The Slovak paper refers to information released by the SVR Russian intelligence.
Historians, however, question its credibility, it says. Benes (1884-1948) was a co-founder of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and its first foreign minister until 1935 when he became president. He resigned shortly after he signed in 1938 the Munich agreement that paved the path to Hitler dismembering Czechoslovakia. During the war, Benes was Czechoslovak president in exile, and he was confirmed as president after World War II in 1945. He resigned in June 1948 after the communists seized power Czech court does not return Rohozec chateau to Walderode heiress ...
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Russia to extend naval exercises ... in the country in February. He died in September of the same year. According to SVR, Benes closely cooperated with Soviet agent Pyotr Zubov, whom Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov assigned with negotiating with the ill Benes in Prague in January 1948, Pravda quotes the SVR. Zubov was to persuade Benes not to stand in the way of then Czechoslovak Communist leader Klement Gottwald in taking over power in the country. "He successfully fulfilled the task," Pravda quotes Vladimir Karpov, expert in the history of the Soviet intelligence, as saying. Zubov was decorated with the Lenin Order and he died four years later, the paper reminds. Michal Stefansky, from the Bratislava-based Military Historical Institute, says the same sensational revelation was made for the first time by Pavol Sudoplatov, former deputy head of the Soviet intelligence service, in his memories that were published in the United States in 1994. "The information about Benes having been blackmailed by Soviet agents caused a sizeable uproar already then, but no other source has confirmed it to date," Stefansky said. Sudoplatov claimed that Zubov blackmailed Benes reminding him of his confidential relations with the Kremlin and Lyubyanka, the seat of the Soviet secret police KGB, a 10,000 dollar receipt he got when he emigrated in 1938, and the alleged participation in the preparation of a military coup in Yugoslavia before the war, Pravda writes. It says not even historian Yelena Serapionova, from the Russian Academy of Sciences, is able to clearly say whether this is a "shocking revelation, a fabrication or a deliberate disinformation." She said, however, she considers it trustworthy that Benes was providing the Soviet leadership with information, the paper writes. It is known that Benes handed to Stalin in 1937 already a secret piece of information about Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky that he is a German agent. But it was a fake produced by the German secret service. The talented military leader was executed and a big part of Soviet generals were exposed to repression.
(Ceske Noviny)
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