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After the entry of the Red Army into Czechoslovak territory in 1945, Red Army authorities began to arrest and deport Czechoslovak citizens to labor camps in the Soviet Union. The regions most affected were Eastern and South Slovakia and Prague. The Czechoslovak authorities repeatedly requested a halt to the deportations and that the deported Czechoslovaks be returned immediately. It took a long time before these protests generated any response. Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag focuses on the diplomatic and political aspects of the deportations. The author explains the steps taken by the Czechoslovak Government in the repatriation agenda from 1945 to 1953 and reconstructs the negotiations with the Soviets. The research tries to answer the question of why and how the Russians deported the civilian population from Czechoslovakia which was their allied country already during the war. Key words: 1. World War, 1939–1945—Deportations from Czechoslovakia. 2. Forced labor—Soviet Union—History. 3. Labor camps—Soviet Union—History. 4. Czechs—Soviet Union—History. 5. Slovaks—Soviet Union—History. 6. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 7. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—Czechoslovakia. 8. Czechoslovakia—Foreign relations—1945–1992. 9. Repatriation—Czechoslovakia—History.

Containing meticulous research of a long under-represented part of the Holocaust, this book provides a rich pictorial documentation of the Gulag environment as told by Jewish refugees.

While millions of Soviet slaves awaited liberation from the Nazi troops, millions of German concentration camp victims put their last bit of hope in the Red Army.

An in-depth look into the Soviet persecution of Jewish refugees, this book offers twenty-one different interviews with Czechoslovak Jewish refugees who found themselves in Soviet labor and prison camps between 1939 and 1941. They represent around two thousand Czechoslovak Jews who escaped persecution from German and Hungarian occupational forces and Slovak fascists by fleeing to the East. The Soviets sentenced most of them to long stints of forced labor in the Gulags for illegal immigration, espionage, and other arbitrary accusations. A specific group was formed by the Jews from the Hungarian labor service who either defected to or were captured by the Soviets.

Dvořák and Hradilek chronicle four waves of escape—those from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Nisko concentration camp, Carpathian Ruthenia, and the aforementioned labor service. Thorough and clear, every interview coincides with supplementary documents and photographs found in the NKVD archives, sourced from Ukraine.