Viliam Široký
Czechoslovak vice prime minister of Czechoslovakia, member of Czechoslovak national parliament, minister of foreign affairs and slovak nation politician (1902-1971)
Viliam Široký (31 May 1902 – 6 October 1971) was a Slovak politician. He was prominent communist politician of Czechoslovakia who served as Prime Minister from 1953 to 1963, and was also the leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia between 1945 and 1954.
Biography
Široký was born into the family of railroad workers in Hungary. According to Muriel Blaive, he was an ethnic Hungarian, but no Slovak source confirms this. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) at age 19, and quickly rose in the party apparatus after the election of Klement Gottwald as general secretary. Together with Václav Kopecký, Široký was an agent of the Soviet NKVD, whose task was to inform the Moscow leadership mainly about Gottwald's activities.
in 1935, Široký was elected as a member of the Czechoslovak National Assembly, where he sat until the KSČ was banned in 1938. Prior to the start of Second World War, he was also elected secretary of the Communist Party of Slovakia. In the autumn of 1938, Široký left for the USSR due to the growing threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. During the war, he first worked as a member of the exiled foreign secretariat of the Communist Party in Paris, and later in a similar position in Moscow.
“Viliam Široký” enters the record as czechoslovak vice prime minister of Czechoslovakia, member of Czechoslovak national parliament, minister of foreign affairs and slovak nation politician (1902-1971). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Viliam, Široký and Czechoslovak can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Viliam Široký” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Viliam, Široký and Czechoslovak provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1399968. VIAF identifies the subject as 23774597. The Library of Congress control number is n91026109. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1902, 1971, 1953 and 1963.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Viliam Široký”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Viliam Široký primary sources, Viliam Široký archive and Viliam research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Viliam Široký”?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Viliam Široký” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.