The Enigma of the Gajda Affair in Czechoslovak Politics in 1926

While historians have studied Pilsudski’s coup d’état in Poland extensively, histories of interwar Eastern Europe either totally ignore or make only guarded references to an alleged attempted coup in Czechoslovakia in the same year under the aegis of the prominent general and former Russian legionary, Radola Gajda (1892-1948). In 1926, Gajda, the acting chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Army, was removed from his post to be tried and convicted for having committed several treasonable offenses against the Czechoslovak state. Historians agree that Gajda harbored Fascist political sympathies—as after his dismissal from the army, he became the leader of the “National Fascist Community” (Národnί obec fašistická or NOF), the small Czech Fascist movement—but no one has written in detail about Gajda’s career in the army before 1926. Two older accounts of Czechoslovak politics by Ferdinand Peroutka and Harry Klepetář briefly discuss the sensational scandal surrounding Gajda, and several Communist historians have asserted that Gajda reached an agreement with the Slovak leader Vojtech (Béla) Tuka to carry out a coup against the government during the 1926 Sokol gymnastic congress.