Klement Gottwald's Second Cabinet

In the 1946 Czechoslovak parliamentary election the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) emerged as the largest party, winning 114 of the 300 seats in the Constituent National Assembly with 38% of the vote.^[2] Following the elections, the National Front formed a coalition government, headed by KSČ leader Klement Gottwald. Although the government still had a non-Communist majority (nine Communists and seventeen non-Communists), the KSČ had initial control over the police and armed forces through Interior Minister Václav Nosek; in addition to this, the KSČ was gradually able to fill various other positions in the security apparatus with its own candidates.^[3]

During the winter of 1947–1948, the tensions between Communists and non-Communists led to increasingly bitter conflict, both in the Cabinet and in parliament. When the non-Communist ministers protested against Nosek's transformations of the security apparatus in February 1948, the Communists responded by mobilizing groups of their supporters across the country.^[4] On 13 February, Nosek refused to reverse the recent dismissal of eight senior non-Communist police officers, despite a majority vote in the Cabinet instructing him to do so. In protest, twelve non-Communist ministers resigned from the government on 20 February, hoping that it would lead to the fall of the government and new elections. However, as the ministers of the Czechoslovak Social Democracy and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk chose not to resign, the government remained.

Earlier during the government crisis, President Edvard Beneš had stated that he would refuse the replacement of the non-Communist ministers with KSČ members. Despite this, he accepted a new, Communist-dominated government proposed by Gottwald on 25 February, likely out of fear of civil war or Soviet intervention, or hoping to be in a position to later make deals with the KSČ.^[3]