[1] Following the collapse of democratic Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement, the right-wing leadership of the Czechoslovak Second Republic banned the Communist Party, forcing Gottwald to emigrate to the Soviet Union in November 1938.

In 1943, Gottwald agreed with representatives of the Czechoslovak-government-in-exile located in London, along with President Edvard Beneš, to unify domestic and foreign anti-fascist resistance and form the National Front.

In June 1948, he was elected as Czechoslovakia's first Communist president, four months after the 1948 coup d'état in which his party seized power with the backing of the Soviet Union.

Klement Gottwald was born on 23 November 1896, but it is unclear if in Dědice (today part of Vyškov) or in Hoštice-Heroltice.

In September 1921 he moved from Rousinov to Banská Bystrica, where he became the editor of the communist magazine Hlas Ľudu ("Voice of the people" in Slovak).

From 1926 to 1929 he worked in Prague, where he aided the Secretariat of the KSČ to form a pro-Moscow opposition against the anti-Moscow leadership then in power.

In 1943, Gottwald agreed with representatives of the Czechoslovak-government-in-exile located in London, along with President Edvard Beneš, to unify domestic and foreign anti-fascist resistance and form the National Front.

In 1945, Gottwald gave up the general secretary's post to Rudolf Slánský and was elected to the new position of party chairman.

On 10 May 1945, Gottwald returned to Prague as the deputy premier under Zdeněk Fierlinger and as the chairman of the National Front.

"[8] By the summer of 1947, however, the KSČ's popularity had significantly dwindled, particularly after the Soviets pressured Czechoslovakia to turn down Marshall Plan aid after initially accepting it.

Outwardly, though, Gottwald kept up the appearance of working within the system, announcing that he intended to lead the Communists to an absolute majority in the upcoming election—something no Czechoslovak party had ever done.

The other parties were still nominally represented, but with the exception of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk they were fellow travellers handpicked by the Communists.

On 9 May, the National Assembly, now a docile tool of the Communists, approved the so-called Ninth-of-May Constitution.

Later that month, elections were held in which voters were presented with a single list from the National Front, now a Communist-controlled patriotic organization.

In a famous photograph from 21 February 1948, described also in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, Clementis stands next to Gottwald.

[10][11] Gottwald was a long-time alcoholic[12] and suffered from heart disease caused by syphilis that had gone untreated for several years.

Gottwald's embalmed body was initially displayed in a mausoleum at the site of the Jan Žižka national monument in the district of Žižkov, Prague.

There are accounts that in 1962 Gottwald's body had blackened and was decomposing due to a botched embalming, although other witnesses have disputed this.

He was succeeded as de facto leader of Czechoslovakia by Antonín Novotný, who became First Secretary of the KSČ.

This note was so poorly received by Czechoslovaks that it was removed from official circulation on 31 December 1990 and was promptly replaced with the previous banknote issue of the same denomination.