SOVIET DISSIDENTS AND EUROCOMMUNISM
Motyl, Alexander
A volatile relationship binds the Communist parties of France, Italy, and Spain, the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the Soviet dissenters espousing variuos Marxist...
...it is quite another to acknowledge that the source of one's inspiration is not democratic...
...While one can only speculate whether Western Communist criticism in 1973 of Soviet treatment of Solzhenitsyn saved the writer from imprisonment, it seems likely in the case of Leonid Plyushch's release in January 1976...
...Insofar as the Berlin participants avoided making references to the Soviet Union (Santiago Carrillo's remark that Moscow serves as "the Communist Rome" is the leading exception) and instead limited themselves to general statements, this event was much less significant than might be concrete criticisms of Soviet policy...
...If it is true that criticism of the Soviet Union is politically expedient for the Eurocommunists and beneficial to Soviet dissenters, then it logically follows that the greater this criticism becomes, the greater the political advantages for the Western Communists are likely to be...
...This is why socialism in the West must be different from the Soviet kind" 3) is understandable if one looks at Spain's current political dynamics...
...In view of the electoral gains of the French left in the past few years, as well as of the Italian CP's (PCI) steady electoral advances, CP participation in the government of these nations has become a distinct possibility...
...3Wlodzimierz Sznarbachowski, "Evropeys'ky komunizm i Skhidnya Evropa," Suchasnist, 11: 191 (1976), pp...
...The latter instance is particularly noteworthy because of Plyushch's avowed Marxism...
...232 surprising...
...The point of such criticism also is clear...
...That the Eurocommunists should thus far have avoided criticizing "aspects of Soviet policy" from a Marxist point of view is not Holubenko, "Plyushch and the French Communist Party," META, 1: 2 (1976), p. 33...
...The Marxist and other dissidents in the U.S.S.R...
...Ironically, however, Eurocommunist success in the West may increase hardships of dissidents in the Soviet Union...
...ceases to be "fraternal" and joins the "chorus of the troubadours of anti-Communism...
...likely to have on the Kremlin...
...It is one thing to proclaim oneself a democrat, as was done in Berlin or in the joint French-Italian CP declaration of 1975...
...In this respect, the French and Italian CPs' concern over Solzhenitsyn in 1973 as well as the PCF's editorial defense of Plyushch in 1975 are closer to "bourgeois" positions on the human rights question than it is convenient for them to admit...
...In affirming their independence, however, Western Communists were not condemning the Soviet system: they were only rejecting the "leading role" of the CPSU...
...Such a development, while not helpful to dissidents in danger of prison, could greatly affect the character of dissent in the Soviet Union...
...Toward the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, the Western CPs have taken an apolitical and "classless" line, stressing the importance of human rights as distinctly human rights...
...A similar sprouting of dissident Marxism may very well take place if a Eurocommunist party were successfully to assume the role of a model...
...This emphasis on human rights has continued up to the present, manifesting itself most recently in widespread CP criticism of the repressive measures taken against the East European supporters of Charter 77...
...Considering the extensive favorable coverage given the Prague Spring in Samizdat writings by such dissident Communists as P. Grigorenko, A. Kosterin, I. Yakhimovich, and I. Gabai, it is probably true that a direct link existed between the attempt to install a "socialism with a human face" and the fairly sudden rise of numerous dissident Marxist groups in the U.S.S.R...
...exert an indirect form of pressure on the Kremlin to be less harsh toward dissenters...
...In 1968-69 alone, at least seven such groups were founded...
...Soviet dissident Marxism, in particular, would stand to undergo farreaching changes...
...234...
...Not only was the Spanish General Secretary more blunt in his remarks concerning the leading role of the CPSU at the Berlin Conference, but Carrillo's statement—that the "Soviet Union is not really a popular democracy but a dictatorship of a small layer of the country over the rest of the society"2—goes a long way toward being a Marxist critique of the Soviet Union...
...Continued assertions of Westernism and a distancing from the monolithic aspects of the world Communist movement are intended to serve as proof of national patriotism and democratic conviction...
...Although Marchais and Plyushch have been fairly critical of each other, the fact that L'Humanite ran an open letter from Plyushch to the French General Secretary on February 26, 1977 reveals that a dialogue of some sort exists between the two sides...
...AT THEIR JUNE 1976 Berlin Conference, the Communist parties of France, Italy, and Spain proclaimed before a generally skeptical world their readiness to follow independent and democratic policies in their own countries...
...R. has long since eliminated those systemic characteristics that typify bourgeois societies...
...While this may not be overly problematic in the case of someone like Roy Medvedev, it becomes exceedingly so with someone like Plyushch...
...ALTHOUGH IT is impossible to determine the present strength of the dissident Marxist current within the U.S.S.R., it is at least clear that some such current does exist, that it was particularly strong in the late '60s and early '70s, and that its social base is, as Plyushch maintains, rooted in the provinces...
...Significantly, of the 23 known, post-Stalinist dissident Marxist groups, more than half existed between the years 1968 and 1971...
...This visit, however, was not quite the provocatory gesture it was made out to be by the Western press, for the dissent of Medvedev is very much that of a "loyal opposition...
...However, the closer the Eurocommunists come to achieving "respectability," the less will this benefit Soviet dissenters, because the further the Western parties deviate from the Soviet line, the less impact is their criticism of the U.S.S.R...
...What is less obvious, and probably unprovable, is that such public protests against violations of human rights in the U.S.S.R...
...To do so would have been to imply that the whole Soviet system is open to a Marxist critique...
...A condemnation, however mild, of the invasion of Czechoslovakia or of Soviet mistreatment of such dissenters as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Leonid Plyushch, or Vladimir Bukovsky is a much more emphatic rejection of Stalinism than the proclamation of one's own virtues...
...That Carrillo should have made this and similar judgments (as, for example, his comment in an interview published in Corriere della sera at the time of the 25th CPSU Congress that the Soviet Union's "socialism is in a primitive state with the marks of the feudal order that it destroyed...
...The political expedience of criticizing the U.S.S.R...
...To defend a Marxist as a Marxist comes close to endorsing that dissenter's nonofficial Marxism...
...Their commitments to Marxism may vary, but insofar as it is not of the official CPSU sort, it is "dissident...
...But according to the official Soviet position, the U.S.S...
...The French Communist party's (PCF) decision to drop the politically inexpedient term "dictatorship of the proletariat" at its February 1976 Congress is an example of this attitude...
...Carrillo's success in getting his party legalized seems to a large extent the result of his "anti-Sovietism...
...For then CP criticism of the U.S.S.R...
...For want of a better term, those Soviet dissenters espousing a nonofficial form of socialism will be characterized as "dissident Marxists...
...Not surprisingly, neither Marchais nor Berlinguer shared the Spaniard's sentiment...
...Should a Eurocommunist party approach some form of government power without sacrificing its commitment to democracy and to socialism, it would set an influential precedent by offering a viable model of socialism...
...Significantly, the French have recently taken a large step in the direction of the Spanish by maintaining public contacts with Plyushch at both 2"Not Being too Beastly to Moscow," Time, March 14, 1977, p. 23...
...No wonder the Italians found in the Russian Marxist an ideological compatriot...
...Seeing a model of socialism as "it should be," dissident Marxists were able to resurrect Marxism as a visibly workable approach to reality...
...L'Humanite, however, completely ignored the Ukrainian mathematician's politics (as well as the more explosive issue of the repression of a Communist by a Communist state) and instead vaguely affirmed only his right to disagree with the Soviet regime: If it is true, and unhappily until now there has been no proof to the contrary, that the mathematician is interned in a psychiatric hospital because he has taken a stance against some aspects of Soviet policy or against the regime itself, we can only confirm with the greatest clarity our total disapproval and demand that he be liberated as quickly as possible.' The mildness of the statement is all the more striking in light of the fact that it appeared the day after a non-Communist, left-wing rally in defense of the Ukrainian at which the PCF was sharply criticized for its lack of participation...
...A Western CP that integrates itself into the fabric of "bourgeois democratic" politics may thereby lose the levers of influence with its Soviet ally...
...A volatile relationship binds the Communist parties of France, Italy, and Spain, the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the Soviet dissenters espousing variuos Marxist tendencies...
...is well illustrated by the different attitudes taken toward the question by the French and Italians on the one hand, and the Spanish on the other...
...understand this very well—they have repeatedly made clear that there is no convincing reason to accept the sincerity of Eurocommunist assertions of democracy, unless these are accompanied by strong criticism of the Soviet Union and a realization that "noninterference" in CPSU affairs implies tacit approval of Soviet policies...
...For Medvedev, the lack of democratic procedure is the only substantive problem...
...Central to the instability of this relationship are the attempts by the Eurocommunist parties to achieve their political goals by electoral means...
...The campaign in defense of Plyushch waged by various groups in the West seemed to be headed for the same fate as that of other such unsuccessful actions...
...While this hardly indicates that the French have been converted to Plyushch's views, their willingness even to be associated with so thorough an "anti-Soviet renegade" is a sign of distancing from the U.S.S.R...
...would mean a rejection of the Soviet system—a step that none of the Eurocommunist parties is at present prepared to take, since too hasty a move away from the CPSU could undermine their own organizational and ideological foundations...
...Dissident Marxists pose an even greater difficulty for the Eurocommunists...
...Such a critique of the U.S.S.R...
...Medvedev sees little wrong with the social structure as such, finds the national question to be a nuisance more than anything else, and is generally satisfied that the Soviet Union is socialist...
...While the Italians and the French have already achieved a certain degree of legitimacy and are not hard pressed to make further concessions to their democratic systems, the Spanish CP has to make the type of grand gesture that will make it acceptable...
...First, they serve to enhance the CPs' democratic image at home and thereby help garner votes...
...THE EFFECT of the Communists' occasional "antiSoviet" outbursts is twofold...
...This is certainly understood to be so by the numerous Soviet Communist and non-Communist dissidents who make appeals to the Western CPs...
...But after the PCF's interest in the matter in late 1975, Moscow seemed almost to respond directly with Plyushch's release a few months later...
...On the other hand, to endorse a Marxist such as Plyushch is at present inconceivable, because his brand of Marxism provides a radical analysis of the Soviet Union as a state-capitalist and nationally repressive system...
...An Italian Communist delegation visited Medvedev in early 1977 to present him with a copy of an Italian-language translation of one of his works...
...82-83...
...233 the Central Committee and local levels...
Vol. 25 • April 1978 • No. 2
