East Europe: The Problem of "National Communism"
Howe, Irving
One of the more insidious dangers in political analysis is to name things too soon. Faced with events or situations that are essentially without precedent, we are tempted to pin down their...
...This alliance among the Gomulka supporters (some of whom, like the students, have also begun to act as very sharp critics) is based less on common belief than a common fear...
...The contempt not in Yugoslavia...
...the presence in Warsaw too costly...
...In Poland the situation is further complicated by the fact that the opposition to Gomulka contains a reactionary component...
...And at a time when new illusions are rapidly being precipitated, this characterization can be very important...
...Although it is wise to discount some reports of antiSemitism as maneuvers of the Communist factions against each other, it would be absurd to deny that antiSemitism exists...
...but they must be taken...
...the indispensable freedoms of speech, press and assembly are still far from being secure or complete...
...This remarkable statement—which only persons of malice or foolishness will take as proposing a return to capitalism—indicates that the momentum of east European politics, if allowed to proceed freely on its own, would soon have to break past the narrow limits of "National Communism...
...I! Poland now presents what is the most ambiguous and complex of situations, one that conforms neither to the Yugoslav nor Hungarian pattern...
...that is, between those who wish for a Polish version of Titoism (though the events in Poland have already gone considerably beyond anything that happened in Yugoslavia) and those who wish for a Polish version of "Djilasism...
...No Polish Communist," writes Sidney Gruson, the New York Times correspondent, "seriously tries any long er in private conversation to gloss over the people's lack of faith in the party...
...But it would still be naive to suppose that this majority was very much more than a vote against the threat of Russian pressure...
...Unless we succumb cussions of eastern Europe: the crisis to the notion that Communist leaders of leadership that appeared in almost are simply agents of Satan, we must all of the satellite parties...
...The New Leader, Nov...
...when the students of Warsaw and Budapest march against the Stalinists, they employ the very language that the rulers of their country have taught them...
...That is no small victoryt...
...III A number of American fellow-travelers, clutching the remnants of their faith, have attached themselves to the Gomulka regime and found in it a symbol of their hope for a renovated "socialism...
...even upon those who consciously man-One should not underestimate the ipulate it...
...Democracy in Poland would not assure a complete or immediate solution to the problem of anti-Semitism...
...For no matter how severe the domestic control of the Communist leadership in a country like Yugoslavia might be, it had to reinforce its appeals to national feeling with slogans that touched upon domestic social issues...
...But the interests and the initiative of the leaders played a crucial and leading role...
...If to foreign domination one adds a local satrap government engaged in a sustained civil war against its own people through political terror, forced collectivization and excessive industrialization, it follows that the one passionate concern of almost everybody, no matter what his political views, becomes the "national question...
...On some issues there is virtual popular unanimity: e.g., the withdrawal of Russian troops, a demand which, in opposition to Gomulka's compromise, the progressive workers and students voice and the reactionary nationalists support...
...Now in this very general sense of tracing origins it may be useful to speak of a political phenomenon in eastern Europe called "National Communism...
...They discover that the and Budapest of a working clans with ideological phrases they had repeated a strong socialist tradition that could by rote and thereby half begun to not be manipulated as easily as were believe or half continued to believe, the workers of Belgrade by Tito...
...for to say this is either to stretch a term beyond analytic usefulness or to fail to recognize what has been happening in Poland...
...Everything that has since happened in eastern Europe can be seen—at least in its beginning—as a reaction to this central fact of Russian power...
...and Marxist ideology, because even in its most grotesque distortions it appeals to "progressive" sentiments, is particularly dangerous to autocratic regimes that use it...
...but then, in the long run, the Go mulka wing of the party is likely to succumb to the centrifugal forces that are today barely held together by com mon fear of the Russians...
...For peosought, but freedom to rule in their ple like Djilas and Dedijer it brought own way...
...In the long run, a choice is unavoidable...
...In Poland today there would seem to be a tacit alliance, within and near the Gomulka wing of the party, between those who would like to "stabilize" the recent changes within the context of a one-party state and those who are edging toward a democratic socialist perspective...
...Ideology reacts way to a kind of democratic socialism...
...19, 1956) Djilas' analysis is brilliantly apt— he has paid for it with a three year sentence in Tito's prison—but the one thing he fails to stress is the political importance of people like himself...
...As Milovan Djilas has written: Yugoslav national Communism was, above all, the resistance to Moscow of the Communist party, that is, of its leaders...
...All the while, of course, the auto cratic limits of these measures were never in question...
...On the one hand, socialists should acknowledge the tactical difficulties and necessities of the Polish situation, and refrain from peremptory demands from afar as to what should be done by those in Poland whom we can regard as our comrades...
...In its early stages, when a word of dissent constituted an act of high courage, this opposition to the Russians—embodying as it did the almost unanimous national will—had little choice but to find its focus within the Communist parties of the satellite countries, even though it was through these very parties that they had suffered a loss or diminution of their independence...
...What it does do, however, is to characterize the basic socio-political relations in Poland between the rulers and the ruled...
...on the other hand, we need to insist upon the conditions which alone permit a society to be described as socialist...
...the common misery of bearing the imperialist burden, like the common need for resistance, prevents the natural conflicts of domestic interest and opinion from flourishing as they should...
...It nearly did...
...Mainly because they were the only public channel available for political life, the Communist parties and their attendant organizations became the means through which opposition to Russian imperialism was first expressed...
...Not that the people opposed this resistance, not that they did not support it and benefit from it—quite the contrary...
...The blow of the fact that Russian troops were sta-Twentieth Russian Party Congress hits tioned in Poland and Hungary but them across the face...
...Yugoslavia supported this discontent [in eastern Europe] as long as it was conducted by the Communist leaders but turned against it—as in Hungary—as soon as it went further .. . This revealed that Yugoslav national Communism was unable in its foreign policy to depart from its narrow ideological and bureaucratic class interests...
...That is an ominous sign...
...In both Poland and Hungary there was no shortage of candidates for the role of Tito: Communist leaders eager to wrench free from the Russians yet keep firm control at home...
...The Yugoslav Communist leadership, disinclined to share its power at home but wishing to end its dependence on the Russians, struggled to establish itself as an independent dictatorship: one that would be free from Russian veto yet would command a social system that in essentials may be described as a (perhaps less terrorist, more rationally organized) *ersion of bureaucratic collectivism...
...But even at this point, when the whole nation seemed united for a common end, deep clefts of interests were forming...
...Hence, the Khrushchev strategy of trying to work out a practical agreement with Tito and (for the moment at least) with Gomulka, while simultaneously announcing a half-way swing back to ideological Stalinism ("when it comes to fighting imperialism, we are all Stalinists...
...but only through the ventilation of public life made possible by democracy could this problem begin to be solved...
...Only when Gomulka made his dramatic statement that to cross off the party's candidates was to cross Poland off the map—which meant to transform the election into a demonstration of na tional sovereignty against the Russians —and only after he had made an en tente with the Church, was he able to win so overwhelming a majority at the polls...
...The dilemma of the Gomulka lead ership is this: it fears that if it goes "too far" in the direction of independ ence, the Russians will employ brute force, yet the only way it can gain the enthusiastic support of the Polish people is by continuing and extend ing the steps toward "democratiza tion" that it has begun to take...
...For suppose that free political life were now possible in Hungary and Poland...
...It is not a question of creditof the people against the imposed ing their "good intentions" or believstate apparatus...
...They also tried to win the active support of the Yugoslav workers by making concessions (the "workers committees" in the factories) that might satisfy, or appear to satisfy, democratic yearnings...
...Poland continues to be part of the Communist bloc...
...If one must apply a label to the Gomulka regime, I would say that it is an authoritarian government functioning within a collectivist (but not a socialist) economy...
...And in doing this it took the risk of raising what it must regard as the spectre of "Djilasism," that is, the political impulse to extend freedom from Russian dictation to freedom within Yugoslavia itself...
...This fact, which might be described as the "reversibility of ideology," has caused and will continue to cause sleepless nights among the despots of eastern Europe...
...The mere be ready to recognize that at least fact that the Titoists had to utilize some elements of the Communist rulcertain democratic slogans against Sta-ing class in eastern Europe are deeply lin—whatever the cynicism or hypoc-shaken in their faith...
...From reading excerpts of articles written in the Polish press (see the report by L. Labedz in this DISSENT), one gains the strong impression that many Polish Communist intellectuals have made a complete break...
...As in Hungary, a popular revolution took place during the last months of 1956, but a revolution that did not entirely shatter the power of the Polish Communist party...
...In Yugoslavia Djilas sits in jail...
...What seems familiar and need merely be noted: to be happening among them is the Tito had behind him a genuine mass equivalent of that moral crisis in the party while the Polish and Hungarian ruling class which Marx and Lenin Communist parties enjoyed little sup-specified as an element in a prerevoport among the people...
...While in the "sanctuary" of Tito's embassy in Budapest (it is still not clear whether the Yugoslays betrayed him to the Russians), Nagy told a Swedish journalist that the revolutions in eastern Europe meant "the beginning of the end of Communism as a social system...
...Consider Yugoslavia, the first east European country to rebel against the Russians...
...Faced with events or situations that are essentially without precedent, we are tempted to pin down their novelty with a phrase...
...be repeated in Poland and Hungary...
...And while it may be true that the threat of the Russians can be demagogically utilized by Gomulka as a pretext for throttling the democratic yearnings of the people, it would be foolhardy to deny that the threat is very real, that it does present a grave problem to any Polish government and that it cannot but exert a constricting influence upon all Polish life...
...in other words, a struggle between the views represented by Tito and those represented by Djilas...
...It was not —felt the break with Stalin as a major freedom for their people that they intellectual and ethical crisis...
...The limited freedom of speech—limited mainly to those who in effect agree "not to rock the boat," yet not a mere masquerade—is not what one associates with a totalitarian society...
...Admittedly the problems touched upon in these notes are knotty ones, but we can now feel, as a result of recent happenings in eastern Europe, that the need for reworking the ideas of democratic socialism is felt not only among socialists in the West but also among new friends in the East...
...People like Djilas, Nagy and their Polish counterparts would probably find it easier to cooperate with socialists like Anna Kethly than with the remaining orthodox Communists...
...For socialists the following attitude would seem to be indicated: we welcome and applaud every step toward a loosening of the dictatorship, we sympathize with those figures in Poland who are genuinely moving toward the values of democratic socialism, but we do not accept the Gomulka regime as ours...
...Thus, shortly before the managed elections in January it became clear that if votes were to be cast on the basis of domestic political relation ships, the party would lose heavily— not so much to the discredited "Nato lin" faction, the meagerness of whose popular support is indicated by its re sort to desperate anti-Semitic rumors —but to large masses of workers and peasants who are rightfully sick of the whole Communist experience...
...Only in situations where Gomulka has been able to mobilize the workers in the large Warsaw factories and the students in the universities has he managed to achieve his immediate aims...
...Still others, perhaps the majority of Gomulka's supporters, are experiencing a severe crisis of conscience which leaves them uncertain and troubled...
...So long as these conditions persist, democrats and socialists have no business identifying themselves with the Polish regime—except insofar as it serves to express the will of the Polish people in resisting Russian intervention...
...They discover that in geography, which should never be the price of ruling in Stalin's way is forgotten...
...Nonetheless, it seems to me a mistake to say, as some socialists do, that Poland today remains a totalitarian country...
...It is here that the perversion of Marxist ideas by the Communists tends to boomerang against them...
...At the moment, then, it would appear that those elements within the Gomulka regime which favor an authoritarian stabilization and a "tightening up" at home have the upper hand...
...This seems to me a delusion...
...and hatred that the masses of their But there is another factor that has own countries feel toward them begins not been sufficiently stressed in dis-to express itself...
...Unavoidably, such a description is clumsy and may not capture the point that there is a fluid situation in Poland today...
...From the perspective of the Kremlin rulers, it is clear that the mild deviation of a Tito provides serious openings to the utter heresy of a Djilas or a Nagy...
...Ideology seems to take on a life of its own, prompting people to action which the masters of the state have not counted upon...
...Recently, in fact, there have been a number of signs that the Gomulka government is trying to stabilize its authoritarian rule...
...The risks of freedom, which its supporters need never underestimate, are genuine...
...With considerable help from its war-time allies and by employing methods as barbarous politically as they were rapacious economically, Russia reduced the countries of eastern Europe to a semi-colonial status...
...Some, like Djirisy with which they did this—forced las and Nagy, have even broken out a certain modification of their politi- of ideological bondage and found their cal behavior at home...
...The kind of articles from which Mr...
...What had been done in a period of sustained revaluation, the Yugoslavia, however, could not easily cleansing pain of self-confrontation...
...Others, while continuing to employ the vocabulary of Communism and finding it necessary to function within the Communist party, seem clearly to be political marranos: socialists in secret...
...In Yugoslavia, therefore, the entire process was led and carefully controlled from above, and tendencies to go further— to democracy—were relatively weak...
...Welcome and remarkable as the changes in Poland may be, they do not yet come to a decisive break with an oppressive social system...
...Whatever historical reason there may be for this descriptive promiscuity, the time has come to search for greater precision...
...By skillfully and hurriedly placing itself at the head of the Polish uprising, the Gomulka leadership managed, for the time being, to contain it within an unstable form of authoritarian Communist rule...
...Yet nothing could be more mistaken than to urge a muting of the struggle for more democracy in Poland on the grounds that it will give opportunities to the Right...
...But soon these independent workers' committees and independent student organizations prove an embarrassment to his government—as when the student organizations, committed to genuine democracy, protested against the repressive atmosphere created during the elections or when the workers in the Zeran auto plant denounced the party for its failure to support the Hungarian revolution...
...Tito's rebellion was not against a social system or even a political ideology: it was designed to modify a relationship of power...
...These bureaucrats stick like leeches to their jobs...
...What holds these people together is the enormous pressure exerted upon them from two sides, first and primarily by the Russians, which takes the form of the constant possibility of intervention and regular sabotage by the Russian wing of the party (the "Natolin" faction), and second by the traditional Polish Right, chauvinist and anti-Semitic, which has begun to make itself felt from below...
...When the students of Madrid march against Franco, they seldom think of confronting him with the original slogans of fascism...
...As the price for support from the Chinese, the Poles shamefacedly denounced the Hungarian revolution...
...The workers of Poland do not have the right to strike or to organize free trade unions...
...In Communist counTito may have been engaged in a tries ideology has so great a currency, power maneuver for which ideologi-and in times of trouble the problem cal decoration was necessary, other of rationalizing power becomes so difleaders of the Communist party—most ficult, that the east European state notably Djilac and Dedijer, but surely bureaucrat cannot solve his intellecsome whose names we do not know tual crisis simply by settling for his interest in preserving the status quo...
...Similarly, Gomulka has found that his efforts to dismiss thousands of secondrank functionaries in the Polish party who are still loyal to his predecessors is much more difficult than he had supposed...
...Without putting it in so many words, they have begun to take the path of Djilas or Czeslaw Milosz (The Captive Mind...
...National Communism" is today being used to describe, or obscure, the meaning of political tendencies as diverse as those embodied in men like Tito, Gomulka, Djilas and Nagy...
...In a country suffering from foreign oppression, inner social and political divergences tend to be suppressed...
...the are sheer nonsense...
...opposition parties are not permitted to function freely...
...ing that scoundrels (as many of them Many of the reasons for this are are) can become "good...
...That too is ominous...
...Under the pressure of the great events in Budapest, Nagy and some of his colleagues seem to have undergone an intellectual self-liberation similar to that which Djilas had slowly been working out for himself in Belgrade...
...Chauvinism and antiSemitism have survived in Poland partly because Communist terror created the kind of social atmosphere in which such atavistic sentiments could flourish...
...in Poland his counterparts still publish articles and in some instances hold government posts...
...the differences lutionary situation...
...More importantly, where a role of ideology...
...Everyone can provide his own examples, but the one that seems most relevant at the moment is "National Communism...
...At the end of the Second World War Stalinist Russia entered a stage of open imperialism...
...A struggle would then ensue between those who wish to continue with a milder form of totalitarian collectivism (the true "National Communists") and those who wish to break through to some version of democratic socialism...
...One of the first things to happen would be that "National Communism" would crumble into a number of political tendencies...
...Labedz quotes are not written in a totalitarian country...
...But to the extent that the national aspect of Polish politics recedes—that is, if and when the threat of Russian intervention declines—the distance be tween the opponents of the government from the right and its critics from the left will surely be widened...
...One of the more insidious dangers in political analysis is to name things too soon...
...The elections, certainly not free in any serious sense, aroused bitter criticism from the Polish students, and as a result one of their non-party organizations was compelled to disband...
...To achieve this end, the Titoists had to call upon and to some extent mobilize the strong national feelings among the Yugoslav people...
...This crisis of thought and values The controlled rebellion of state must, I am convinced, be deeper against state which Tito had managed among many of the east European could not occur in Poland and Hun-Communists than any of us can quite gary without a simultaneous rebellion know...
Vol. 4 • April 1957 • No. 2
