The Captive Nations--1956
BERLE, INTRODUCTION BY ADOLF A. Jr.
The Captive Nations -- 1956 A Comprehensive Report Prepared by the Assembly of Captive European Nations Introduction By Adolf A. Berle Jr. Europe's balance of power--and with it the basis of...
...Both 20th-century world wars started in this area...
...Forced labor continues and is held as a threat against absenteeism, inefficiency, or changing jobs without permission...
...There is no open, organized opposition...
...In World War II, these peoples, again submerged by either Hitler or Stalin, were promised governments of their own choosing...
...Gailevicius) and the Chairman of the Committee for State Security (K...
...Thus, in the Soviet campaign to win Egypt's favor one of the instruments is the export of Rumanian oil and lumber...
...Within three days, 16 collectives in the Kula area of northern Bulgaria had dissolved completely...
...Much of this has already been done, indeed, in the Baltic republics, especially Latvia...
...How voluntary the process of collectivization was can be seen from what happened in 1951...
...She assists in the industrialization of other nations in the Soviet bloc and at the same time competes with the industrial nations of the West in world markets...
...in fact, it takes its orders from the leadership of the United Workers' party...
...It was dominated by the recently deceased Bierut, who had the title of First Secretary of the Central Committee...
...It then began to purge its ranks of persons considered unreliable or associated with factions which had fallen by the wayside in internal Party squabbles, and by May 1950 it was down to 720,000 members...
...At present, the former functions of the Ministry are divided--as they are nationally--between the Minister of the Interior (A...
...At the same time that it maintains itself by terror, the regime does not neglect propaganda...
...The Supreme Soviet elected in February 1955 contained 66 members of the previous Supreme Soviet and 143 new members...
...The territory of these peoples could be seized...
...Of 26 ministers, 9 are Russians...
...In the religious field, the New Course brought a relaxation in the persecution of the Catholic Church...
...Any defection of the top Communist leadership from the Soviet line is therefore impossible: if their followers should revolt against Russian domination, they could do so only by breaking away from the Communist party altogether and joining with Rumania's anti-Communist masses...
...they live under Soviet law...
...Of the 125 members of the Estonian Supreme Soviet elected in February 1955, only 56 were Estonians born and bred...
...the Government continues to discourage religious education...
...In theory, the Council of Ministers is responsible to a parliament, the Sejm...
...Trybuna Ludu of December 29 admitted that Polish factories were producing artillery, modern tanks, jet planes and radar apparatus...
...Actually, however, Polish fear of Germany--East as well as West--serves the regime...
...Despite the use of police terror, which continues despite a slight decrease in the power of the secret police since Beria's downfall, nationalist sentiment continues to be ubiquitous in Latvia and has even penetrated the ranks of the Communist party...
...Since the Geneva Summit Conference, Western tourists have been able to visit Poland, and toward the end of 1955 Warsaw announced that Polish tourists would be permitted to visit the West...
...To a large extent, both Government and Party officials are imported from other parts of the Soviet Union...
...No small country--probably no great country, either--can maintain itself economically except as part of a system involving many other countries...
...At the Twelfth Congress of the Latvian Communist party, only 50 per cent of the delegates were Latvians, while 44 per cent were Russians...
...The elections of October 1946, in which opposition parties took part at the insistence of the Western powers, demonstrated the unpopularity of the Communist regime...
...At the same time, however, Hungary continues to play her assigned role in the Soviet military scheme...
...Meanwhile, the "free" workers are being subjected to intensified pressures in order to realize the regime's industrial goals...
...Until 1955, no foreigners--even from states of the Soviet bloc--were permitted to visit them, and even trusted Communists in the three states were not permitted to go abroad...
...Soviet control continues to be exercised through special departments headed by Russians in all the economic ministries and in the national bank...
...The result is that the population lives on the verge of starvation...
...No small country can maintain itself for more than a few hours if attacked with modern weapons...
...In addition, Albania maintains an army of 60,000 men--a tremendous drain on a country whose total population is 1,250,000...
...Mecys Gedvilas, also a Lithuanian, was Prime Minister from 1940 to January 16, 1956, when he was replaced by a Khrushchev-type Communist...
...In the basic coal and steel industries, production also lagged behind the plan...
...the peasants, on the other hand, have suffered an even greater cut in their purchasing power...
...Russian is required in the schools, and Government employes are forced to study it...
...Special attention is also given--though so far without too much success--to the improvement of relations with Austria and Yugoslavia...
...the regime was too afraid of the opposition of the Bulgarian people to dare loosen its grip even for an instant...
...1955 that the armed forces would be reduced by 40.000 men by December 1. Even if this reduction has actually taken place, it leaves the Rumanian armed forces far in excess of the level permitted by the Peace Treaty...
...Like all the other "people's democracies," Czechoslovakia is a police state...
...Two men from this group, Matwin and Morawski, were appointed to the Party Secretariat in January 1954...
...After the war, joint Soviet-Rumanian companies were established to control and exploit most branches of the Rumanian economy...
...The greatest expansion is planned for the chemical industry, whose production is supposed to increase almost three times...
...however, talk about "national cadres" ceased and Russification appears to have been resumed...
...August Jakobson continues as chairman of the Presidium of the Estonian Supreme Soviet, a post which he has held since 1050...
...it has been necessary to send Communist "shock brigades" from the cities to improve the work of the machine-tractor stations...
...Milk 12.29 liters 5.00 liters This drop in the standard of living has not been affected by four sets of "price reductions" announced by the regime in the last five years, Almost all these reductions affected such luxury goods as radios lout of the reach of most Bulgarians) but not the necessities of life...
...A Polish-Soviet Friendship Month is celebrated annually...
...There is no prospect of any Titoist movement in Bulgaria...
...A large part of Albania's manpower is employed in constructing airfields and in fortifying the port of Aloha as a Soviet naval base dominating the mouth of the Adriatic...
...1.50 kg...
...There was formerly a certain rivalry between these and the small group of Communists who were active in the wartime Communist underground...
...In fact, however, the shift reflects to a large extent only the artificially and fantastically high values assigned to industrial products...
...From April 1954 to October 1955, Gheorghiu-Dej relinquished the Party Secretaryship to Apostol but remained Premier...
...Conditions in the captive countries have been even more a mystery than those in the USSR...
...Few Mid-European representatives, I imagine, intend that their reconstituted countries shall be pieces in an historical museum...
...in order to drive them into the collectives, they are given delivery quotas beyond their capacity...
...Industrial production increased 8 per cent in 1955 over 1954...
...In Latvian schools, even on the elementary level, Russian has equal status with Latvian as a language of instruction...
...The "socialist sector" represents only 26.5 per cent of the total agricultural land: of this, stale farms account for 13.7 per cent, collectives 8.3 per cent, those cooperatives in which the peasants work the land in common but derive a share based on their land ownership make up 4.1 per cent, and ordinary cooperatives 0.4 per cent...
...Production of automobiles reached only 20,900 tons compared to a scheduled 37,000...
...Absent that, and Europe will not be at rest...
...It was thereby able to meet the minimum needs of the urban population, but at the cost of further discouraging farm production...
...These are the United Peasant party and the Democratic party...
...This represented a formal concession to Moscow's post-Stalin principle of "collective leadership...
...After the fall of Beria...
...They intend a real and vital life...
...The terror has also affected the Communists themselves...
...Behind the restrained though grim narrative here presented is a composite drama of endless personal heroism...
...In 1955, agricultural production had fallen to roughly 55 per cent of its prewar level...
...An attempt was made to place sole blame for previous excesses on the head of its former chief, General Gabor Peter, who had been arrested in January 1953...
...Three-fourths of its 209 members are Lithuanians, one-sixth Russians...
...This, perhaps, was what Winston Churchill had in mind when he observed that World War I had given "self-determination" but that the world was entitled to something more...
...Perhaps the most striking change of climate has been in the intellectual field...
...Before the war, a food basket consisting of 4 kilograms of bread, 1 kilogram of flour, 1 kilogram of potatoes, 100 grams of sugar, 400 grams of beef, 2 liters of milk, 2 eggs, 50 grams of butter, and 100 grams of other fats represented 7.7 hours' pay for the average worker...
...The regime holds power by continuous terror...
...Poland's relations with East Germany are a special problem...
...In the first years of the dictatorship, every outstanding non-Communist was liquidated, but the terror continues...
...Thus, Bishop Anton Pawlowski, whom the Holy See had appointed to the Wloclawek diocese in 1950...
...The regime began efforts to consolidate the two groups in October 1953, but the Commission of Priests delayed the merger until July 1955...
...Of the 107 machine-tractor stations, which control the collective farms...
...But they also continue to carry on passive resistance through all means at their command...
...While these changes have not been altogether wiped out...
...that is, Poland's economic plans and foreign trade must be fitted into the plans of the Soviet Union...
...there are no major camps in Lithuania, but political prisoners are sent to Siberia and Central Asia...
...Czechoslovak foreign policy is completely subject to the will of the Soviet rulers...
...All churches in Czechoslovakia today have been brought under state control...
...55.000 in the frontier guard, and 60.000 security troops, in addition to over a million others in para-military formations...
...Taken together, Mid-Europe is a mighty reserve of something the world needs most: unique, individual capacity...
...Polish economic planning centers on the rapid increase of industrial production, and in particular on the forced development of heavy industry...
...But, should either Poland or Czechoslovakia attempt to circumscribe its economy or defense within its boundaries, she is lost, and every sane statesman knows this...
...At the same time, efforts have been concentrated on building up industry, particularly heavy industry...
...Thus, a 1945 agreement provided that, in return for Russia's promise not to claim German assets in Poland, she was to receive Polish coal at artificially low prices for the duration of the occupation of Germany...
...Popular resistance manifests itself constantly in absenteeism and spoiling of work on the part of the workers, peasant refusal to enter collectives, and increasing church attendance...
...In addition, 10,205 persons were deported to the Soviet Union in June 1941...
...The Rumanian Communist party has had a series of purges since 1945...
...But, encouraged by the "thaw" in Soviet Russia, a flood of criticism broke loose in the middle of 1954, introducing what is called the period of "great chaos...
...Executions are estimated to have totaled well over 10,000...
...Poland's colonial relationship to the Soviet Union is also shown in the economic field...
...Shortly afterward, it was announced that Cardinal Wyszynski's release was imminent...
...was permitted to assume his post on October 25, 1955...
...however, caused the Communists to slow down Czechoslovak arms production or disband their armed forces...
...It shows itself in their steadfast adherence to the Catholic Church, in the refusal of the peasants to join collectives despite heavy pressures, in continued defections to the West of even Government officials, and in the rebellious criticism of the Communist regime which appears at the slightest opportunity...
...Thus, an average worker's daily wage declined in purchasing power, between 1939 and 1955, as follows: Commodity 1939 1955 Meat 3.07 kg...
...His "request" was doubtless heart-felt enough...
...The peasants are subjected to very great pressure to join, both by direct persecution and by such economic means as discriminatory delivery quotas and pricing systems...
...Sugar 2.93 kg...
...Nevertheless, the sacrifices which have been demanded of the people to achieve industrialization are real, even if the results are largely fictitious...
...Relations between the Polish and Yugoslav Communist parties were always good, and it was only with reluctance that the Polish regime followed the Russian example in breaking off relations with Tito...
...The peasants nevertheless continue to resist by refusing to join the collectives and failing to meet delivery quotas...
...In 1948, only 38 per cent of its members were of proletarian origin--approximately 345,000...
...After the break between Tito and the Com inform, however, it came under direct Russian control...
...Alone among the satellites, Poland is surrounded by Communist-controlled neighbors...
...While the Government has sought to discourage this trend and critical writers have frequently been officially reprimanded, the flood of criticism has not yet subsided...
...it therefore seems probable that he has been deprived of that post...
...he was refused a visa to return for the Communist Party Congress in December...
...Collectivization is more advanced in Czechoslovakia than in most other satellites...
...In the June 1955 issue of Tarsadalmi Szemle (Social Survey...
...A decree of July 26, 1953 dissolved the internment camps, from which large numbers of forced workers had previously been drawn, and discontinued internal deportations...
...In 1955, Party Secretary Gheorghiu-Dej reported that only 42.61 per cent (i.e., about 240,000) of the Party's members were workers...
...On farms, pressure for collectivization was relaxed under the New Course...
...Meanwhile, an underground movement is building up strength, especially among the peasants...
...Of Latvia's seven representatives in the All-Union Supreme Soviet, three were non-Latvians who did not even have their homes in Latvian territory--Vishinsky, Bagramian and Ehrenburg...
...Government employes were often compelled to join in order to hold their jobs...
...Karl Marx (or Engels writing under his name) explained that these races must be swept into the "dust-bin of history," since they stood in the way of a Marxian historical tide...
...Figures on specific industries, reported by Hilary Minc, Poland's economic dictator, on December 23, show that the machine-tool industry, the key to industrial expansion, was producing at a rate of only 29,300 tons as against a planned 42,400...
...REPRINTS of this report may be obtained at 15 cents a copy, 25 copies for $3, and 100 copies for $9.50, by writing either to The New Leader or to: Assembly of Captive European Nations 29 West Fifty-seventh street New York 19, New York ALBANIA From the end of the war to 1948, the Soviet Union farmed Albania out as a sort of sub-colony to Yugoslavia...
...Bierut, who formerly held the title of Premier, relinquished this to Jozef Cyrankiewicz, a relatively unimportant member of the Politburo, when he took the post of Party First Secretary in March 1954...
...These and other deportations, which also served to break the back of open national resistance, affected about 10 per cent of the population...
...In 1951-2, the Government introduced compulsory collections of grain, milk, potatoes and livestock, at fixed low prices...
...her natural resources are exploited for the benefit of the Soviet economy and the advancement of Soviet political aims...
...The Communist Government seeks to bend all forces in the country to its service...
...But the combination of Teschen raw material, Czechoslovak and Polish manufacture, and the markets of both are part of a far larger picture...
...To popularize the alliance, there is a Polish-Soviet Friendship Association, with 7.3 million members...
...Soviet delegations participate on all important Polish occasions...
...For the fact is that a boundary and a government chosen by mandate of a people can determine language, education, social structure and cultural habits...
...These include Koci Xoxe, Minister of the Interior from 1945 to 1948, who was charged with Titoism, and Nako Spiru, Minister of Economy and Director of the Five Year Plan, one of the few genuine idealists in the Communist leadership, who was killed or forced to commit suicide in 1947...
...they have been rewarded by the halting of active persecution and by a slight increase of freedom in the strictly religious field...
...At the same time, private artisans were again permitted to enter the market in order to relieve the shortage of consumer goods...
...Small nations, linguistic and cultural groups occupying restricted territory, no longer achieve freedom merely by Wilsonian self-determination...
...The workers, like the peasants, have attempted to resist openly--as in a strike of workers in the tobacco industry in 1952--and been brutally repressed...
...This was greeted enthusiastically by Lithuanian Communists, who shared the resentment of their non-Communist fellow Lithuanians at the overrunning of the country by Russian Communist officials...
...Imre Nagy was shelved, and Rakosi returned to complete power...
...If unity can be brought about, a brilliant new page in the cultural history of both Europe and the world will have been turned...
...one, which the Russians are unable to do anything about, consists of walking bareheaded in all weather--this being regarded as an American custom...
...that of tractors, 8,000 tons where the plan called for 11,000...
...63 are Government officials, Army officers, writers, actors, etc...
...It has been forced to rely almost entirely on Soviet support to stay in power and has hence been even less capable than other satellite regimes of developing an independent policy...
...Even many supervisors winked at this relaxation...
...In the cultural field, there is an active program of Russification...
...Thus, it lacked the competent personnel to administer a government...
...Despite the vigilance of the authorities, a trickle of refugees continues to escape over the borders...
...Church property has been confiscated, and the churches have been forced to lease their own buildings at high rents...
...According to official estimates, industrial production in 1955 was 6.9 times the prewar level...
...While 70 per cent of Rumanian trade is with other members of the Soviet bloc, even much of her trade with the West (which is now 2.5 times its 1950 level) is directed to the fulfilment of Soviet goals at the expense of the Rumanian economy...
...The abolition of rationing in December 1954 was actually a measure to put further pressure on the workers' standard of living by forcing them to buy needed items at the higher free-market prices...
...Moreover, the Government's agricultural plans are hampered by an acute shortage of manpower for the state farms...
...World War I exploded as Germany and Austria challenged Russian ambitions in what is now Yugoslavia...
...In the period after Stalin's death, when the so-called "New Course" was being instituted, labor discipline declined even further, as the workers saw greater opportunities for resistance...
...And it now cites Albania's admission to the United Nations as proof that the Communist regime is in power to stay...
...Of six Deputy Premiers, two are Russians, one is a Lithuanian educated in Russia, and the other three are Lithuanians...
...3 of the 5 ministers appointed in 1955 were Russians...
...since the newspaper Trybuna Ludu lamented last December 29 that the cost of industrial construction was excessive, this probably represents an even greater deficiency in the actual expansion of industrial plant...
...The degree of its dependence was well illustrated on August 11, 1955, when Premier and Party Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej "requested" that Soviet troops remain in Rumania even after the Austrian State Treaty made their withdrawal obligatory...
...Hungarian foreign policy, of course, follows in the wake of that of the Soviet Union...
...The Czechoslovak Communists hailed the Geneva Summit Conference as a victory for "Soviet peace policy" and blamed the failure of the Foreign Ministers' Conference on Western violation of the "Spirit of Geneva...
...The Second Five Year Plan, beginning in 1956, shows that this is still the case...
...These come to at least 150,000 men...
...60 have Russian directors and 64 have non-Latvian Communist party secretaries...
...While it is officially asserted that the industrial part of the Six Year Plan was overfulfilled by 9 per cent, such specific statistics as are available do not bear this out...
...This indicates that much of the production of Polish shipyards was diverted to the service of the Soviet Union...
...thus, from 1944 to 1950 a total of 117 books by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin--especially Lenin and Stalin--were printed in Bulgaria, amounting to some 3,614,670 copies m all...
...Then the pressure for collectivization was resumed, so that today Communist officials say that 61 per cent of the arable land is in collectives...
...But a new internal struggle for power in the party is possible: collective leadership in Czechoslovakia is subject to the same strains as in Russia...
...Although under the Peace Treaty she is limited to armed forces totaling 70,000 men, she actually has three times that number...
...The regime holds power entirely by force...
...During the first Soviet occupation of Estonia (1940), 7,926 persons were arrested on political grounds...
...Liaudis...
...Hence, any Titoist development is completely impossible...
...its wartime and first postwar leader, Lucretiu Patrascanu, was eventually charged with being a police spy and executed...
...This is "Mid-Europe," extending from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and the Adriatic...
...In both cases, as indeed today, the ultimate imperial prize sought was control of the Middle East...
...The March 1954 congress of the Polish Workers' (Communist) party decided to give more help to agriculture, but the decision had little effect on actual Government policies...
...At the time of Stalin's death, 51 per cent of the country's land was already collectivized...
...The Albanian economy is also geared to the needs of the Soviet Union...
...While collectivization continues to be the ultimate aim, the latest report of the Central Committee of the Workers' party admits that the importance of the middle peasant as the chief producer of agricultural commodities necessitates a shift in the orientation of agricultural policy...
...It is doubtful, however, that the Government can make many further concessions of this nature, in view of the continued emphasis on heavy industry and armaments...
...police and troops were called in to drive the peasants back to their "voluntary'' collectives and mass deportations followed...
...Nominally, they are cordial and even warm...
...In the industrial sector, great efforts have been expended on building uneconomic and parasitic industries...
...With the exception of the Communist party, no Czechoslovak party has any genuine existence...
...At the same time, Hungarian intellectuals are sent as delegates to congresses abroad, in the West as well as in countries of the Soviet bloc...
...Industrial investment fell short of the goal by about 15 per cent...
...Great emphasis has been placed on the development of heavy industry, whose products are exported to other parts of the Soviet Union...
...Mid-Europe requires freedom...
...They are, therefore, an inventory of elements from which a modern solution must be constructed...
...One reason for the failure to fulfil the goals of the plan is undoubtedly the diversion to armaments of resources which would otherwise have been available for industrial expansion...
...Soviet movies flood the country, and many thousands of Soviet books are poured in annually...
...Another 33,304 men were ostensibly drafted into the Army, but were sent instead to forced-labor camps...
...only by the assassination of oppositionists and falsification of election returns was it able to claim victory...
...collective farmers tend to neglect the work of the collective to concentrate on their small private plots so that they may have more to sell at the better prices available on the free market...
...A large number of Russians have been settled in Latvian territory...
...As the most highly industrialized of the Soviet satellites...
...In 1948, the Rumanian Workers' party (the name the Communists assumed after their absorption of the Socialists) had a membership of 912,000...
...CZECHOSLOVAKIA Since the Communist seizure of power in 1948, Czechoslovakia has been a one-party state, despite the nominal existence of several parties in the "National Front of Czechs and Slovaks...
...Military courts have also been deprived of much of their former jurisdiction...
...This requires concessions...
...And, in fact, a number of high officials were replaced by Lithuanians shortly after Stalin's death...
...The regime in Bulgaria has been one of the most slavish in its relation to the Soviet Union...
...Special burdens are assigned to Czechoslovakia in the field of armament production...
...Yet, "freedom" in 20th-century terms has a content and exacts conditions unknown to 19th-century statesmen...
...After that, however, direct attacks on the Church declined...
...Even if this actually took place, however, it leaves Hungary's armed forces far above their legally permitted strength...
...Others have been placed in key positions in other churches and on theological faculties...
...Labor productivity is also increasing as a result of new machinery and periodic increases in the required norms...
...The former Security Minister, Stanislaw Radkiewicz, was demoted to Minister of State Farms, two of his closest associates were expelled from the Party, and the chief of the investigation department of the Security Ministry was sentenced to five years in prison...
...These nominal changes did not affect his actual leadership throughout...
...and the Mid-European complex is, with the Middle East, the most powerful illustration of that fact...
...But there have been no significant changes in the Party leadership since the death of Stalin...
...Many of the top leaders, such as Communist parly Secretary-General Matyas Rakosi and economic dictator Erno Gero, were trained in Russia and acquired Soviet citizenship...
...the actual figures were 94.5 million and 1.7 million tons respectively...
...Even a relatively large country like Bulgaria, let alone smaller ones, is almost as much an anachronism, if it attempts isolated sovereignty, as are historic mementos like Monaco and Andorra...
...Gottwald's death, following closely on that of Stalin, ended the period of major purge trials and large-scale executions...
...Before the war, agriculture supplied 62 per cent of Estonia's combined agricultural and industrial output...
...There is reason to believe that much of the recent improvement has reflected not increased production of consumer goods, but a release of the Government's reserve stocks...
...It has therefore conducted an intensive campaign to induce Poles to return from abroad, setting up a special radio station Kraj (Homeland) and forming an organization called Polonia for this purpose...
...Peter remained as a convenient scapegoat when, at the end of the New Course, the Communist party leadership was resumed by Rakosi, and his protege Andras Hegedus replaced Imre Nagy as Premier...
...For a short while, beginning in September 1953, the regime slowed down the development of heavy industry in order to devote more attention to consumer goods, but this policy was soon reversed and heavy industry regained priority...
...As a result, some 86,000 peasants-about 40 per cent of those who had withdrawn--rejoined the collectives, and the total number of collectives increased to 4,870...
...But they must also seek a national and international framework which liberates that individuality, racial and personal, while at the same time providing essential bases of economics and defense...
...in connection with the drive to collectivize Estonian agriculture...
...Alexei Muurisepp has been Prime Minister since 1951...
...According to Hilary Minc, agricultural production increased only 19 per cent during the period of the Six Year Plan, as against a scheduled 50 per cent...
...But arrests and terror have continued, as has forced labor, mostly in distant parts of the Soviet Union...
...After World War I, the Wilsonian doctrine of "self-determination" brought into existence as independent states peoples whose countries had been submerged and divided by the rival empires of Russia, Germany and Austria...
...Western publications are available only to specialists who have obtained permission to read them in Government-controlled libraries...
...No other relaxation of Communist rule took place, however...
...The Communist party maintains its power only by force...
...Yet, at the same time the increase in the merchant marine fell short of its goal by 50 per cent...
...It continued to accept new members...
...On the other hand, it appears that development of the steel industry has been hindered by the failure of the Soviet Union to supply enough iron ore to permit the use of existing facilities to capacity...
...Rumania's economy is "integrated" with that of the other nations in the Soviet bloc...
...At present, the captive nations of Mid-Europe are part of the Stalin-created imperialism and nothing else...
...A number of "kulaks" received long prison terms...
...Three of the five Deputy Premiers are Russians, and...
...Her economy is "integrated" with that of the other nations of the Soviet sphere through the Molotov Plan...
...Polish ports, over which the Soviet Union exerts direct control, have units of the Soviet Navy in their harbors...
...But the Government's scope for concessions in regard to working conditions and the standard of living is limited by the demands of its economic plan...
...A citizen of a "country" is, at the very least, a citizen of three communities: the sovereign state to which he owes allegiance...
...It remains to be seen, however, whether any except handpicked agents will be permitted to use this privilege...
...Of the 140 members and alternates of the Party Central Committee, 92 are Lithuanians, 31 are Russians, 2 are Jews, 7 are Poles, and the origin of 8 is uncertain...
...The regime intends to continue its stress on the expansion of heavy industry...
...On January 5, 1956, it announced a decree granting amnesty to those who returned and promising that they would enjoy the same "freedom" as any other citizen...
...These included Deputy Premier Pisaryov, Second Secretary of the Communist party Aronov, and Minister of the Interior Kondakov...
...Meanwhile, the state gave increased assistance in the reconstruction of churches, which are growing in number...
...Despite this announcement, his imprisonment continues...
...The so-called kulaks are singled out for special attention in this respect...
...Some of the prisoners who had been working on the canal were freed, while others were transferred to other camps...
...This emphasis on the Spirit of Geneva has not...
...Over 20 members of the Communist Party Central Committee have been executed...
...Unlike the other Soviet-bloc countries, they were incorporated directly into the Soviet Union...
...this has resulted more from a change in the political climate than from any specific legal reforms...
...The news was broadcast in the foreign transmissions of Radio Moscow--but no word of it appeared in the local press or on the local radio...
...The large number of Polish refugees abroad has been a constant source of embarrassment to the regime, which has also been anxious to obtain the refugees' skills and labor for its own purposes...
...The development of industry, especially heavy industry, has been emphasized, and the regime claims that Lithuanian industry is now responsible for 65 per cent of its gross national product, as compared to 36 per cent before the war...
...The Khrushchev-Bulganin visit to Yugoslavia and the events which followed were well received in Warsaw...
...this left it only 8 per cent above the prewar level...
...On December 7, 1954, the formerly omnipotent Ministry of Public Security was dissolved and its powers were divided between a newly established Ministry of the Interior and a special Committee for Security Affairs attached to the Council of Ministers...
...families were split up, the men being sent to forced-labor camps and the women to collective farms or industries in remote parts of the Soviet Union...
...The purge and reorganization of the police apparatus have been followed by some relaxation of police pressure...
...Living standards fell sharply from prewar levels as the economies of the three Baltic countries were integrated with that of the Soviet Union...
...Western plays and moving pictures began to be presented...
...But it cannot determine economic conditions or provide defense...
...Productivity is reported to have increased 45 per cent between 1951 and 1954...
...It therefore seems likely that in the next few years the regime will seek to induce the peasants to increase their production through cooperatives on any basis that they will accept, rather than resume forced collectivization at the cost of endangering agricultural production...
...Moreover, the low proportion--only 11.9 per cent--of the investment budget allotted to agriculture was not enough to permit the planned expansion of production...
...The Communist press and radio publicized the consecration of a cathedral in Katowice (Stalinogrod) on October 30, 1955...
...Internally, cultural life remains monolithically controlled...
...The Six Year Plan, covering the period 1950-1955, provided for an increase of 154 per cent in the output of heavy industry and only 111 per cent in that of light industry...
...Open attacks on the Church ceased, although anti-religious propaganda did not...
...Despite heavy pressure from the Government, only 200,000 peasants had joined some 10,000 collectives by the end of 1955...
...Although 17,000 workers produced adequate textiles for all of Latvia before the war, and there are now 50,000 workers in the same industry, shortages of clothing and bedding are endemic...
...the emphasis shifted to long-range anti-religious propaganda, and the regime made some concessions to the Church...
...Collectivization has met with vigorous resistance...
...thus, Khrushchev himself addressed the Workers' Party Congress in March 1954...
...Marxian doctrine has not yet been dethroned like the Stalinist myth...
...In return for 75,000 tons of petroleum products and 50,000 cubic meters of lumber sent to Egypt in the first ten months of 1954, Rumania received only 1,800 tons of raw cotton and 1,800 tons of cotton yarn, fruits and spices...
...Nevertheless, despite seven price reductions between 1948 and 1954 (of which the 1949 and 1951 reductions had a substantial effect on real income), the average worker without dependents can buy only 27.9 per cent of what he could in 1939...
...this process obviously has narrow limits...
...Trade between Albania and the free world is practically non-existent...
...The Central Committee report declares: "We must strengthen our alliance with the middle peasant in order to help him overcome his hesitations and to attract him into cooperatives...
...Then he resumed the post of Party Secretary and gave the Premiership to Chiva Stoica...
...Moreover, although Hungary's exports to Communist China are exceeded only by her exports to the Soviet Union, she receives almost nothing in return...
...Both are Lithuanians, but Liaudis was educated in the Soviet Union...
...To produce these surpluses, living standards of both peasants and city workers are driven down...
...Today, the Communist party membership includes about a tenth of the population...
...Probably their military history will be less important...
...Of his four deputies, one is Lithuanian, one is a Russian brought up in Lithuania, and two are "imported" Russians...
...In that war, some of them, signing the United Nations Declaration on January 1, 1942, declared themselves allies of the United States, and underground movements in all of them fought in the common cause...
...At the same time, the regime has sought to infiltrate the Church and weaken its influence over education...
...Rice 4.33 kg...
...Fellow-travelers have been made administrators of Catholic dioceses, in place of bishops who have been prevented from exercising their functions...
...It takes many forms...
...The possibility of coexistence and the desirability of friendly relations with all countries are continually emphasized...
...Many clergymen were deported or imprisoned, and some executed, until the churches were completely subjugated...
...Popular unrest is widespread, and resistance often takes the form of guerrilla war in the mountains...
...While it once had wide support among the workers, this has disappeared...
...Although there was little effort to collectivize their agriculture in the relatively brief period of the first Russian occupation, or in the first postwar years, collectivization was carried through in 1948 and 1949 with the aid of mass deportations...
...Ivan Serov, when he headed the MGB in Poland after the war...
...The bulk of the Party's 1.3 million members have been recruited since the war...
...It is time, then, that representatives of these peoples, forgetting past divisions, united in the massive task of a peoples' defense...
...The Danube-Black Sea Canal, which employed great numbers of forced laborers, was abandoned at least temporarily in 1953, either as a result of the new situation after Stalin's death or simply because of Soviet failure to deliver the necessary heavy machinery...
...Of the others, 22 were Russians and 47 were of Estonian descent but had been Soviet citizens prior to 1939...
...As a result, Mid-Europe has too often been, as it is today, the spoils of naked imperialism...
...Prices were reduced, and a slight increase in criticism was permitted...
...Agricultural production has fallen as a result of the inefficiency caused by collectivization (directors of collectives and machine-tractor stations often have only political and no technical qualifications) and the increasing passive resistance of the peasants...
...40 are in managerial posts in industry or agriculture...
...These reports on exiled countries are anything but nostalgic wishes for the return of years gone by, for an historical period which cannot be restored...
...Soviet penetration of Hungarian intellectual life is carried on assiduously: Russian is compulsory in all schools above the fifth grade, and the primacy of the Soviet Union in science is continually emphasized...
...In 1950, it took him 10.05 hours to earn enough to pay for it...
...Justas Paleckis, a former Lithuanian journalist and poet and a Communist party member since 1940, has been Chairman of the Presidium of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet since the beginning of the Russian occupation...
...As a result, free Mid-European representatives are, more than any other group, forced to think in really modern terms...
...The curtain has recently lifted slightly in Russia...
...Agricultural production was drastically reduced by collectivization and peasant resistance to it, as well as by the deportation of many of the best farmers as "kulaks" and "bourgeois nationalists...
...The total number of collectives fell from 4,600 to 4,000...
...The Church itself is permitted to publish a weekly called Uj Ember (New Man...
...This, of course, paralleled what was taking place in Moscow...
...Ana Pauker was purged...
...There has also been some increase in cultural contacts with the West...
...To some extent, the post-Stalin relaxation of the regime's severity appears to have continued...
...There have been four changes in the Ministry of the Interior since Stalin's death...
...In the cultural field, too, Bulgaria is completely subject to the Soviet Union...
...The Communist leadership, since the death of Klement Gottwald in March 1953, has been shared by President Antonin Zapotocky, Communist party First Secretary Antonin Novotny, and Premier Vilem Siroky...
...RUMANIA Before it came to power, the Rumanian Communist party was a tiny group without any significant support...
...But, behind the barbed-wire wall that literally crosses Europe, few travelers have seen enough to give an accurate account of life in these conquered countries...
...Even if this is true, however, it may be due as much to a drop in agricultural production as to the growth of industry...
...it sells the Soviet Union agricultural and other primary products at low prices, and imports manufactured goods at high ones, in the classic colonial pattern...
...the regime remained uncertain as to Moscow's course...
...Moreover, trade between Poland and the Soviet Union is conducted completely to the advantage of the latter...
...In industry, the resistance of the workers to Communist pressure frequently takes the form of absenteeism...
...Nikolai Kovalchuk, probably a Ukrainian, was replaced as Minister of the Interior by Janis Zujans, an MVD man of Latvian descent although from Russia...
...No statistics on agricultural production are available, but the shortage of food is an indication that it has fallen sharply...
...Projects which had been dropped were resumed, and heavy industry again received an absolute priority...
...So our idea of freedom and self-determination has to move now into the 20th century...
...Meager deliveries of machinery from other members of the Soviet bloc place the major burden of industrialization on the workers, who are faced with constantly increasing demands for "productivity," enforced by the frequent revision of the work norms on which payment is based...
...they see no reason for distinguishing between their former masters and their present ones...
...This appeal is not likely to meet with much response...
...Of all illusions in international affairs, none is more pathetic than the illusion that by drawing a boundary and creating an independent government a "free sovereign state" has been created...
...an economic complex, far outrunning any national frontiers, which supports the culture...
...Lithuania: After Stalin's death, there was much talk of "strengthening national cadres...
...Until recently, the Baltic states were even more isolated from the rest of the world than other parts of the Soviet Union...
...HUNGARY Hungary's Communist regime was installed by the intervention of the Soviet Army, and Soviet representative's still exercise direct supervision over all branches of the Government...
...In particular, Peter was--kike Beria in the Soviet Union--loaded with the blame for the break with Tito when the USSR began to conciliate the Yugoslavs...
...Since the abandonment of the New Course, the Government has attempted to increase labor productivity by imposing stiffer penalties on the workers, but resistance has been so widespread that the Government has made many concessions...
...In general, there seems to have been a slight increase in the proportion of Estonians in the administration in the post-Stalin period...
...One of its major weapons is forced labor...
...There was an increase in contact with the West...
...Political crimes are still prosecuted as "treason" and "espionage," however, and there are numerous political prisoners...
...Since he also reported that 47.93 per cent of those newly admitted (as against a planned 80 per cent) were workers, it appears that not only did the effort to recruit workers fall far short of its goal but workers were dropping out of the Party at an even faster rate than its other members...
...In the next five years, the Party announced no general purge, although Ana Pauker and her associates were purged from the leadership in the summer of 1952...
...On the other hand, the admission of the satellites to the United Nations has been widely used by the regime for propaganda...
...Forced labor continues...
...Communist party membership, according to the Soviet Encyclopedia, is 34,000, plus 7,000 candidate members...
...Steel production attained 4.4 million tons as against a scheduled 4.6 million...
...The effects of the New Course on Hungarian intellectual life were striking...
...They were--and are--in urgent need of such voices...
...Even so, however, only about one-fifth of the peasants are in the collectives...
...The First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist party, Antanas Snieckus, is of Lithuanian origin and has held his post since 1940...
...BULGARIA The Bulgarian Communist regime, installed by the Soviet occupation authorities after the war, has maintained its position only by terror...
...Latvia: In the period immediately after Stalin's death, there was some improvement in conditions in Latvia...
...BALTIC STATES The three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, were the first nations subjugated by the Soviet Union after the Hitler-Stalin Pact...
...Since 1948, when the United Workers' (Communist) party was established by the merger of the Polish Workers' party with the left wing of the sham Socialist party, Poland has been in effect a one-party state...
...At the same time, capital investment is to be increased by 30 per cent, so that the increased production will not permit any improvement in the standard of living...
...There is reason to believe that Minc's report exaggerates...
...Not only did the Soviet military occupation continue after the signature of the Austrian Treaty, but the number of Russian troops stationed in Hungary actually increased since most of the troops formerly in Austria were transferred to Hungary...
...while only three of the 20 ministers are Russian, every Latvian minister has at least one Russian deputy...
...Indeed, almost the entire working class in some areas took part in the strikes and riots which broke out in June 1953, following a currency reform which cut workers' living standards...
...As Stalin is dethroned, in realization of his amoral cruelty ending in madness, it may be that the Soviet Union will modify its present Mid-European policy...
...A slight relaxation has taken place recently, and people speak a little more freely...
...Poland's armed forces are headed by the Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky...
...Cardinal Mindszenty's imprisonment was "interrupted" and a number of other priests were released from prison...
...The picture is as nearly accurate as possible, given the absence of direct contact...
...Wazyk is a veteran Communist, and his poem appeared in Nowa Kultura, organ of the Association of Polish Writers...
...Soviet troops are stationed in Poland, the Soviet Air Force has bases...
...The Czechoslovak regime went along tamely in the break with Tito, and again in the reconciliation...
...Since 1947, some 3,400 books have been translated into Latvian from Russian and other Soviet languages...
...State farms account for another 13 per cent...
...it did not mean that Bierut's power was actually reduced...
...It is possible that the Bulgarian rulers, in agreement with Moscow, might try their own version of "independent" Communist rule, but such a transparent fraud would fool no one in Bulgaria...
...Since that time, however, resistance has been subterranean and passive...
...Prices are fantastic...
...only 15 are industrial workers and 11 are agricultural workers...
...The churches have been deprived of control over their own finances and made dependent on slate subsidies...
...Large-scale absenteeism is also rare for the same reason, although it is reported that in Lithuania most workers stayed home for two days last Christmas, forcing some factories to shut down completely, and that this was so widespread that the regime was unable to take punitive action...
...Poland and Czechoslovakia tangled over the coal and iron regions of Teschen...
...Albania is the most isolated state in the Soviet bloc...
...has increased, these are confined to "progressive" films and those with no ideological content...
...The last large-scale deportations occurred in 1949...
...Occupied by the Nazis during World War II, they were returned to Soviet rule after Hitler's defeat...
...And even where they represented a genuine reduction, they were counterbalanced by forced loans and compulsory savings, which reduced the people's income more than enough to make up for the price cuts...
...In captivity or in freedom, these races and peoples have steadily made their contribution--whether it be a Polish Chopin writing music or a Hungarian Teller unlocking the secret of the hydrogen bomb...
...Now church officials are forced to publicly endorse Soviet policy...
...another 6-per-cent rise is supposed to take place in 1956...
...Great efforts are put into the development of oilfields and tin and chromium mines, the entire production of which goes to the Soviet Union...
...the trend has now been reversed...
...Hungarians and Rumanians, for example, have struggled for decades over the fate of Transylvania, which lies between them...
...Many Western books found their way into Hungary, and an increasing number appeared in Hungarian translations...
...Soviet movies, and translations of Soviet books flood the land...
...Periodically, the situation degenerates to the point of actual famine...
...5.00 kg...
...in 1955, it required 11.42 hours...
...Yet, every conqueror in every century has ultimately learned a crucial, devastating fact...
...1.50 kg...
...At the same time, the number of Russian plays performed and Russian books published in Hungarian translation dropped...
...Europe's balance of power--and with it the basis of world peace--depends on a tier of states between the Soviet Union and the Western world...
...So far, the results of this have been slight...
...World War II broke out as Hitler's Germany, having seized Czechoslovakia, thrust into Poland...
...composed of representatives in the free world of the Mid-European states, has endeavored to draw together the free voices of these peoples...
...The Geneva Conference gave new hope to the Bulgarian peasants, not because they expected any immediate result from it but because of the very fact that the President of the United States had raised the question of the captive states with the rulers of the Soviet Union...
...no trace of the others has been discovered...
...This called for the mining of 100 million tons of coal and 3 million tons of iron ore...
...Agriculture continues to be a source of trouble and frustration for the regime...
...The promise that they would choose their own governments was renewed at the Yalta Conference...
...There has also been a relatively high amount of contact by mail between the people and their relatives in other countries...
...At the same time, however, industry had expanded sharply...
...A large but unknown number of executions took place when Soviet troops reoccupied the country in 1944...
...Bulgarian trade with the West is also encouraged--but only for the purpose of exchanging "surplus" agricultural goods for strategic materials...
...It was announced on August 30...
...Even more attention is devoted to Russification of the children...
...White bread 13.23 kg...
...Yet, ten years later not one of these countries, with the exception of Yugoslavia, reflects or can reflect anything other than the will of a Stalin-created Soviet dictate, executed by puppets chosen in Moscow and enforced by Russian or Russian-dominated troops...
...In that spirit, these old and famous peoples can proudly reject and overmaster all the vaunted Marxian inevitabilities...
...This figure is probably exaggerated, but even if the increase is only half as large as claimed the total national output is now more than 1.6 times what it was before the war, and of this industry accounts for 79 per cent, agriculture for only 21 per cent...
...Czechoslovakia has a special role in the Soviet scheme of things...
...Not only does she serve as an armory for the Soviet bloc, but she supplies arms to countries like Egypt in the interests of Soviet foreign policy...
...It is also demonstrated by the continued repression and by the almost complete embargo on cultural contacts between Rumania and the West...
...Polish foreign policy is, of course, controlled by the Soviet Union...
...Gyorgy Csatar described the situation thus: "Lax labor discipline in 1953-1954 was coupled with a definite slackening of wage and norm discipline...
...Estonia: There have been few changes in Estonia since the death of Stalin...
...The Communist press continually complains of the failure to win over the youth, and even Communist intellectuals resist the Government's line wherever they can...
...According to official statistics, 5.5 per cent of the agricultural population now belongs to collectives...
...Governments could be imposed...
...Of the 209 members, 77 are Party officials...
...it also has an economic function...
...It is probable that much of the production af oil and coal will be channeled to chemical production...
...Thus, although Jack Raymond of the New York Times was permitted to visit the country in September and October 1955...
...As in other parts of the world, the solution lies in combining both elements: There must be freedom...
...Since the Geneva Summit Conference, violent abuse of the West has more or less disappeared from the Hungarian press--except when the United States is accused of interfering in internal Hungarian affairs or fostering German militarism...
...Despite the fact that many of the lower ranks of the Communist party and the Government unquestionably share the resentment of other Rumanians against Soviet oppression and exploitation, there is no chance of a Titoist movement in Rumania...
...The norm and bonus requirements were relaxed in the plants, the various jobs were classed into higher wage categories, wage raises exceeded the schedule...
...the Western press is unrepresented there, and even the few non-Communist diplomatic missions live in a near state of siege...
...POLAND Deeply religious, with a long tradition of national aspiration toward freedom, the Polish people are today holding firm against Soviet Communism...
...Nevertheless, he has announced that the tempo of collectivization is to be doubled in the next Five Year Plan, although he himself included too rapid collectivization and the disregard of "people's legality" as reasons for the failure of agriculture...
...Yet, the Communist regime in Poland, if it lacks popular support, nevertheless remains strong...
...only about a thousand Poles have returned from the West, while about 4,000 have been permitted to return from the Soviet Union...
...The Soviet Union has relinquished its share of the joint Hungarian-Soviet companies which were established after the war in most branches of the Hungarian economy, but this has had little meaning...
...The most notorious forced-labor camps are those connected with the Jachymov uranium mines...
...This is why, under the New Course, introduced on July 4, 1953, Prime Minister Imre Nagy announced a reduction in the targets for heavy industry and an increase in those for consumer goods...
...The Bulgarian peasants continue firm in their opposition to the regime...
...But it was more difficult to withdraw the increased freedom of expression extended to Hungarian writers under the New Course...
...Mikhel Krassman was replaced as Minister of Interior by Major General Juan Lombak, former Estonian Commissar of Defense, and Ivan Seiko, a Russian, was replaced as Minister of Justice by Valter Raudsalu, an Estonian...
...On August 11, 1955, two new bishops were consecrated...
...His bitter indictment of present-day conditions caused a sensation, as did an attack on Marxist monopoly in science by the sociologist Professor J. Chalasinski...
...The "Special Commission against Speculation and Economic Sabotage" has been dissolved...
...increasingly, the modern world is exacting the abandonment of force by any save Great Powers--perhaps even by them...
...Nominally, two-thirds of the value of Bulgarian production today is industrial and only one-third agricultural...
...and a defense complex whose borders may be flung to the ends of the earth...
...While the importation of Western films, especially from France and Italy (with one or two a year from the U.S...
...At the same time, the failure of compulsion--including the large-scale use and everpresent threat of forced labor--has forced the regime to make economic concessions to peasants and workers (especially the miners...
...The Communist dictator, Vulko Chervenkov, declared that peasants who wished to leave the collectives were free to do so...
...Persecution of the Catholic Church continued for some months after Stalin's death, reaching a climax with the trial of Bishop Kaczmarek, who was sentenced to twelve years in prison, and the arrest of Cardinal Wyszynski on September 26, 1953...
...The Albanian people had no reason to love the Yugoslav regime during the period when the Cominform entrusted it with their supervision...
...Consumer-goods production has also risen sharply, but very little of it is available to the Latvian people...
...I am convinced that we shall see this mighty group of peoples free once more...
...Popular resentment of this cultural infiltration shows itself by the enthusiastic applause with which any chance performance of a Western film, for example, is greeted...
...The other "parties," with no independent policies of their own, maintain a nominal existence...
...There has been no significant relaxation in the cultural sphere since Stalin's death...
...1.25 kg...
...Estonians who have completed their sentences in forced-labor camps have in numerous cases not been permitted to return to Estonia...
...In November 1955, following the Soviet example, Hungary announced a cut of 20,000 in the number of men under arms...
...In recent months, when the Warsaw press has mentioned Radkiewicz, it has not described him as a member of the Politburo...
...The Socialists were forced into a shotgun merger...
...The ACEN has pleaded the cause of Estonians and Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles, Hungarians and Rumanians, and of their fellow peoples--before the Council of Europe, before world congresses, wherever men would listen...
...It has also commenced a campaign to lure exiles back from abroad...
...despite all Government pressure, the great majority have successfully resisted...
...Mid-Europe has had a tragic history...
...Young Communists, trained in Poland under the Communist regime, are gradually beginning to come to the fore, although few of them as yet hold major positions...
...The great Polish contribution will be in terms of Polish culture, as Czechoslovakia's will be in terms of the diverse Czech and Slovak elements within that country...
...The new development was climaxed by the publication of "A Poem for Adults" by Adam Wazyk last August 21...
...1.25 kg...
...Forced labor continues, particularly in the mines, but on a somewhat reduced scale...
...Prices on the domestic market are set far above the export levels...
...Official statements and the press emphasize that there are things to be learned from the West, and tourists from Western countries are being encouraged to visit Hungary...
...Now, with the exception of Sovromquartz (which controls the recently discovered Rumanian uranium deposits), all of them have been sold back to Rumania at exorbitant prices, to be paid out of Rumanian production for years to come...
...Priests have been removed from teaching posts, and a new Catholic theological academy was established near Warsaw under the direction of a pro-regime Catholic professor...
...But just as a demilitarized Finland in the past decade has proved an asset to the free world--and no threat to Russia--a free Mid-Europe, with an instinct for common action permitting its component peoples to complement one another, may also come into existence...
...In the first years after it came to power, the Communist party sought to expand by recruiting all (no matter what their background of Iron Guard or criminal activity) who could be persuaded to join and by compelling the affiliation of others whom it considered potentially useful...
...and Chairman Volkov of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet headed the Soviet delegation to the sixth session of the Sejm in March 1955...
...They chronicle a disastrous and unsuccessful attempt to break this spirit...
...Ivan Cabin has been First Secretary of the Estonian Communist party since 1950...
...Most key posts in the Party are held by old Communists who went through years of training in Moscow...
...Deeper even than that is the discovery by age-old enemies that survival lies rather in love than in hate...
...In some cases, the Communist-organized factory guards actually took a leading part in the anti-Government demonstrations...
...Yet, in 1955 its membership was down to 538,815, plus 56,583 candidate members...
...Even removal of the fantastic Stalin statue in Prague will not change this upsetting political fact...
...Nevertheless, Bulgaria has gone further on the road to collectivization than any other satellite...
...Popular resistance to the regime has shown itself in such forms as absenteeism and slackness on the part of workers, and low production and almost complete refusal to join collectives on the part of peasants...
...It may be doubted whether even all Party members actually support the regime: certainly nobody outside the Party does...
...Russians and Byelorussians comprised less than 5 per cent of the population of Lithuania before the war...
...these represented only 9 per cent of the total agricultural land of the country...
...Their Communist parties are branches of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and their "governments" are subordinate local administrations...
...It has long made effective use of the claim that Albania's neighbors threaten her independence and territorial integrity...
...This movement was fostered by the present Soviet security chief...
...The Government has sponsored a "progressive Catholic" movement, centering around the weekly Dzis i Jutro and the publishing house "Pax" and led by Boleslaw Piasecki...
...Until about 1949, active armed resistance continued in Lithuania...
...Prices are high, and even basic foodstuffs like bread are rationed...
...There are continual exchanges of cultural delegations between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and constant and intensive propaganda for Russification...
...But both Rumania and Hungary need each other, and Transylvania, and a great deal more besides, if either is to maintain economically its broad and individual national culture...
...Collectivization is now almost complete in all three Baltic states...
...In this they sometimes have the assistance even of disillusioned Communists...
...The Soviet Union also purchases other Polish products at far less than world prices...
...The self-criticism which accompanied the adoption of the "New Course" was much milder in Poland than in the other satellites and was directed at subordinate state organs rather than at the Party leadership itself...
...Soviet newspapers and magazines are brought into Czechoslovakia by the millions, and Soviet plays...
...Party control over the police apparatus was strengthened, and there was a new emphasis on "people's legality...
...Since then, forced laborers have been drawn from persons convicted in court--often, of course, of political offenses or "economic crimes" like absenteeism--instead of from internees, who were held by a simple police order...
...thousands of Soviet officers are to be found in all branches...
...In particular, the complaint was heard that there were not enough "national cadres" in Party and Government posts...
...After the fall of Beria...
...he has said that without the Soviet occupation authorities "the class enemy would have overthrown and would still overthrow the people's government...
...this has been the key to its church policy...
...the latter, however, lost their influence when Gomulka fell...
...After the 1950 purge, the percentage rose to 42 per cent--but the number of workers this represented was only about 300,000...
...The Party has failed particularly in its efforts to recruit workers...
...The worker with children may be as much as 6 per cent better off...
...More than 1.5 million votes--nearly half the total--were recognized as having been cast for democratic parties...
...the exact reverse was true before the war...
...There is an acute shortage of investment capital, which the Government seeks to make good by reducing living standards...
...this means that large quantities of Hungarian goods are sold to the Soviet Union at far less than world prices...
...Since reserves of farm workers who can be shifted to industry are no longer available, the only way to increase production is to raise workers' productivity...
...there must also be union in essential matters, both within each country and between countries in the framework of an emergent free world...
...The daily wage of a worker ranges from $2.60 to $4...
...In 1954, in addition to paid vacations and maternity leaves, whole-day absences amounted to a total of one year's work-time of 40.000 workers...
...But in the spring of 1955 the New Course came to an end...
...Churches are still crowded, but relatively few of those attending are young...
...After the fall of Beria, however, there was a complete shakeup in the security apparatus and a reduction in the power of the police...
...The electric-power industry, which was supposed to produce 19.3 billion kilowatt hours, actually produced only 17.6...
...But after Beria's fall the call for "strengthening national cadres" was replaced by one for "friendship between the Soviet nations," and the process of Russification resumed...
...and by the latter year to have reached three times the 1945 level...
...Collectives include 25.4 per cent of the arable land: another 18.6 per cent is state-owned...
...Controls over the workers have, however, been somewhat relaxed in the past year...
...Gheorghiu-Dej has continued in control, and his associates throughout the period have included Gheorghe Apostol, Constantin Parvulescu and Emil Bodnaras (First Vice Premier, formerly Minister of the Armed Forces and head of the police...
...This is especially true in the mines, once a Communist stronghold...
...Thus, it was recently reported that a mine official lamented that, whereas in the "bad old days" before the Communist coup absenteeism was practically unknown, today it is widespread and increasing...
...The shipbuilding industry, however, increased its production ninefold--almost twice the scheduled fivefold expansion...
...The Baltic states' economies are completely integrated with the Soviet economy...
...There is no evidence of any Titoist movement in Albania...
...They have done their best to block collectivization, despite the terror with which it has been enforced, and they seek to sabotage it through passive resistance...
...Despite sharp official criticisms of Wazyk and Chalasinski, the controversy continues...
...40.5 per cent are working peasants with middle-sized holdings, and 2 per cent are kulaks...
...And, when the Soviet rulers so desire, she sells arms and industrial products on credit, at the expense of further restriction of the consumer goods available to the Czechoslovak people...
...though she was not executed, some of her closest associates were...
...Here, tight Communist control had produced an atmosphere of complete stultification...
...Similarly, the police are controlled by Soviet "advisers...
...They intend the driving particularism, the passionate attachment to individuality, which has been the classic Mid-European quality...
...Their resistance no longer takes the form of armed struggle, as was the case during the German occupation...
...Great Power rivalry has exploited the bitterness of an age-old history for conquerors' ends...
...thus, the lowered standards of the Bulgarian people directly subsidize a program of forced exports for the benefit of the Soviet Union...
...At the beginning of 1955, there was only one Catholic bishop in Lithuania, as compared to 13 before the war...
...At the same time, agriculture is neglected and agricultural production disorganized by the regime's efforts to impose collectivization...
...But with the abandonment of the New Course, pressure for collectivization was resumed...
...Disillusioned Communists throw in their lot with the anti-Communist opposition, while the rulers of the country are completely dependent on Moscow and subservient to it...
...This is shown by the fact that, despite the execution or deportation of some 200,000 Latvians and the escape of another 110,000 to the West, the population remains approximately 2 million, about the same as before the war...
...In addition, others are locally printed...
...The powers of the secret police were somewhat diminished and to some extent transferred to the State Prosecutor in the name of "socialist legality...
...Consequently, he has made his terms for reconciliation with Hungary more onerous, in both a political and a financial sense, then in the case of the other satellites, and as a result negotiations have not yet been successful...
...At once, we would have a genuine reduction in European "tension," a noble release of culture, and solid progress toward world peace...
...Rumania remains almost completely isolated from the Western world...
...even this amount does not appear to have been actually available, as indicated by the previously cited failure of tractor production to meet the requirements of the plan...
...They are cold political studies of countries where people, in the face of savage suppression, have maintained their identity, their culture, and their devotion to a way of life...
...The efficiency of both state and collective farms is low...
...At the official rate of exchange, a kilogram of wheat costs $3.20, a kilogram of potatoes $1.60, a kilogram of cheese $11, a kilogram of butter $20, a quart of milk $2, a suit $200, a shirt $12, and a needle 20 cents...
...The difference was supposed to be made up by Soviet exports to Rumania--at prices fixed by "mutual agreement" between the Soviet Union and its Rumanian puppets...
...presumably, therefore, the intent is not merely to capture these countries but to destroy their component races...
...A slight relaxation has taken place in the past year, and a few selected foreign delegations have been allowed in, while an occasional individual from the Baltic states has been included on a Soviet delegation abroad...
...It has increased the supply of consumer goods and permitted some rise in the standard of living since Stalin's death...
...The Bulgarian economy is completely subordinated to the goals set in Moscow...
...The churches in Estonia have been deprived of their former independence...
...This is true because of the hatred with which the population regards its Communist rulers and the recognition by the latter that only Soviet support makes their regime possible...
...At the same time, the Government continued to try to infiltrate the Church, stepping up the activity of the "peace priest movement," whose organ is A Kereszt (The Cross...
...The regime combats this by continuous propaganda in working places, all means of communication, the stage, literature, and special educational institutions for adults...
...This, however, did not satisfy Tito, who had a lively memory of the insults that the Hungarian Communist leaders had leveled against him and of the executions they had carried out on the charge of "Titoism...
...a delegation headed by Premier Cyrankiewicz participated in the celebration of the sixth anniversary of the "German Democratic Republic," an agreement on cultural cooperation was concluded in November 1955, and a Polish-East German Friendship Week was celebrated in the same month...
...Their importance may be judged from the fact that, of the 36 ministers who compose the formal Government, 35 are members of the United Workers' party and one is a member of the United Peasant party...
...In the so-called Zapotocky period, there has been a noticeable lessening of tension...
...a man's suit costs 1,200 to 1,700 rubles, or the equivalent of about two months' wages...
...Of these, some 1,950 were found in mass graves during the German occupation...
...This not only serves as a punishment...
...less than 30 per cent of the former number of priests remained in the country...
...this periodical cannot criticize the regime but refrains from praising it...
...Closely associated with it was the Independent Commission of Priests, which published the magazine Kuznica Kaplanska (Priests' Forge...
...it is felt that only Russia is willing to guarantee Poland's western borders against German revisionism...
...The relaxation in the rigidity of Communist control since Stalin's death has not affected the Communist monopoly of power...
...There can be no solution merely in the dimensions of a flat map and 19th-century "sovereignty...
...even if any were inclined to trust the promises of the regime, the "freedom" enjoyed by Albanians today would scarcely be an attractive prospect...
...People has been set against people, race against race, faction against faction...
...The first resume (other than Communist propaganda) is given here...
...The Catholic Church has also been permitted to publish a religious calendar and a prayer book...
...While the plan does not indicate the share of the armament industries in this expansion, it is known to have been substantial and to have been revised upward after the beginning of the Korean War...
...5.8 per cent to cooperatives, less than 1 per cent are landless laborers, 45.2 per cent are working peasants with small holdings...
...Hungary in many ways went further than any of the other satellites-at least verbally-in modifying its policies during the New Course...
...equipped with heavy armaments and jet planes, plus thousands of frontier guards, security troops and militia...
...This leadership has remained almost unchanged for the past eight years, since the fall of Wladyslaw Gomulka...
...Hungary's economy is integrated with that of the other captive nations in accordance with the Molotov Plan...
...In the new Five Year Plan, investments allotted to capital-goods industries are eight times as large as those for consumer-goods industries...
...But the minds and hearts and cultural heritage could not be conquered...
...Hungary is also attempting to expand its trade relations with the West, as well as with those uncommitted countries--particularly in Asia--which the Soviet rulers are wooing...
...Nevertheless, anti-religious propaganda has increased...
...The excessive armed forces which Rumania maintains in violation of the Peace Treaty provisions limiting her to a total of 138,000 men in all branches are a heavy burden on the economy...
...In the year following Stalin's death, collectivization was at a standstill...
...To do this, she is forced to concentrate on the further development of her heavy industry at the expense of the workers' standard of living...
...Only a small number of churches remain open, but they are crowded and religious weddings and christenings are the rule...
...Similar peasant riots have taken place in Varna (Stalin) and Provadia Counties...
...as a result, over half the peasants withdrew from the collectives...
...about 30,000 persons are in forced-labor camps...
...The Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN...
...rather, it is a built-in part of their daily lives...
...The Soviet system of payment by norms makes any intentional slowdown by workers almost impossible: unless a worker produces as much as he can, he starves...
...At the beginning of 1955, there were 240,000 men in the Army, Navy and Air Force...
...Even Communist writers took advantage of it to write critically of conditions...
...Cheese 2.53 kg...
...Beria's fall does not appear to have had any important repercussions in Czechoslovakia...
Vol. 39 • April 1956 • No. 15
