Two Different Revolutions
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS I.
Poland and Hungary Two Different Revolutions By Boris I. Nicolaevsky The Kremlin has entered upon grave new trials. After Khrushchev's ignominious capitulation to the Polish Communists, who...
...Before the united front of the entire Polish Party, backed by the entire Polish people, the Kremlin had to retreat...
...At the beginning, to be sure, they not only acquiesced in the highhanded behavior of the occupation armies but at times even asked for increased Soviet interference in the internal affairs of the occupied countries...
...Since Stalin's death, the Soviet regime had tried to resolve the contradiction between the requirements of domestic policy and the interests of foreign policy...
...The Communist parties are an important weapon of this organized violence...
...This exploitation has in no way helped the peoples of the USSR...
...Therefore, when it became apparent that Gomulka would be elected First Secretary of the Polish CP, the Kremlin tried to use Soviet occupation troops in Poland to stage a coup...
...Since there is no doubt that only a small part of Bierut's many crimes have as yet come to light, it seems more and more plausible that hie death resulted from suicide or even murder...
...In these circumstances, the Hungarian Communist party could not show internal unity at the decisive moment, as had the Polish CP...
...In totalitarian countries, the masses have no legal means of joining together or even of formulating their sentiments...
...It was most apparent in the Polish Communist party...
...The fact that the entire old Politburo voted against putting Gomulka on trial, and thereby saved his life, made it psychologically possible for even those who had recently been his bitter opponents to make a relatively easy transition to cooperation with him...
...It is these oppositionist Communists who have played the decisive role in the events of recent weeks...
...This complex intermingling of various types of relations exerts different influences on the domestic policies of each of the satellites...
...It was different in Hungary...
...Rakosi had been dismissed on July 18 by the Parly majority only on a direct order from the Kremlin, which issued it at Tito's insistence...
...Khrushchev, who flew to Warsaw with Molotov, Mikoyan and Kagano-vich to prevent Gomulka's election and who threatened the Polish Communists there, was forced to retreat and somewhat later begged forgiveness for his "excessive heat...
...the other is the level of relations between the ruling party as a whole (i.e., the entire state apparatus, based on a system of one-party dictatorship) and the broad masses of the population...
...He was transformed into virtually a national leader...
...Before the last war and before the advent of Hitler, they were, in all these countries, small, unimportant groups, with no roots among the masses...
...The ruling Communist party is nominally based on "democratic centralism," which gives its members the right to participate in deciding Party policy...
...even after Stalin's death, he continued to persecute his opponents, having the latter subjected to the most brutal torture in Hungarian prisons...
...Rokossovsky has already left Poland, ostensibly on leave...
...General economic policy...
...They are kept within the Soviet bloc only by the organized violence which the Soviet regime exercises through its occupation forces...
...The extent of this influence varies at different times...
...In order to carry out such a reduction, however, it was necessary to renounce the aggressive character which this foreign policy had had under Stalin...
...After Khrushchev's ignominious capitulation to the Polish Communists, who refused to be frightened by the threat of a military putsch by Soviet troops, the Kremlin was forced to launch such a brutal putsch by sending eight new Soviet divisions to crush the liberation movement of Hungarian workers, students, soldiers and peasants...
...The position of the working people in Hungary could be improved only by reducing expenditures for the Army and other expenditures dictated by Soviet foreign policy...
...The old First Secretary of the Polish Central Committee, Edward Ochab, who had previously been known as a foe of Gomulka and who had once been political deputy to Marshal Konstan-tin Rokossovsky,-not only resolutely refused to support the coup but openly went over to Gomulka...
...it remains in the Warsaw Pact and retains the one-party system...
...The latter regarded the Communists of all the satellites with contempt, but he needed them to carry out his policy in those countries...
...As the various satellite CPs concentrated power in their hands, however, antagonism grew between their leaders and the Soviet occupation commanders...
...The degree of tension between Moscow and the satellite Communists varied from country to country...
...The regime deliberately tries to atomize them, reserving for itself the exclusive right of organization and political propaganda...
...the other Party members receive only the right to carry out the decisions made by these leaders, with obedience and zeal rewarded by material benefits and advancement in the Party hierarchy...
...But the unanimity of their decision stayed the avenging hand of Stalin...
...In order to threaten the peaceful development of the Western democracies, the Soviet regime imposes unbearable burdens on all the countries it rules...
...without this, the local Communists could never have come to power...
...the Kremlin sought to refashion all socioeconomic relations in the image of the USSR, and particularly to nationalize all industry, even small-scale, introduce 100-per-cent collectivization of agriculture, etc...
...In these two countries, conflict has erupted sooner than in the other satellites...
...The behavior of the Soviet leaders in the decisive last days of October greatly contributed to this...
...The attempt of the Nagy Government to withdraw from the Soviet bloc signified a desire to break completely with the former foreign policy of aggression...
...This act by the Nagy Government brought events to a new decisive stage...
...the Nagy Government was arrested...
...The Kremlin mercilessly fought all these sentiments, physically liquidating all those who held them...
...Instead, on November 4, Soviet troops stormed Budapest...
...he will not return...
...Only after Stalin's death, when cracks appeared at the very summit of the Soviet dictatorship, was the Kremlin forced to become more tolerant of the Communists in the satellites who were striving for some measure of independence from the Soviet regime...
...The oppositionist Communists were caught up in the national revolution...
...The Soviet regime conducts a distinct type of colonial policy in that it brutally exploits all the nations within its orbit...
...The establishment of all-embracing Kremlin control of the internal life of the satellite parties, whose leading apparatus, as well as the central apparatus of the state, were filled with Soviet stooges, while local Communists who tried to moderate the demands of Soviet representatives were removed and often killed...
...But in reality this right is enjoyed only by the leaders of the complex Party apparatus...
...For some time there had been a certain trend toward independence among the Polish Communists?moderate, of course, but noticeable...
...it is thus apparent that the program was dictated by the Kremlin...
...What are the special features of this new situation...
...As a result, a change unprecedented among Communist parties occurred: The Polish Communist leadership, which only shortly before had been violently attacking Gomul-ka's political line, in the space of two or three months went over completely to his position, even though he had not in the slightest moderated his criticism...
...The resources obtained from such exploitation of both the Soviet and satellite peoples are used to build the stronger armies and more powerful heavy industry which are necessary for the Kremlin's aggressive foreign policy...
...it includes in its program almost all the domestic-policy points of the Nagy program...
...Premier Nagy proclaimed its transformation into a broad democratic movement, He revised his government to include representatives of other, hitherto illegal parties (Smallholders, Social Democrats, etc...
...Its program was announced first on the Moscow radio...
...Most of these leaders, headed by Rakosi, as well as the chiefs of the secret police, escaped by air to Moscow...
...The Soviet regime has maintained and supported them everywhere by artificial means, by the political-police apparatus of the occupation armies...
...For example, it has now come to light that the Polish Politburo unanimously rejected Stalin's persistent demand to put Wladyslaw Gomulka, now Poland's new Party boss, on trial, which inevitably would have led to his execution...
...Moscow's will is carried out in the satellites by the commanders of Soviet occupation armies and the political-police apparatus attached to them...
...The desire among satellite Communists for independence from Moscow manifested itself with varying degrees of intensity...
...Among those who voted against trying Gomulka was even President Boleslaw Bierut, who not only directed the liquidation of the Polish Communist "Old Guard" (Warski, Walewski, Lapin-ski and many others) in the 1930s, but in 1948 directed the dismissal and arrest of Gomulka.* One need only recall the situation in 1948-52, when purges of all Communist leaders whom Stalin regarded as insufficiently reliable swept across the satellite countries, in order to understand the courage shown at that time by the Polish Politburo...
...The Kremlin was in favor of Gomulka's release and his return to Party work, but it did not want him to take over supreme power in Poland...
...Common to all of them is the rapid growth of discontent among the satellite masses, who have been the object of brutal exploitation by the Soviet regime...
...In the satellite countries, these two main levels of socio-political relations in any one-party state are supplemented by an oppressive third level: that of relations between the satellite Communist leaders and the Communist leaders of the Soviet Union...
...For this reason, there is not a country in the Soviet bloc whose people, in a free election, would not vote by an overwhelming majority for the destruction of the present system...
...In this manner, Soviet occupation troops were drawn into the fight, which now became a national uprising against both the Soviet occupation armies and the leaders of the Communist party...
...This friction largely concerned three main issues: -The removal of goods and property to the Soviet Union from the occupied countries and the conditions of payment...
...In actual practice, it is never possible to maintain an absolute line of separation between developments on the two levels mentioned above...
...Its members risked being denounced as "secret Titoists" and "enemies of the people...
...Meanwhile, the Party excluded (until the uprising began) Imre Nagy...
...These attempts were unsuccessful because the Kremlin leaders could not find a single prominent Polish Communist willing to take part in the coup...
...there is little doubt that a provocational role was played by secret police officials, trying to cause bloodshed in the hope that this would avert the threatened investigation of their crimes...
...However, the policy of the Soviet regime has been so ruinous for the masses of all the satellites that even in these Communist parties, artificially installed by Moscow, there have constantly arisen groups opposing in various degrees the policy of the Soviet regime, striving to free themselves from Moscow...
...The Party First Secretary, Erno Gero, Rakosi's closest aide for years, called in Soviet troops against the peaceful demonstrators gathering in front of the Parliament building...
...Two points in it are particularly important: The new government decisively repudiates the Hungarian Stalinists, led by Rakosi...
...Even under Stalin, the Communist leaders there had behaved differently from those in Poland...
...In a Communist country, development proceeds on two levels...
...One is the level of relations within the ruling Communist party...
...Even more important, Gomulka's many years in prison, and his widely known opposition to the Kremlin, made him tremendously popular outside the Party...
...These relations were never completely satisfactory to satellite Communists...
...A number of unique features in Poland's development contributed to this...
...a new, all-Communist government was set up at Soviet Army headquarters...
...Gomulka was elected First Secretary and at the present time is the universally recognized leader, not only of the Polish Communist party, which dehave written previously in The New Leaser of the Euspicious coincidence between Bierut's death last spring and the decision at the same time to rehabilitate the Polish Communists shot in the 1930s...
...promised free elections, and announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Soviet bloc and assumption of neutral status on the Austrian model...
...Naturally, their behavior in the decisive days was very different from that of the Polish Communists...
...The first shots were fired in mysterious circumstances...
...It was a test of the Soviet Government's foreign-policy intentions...
...The tax burden of the USSR has been consistently greater than in any of the satellites: the standard of living there is as low as in any of the satellites...
...clared that it is seeking "its own road to socialism," but also of the entire Polish people striving for independence...
...This indicates the decisive rea-ons for Soviet intervention: Moscow will not allow the peoples of the Soviet bloc to change their foreign policy or establish genuine democracy...
...The events in Warsaw and Budapest are merely the beginning of a major crisis involving the entire Communist empire...
...He spent some six years in prison under the constant threat of liquidation, and these years not only affected his thinking but also made him the recognized leader of all Polish Communists dissatisfied with Moscow...
...Had the "collective leadership" accepted this decision by Budapest, it would have meant that the Soviet regime had decided to pursue a less aggressive foreign policy in at least the near future...
...But, unlike Nagy...
...Matyas Rakosi, who had headed the Hungarian CP since 1944, not only carried out Stalin's orders to put the Hungarian "Titoists" on trial...
...though he could liquidate sections of them, he couldn't wipe out the entire Party leadership of any of these countries...
...To defend their interests, the masses resort to exlra-legal struggle, to revolutionary struggle which aims not at reforming various aspects of the dictatorship but at destroying it...
...The newly appointed Premier, Imre Nagy, was not informed about any of this...
...But all signs point to identical sentiments in the rest of the Soviet orbit...
...The sentiments of the masses, which are not part of the Communist party, always influence the sentiments of Party members, particularly those in the lower echelons...
...As a result, Gomulka survived...
...Although Bierut had voted against pulling Gomulka on trial, the fact that he organized his ouster would have made future contact between the two most embarrassing...
...We now know that, at the same time, the decision was made to completely rehabilitate Gomulka...
...The Parly Central Committee remained headed by Rakosi supporters, and the secret police was led by people who were directly responsible for all the bloody crimes of the past decade...
Vol. 39 • November 1956 • No. 46
