Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR POLAND I want to protest Peter Wiles's contention ("Poland and Hungary: A Reappraisal," NL, February 11) that Poland stole a large part of German territory. Without going into the...
...While valid in themselves, these themes have been repeated so often that a genuine analysis of what actually happened in those memorable days has only just begun...
...But it is not true that Tito's "press and literature are as unreadable as any," as Wiles charges...
...Great dissatisfactions exist among Yugoslavia's intellectuals (indirectly reflected in the Djilas case), and these forces may in time find vigorous internal expression...
...I think perhaps, in this case, Wiles has passed a judgment on the basis of hearsay rather than on the basis of the type of intimate knowledge which he brought to the subject of Hungary and Poland...
...The absence in Yugoslavia of the violent ferment which we have witnessed in its two northern neighbors is not merely a reflection of Tito's strong dictatorship, but also, it seems to me, of the greater tolerance which Yugoslavia's intellectuals feel toward that dictatorship...
...It is indeed refreshing to read something on the Hungarian-Polish events which, in some degree, measures up to the complex grandeur of the events themselves...
...Los Angeles J. P. Conneally...
...Also, the alleged expulsion of eight million Germans by the Poles does not correspond with the facts...
...Actually, therefore, the number actually expelled (as recognized by the Potsdam Agreement) is about 2.5 million...
...many were killed on various fronts, murdered or deported by the Russians...
...There is, however, one small point at which I think Wiles vastly overstated his case—regarding Tito's Yugoslavia...
...56) of Mikoyan's "revision'' of Lenin...
...That the American Communist party proposes now that we peacefully surrender the machinery of the state into their hands as the alternative to violent revolution is clear from their acceptance in the Draft Resolution (p...
...That the "new historical development" does not include the Party's renunciation of its right to violence where the workers resist is affirmed by Dennis in his comment on Hungarian resistance...
...The Polish and Hungarian revolutions were made possible by a widespread disaffection within the ruling Communist parties...
...The essence of the 16th Convention's road to socialism was explained by the late Peter Meyer (NL, March 12, 1956...
...From this unique legitimacy Dennis argues to the Kremlin's right to overthrow the workers' councils and the government they helped establish...
...Too many writers have confined themselves to celebrating the valor of the freedom fighters, re-emphasizing the enormity of the Soviet intervention, and voicing indignation over the Western failure to intervene...
...The imprisonment of Djilas is not reassuring, but one should not confuse Djilas with Nagy or Gomulka...
...Thus, in fact, Poland was bodily shifted to the West, and the shift was responsible for « net loss of about 20 per cent of its territory and an even greater population loss...
...This is why Tito survived in 1948 when Gomulka fell, not because "there was not enough Soviet force to kidnap him or browbeat his Central Committee,'7 as Wiles explains it...
...yet they were made all the same...
...Taking Czechoslovakia, the very instance Mikoyan used to interpret the law of combined development, Meyer comments: "There were no barricades in Czechoslovakia, only defenestrations, executions and concentration camps...
...These territories were given to Poland by the Soviet Union, with the consent of the United Kingdom and the United States...
...Poland had no choice but to accept them, since it had just lost the eastern half of the country— also with the approval of the Western powers...
...In the economy, the obstacle to healthy progress may be as much incompetence and complacency in the higher echelons as it is dogmatism...
...the grounds for such disaffection may exist in Yugoslavia, but the fact that the imprisonment of Djilas was not followed by a larger purge of Communists should indicate that the breaking point is still quite far away...
...This means that the only legitimate leadership of the Hungarian workers comes from the Kremlin...
...New York City Paul Willen U.S...
...The Yugoslav story has by no means reached its climax, and new storms may brew...
...The Czechoslovakian example of i non-violent transition to socialism makes clear that we will be allowed to accept reservations peacefully assigned us in slave labor camps...
...Most of these eight million fled in the face of the approaching Red Army...
...Without going into the centuries-long territorial dispute between the two nations, or discussing the validity of Polish compensation claims for all the Germans did in Poland during World War II, it can be flatly stated that Poland did not "take and carry away feloniously and unobserved" the areas in question...
...But one should not, in his understandable bitterness over Tito's many recent vacillations, forget that he did offer, for many years, vigorous leadership to those forces, represented by Nagy and Gomulka, which made last autumn's great convulsion possible...
...These concessions, it is true, were made from above, and not, as in Poland, as the result of agitation from below...
...that actual acceptance by us of such an alternative, hardly more inviting than violent revolution, is suggested is coolly implicit in the words: "We advocate a peaceful, democratic road to socialism...
...Gomulka's party is not...
...Western connections predominate completely...
...hut judging from Moscow's latest broadsides against Tito, the Kremlin has not...
...Certain groups in the West may have lost sight of this fact...
...Yugoslav literature has none of the brilliance of Poland's recent intellectual ferment, but neither has it much in common with the "socialist realism" of the East to which he makes implicit reference...
...Despite every failing, Tito has provided the disparate Yugoslav peoples with vigorous national leadership for over 15 years...
...In style, personal philosophy and esthetic leaning, Yugoslavia's current literature contains considerable variety and space—though it suffers from a general prohibition regarding certain central national experiences...
...No amount of "debate" by Gates can hide the fact that the American party still upholds the right to violent overthrow where the Government has organized support, like that the workers' councils gave Free Hungary...
...Thus the only correction needed for the "incorrect thesis" of the "law of inevitable violent revolution" arises from the Czech "road to socialism...
...In sculpture, painting and architecture, the influence of Soviet doctrines is altogether absent...
...But one must recall that in Yugoslavia the major targets of the Polish-Hungarian wrath—Soviet domination, farm collectivization, strict intellectual controls, isolation from the West, economic centralization, wide-scale police activities—have not exist* ed for some years now...
...REDS Can Louis Jay Herman be serious (NL, January 21) when he fails to consider that today's soul-searching and discord on the highest level of the American Communist party can only be a hoax—contrived to confuse Americans about the Nazi-like dictatorship within the party...
...After all, democracy, according to Mikoyan as well as Lenin, is incapable of any contribution to the classless society other than surrender...
...In the Daily Worker of November 29, Dennis likens the Budapest workers' councils' support of the anti-Kremlin revolt to a "scab movement...
...If you are willing to surrender, we can dispense with open violence" is a succinct characterization of how democratic is the new choice offered...
...Despite the relaxed atmosphere in Yugoslavia, Tito's party is still basically monolithic in character...
...If Hungary aptly demonstrated the severe limitations of Tito's narrow doctrine, Poland proved that these limits were considerably broader than Tito's traditional critics ever conceived...
...This problem must be licked, or there may be trouble...
...Kingston, R. I. Michal Zawadzki Peter Wiles's article is superb—full of brilliant insights, fine observations and provocative points...
...If you do not resist, they assure us, there need be no barricades...
...The withering away of the state is contingent upon the prior control of all governments by the Communist elite, since the building of Communism requires the tutelage of the masses by those whose superiority in Marxist science qualifies them alone to elucidate and decide every human issue...
...The major problem in the Yugoslav economy today is not actually an excess of Government interference (the totalitarian "in a hurry," a9 Wiles says), but rather a deplorable deficiency of concentrated official concern with the chronic failures in several crucial fields...
...It is certainly true, as many have pointed out, that Poland enjoys today a greater degree of intellectual and political freedom than does Yugoslavia...
...The new peaceful, democratic road to socialism'' is only for weak states that fear fighting back...
Vol. 40 • March 1957 • No. 10
