Cockpit of History

...In the process of self-liberation, these countries will themselves destroy that Western contempt which made possible Churchill's famous wartime 5050, 75-25, 90-10 bargain with Stalin over the future of the Balkans...

...The excessive concentration on both Soviet and American policies obscures from view the rich complex of relations between Moscow, Budapest and Warsaw on the one hand, and the evolution of new relations between the satellite governments and their own people on the other...

...It is curious to recall, for example...

...Just as English capitalism brutally transformed India into a nation, so Russian Communism may have performed a somewhat similar service for the "backward" countries of East Central Europe, with even greater brutality...

...but these are some of the forces and questions with which serious students must begin to deal...

...A large number of Hungarian exiles, having fled the country with the Germans in 1944, were discredited among their own people...

...The key questions which every serious student of East European affairs must now ask are these two: (1) Why have Hungary and Poland, and not the other satellites, taken so decisive a lead in the first onslaught against Russia's European empire...

...Under the electrifying impact of Communism, the nations of East Central Europe are rejecting that very passivity which made it so easy for German armies and then Soviet agitators to subdue them during and after the war...

...Poland had a national uprising during the war...

...and yet present events reflect them to a surprising degree...

...Several years ago, these differences could be dismissed as mere variations in the Moscow timetable...

...This is an overstatement, of course...

...The other two were the Poles and the "Slavs in Turkey...

...One of the tragedies of Eastern Europe between the World Wars was the helpless dependence of its unstable regimes on the Great Powers, on whose support their continued existence, as a regime or as a nation, seemed to depend...

...The problems are essentially historic in scope...

...East European anti-Communists who have made the same errors regarding another Great Power may well suffer the same fate...

...The common belief that the advent of Communism temporarily suspended the action of these deep-rooted national experiences should have vanished with Tito's revolution in Yugoslavia...

...He makes no distinction between Tito's road to power and Rakosi's...

...He can walk from left to right or pace up and down...

...American influence in East Central Europe has never been decisive but has been limited to the encouragement of hopeful indigenous trends...

...In the cold and unfeeling perspective of centuries, the emergence of new independent powers in East Central Europe may be considered the central significance of the revolutionary exertions now in progress...

...The Magyars were one, of course...

...Unhappily, the present volume offers us very few clues by which to answer either of these questions...

...but it persists...

...In the 17 years since the start of World War II, each of these countries has undergone a series of invasions and several revolutions...

...nor did they exist, in such form, a decade ago...

...Some pacing up and down we've seen these past two months...

...The Czech party was the only one which gained a dominant place among the nation's working class...

...neither Dragnich, nor I, nor Tito himself really knows how much, how little, under what circumstances, in what way, how many people will support which aspects of Yugoslav Communism...

...It is indeed one of the ironies of our epoch that Russia's audacious attempt to absorb East Central Europe into its sphere (following upon Germany's equally bold effort) may have so vitalized the region that in time it will lose its traditional character as a vacuum for Great Power rivalries...

...The accounts of the "take-over" in the postwar years are generally accurate and sound...

...but he offers not the slightest hope that this upheaval could ever break through the fragile structure of Rakosi's regime —even though it nearly happened in the fall of 1954, two years ago...

...Ferrell points out, for example, that President Wilson supported Czech independence in World War I only when, in mid-1918, the possibilities of a separate peace with Austria had been thoroughly exhausted...

...But this really isn't the issue...

...he dismisses Tito's position in Yugoslav life with the unsupport-able "estimate" that 85 per cent of the people "bitterly hate" his regime...

...A brief glance at the recent history of the area will show how revolutionary an idea this is...

...Oscar Halecki gloomily declares, for example, that "only annexation bv the USSR and formal transformation of Poland into a Soviet republic could be a further phase in the absorption of the 'liberated' country by its big neighbor in the East...

...that over a century ago one historian, Frederick Engels, singled out three peoples in Eastern Europe as possessing a great future...

...It is not that the authors did not predict these massive upheavals (who did...

...in Poland, however, there was a fairly steady development of industry which earned the reluctant praise even of some exiles...

...Ra-kosi chose his hundred million...

...Gomulka and Tito may prove too dependent on Russia to carry through the shift in the alignment of European power which they themselves have initiated...

...This illusion—we may Reviewed by Paul Willen Contributor, "New Republic'' "Commentary"Reporter" call it Great-Poweritis—is that the past, and therefore the future, of East Central Europe is largely determined by the fortunes and decisions of the Great Powers...

...In this respect, Dragnich's discussion of Yugoslavia is the most disappointing...

...I would not say that 85 per cent, or 45 per cent, "vigorously support" the regime...

...Unfortunately, the rest of the volume—describing the Sovietization of East Central Europe —does not sustain the historic detachment of the initial studies...

...With the exception of Wolff's essays on Bulgaria and Rumania, the accounts in the present volume hardly touch on the pre-Communist political situation...

...We refer, of course, to the partial separation of Poland from the Soviet bloc, following a year of social and intellectual unrest capped by the Poznan riots, and the great revolution inside Hungary...

...Mind-szenty and Rajk were made the objects of gruesome show trials in Hungary...

...Of course, by the "Slavs in Turkey" he was referring to that small group of tough hajduks who were creating, around the tiny village of Belgrade, the foundations of modern Yugoslavia...

...Each satellite has its own peculiar characteristics, reflecting historic patterns, native traditions, social forces, and the special background of its native Communist party...

...today, they loom as decisive...

...but how else can one explain the failure of these accounts—most of which were completed only a year ago—to prepare the reader in any way for what the East European peoples have done for themselves this year...

...Many of the authors seem to accept the philosophy embodied in Rakosi's cynical statement last spring that "to be a successful power nowadays you must have a population of at least one hundred million...

...Yugoslavia was one of the anchors of the French "Little Entente," and then a temporary pawn of Germany's powerful drive to the east...

...As Marx once put it, "a single courageous attempt at a democratic revolution, even if it is smothered, erases whole centuries of infamy and cowardice from the memories of peoples, rehabilitates at once any nation, no matter how deeply despised...

...Rakosi in Hungary and Nowak in Poland have been swept aside because they overestimated the capacity of a Great Power to influence their region, and because they underestimated the vitality of their own people...

...The Yugoslav party was the only one which in the inter-war years captured virtual leadership of the nation's vigorous intelligentsia...

...Czechoslovakia considered a strong France the very cornerstone of its survival...

...Regarding the first topic, the book includes three excellent historical essays by Philip Mosely, Robert Ferrell and Robert F. Byrnes, in which they take up, among other things, several popular misconceptions about U. S. history...

...but the Polish exiles, who had given leadership to the powerful anti-German Home Army, still commanded great prestige in their country...

...He may side with the fellow prisoners or with the guards...

...Yet most of these accounts suffer, ironically enough, from the very illusions which the first three essays try to dispel...

...Stephen Kertesz describes the popular upheaval which occurred in Hungary in 1^53-54 under the first Irnre Nagv regime...

...The roots of the change must be sought in the chemical reaction between national traditions and the energizing process of Sovietization itself...

...The number is probably a good deal more than Dragnich modestly "estimates" and a good deal less than Tito may realize...

...but the process, begun so brilliantly by them, is probably one of the most vigorous of our day...

...The people of Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Rumania are still only pacing up and down...

...Engels may have overstated his case regarding the other Slavic peoples (whom he condemned to oblivion) ; but it can hardly be said that he ever underestimated a people's revolutionary-energies...

...Poland was caught in a game involving France, Germany and Russia, at the mercy of one combination or another...

...But we do suggest that the future of this area can no longer be viewed through the narrow prism of Great Power politics...

...Duchacek concludes his description of Czechoslovakia by comparing the aspects of a captive nation to those of a prisoner: "He can sit, or stand, or lie down...

...The assumption is that what is happening under Communism, and what happened before Communism, are not really connected...

...With the exception of Duchacek's interesting discussion of the passivity of the Czech people, the book makes no attempt to identify the distinguishing features of each national grouping— even as these features affect the local Communist parties...

...but that they didn't even allow, by so much as a word, for the possibility of the growth of a powerful popular movement within the area...

...2) What enabled the Polish Communist party to absorb much of the rising tide of nationalist feeling into its own body, whereas the Hungarian Party could not do so...

...Collectivization in Poland comprised less than 10 per cent of the land, but in Bulgaria it has reached 60 per cent...

...Industrial planning in Hungary was characterized by violent fluctuations of design...

...Mosely reminds us that if the U. S. had launched a costly invasion of the Balkans in 1943-44—to check the Soviet advance in that area—the Russians might have liberated the whole of Germany and France with disastrous consequences...

...As the three historical essays indicate...

...These three studies get the book off to a fine start...

...The vital idea in East Europe now may be neither parliamentary democracy nor socialist forms, but national integrity and national rebirth—and with these things, of course, a bursting of the bounds of Communist orthodoxy...

...Byrnes makes the point that even during the 1952 campaign Eisenhower and Dulles made no substantial commitment to "liberate" the satellites in the sense in which the term was subsequently understood...

...Hungary wavered between France and Italy, and finally succumbed to Germany...

...It is unlikely that a self-liberated Poland, Hungary or Yugoslavia will again so easily submit to the ambitions of French, German or Russian continental stratagems...

...In the process, three of them—Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia—have lifted themselves into a position of prominence in global politics which they have not enjoyed for decades, even centuries...

...Thus the past decade is merely the dismal recording of the havoc wreaked by the Russians...

...Much remains to be seen, of course...

...Wyszinski and Gomulka were only placed under arrest in Poland...

...Several years ago, these differences could be ignored, too...

...Any attempt to impose a rigid pattern of analysis on them will fail as badly as the Russian attempt to impose identical political molds...

...Perhaps a little more attention to the area itself, and less to the Communist avalanche and the American apocalypse, would be in order...

...If the Kremlin is denied the authority to determine East European boundaries, the task will not fall again to a Congress of Berlin or a Versailles Conference...

...THIS TIMELY BOOK is composed of 18 essays dealing with two related topics: American policy toward East Central Europe and the postwar Communist transformation of that area...

...But he cannot go beyond his four walls...

...The mighty impulses of independence were not, as it may seem to some, generated by Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech last spring...

...others chose their hundred million...

...Indeed, even before Stalin's death it could be said that the Polish press was the very essence of variety and excitement compared to the Czech press or its Soviet model...

...The Polish Communist party was the only one in Eastern Europe which was so independent of Kremlin dictates between the wars that it was actually dissolved by Comintern edict in the late 1930s...

...This does not mean, of course, that we minimize Soviet power...

...all the major points are covered...

...Hungary experienced a mild social revolution, directed against the latifundia, immediately after it...

...The assumption of an ever-increasing uniformity among the satellites, and an ever-deepening degree of Soviet control over them, dominates the book...

...and the next decade, it is hoped, will record the avenging of these wrongs by the United States...

...Gomul-ka's position is still unclear, and the Hungarian Revolution may end in temporary failure or stalemate...

...Yugoslav Communism may be abhorrent, but it is Yugoslav, and this is its great significance in East European politics...