Hungary and the French Left
BOSWELL, GEORGE B.
Workers, intellectuals desert Communists Hungary and the French Left By George B. Boswell Paris The Hungarian Revolution has had a decisive effect on France's long-range foreign policy and has...
...Hungary has virtually isolated the party from the rest of the nation, and it seems likely to remain isolated so long as the present leaders remain in control...
...Should they try to promote internal reform within the Communist party...
...It could not, however, hide the revolt and disaffection within its ranks...
...When a lengthy discussion showed that it could not deliver the goods without threatening the unity of the organization, the Bureau finally took refuge in a long-forgotten principle of political neutrality, leaving each federation free to determine its own position...
...The Hungarian affair will have lasting repercussions in France...
...Mollet and Pineau paid a state visit to the USSR, and Mollet declared on his return that he was convinced an end could be brought to the tragic division between nations...
...The coexistence theme pushed by many left-wing groups in France during 1956 had its counterpart on the internal political plane as the "progressives" and fellow-travelers intensified their campaign to achieve a rapprochement between the Mendes-France Radicals and Socialists, on the one hand, and the Communists on the other...
...The events of late October and November brought to an end the optimism engendered by the Bulganin-Khrushchev diplomacy of smiles...
...Nazaire shipyard...
...In some cases, the defections were led by local and regional leaders, with whole federations and regional unions refusing to back the strike...
...Today, France clearly recognizes that the Atlantic alliance is the best guarantee of her freedom and security...
...The Christian (CFTC) and Socialist (FO) labor movements called nationwide protest strikes...
...Too weak to form an effective political party, they sought to act as a catalyzing agent between the Communists and Socialists, and have failed...
...it lost as much as 30 per cent of its voting strength in a recent plant election at a St...
...Pablo Picasso, under pressure from fellow artists and intellectuals, joined nine other Communist intellectuals in submitting a petition to the Central Committee which accused the party of systematically distorting and suppressing information ever since publication of the Khrushchev report...
...On October 23, Duverger correctly predicted that Russia would have to accept Gomulka's revolution...
...The week that followed November 4 was crowded with appeals, protests and letters of resignation by prominent left-wing intellectuals...
...one of them, J. F. Rolland, published a letter in L'Express bitterly criticizing the party leaders for their authoritarian and "reactionary" policies...
...The non-Communist extreme Left has been reduced to an impotent group of disparate elements which are divided among themselves over Hungary and cut off from the Socialists by the Algerian and Suez fighting...
...The Suez issue created such a wave of anti-Americanism in France that NATO would have been seriously endangered if the Hungarian revolt had not occurred to demonstrate the fraudulence of "de-Stalinization...
...At the same time, the Hungarian events have smashed the efforts of the Progressistes and Communists to achieve a united front with the Socialists and Radicals...
...Now they face the dilemma: Should they remain in touch with the Communists...
...The CNE, a writers' group born of the cooperation of Communists and non-Communists during the wartime Resistance, issued a weak appeal to "Mr...
...Kadar" to please spare the lives of Hungarian intellectuals, whereupon most of the non-Communist members resigned...
...Chi the eve of the walkout, three important national unions (Government employes, tax collectors and printers) adopted motions condemning Soviet intervention in Hungary, and Le Brun, the rion-Communist Secretary General of the CGT, signed a similar motion presented by the Progressiste party...
...Moreover, the great majority of CGT members failed to follow strike orders...
...The day after the anti-Communist riots, the party called its members out for mass demonstrations in Paris...
...Khrushchev's report to the 20th Soviet Party Congress was also widely used by French "progressives" and left-wing neutralists to support the thesis of coexistence...
...Or should they make a clean break and try to found a democratic Marxist party...
...On November 5, the day after the Budapest intervention, the party issued a statement fully approving Kadar's appeal for Soviet troops and declaring that it "would have been inconceivable for the army of workers and peasants of the USSR not to answer the call for help, at a time when the best sons of the Hungarian working class were being massacred.' Since then, L'Humanite has denounced the Hungarian revolutionaries as "traitors, gangsters, fascist dogs, paid agents of the Americans," etc...
...it was actively opposed by the free labor federations as well as by the influential autonomous teachers' union...
...They called for an "anti-fascist" day of strikes in protest against the November 7 riots, which had partially destroyed the party's Paris headquarters...
...The brutal cynicism of the French Communist party aroused national indignation...
...Throughout the crisis, the Communist party maintained an intransigent stand, ignoring Gomulka's reform program in Poland and rejecting a telegram of congratulations to Gomulka proposed by certain party figures...
...It is too early to predict the effects of the crisis in the trade unions...
...Despite Russia's activities in the Middle East and her covert support of the Algerian nationalists, a great many influential Frenchmen had gradually become convinced in the past year that a permanent solution of East-West differences was possible...
...Whereas a few years ago it could have counted on 150,000 to 200,000 militants, only 8,000 to 10,000 members turned up to protest the destructive attacks on the party's headquarters and printing plant...
...Workers, intellectuals desert Communists Hungary and the French Left By George B. Boswell Paris The Hungarian Revolution has had a decisive effect on France's long-range foreign policy and has altered the whole structure of her left-wing political forces by temporarily neutralizing Communist influence...
...In the trade unions, the Communists sought to use the CGT to demonstrate that the working class still stood with the Communist party...
...This, indeed, may weaken the labor movement as a whole, for most of those who drop out of the CGT will remain unorganized rather than join one of the rival free labor unions...
...The non-Communist Left saw in each new development in Eastern Europe a further confirmation of its hopes for increased liberalization of the Communist system, and the simultaneous explosions in Poland and Hungary in late October seemed to bear this out...
...The most significant individual gesture was Sartre's long letter in L'Express in which he clearly broke with the Communists...
...The government of Socialist Guy Mollet contributed to the development of this thesis, and Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, fearing that Russia's policy of good will and economic aid would threaten the West's position among the uncommitted nations of Asia and Africa, criticized U.S...
...Maurice Duverger, writing in Le Monde in July, asserted that East and West were gradually coming together, the East seeking liberalization of its political tyranny while the West sought to moderate its economic injustices...
...In some cases, whole sections of locals passed from the CGT to the FO, something which had not occurred since the split that brought the latter into being in 1947...
...Thorez and his satraps replied with expulsion and suspension of the "fractional" elements "threatening the unity of the working class...
...While the Communist party may lose some members, it will be even more affected by the increasing passivity of a much larger number who will remain in the party purely out of class solidarity...
...On the trade-union level, the effort toward unity of action received a boost in October, when the Secretary General of the Communist-controlled CGT wrote an article in the Mendesist weekly L'Express, outlining basic points on which Communist and non-Communist labor could reach understanding...
...Four prominent Communist journalists joined "progressive" elements in public protests against the Soviet intervention in Hungary...
...Francois Mauriac confidently asserted that the report marked the end of a bloody chapter and that a page of history had now definitely been turned...
...The ruthless Soviet attack on Budapest on November 4 abruptly ended the Utopian visions of democratization in Russia and a united front in France...
...Le Monde's November 4 issue ran a front-page editorial optimistically contending that, so long as the "moderates" remained in control in Moscow, the Hungarian Revolution would probably not be crushed by armed force...
...The Hungarian events and the party's stand shocked the conscience of even the most faithful fellow-travelers...
...Many Frenchmen have also concluded that Western Europe must now achieve greater unity...
...It is no longer possible for a French Government official to suggest that an alliance with Moscow might be more profitable than that with the U.S., as Secretary of Public Works Pinton did in September...
...Crypto-Communist organizations disintegrated, unable to conciliate opposing factions...
...The petition called for the convening of a special party congress...
...Frangois Mauriac and Jean-Paul Sartre led another exodus from the cultural group France-USSR...
...The strike, which had been intensively prepared for five days, proved a complete failure...
...More significant may be an effort by non-Communist "reformist" elements in the CGT to shake the latter loose from the party, in order to protect it from defections both by individuals and by important constituent unions...
...The Socialists, reunited in their opposition to the Communists, held an imposing party meeting in Paris, launched a large-scale poster campaign, and joined Christians, Radicals and members of the free labor movement in a mass protest meeting...
...The Hungarian revolt has also helped restore some measure of unity in the Socialist party, which is torn by disagreement over Suez and Algeria...
...The National Bureau of the CGT met on the day of the strike, with instructions from the party to adopt a motion of solidarity with the Hungarian Communists and the Soviet forces in Hungary...
...foreign policy for its rigidity and reliance on military pacts...
...and on November 3, on the eve of the ruthless repression in Hungary, he went boldly on to assert that Moscow would also accept Nagy's demands...
...The CGT has, without doubt, been seriously weakened...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 3
