Khrushchev's New Unity
LOWENTHAL, RICHARD
The retreat of Tito and Gomulka Khrushchev's New Unity By Richard Loiventhal One year after the Polish and Hungarian crises, Communist unity shows a remarkable degree of consolidation. The often...
...On this basis, mutual toleration of "different roads to socialism"—i.e., of tactical variations concerning both the way to get power (as between French and Italian Communists) and the way to exercise it (as between Poles and Czechs)—has been established...
...All that has remained of Tito's rejection of the Soviet doctrine of "two camps" in world affairs is thus simply the rejection of an outright military alliance...
...The new model of inter-Communist relations largely corresponds to the hopes originally entertained by Khrushchev at the time of his Belgrade visit in 1955 and of the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956...
...In Yugoslavia, it has involved both a reorientation in foreign affairs and a unilateral ideological disarmament...
...In Poland, this acceptance involves chiefly the campaign against "revisionism" and the difficult effort to restore monolithic Party rule—an effort still being pursued by compar-tively gentle, non-terrorist methods...
...3) they must maintain (or seek to restore or achieve) monolithic single-party rule and defend its necessity against all "revisionist" attempts to defend the right of political criticism...
...It is the conviction that a threat to any Communist dictatorship is a threat to all that has caused both Tito and Gomulka to accept Khrushchev s terms for a new alignment, and luis allowed the latter to that extent to pluck a tactical success from the very shock of his Hungarian defeat...
...Instead, lie has made clear that he will back any Communist leader who proves strong enough to keep his party together—provided he complies with three indispensable conditions...
...But, for the time being, her support is declared—based on the curious argument that, while in Stalin's lifetime the main danger to peace emanated from the USSR, at present the chief danger is Western policies...
...These conditions are: (1) they must accept loyally Khrushchev's position...
...Apart from this argument, Yugoslav spokesmen try to explain their ideological appeasement of Russia by the need to support the peace-loving Khrushchev against the lurking danger of a Stalinist comeback...
...He abandoned the "Stalinist" opposition in Poland, but made no move to get rid of the "old Stalinists" abroad after his victory over Molotov and Malenkov at home...
...Nikita Khrushchev's success in restoring a measure of Communist unity has been achieved in part by granting Communist parties and governments a certain degree of tactical independence...
...The Yugoslavs, while guarding their sovereignty, have in fact abandoned their former "non-aligned" attitude in foreign affairs in favor of a return to "proletarian internationalism," i.e., to full support for Soviet foreign policies, of which their recognition of East Germany is the latest example...
...The often bitter public polemics which last winter and spring were so frequent between the heretical Communists of Poland and Yugoslavia and the orthodox camp led by the Soviet Communists have stopped...
...2) they must support the foreign policy of the Soviet Union...
...Khrushchev has stuck to this concept despite the shattering events of last autumn, and has succeeded first in enlisting for it the support of the Chinese Communists, and finally in getting it accepted by Tito and Gomulka...
...That is, of course, not unimportant, because it means that his support of Soviet foreign policies is still conditional—that Yugoslavia still remains free to withdraw it...
...But there is no evidence of such a danger, and it seems probable that the argument about Western "aggressiveness" comes closer to revealing the true motives of the Yugoslav reorientation, though in a twisted form...
...The claim that the "workers' councils" are essential for true socialism as distinct from "bureaucratic stale capitalism" has been dropped because it implies criticism of the Soviet system...
...and, while probably none of the Yugoslav leaders believe that the Western powers "organized" that movement, they are as worried as Khrushchev by the West's continued refusal to accept the unpopular satellite regimes of Eastern Europe as permanent...
...There can be no doubt that Tito and his aides were profoundly frightened by the Hungarian Revolution, because it showed that an effort at reforming a Communist regime might easily lead to the total overthrow of Communist rule...
...the doctrine that advanced democratic countries may achieve socialism by "reformist" methods has been attenuated (in the last Tito-Gomulka communique) to the innocuous statement that in the West also the masses are "struggling for socialism...
...but neither is he urging the "orthodox" satellite leaders, like Novotny in Czechoslovakia or Ulbricht in East Germany, to follow their model...
...Neither Gomulka nor Tito will abandon their concessions to the private peasants or the workers' councils, and Khrushchev is not pressing them to do so...
...The Polish Communists, who always had to practice such solidarity in order to maintain independence in domestic affairs, are making serious efforts to restrict freedom of political discussion...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 43
