Intellectuals and the Populist Spirit

...In Serbia in the 1930s, the most active revolutionary students became Communists...

...He is author of The East European Revolution and From Lenin to Malenkov...

...The new East European educated youth was to be the brains of totalitarianism...

...Like many of the leading cadres of the Yugoslav Communist party, Djilas comes from the intelligentsia...

...Only then did he criticize the regime which he had helped to build and which had destroyed him...

...In Rumania about the same time, many young intellectuals put their faith in Nazi Germany and its racialist, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist slogans...

...Hundreds of thousands of new intellectuals were in fact created...

...Yet we would do well to remember that, though the Czech people bitterly resented Anglo-French betrayal at Munich, they did not for that reason become loyal citizens of the Third Reich...

...He was under no inducement to do what he did...

...There was also leadership from the older generation of the intelligentsia, from men who had been convinced Marxist idealists and had become utterly disillusioned with the whole system...

...They hope not so much because America is strong, even less because they have any illusions that the West will forcibly liberate them...

...They hope because they know that freedom exists in more than half of Europe— that there is a way of life which, despite its sordid features and despite great differences among regions and nations and classes, does protect the freedom and dignity of man...

...Eastern Europe now represents to the Soviet leaders both an economic and a military liability...

...He went to the root of the matter and attacked the ruling class, clumsily perhaps but without evasions...

...These were the so-called "village explorers"—young intellectuals, some of peasant origin, some of middle-class background, who devoted themselves to serious economic and sociological studies of the condition of the oppressed rural proletariat and dwarf-holder peasants of Hungary...

...children of workers and peasants...

...British historian probes two generations of unrest among the Danubian intelligentsia East European Intellectuals and the Populist Spirit By Hugh Seton-Watson To my mind the most remarkable thing about Milovan Djilas is that he developed his own ideas without any external compulsion, and did not fear to state his conclusions...

...They did not appear in Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria...

...And so it came about that the Polish and Hungarian Revolutions of October 1956 were led by the educated youth, by the new intelligentsia in which the regime leaders had placed their fondest hopes...

...They themselves belonged to contemporary Western culture, while their own peoples lived in ancient squalor...

...But, in any case, it was not primarily economic conditions that caused the discontent of the East European intellectuals: Rather, they protested against coercion of thought and national enslavement, both of which persist, except in Poland...

...Even then, his criticisms remained confined within narrow limits...

...The basic discontents were the same, but leadership was lacking...

...The new intelligentsia was created—but it proved a sad disappointment to its creators...

...The various revolutionary ideas to which they subscribed may seem to us naive or repulsive or both...

...From the Soviet point of view, the only ultimate solution is to destroy free Europe, to obliterate or enslave its people...

...Whatever the particular explanations in each case, it remains a fact that the intellectual youth of Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria found no leaders or spokesmen among their elders...

...No doubt renewed efforts will be made to indoctrinate the youth...

...No doubt some effort will be made to improve ecenomic conditions...

...In Poland and Hungary, there was leadership both in the political apparatus and in the intelligentsia...

...service to the people in its Stalinist form, which of course meant unconditional devotion to the totalitarian regime...

...So they must maintain their rule over millions who, they well know, hate them...

...They could not but be aware of the contrast between the enlightened social and political ideas which they acquired in the process of their Western-type education, and the corruption, brutality and injustice which marked the machinery of government in their own countries...

...I, at least, cannot believe that on either side of the Atlantic we shall be so stupid, unimaginative or cowardly as to permit this...

...Such people were especially important in Hungary, but they were found in Poland, too...

...Hatred is not dangerous if not accompanied by hope...

...To the end of his life, he retained a remarkable ignorance of some of the basic facts of political life...

...Of course, there have been many distinguished Communist intellectuals, holding marginal or subordinate posts in the Party hierarchy, who became disillusioned with the system and, after leaving it, developed quite profound critical analyses of it...

...Meanwhile, the peoples and intellectuals of Eastern Europe remain unreconciled...

...Children of workers and peasants poured into the new or expanded schools and colleges...

...They are dogmatists, resolved to impose the blessings of their form of government on the whole human race, with the use of such benevolent instruments as the philanthropical General Serov can muster...

...But the oppressor was the Communist party leadership, and the poverty was the result of Stalinist policies of forced heavy industrial development at the expense of popular welfare...

...Whether to them there will be added the special factors (leadership within, protection without) which make possible successful revolution, or whether on the contrary the helpless rage will go on smoldering for years or decades, no one not possessed of the gift of prophecy can foretell...

...Maximum use was made in Moscow of the West's failure to help Hungary, and of the sputniks...

...Leon Trotsky was driven from office and expelled from his country by his revolutionary colleagues...

...Revolution occurred only in Poland and Hungary, but the attitude of the educated youth was in no way different in the countries where no explosion took place—Rumania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria...

...But neither has criticized the essence of Communist power or openly discussed the nature of the new class...

...nor did the temporary superiority of Goering's Luftwaffe destroy their hope of liberty...

...From this point of view, little independent Austria, well known to millions of Czechs and Hungarians and Rumanians, is a more important symbol than the powerful United States...

...But the political situation was not revolutionary in these countries as it was in Poland or Hungary...

...The Czech and Slovak students made a rather courageous protest in May 1956...

...Rumanian students were in ferment during the Hungarian Revolution, and there were stirrings at the Humboldt University in East Berlin...

...A brilliant future lay before him...

...But he chose to follow his ideas and his conscience...

...The basic discontents are there...

...In Rumania this was, I think, because the older intellectual generation had hardly been touched by Marxism, and the official leaders of the intelligentsia in recent years have been cynical non-Marxists who have merely performed with servile zeal all the ritual motions required of them by the bosses of the regime...

...But Djilas was not a marginal or subordinate intellectual: He was one of the Big Five of the Yugoslav Communist regime...

...The best argument that the Soviet leaders possess concerns their own armed strength and the moral vacillation of the West...

...The idea that they had a responsibility to the masses, that they must serve the people—which the Party spokesmen trumpeted forth day and night—was interpreted by them to mean that they must, like their predecessors, strive to free the people from its oppressors and raise it up out of its poverty...

...The Russian Populists had a conception of a peasant-based socialism built on the traditional commune, which bore little relation to reality...

...This is, I think, unique in the case of a Communist holding high office...

...As long as Europe is at least half free, they will refuse to believe that Soviet totalitarianism is the only future of man...

...Only the total violent overthrow of the existing system could bring progress...

...On purely empirical grounds, they would do well to clear out...

...Tito and Gomulka have defied Moscow and have introduced important economic and institutional reforms, and we should give them all due credit for this...

...This they can do only if they obtain an overwhelming arms superiority over the whole of the rest of the world, or if they should be able by subversion and intimidation and flattery to separate Western Europe from America...

...Djilas is the first Communist potentate, enjoying all the fruits of power, who has renounced these solely from conviction...

...Djilas was not content to place the blame on the usual convenient scapegoats—over-zealous or insufficiently orthodox bureaucrats...

...Judged at first by outward results, the Stalinists achieved impressive success...

...Nothing that Soviet leaders have done since October 1956 can have changed the basic hostility of the intellectuals of Eastern Europe to their rule, and I must confess that I simply cannot think of anything which they are capable of doing that can have this effect...

...This will represent a substantial cost to the Soviet Government, and—contrary to the assertions of Soviet leaders—generosity is not one of their most conspicuous traits...

...The Rumanian Iron Guard, which these people followed, was led by a curious gang of fanatics, demagogues and criminals, but it succeeded in channeling a great deal of genuine social revolutionary idealism...

...The intellectual discipline to which they were subjected, and their own natural intelligence, combined to make them see through the lies of official propaganda...

...In Hungary at the same time, there were young Fascist idealists, a few Marxist idealists, but also a specifically Hungarian group of great interest, the most sympathetic to me personally of the four groups which I have mentioned...

...But they do not think empirically...

...The Communist bosses who took over Eastern Europe in the years 1944-48 were well aware of this mentality, and believed that they could use it for their own purposes...

...At the same time, the Populist tradition reasserted itself...

...The enormous attraction, to eager, brilliant but inexperienced minds, of the allegedly scientific closed system of Marxism combined with the old love of the Serbian people for Russia...

...But the intellectuals of Eastern Europe still do hope...

...The Soviet Army suppressed the Hungarian Revolution, but it could not win over Hungary's educated youth, nor the youth of Poland...

...This I would describe as the "Populist mentality"—the idea of service to the people, the belief that it was their duty, as they had risen from the people and had achieved a material and cultural level that were inaccessible to the people, to use the skills and knowledge they had acquired in order to free the people from its oppressors and raise it up out of its poverty...

...It was to propagate the idea of...

...But if the Stalinist lies of 1946-56 made so little, or rather so negative, an impression on the minds of young Danubian workers and peasants, why should the Khrushchevian lies of 1958 be more effective...

...Far from becoming the exponents of totalitarianism, the educated youth became its bitterest critics...

...In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the educated youth of Russia from the mid-19th century, and of the Balkan and Danubian countries from a somewhat later date, inclined to the most extreme revolutionary ideas...

...In a large part of Eastern Europe between the world wars, the university students and recent graduates resembled the Russian intellectual youth of the 1870s, not so much in their ideas as in their social predicament...

...They were determined to create a new intelligentsia, much more numerous than the old and composed of...

...Hugh Seton-Watson of London University is now a Visiting Professor of Russian History at Columbia...

...Though they were trained social scientists, they were also politically conscious reformers, did their best to set up political organizations, and had a rather wide influence on public opinion in general...

...Curious though it may seem, I would argue that these four quite different groups—Russian Narodniks, Serbian Leninists, Rumanian Fascists and Hungarian village explorers—had in common a basic social attitude and moral-political mentality, which is at least as important as the differences in the doctrines they professed...

...They themselves could only enter the Government service if they betrayed their principles: If they remained true to their convictions, the regimes would not admit them to influence or power...

...Within the Communist parties, opposition centered around the two prominent figures Gomulka and Imre Nagy, both of whom enjoyed (rightly or wrongly) popularity both inside and outside the parties...