Central and Eastern European States -
After 1953: De-Stalinization
The death of Stalin in 1953
marked a significant turning point in the history of post-war Europe.
The process of de-Stalinization and liberalisation which began with
Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956 was limited by the reaction of the
Soviet Union to challenges to its power in Poland and Hungary in 1956
and Czechoslovakia in 1968. In this section we will examine the causes
of these challenges and also reasons for their failure.
It would be
wrong to focus only on the moments of political instability, searching
for the precursors of the events of 1989. Because the regimes ultimately
fell apart, it doesn't mean that mature communist regimes were not also
remarkably stable. The failure of reform movements in this period is not
merely to be explained by the internal fear of the secret police and
external threat of Soviet troops. It is also to be explained by the
willingness of citizens to go along with the regime voluntarily. We need
to consider how political regimes may be accepted by their citizens,
even though those citizens are not allowed a free vote every five years
to choose their leaders.
The death of Stalin led to the policy of the New
Course in the Soviet Union and a break with the immediate Stalinist
past. The international context was also changing. The USSR returned to
the conference table, recognised a capitalist Austria and withdrew her
troops; even Tito was rehabilitated as Khrushchev recognised the
possibility of 'different roads to socialism'.
CNN Cold War Episode 7: After
Stalin (1953-1956)
By the time Polish
communists leaked the content of Khrushchev's 'secret speech' in
February 1956, Poland had already begun a process of de-Stalinization
that would ultimately characterize the regime until it began to collapse
in the 1980s. (See Polish
October) The defection of a senior secret police officer led to
lurid revelations of Stalinist abuses that were broadcast to the nation.
In less than a year, 200 political discussion groups sprang up all over
Poland.
In February 1954, the Cominform acknowledged the 'groundless'
liquidation of the pre-war Communist party. The death of hard-line party
leader Boleslaw Bierut in March 1956 offered further hope of reform. In
June 1956, however, from the point of view of the party leadership,
things went too far. Workers in Poznan rioted in response to a cut in
wages and changed working conditions. After two days of fighting with
police 53 were dead and in excess of 300 were injured. Premier
Cyrankiewicz warned the demonstrators that he '…who will dare raise
his hand against the people's rule may be sure that… the authorities
will chop off his hand'. (Berend 109)
Despite the threats it was the
party itself that looked more likely to collapse. In July 1956, at the
7th plenum of the Central Committee the party divided into a pro-Soviet
faction opposing change and a reformist wing advocating greater
liberalisation and economic reform. In August, a decision was taken to
restore Wladyslaw Gomulka's party membership. He had been purged in 1949
and as a martyr of Stalinism he quickly became the focus of pro-reform
opinion. Elevated into the Polish Politburo without the approval of
Moscow, Gomulka now became a symbol of defiance from Polish reformism.
The Soviet army in Poland was made ready to move on Warsaw and a 50,000
strong army of the Polish secret police protected Gomulka and the
central committee.
Time magazine
December 1956
On the 19th of October Khrushchev made an unscheduled
visit to Warsaw. At the same time, Soviet army units left Wroclaw
heading for the capital and the Soviet fleet appeared off Gdansk. The
control tower at Warsaw airport initially refused landing permission and
the Soviet delegation was put into a holding pattern. At the same moment
the Polish Politburo proposed the re-election of Gomulka as secretary
general, suspended their meeting and rushed to the airport. When finally
allowed on to Polish soil, Khrushchev railed against the Poles: 'We shed
our blood for this country and now you want to sell out to the Americans…'
The tense debate which followed
produced the compromise which resulted in a Polish road to
socialism, in return for Polish loyalty in the recently formed
Warsaw Pact. In the words of Norman Davies, 'The Polish People's
Republic ceased to be a puppet state, and became instead a
client state' But Khrushchev would not back down again.
Within a few days, a demonstration in support of the Poles in
Budapest would trigger the Hungarian uprising. (See 1956
- A key date in European History)
What made Poland the client state different to the
other puppet states of Central and Eastern Europe?
Firstly,
collectivisation was cancelled and peasants were allowed to own their
own land. This created a significant independent private sector in a
communist economy. Secondly, the compromise agreement with the Catholic
Church signed in December 1956, created the only fully independent
church in the Eastern bloc. And thirdly, there was a much higher degree
of personal freedom, freedom of speech and the arts, than was tolerated
anywhere else in the states central and Eastern Europe.
Although the
year '1956' would later be embroidered of the banners of the Solidarity
movement in memory of the martyrs who had opposed the regime, Poznan and
its consequences would have far more in common with events in
Czechoslovakia in 1968 than Poland in 1981. In 1956, Polish
discontent was channelled through and resolved by the party. The events
of 1956 have been described by historians as a revolution that
half-succeeded. It is better characterised by the Hungarian historian
Berend as, 'less a revolution of half-successes than a successful
half-revolution'.
It succeeded within the context of the Polish
Communist Party and its relationship to Moscow, but it did not challenge
the Communist Party per se. By the 1970s circumstances had changed and a
full revolution was on the agenda. An alternative non-party opposition
was organising in the industrial heartlands and quite independently of
the party, the name of the organisation would become Solidarity.
Why did the Czechoslovak regime resist De-Stalinization?
Gottwald loyally attended Stalin's funeral in Moscow but, having become
ill at the funeral, developed pneumonia and, following his master to the
end, died nine days later. Stalin's death allowed a tentative loosening
of the strict Soviet style structures and practices elsewhere in the
Eastern bloc, but not in Czechoslovakia.
As reforms were discussed in
Poland and Hungary, and Khrushchev prepared his denunciation of Stalin,
Gottwald's successor, Antonin Novotny demonstrated his regime's
continued pursuit of the old cult of personality by commissioning the
World's largest statue of Stalin, a 50 metre high colossus overlooking
Prague. Czechoslovakia's relative wealth meant that, popular
discontent on the back of social deprivation was largely absent
as a factor driving the leadership into concessions.
The earlier violent purges of the Slansky trial were now
presented as the first acts of de-Stalinisation and there was no
need for further reform. The violence against leading Communists
during the Hungarian Uprising further strengthened the position
of those arguing against opening the door to any pluralism of
ideas.
By 1960, the regime
felt confident enough to present a new constitution declaring that
'actually existing socialism' had been achieved and the country was on
course to reach a genuine communist utopia. Novotny also took the
opportunity to downgrade Slovak federal institutions and centralise
power in Prague.
Coercion, persuasion and consent - why did the
communist states of Central and Eastern Europe survive so long?
All states maintain control over their citizens
through coercion, persuasion and by generating consent. Most accounts,
including the one above, correctly draw attention to the way in which
violence was used by Eastern Bloc regimes to uphold the rule of the
communist party, notably in 1956, 1968 and 1981. In addition, with
Eastern Bloc regimes we can distinguish between internal and external
coercion. Jaruzelski's imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981 was a
prime example of internal coercion. But the limitations of the
governments of Eastern Bloc states were also externally defined; as
Polish dissident Bronislaw Geremek put it 'Limitation is the movement of
Soviet tanks'. (Barend: 257) Persuasion, through state censorship and
propaganda was also important. The state maintained various levels of
censorship and propaganda, through the control of education, leisure,
the arts and the media, initially though newspapers and radio and later
television. (see Barend: 85 for good examples) But it is equally
important to recognize that the Eastern Bloc regimes could not have
survived for as long as they did, unless the states were able to
maintain the consent of a significant proportion of the populace and the
apolitical indifference of significantly more.
Consent was generated through the system of
nomenklatura - a command economy operating without the 'invisible hand'
of the market requires the very visible hands of millions of these state
officials. These were party members recruited from the working class and
therefore the beneficiaries of significant social mobility. They had a
significant stake in the maintenance of the communist system. But
perhaps more significantly, beyond the nomenklatura class obedience was
generated by the simple fact that the state controlled all means of
social advancement and access to scarce resources. In what the political
scientist Neil Harding described as the Organic Labour State: 'We need
not invoke either too lofty of too base a view of human nature to
explain the durability and stability of the state formations of
Communist regimes. We need only accept the commonplace, that in most
times men are guided by a prudent concern for their own welfare and for
that of those who are close to them. It is, therefore, unremarkable that
where all the prospects for advancing that welfare are in the hands of
the state, and where it is clear that the condition for advancement is
support for its policies, then few will rebel.' (The State in Socialist
Society 229) Consent began to breakdown in the Eastern Bloc partly as a
result of the political trauma of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
in 1968 - after which it became increasingly implausible that the
communist system might reform itself internally - but also as a result
of the economic failure of the command economy model which became
evident after the 1973 oil crisis.
The Organic Labour State was increasingly unable to
provide the material basis of its own legitimacy. The Soviet style,
state socialist model had proved adept at rapidly modernising backward,
agricultural economies and providing unprecedented levels of social
welfare provision. Indeed, both the economies of East and Western Europe
were rebuilt after WWII in remarkably similar ways: nationalisation of
heavy industry and essential services, coupled with universal welfare
provision were as much a feature of Britain and France as they were of
Poland and Czechoslovakia. If anything the economies of Eastern Bloc did
relatively better in the post-war years.
WesternEurope
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Year
$
index
$
index
As % of the West
1860
384
100
214
100
56
1913
678
177
389
181
57
1938
839
218
509
238
61
1973
2257
588
1861
870
82
Country
1910
1938
1973
Europe
100
100
100
CZSK
98
82
117
Hungary
75
67
89
Poland
70
55
89
Romania
61
51
66
Per capita GNP (in 1960 US dollars)
Per capita GNP
as a percentage of the European average
As the tables above suggest, the period from 1945 to
1973 was something of a golden age for the command economy. For the
first time in their history, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe
were closing the gap in economic performance with the west. There were
not only real improvements in the standard of living, there was also the
memory of pre-war depression, the common sacrifice of wartime and the
shining model of Stalin's Russia whose economic achievement had been to
defeat the might of Fascist Europe almost single-handedly. There was a
pride in the 'socialist achievement' that was continually polished by
state propaganda. For many there was genuine belief in what was being
achieved in the name of socialism: whether the comprehensive housing and
heath care programmes, full and secure employment, the Russian space
programme or the success of East German women athletes in Olympic Games,
all were sources of pride and steps on the road to a socialist utopia.
So, as long as the party provided the material goods and the social
opportunities, there was little opposition. But when capitalism in the
west began to shift to a more consumer driven, post-industrial economy
that depended on technological innovation associated with microchips and
the telecommunications revolution, the inflexible, command economy could
not compete. A command economy cannot plan innovation anymore than an
actor can improvise the words of Shakespeare. The Eastern Bloc did not
and, more importantly, could not produce a Silicon Valley or an
entrepreneur like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. In addition, the post war
regimes would become victims of their relative economic and social
success. A young family struggling to survive didn't have time to
revolt. By the end of the period, they had become accustomed to economic
growth, health and welfare provision that when threatened produced
serious political grievances. The communist regimes could only dig
themselves out of trouble by short term economic measures which hastened
them into long-term structural crisis. This was the vicious circle which
characterised the periodic economic crisis and political reform in
Poland. The regimes also produced not only higher expectations from its
citizenship, the high quality, universal education system, provided the
citizenship with the means of articulating it. Communism, to borrow a
phrase from Marx, had created its own grave diggers. ‘… there was a
remarkably high level of popular political awareness. Again, this was
partly a result of the system. Everyone had a least a basic education…
because of the politicisation of education and the ubiquity of ideology,
no one could be any doubt that words and ideas mattered, having real
consequences for everyday life.’ (TGA Magic Latern: 147)
'There can be little doubt that the system of
government and political regulation became subject to greater strain
with the passage of time as the popular mood changed and dissatisfaction
with the communist order grew. Memories of the traumas and deprivations
suffered during the hostilities and the immediate post-war period faded
and the mood of fatalism surrounding the Soviet-imposed system weakened.
.. At the same time, material improvement was patchy and irregular,
providing ample grounds for discontent and political dissatisfaction. ..
It was a development that coincided with growing awareness of the new
forms of inequality that had emerged under communist rule…'
Paul G
Lewis 150.
