G R Swain and N J Swain

G R Swain and N J Swain Eastern Europe Since 1945 4 1956: COMMUNISM RENEWED? Between 1953 and 1956 the twin processes of de-Stalinisation and Soviet–Yugoslav rapprochement opened up the possibility of renewal for the communist states of Eastern Europe. With Khrushchev pressing the East European leaders to undo the injustices of the purge trials, and Tito urging them to adopt the Yugoslav system of workers’ councils, there were moments when it looked as if a very different style of communism might emerge. After Stalin’s Cominform purges, genuine reform in the political system of Eastern Europe was unlikely to occur, as it were, from within: it was the existence ‘outside’ of an alternative socialist system, coupled with the genuine desire of Khrushchev to bring Yugoslavia back into the family of socialist states, that made the prospect of renewal genuine. So long as Khrushchev wanted to bring Tito back into the fold, he was prepared to negotiate with him about the nature of socialism and the future of Eastern Europe. It was this unique circumstance which opened up the possibility of a reversal of Stalinist policies; the tragedy for those communists who espoused such a reformist vision was that, deep down, Tito was as committed as Khrushchev to the Leninist concept of the leading role of the Communist Party and, therefore, to a system which allowed power to be concentrated in the hands of an unelected bureaucratic caste. THE NEW COURSE IN THE GDR AND HUNGARY Although Stalin’s crimes would not be fully denounced until the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956, the Soviet leadership began the process of reassessment as soon as the dictator had died. In spring 1953 it was Stalin’s Security Chief Lavrentii Beria and the Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov who took the lead in pushing for reform. While Stalin was only criticised obliquely, many of the policies associated with him, particularly in the field of foreign policy, were quietly abandoned. Thus by the end of May the Soviet Union had re-established diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia and Israel and pushed the North Koreans to adopt a softer negotiating stance, thus preparing the way for the armistice of July. It was in this context that the future of Stalin’s other act of anti-Western confrontation, East Germany, was discussed. On 22 April the Soviet Political advisor Vladimir Semenov was recalled from Berlin for consultations and discussion of a detailed review of the state of East Germany recently undertaken. On 27 May the Soviet Communist Party’s ruling Presidium discussed the situation, and debated the proposal of Beria that the Soviet Union should cut its losses and abandon East Germany. The proposal was rejected, but the same meeting decided that a radical overhaul of the SED and its policies was needed, possibly even a leader other than Ulbricht. Semenov returned to Berlin on 28 May and informed Ulbricht he was needed in Moscow. Both Ulbricht and Semenov had talks in Moscow on 2–4 June, and on 5 June both returned to inform the SED what was expected of it.1 The message was that the pace of socialist construction should be dramatically slowed, collectivisation put on hold and an effort made to woo the middle class. It therefore completely contradicted the policy pursued by the GDR throughout the previous year. Since summer 1952, at the Second Party Conference, Ulbricht had committed the Party to ‘building socialism’. This involved increased exports to the Soviet Union, higher taxes and cuts in consumption. At the same time, the ongoing campaign to collectivise agriculture was accelerated. As a result the number of people leaving the GDR doubled in autumn 1952 and doubled again in spring 1953. However, far from abandoning the policy as these problems mounted, Ulbricht determined to press ahead and in May announced that production norms would be raised by 10 per cent at the end of June. The dramatic volte-face insisted on by Moscow would not be popular with many party workers, and Semenov insisted that there should be no preliminary plenum of the SED Central Committee to prepare the ground. The ‘New Course’ was launched at once with a communiqué from the Politburo on 9 June which spoke openly of the mistakes of the past, cancelled price rises and restored ration cards to those deprived of them on class grounds. A fuller statement came in Neues Deutschland on 11 June, but the lack of adequate preparation for such a momentous change soon made itself felt. The most contentious issue was that of the increase in labour norms. On 14 June 4000 political prisoners were released and an editorial in Neues Deutschland suggested that these revised norms were part of the old hard line which should be abandoned; but the same issue of the paper carried articles praising workers ready to meet the new norms. On 16 June the matter seemed to be clarified when the trade union paper Tribune made clear that there was to be no change of policy as far as the norms were concerned.2 On 15 June the first building workers in Berlin went on strike, and it was waving copies of the Tribune article that the next day they marched first to the trade union headquarters and then to government offices where they received only vague words of reassurance. They resolved to reassemble on the 17th and march through the city once again. As more and more workers joined them, the authorities began to panic. When at midday the demonstrations were so great that traffic was blocked, warning shots were fired. At 12.30 Soviet tanks appeared on the streets. At 1.00 p.m. a state of emergency was declared by the Soviet occupying authorities. By the evening, the Soviet troops had regained control in Berlin, following the total failure of the GDR’s own police force to maintain order. And Berlin was not the only town affected. Violent clashes with Soviet forces also took place in Magdeburg, Halle and Leipzig. In Görlitz an alternative democratic government was formed, while in Bitterfeld the government offices were seized. Elsewhere, the demonstrators appeared to have milled aimlessly on the streets, unsure how to put their power of numbers into effect. All over the GDR, however, the situation was totally out of the control of local functionaries, with most demonstrators acting without any strategic plan or sense of purpose; power rested only on the presence of Soviet tanks. Some 21 demonstrators died, 7 were later sentenced to death as ringleaders, and over 6,000 were arrested. The economic demands of the strikers were immediately conceded; the political demand for free elections was not.3 In the initial aftermath of the strikes, the Party leadership prepared a report which would have radically changed the way the Party operated by removing the post of Party general secretary, then held by Ulbricht.4 This threat to Ulbricht’s position was removed when, at precisely the same time as the report critical of Ulbricht was being drawn up in Berlin, in Moscow Khrushchev rallied support for the ouster of Beria. Arrested on 26 June, he was formally disgraced at the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee Plenum on 2 July on the charge of having plotted the surrender to the imperialists of the German Democratic Republic. In this climate Ulbricht could hardly be disgraced. Instead it was those pressing for reform who were expelled from the leadership at the end of July on the charge of being secret supporters of Beria. Although the strikes in East Germany were the most dramatic evidence of the strain Stalin’s policies had put on those East European countries so rapidly incorporated into the Soviet bloc, the workers of East Germany did not act in isolation. At the end of May 1953 the Czechoslovak government introduced a currency reform and the workers’ response was immediate; by the first week in June there were strikes in many towns. Disturbances in Prague, Pilsen and Ostrava were even reported in the censored Czechoslovak press. The trouble began on 1 June, when Pilsen workers aware that the currency reform meant a 20 per cent cut in real earnings tore down portraits of Stalin and Gottwald. Reports sent by the Czechoslovak leaders to the Soviet ambassador reveal that the disturbances reached a peak on the night of 3–4 June and on the morning of the 4th, when activists from Czechoslovakia’s former political parties started organising petitions. By tapping phone calls and arresting labour activists the authorities prevented the movement spreading to politically sensitive areas; plans had been drawn up for a strike on the Prague tram network. As well as the stick of arrests, there was the carrot of concessions; the government agreed to drop plans for even more punitive laws restricting labour mobility.5 Strikes also occurred that June in Hungary where real wages had fallen by 18 per cent since 1949. The Hungarian Party leaders, like those of the GDR, were summoned to Moscow. At talks held on 12–16 June, Beria took the lead in criticising the way Hungary was being run; the economy was in crisis, peasants were resisting collectivisation and 15 per cent of the population were in prison. Breaking a private understanding given to Rákosi on the eve of the visit that he would retain the post of prime minister, Beria proposed that, while Rákosi could stay on as Party leader, the new prime minister should be Imre Nagy, the former minister of Agriculture who had been expelled from the Politburo in 1949 for opposing the pace of Hungary’s collectivisation campaign.

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