TIIE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE Also by Ben Fowkes and from the same publishers COMMUNISM IN GERMANY UNDER THE WEIMAR REPUBUC The Rise and Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe Ben Fowkes 150th YEAR M St. Martin's Press © Ben Fowkes 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 978-0-333-54478-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of lUlY licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Oreat Britain 1993 by TIfE MACMILLAN PRESS L TO Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire R021 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-22814-0 ISBN 978-1-349-22812-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22812-6 First published in the United States of America 1993 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-09149-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fowkes, Ben. The rise and fall of communism in Eastern Europe / Ben Fowkes. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-09149-1 1. Communism-Europe, Eastern-History-2Oth century. 2. Europe, Eastern-Politics and govemment-1945--1989. 3. Europe, Eastern­ -Politics and govemment-1989- I. Title. HX240.7.A6F68 1993 335.43'0947'00904-dc20 92-38067 CIP Contents List of Plates Vll Preface ix List of Abbreviations xi 2 Introduction 2 2 The Seizure of Power: The Northern Tier 6 3 The Seizure of Power: Hungary and the Agrarian South 28 4 High Stalinism 52 5 Eastern Europe after Stalin 76 6 The Quiet Years, 1957-68 106 7 Czechoslovakia in 1968: Climax and Defeat of Reform Communism 118 8 The Brezhnev Years: Dithering at the Top and Revolt from Below 142 9 The Premature Revolution: Poland 1980-81 157 10 Decline and Fall 170 Appendix: Statistical Tables 195 Notes 200 Index 216 v List of Plates 1 The atmosphere of the 1947 elections in Poland. The headquarters of the Warsaw Committee of the Polish Workers' Party, guarded by submachine guns (Ringier Bilderdienst, Ziirich) 2 The seizure of power in Prague, February 1948. Two lorry-loads of People's Militia disembarking (Paul Popper Ltd) 3 Hungarian insurgents on the way to Budapest at the end of October 1956 (Rolf Gilhausen, Hamburg) 4 A triumphant Du~ekarrives at Ko!iice after his meeting with Brezhnev , 2 August 1968 (Eupra and Orion Publishing Group Ltd) 5 The limits of modernisation. An ox-drawn cart still in use in Moravia in the 1960s (professor W. V. Wallace) 6 The new urban landscape. High-rise flats in Warsaw (William Echikson) 7 The continuing backwardness of agriculture in Poland. Farmer plough­ ing near Lublin in 1980 (Chris Niedenthal, Warsaw) 8 The face of dissent. Jacek Kuron in full flow at Warsaw University, 1976 (Chris Niedenthal, Warsaw) 9 The Ursus Tractor Factory, near Warsaw, at a standstill during the strike over free Saturdays, January 1981 (Sipa-Presse, Paris) 10 The mysterious General Jaruzelski, sandwiched between his allies: General Hoffman, GDR, and General Kulikov, USSR (Sipa-Presse, Paris) 11 Presiding over decline: A Warsaw Pact meeting of 1986. Zhivkov (Bulgaria) Ceau~escu (Romania), Husak: (Czechoslovakia), Gorbachev (USSR), Kadar (Hungary), Jaruze1ski (Poland), Honecker (GDR), (William Echikson) Vll Preface History books are written about events, structures or a combination of the two. This book is about events. In that sense it is marked by the circum­ stances of its birth. I was induced to write it by the tremendous and rapidly unfolding spectacle of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe: a series of events par excellence. Who could remain unmoved by the fall of a system which had seemed such a permanent feature of the world's polit­ ical landscape? Who could fail to see the significance of the event, of the transitory occurrence, of the critical instant, in such a situation? So it seemed in 1989. Not any longer. The event has lost its importance. The political crises in present-day Eastern Europe are, and will continue to be, superficial phenomena. Events will once again, as in the interwar years, 'pass across the stage of history like fireflies' , to use Braudel' s expression, barely denting the surface. The important movement will be that of the deeper structure, a structure by no means motionless, but rapidly evolving. Then will be the time for a structural analysis of communist Eastern Europe. Today even the preliminary studies are lacking for this important task. I hope in the meantime that I have provided a clear guide to the successive crises which have shaken Eastern Europe during the communist epoch without altering, until the end, the fundamental structures put in place after the Second World War. One comment should be made here about the political terminology I have used. Political expressions like 'left' and Iright' tend to appear with their signs reversed in the communist context. For instance, it is difficult to find an appropriate word, without misleading connotations, for thorough­ going opponents of the communist system. People who in the West might well have been labelled 'right-wingers' or 'conservatives' tum up in the East under the description 'progressives' or 'radicals'. Such at least is their self-image. I have tried to avoid attaching labels of this kind, but where I have they should be understood within the context of the Soviet bloc. I have tried in general to avoid using political shorthand, except where the alternatives would be unbearably circumlocutory. There are many good books on aspects of communist Eastern Europe. I have drawn freely but I hope not too uncritically on the information they provide, and my debts are recorded where appropriate in the notes at the end of the book. What has been missing so far, and what the present work attempts to supply, is an overall study of the period from a historical point ix x Preface of view. The book that comes nearest to this is Joseph Rothschild's excel­ lent Return to Diversity, but, firstly, his bias in terms of content is strongly towards the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, and, secondly, he is concerned with continuities rather than crises. I would therefore see my work as complementary to his. Finally, I should like to acknowledge two debts of gratitude. One is to my current and former students, particularly Jim Brown, for inspiring me to undertake this task; the other is to the institution where I work, the Polytechnic of North London, for permitting me to take two months of study leave. May 1992 BEN FOWKES List of Abbreviations AK Armia Krajowa: Home Army (Poland) AVH Allamvedelmi Hatosag: State Defence Authority (Hungary) AVNOJ Antifasisticko vece narodnog oslobodjenja Jugoslavije: Anti­ Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia Avo Allamvedelmi Osztaly: State Defence Department (Hungary) BCP Bulgarian Communist Party CBKP Centralne Biuro Komunistow Polskich w ZSSR: Central Bureau of Polish Communists in the USSR CDU Christlich-Demokratische Union: Christian Democratic Union Ceskomoravskd Kolben Danek: The Kolben Danek (Engin­ eering) Works of Bohemia and Moravia CMEA Council of Mutual Economic Aid (Comecon) CPCz Communist Party of Czechoslovakia CPsu Communist Party of the Soviet Union CPY Communist Party of Yugoslavia CRZZ Centralna Rada Zwiazkow Zawodowych: Central Council of Trade Unions (Poland) CSSR Ceskoslovenskd Socialistickd Republika: Czechoslovak So­ cialist Republic DBD Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands: Democratic Peasants' Party of Germany DiP Doswiadczenie i Przysziosc: Experience and the Future (Poland) DISZ Dolgozo Ijjusag Szovetsege: Federation of Working Youth (Hungary) DWK Deutsche Wirtschafts-Kommission: German Economic Commission Xl xii List of Abbrev;'ltions DZV Deutsche Zentralverwaltung: German Central Administration FIN Front lednosci Narodowej: Front of National Unity (Poland) GDR German Democratic Republic GOM Gminny Osrodek Maszynowy: Communal Machine and Trac­ tor Station (Poland) HCP Hungarian Communist Party HDF . Hungarian Democratic Forum HNF Hazajias Nepfront: Patriotic People's Front (Hungary) HSWP Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party HWP Hungarian Workers' Party IZD lednotne Zemidilske Druistvo: Unified Agricultural Co­ operative (Czechoslovakia) KAN Klub Angaiovanych Nestraniku: Club of Committed Non­ party People (Czechoslovakia) KKP Krajowa Komisja Porozumiewawcza: National Coordinating Commission (of Solidarity) KOR Komitet Obrony RobotnikOw: Workers' Defence Committee (Poland) KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands: Communist Party of Germany KPN Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej: Confederation for an Inde­ pendent Poland KPP Komunistyczna Partia Polski: Communist Party of Poland KRN Krajowa Rada Narodowa: National Council of the Homeland (Poland) K231 Club of Those Imprisoned under Article 231 (Czechoslova­ kia) KSR Konferencja Samorzq,du Robotniczego: Conference of Workers' Self-Government (Poland) KSS Komitet Samoobrony Spolecznej: Social Self-Defence Com­ mittee (Poland) List of Abbreviations xiii LDPD Liberal-Demokratische