There is no doubt that the 20th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the speech of Khruschov, attacking JV Stalin , was a total disaster for the socialist camp and international communist movement , Khruschov's speech was the first step on the road to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 . Many communist parties never recovered from the damage done . Internationally a split arose in the international communist movement as the attempts of the USSR to impose and force the dangerous revisionist line on other parties notably the Chinese and Albanian parties . In many countries 'anti-revisionist' parties were formed and by the mid 1960s there was an open split . A few parties did not take sides or argued for unity , most notably the Workers 'Party of Korea which condemned both modern revisionism (ie the CPSU) and Left opportunism (China and Albania )
In those countries dominated by the USSR , there was a cosying up to the US , the floodgates of imperialist ideological and cultural infiltration were opened and internally there were reforms ( the economic reforms resulted usually in prices going up ) , a gradual dismantlement of the socialist system . When the socialist camp collapsed in the period of 1989-1991 people not only asked why but also raised the question didn't anyone oppose what was going on ? . Well this booklet " Which East Is Red ' by Andrew Smith , goes part of the way to answering this question . Smith is not a communist but a liberal and academic , so of the things in the book need to be taken with a ton of salt . Nevertheless it is goldmine of information on resistance to revisionism from within the USSR and the East European socialist countries though an initial criticism is that the book could be longer with more depth , it also misses out Czechoslovakia , Romania and Yugoslavia . In Yugoslavia anti-revisionists were organised in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia opposed to the official League of Communists of Yugoslavia . In Romania , it was said (but would have to check the reference ) that the Maoists or anti-revisionists functioned inside the ruling Romanian Communist Party , the PCR.
Smith details how in the Georgian SSR of the USSR in March 1956 there were huge pro Stalin demonstrations of up to 70,000 people which ended in riots which were put down by the security forces with loss of life . Later on rank and file members of the CPSU raised awkward questions about the direction of the CPSU such as "“Are we not in fact compromising with imperialism over West Berlin?” and questioned that generous aid was being given to non-socialist countries such as India whilst denying aid to socialist countries such as the People's Republic of China. A number of anti-revisionist groupings were formed within the USSR , mostly small but one the Workers Centre was able to organise strikes . Smith quotes a dissident writer as claiming that in fact most Soviet 'dissidents' supported the socialist system but this is a highly questionable and debatable statement .
The book contains short accounts of anti-revisionist movements in other socialist countries such as the GDR , Hungary , Bulgaria and Poland and has a piece on Albania the only 'anti-revisionist ' European socialist country . I think the best sections are on Bulgaria and Poland . The piece on the little known Bulgarian coup d etat attempt of 1965 is a real nugget . The 'hardline ' Bulgarian leader Vâlko Chervenko( brother in law of Dimitrov ) had been forced out of power by Khruschev in 1956 and later suspended from membership of the Bulgarian party . Todor Zhikov who replaced Chervenko was not only seen as a revisionist but also a puppet of the USSR by more independent minded Bulgarian communists. In 1965 a group of generals and some party leaders staged a coup to try and remove Zhikov but it failed .
In Poland Kazimierz Mijal, who are been a communist partisan leader in Poland in World War , fighting in the Polish People's Army , and a minister in the People's Republic of Poland , formed an anti-revisionist Communist Party of Poland in 1965 . He went into exile in Albania then China and returned to Poland in 1984 only to be arrested by the Polish revisionist regime. Mijal's Communist Party combined anti-revisionism with militant anti-Zionism and Polish nationalism which led to Smith to criticise the party for anti-antisemitism .
The section on Albania is fairly short . It does not really explain how Albania and China fell out so badly with Hoxha even going as far to say that China which he previously praised to the skies was not only revisionist but had never been a socialist country in the first place .
Apart from its short length the book has a number of weaknesses and inaccuracies . Firstly , the author seems totally unaware that there is a lot of evidence that GDR leader Walter Ulbricht was actually opposed to Khruschov's denunciation of Stalin but could not do anything because of the GDR's dependency on the USSR . Some German communists say Ulbricht was the best leader of the GDR and that Honecker was the revisionist . Secondly , Smith omits any mention of the group of CPSU leaders such as Malenkov , Molotov and Kaganovich ( the so-called "Anti Party Group' ) who tried to remove Khruschov in 1957 . Similarly the experience of anti-revisionists in the CPSU such as Nina Andreeva is not mentioned. There is a serious howler in which Smith says the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953 was signed between "North and south Korea " , in fact as many will know was signed between the US on one side and the DPRK and China on the other , south Korea was never a signatory . Smith also claims that the Vietnamese and Korean parties 'vacillated ' between China and the USSR . This is inaccurate . The Workers ' Party of Korea took an independent position.
Nevertheless this short and easy to read book throws an interesting light on a fascinating subject . You cannot help thinking if only revisionism had been smashed into the ground , the USSR and other socialist countries would be still here today .
No comments:
Post a Comment