Communists of Eastern Europe. They did not become “strange” allies
Capitulators and fellow travelers
After the death of Stalin, the Soviet leadership until perestroika had a craving for strange allies, sometimes completely inexplicable. Only in recent years has it become clear that few of the communist leaders of the countries of Eastern Europe, with whom Khrushchev hugged and kissed Brezhnev, could really be considered “faithful Leninists”.
However, most Soviet leaders, we admit, were not like that either. Isn't that why the frank preference that the Kremlin gave to “loyal companions” began with Khrushchev? And this despite the fact that not only in the USSR were those who opposed both "fellow travelers" and "capitulators."
The Soviet Union brought to the altar of victory in the Great Patriotic War and, in general, in the Second World War, completely unprecedented sacrifices. However unprecedented in the world stories steel and the incompetent loss of its successful results for the state and the subsequent exodus of the USSR from Eastern Europe.
At one time, all this would rightly be called capitulation. For many years, the USSR virtually destroyed itself and "squeezed out" of Eastern Europe. This surprised even one of the most consistent anti-Soviet advisers — Zbigniew Brzezinski.
More recently, the whole world was silent when Brzezinski spoke
In his opinion,
"shortly after Stalin, power in Moscow and in the localities was in the hands of ever less competent figures. They only cared about their own power at all costs. And ideology quickly turned into a screen for careerists and flattering officials, which were more often ridiculed in jokes. The same criterion, Naturally, soon prevailed in Eastern Europe. "
In such a transformation, according to Brzezinski, "there could be no place for adherence to communist ideology, which initially shook the USSR and many of its allies." And "it is not surprising that the involvement of Moscow in the arms race, although largely successful for the USSR, was not accompanied by proper measures to strengthen the civilian economy and especially its consumer segment."
It is hardly possible to dispute such estimates. By the way, the authorities of the People's Republic of China have repeatedly expressed themselves in the same spirit (in Beijing they are still not talking about this), as well as Albania, North Korea, and many communist parties of developing and capitalist countries. These true communists managed to preserve their parties, most of which arose after the notorious XX Congress of the CPSU. Incidentally, they are still valid today, in contrast to the Communist Party companions who have died in a Bose.
One cannot but recall that Lenin had long spoken out harshly about petty-bourgeois companions long before the October Revolution. But this biting definition gained particular popularity during the Civil War in Spain, when representatives of the most motley political forces appeared on the side of the republic. As a result, internal contradictions, lack of unity became almost the main reason for the defeat of the "red" Spain.
We will not announce the entire list ... Pole, Slovak, Bulgarian
As for the strange, to put it mildly, allies of Moscow, it is worth recalling especially the political and personal fate of at least several leaders of the countries of people's democracy from the mid-50s to the late 80s. Among those who did not want to be either a companion or a surrender.
Recall at the same time that the names of communist leaders who were not afraid to criticize the heirs of the “leader of the peoples” and their ideological turns, were hushed up under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The authorities reasonably feared defeat in public debate with such figures, and later they became interesting only to historians.
Pole
The first is Kazimierz Miyal (1910-2010), a participant in the defense of Warsaw (1939) and the Warsaw Uprising (1944), the hero of the Polish People’s Republic. Being from the beginning of 1948 a member of the Central Committee of the PUWP (Polish United Workers' Party), in 1949-56. he headed the office of the first president of people's Poland (1947-56) Boleslav Bierut.
Kazimierz Miyal. It was no coincidence that the great helmsman appreciated
As you know, Take suddenly died in Moscow shortly after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (see “Why Polish politicians aggravated border syndrome”) Miyal was then immediately relegated to the second roles, which were not decisive for economic departments. Nevertheless, an experienced politician continued to speak openly not only about the collaboration of the pre-war and emigrant authorities of Poland, but also against Khrushchev's anti-Stalinism.
The policy of the Polish leadership after Bierut, like the new "thawing" course of the CPSU, Miyal openly called direct betrayal of the cause of Lenin. Despite the exception in 1964-1965. from the Central Committee and from the PUWP itself, K. Miyal did not reconcile, having founded the semi-legal Stalinist “Maoist” Communist Party of Poland and was its secretary general from 1965 to 1996. In 1966, he was forced to emigrate and until 1983 he lived in Albania and China.
Miyal published his views in the media, spoke in radio programs in Beijing and Tirana in Polish and Russian, as well as at political and ideological events there. Miyal’s works and performances of those years were illegal, and, of course, were not distributed too widely in Poland and the USSR.
The retired politician very reasonably accused Moscow and Warsaw of "deliberately moving away from socialism", "growing incompetence from top to bottom", "growing corruption", and "ideological primitiveness." Which together, as Miyal believed, led to well-known events in the USSR and Poland at the turn of the 80s and 90s. It is characteristic that the orthodox communist party led by Miyal (and it consisted mainly of workers and engineering workers) survived both the PUWP and the CPSU.
In 1983, Kazimierz Miyal illegally returned from China to Poland, where he was soon imprisoned for almost a year. Until 1988, he was under house arrest, but Marshal and President Wojciech Jaruzelski still "saved" Miyal from the KGB, demanding his extradition. And even the new Polish authorities did not dare either to repress Miyal, or to ban the Communist Party, restored in 2002.
Slovak
No less difficult was the fate of the same age as Miyal, Minister of Justice and Defense of Czechoslovakia Alexei Chepichka. He also fought, was a member of the anti-Nazi underground and a prisoner of Buchenwald, managed to rise to the rank of army general. He is also a hero - Czechoslovakia, and also a doctor of law. But he died in a dilapidated nursing home on the outskirts of Prague ...
The sudden (almost like that of Pole Berut) demise of the founder of Czechoslovakia Clement Gottwald (March 14, 1953) immediately after Stalin’s funeral and the campaign launched in the fall of 1956 against the “personality cult” of Gottwald led to the “demotion” of A. Chepichka, who was appointed to the post ... the head of the Patent of the Republic (1956-1959).
Alexey Chepichka
He, like K. Miyal, sharply condemned the post-Stalinist policies of the USSR and Czechoslovakia and especially the anti-Stalinist hysteria in most socialist countries. In 1963-1964 The cap was expelled from the CPC, deprived of awards and military rank, and he remained under house arrest until the end of his life. Chepichka called Operation Danube in 1968 “the discrediting of socialism and the political bankruptcy of Moscow.”
Here is a brief summary of his opinion on these issues:
“Millions of people defeated fascism and in a matter of years restored their countries with the name of Stalin, with faith in Stalin. And suddenly his “disciples” convicted Stalin shortly after his sudden and, as it turned out, violent death. All of this instantly demoralized the foreign Communists, the USSR, most of the socialist countries. And soon there the erosion of socialism accelerated, intensifying the lack of ideas and the incompetence of party-state systems. In vain tried to also eliminate the authority of Stalin, even defamed. At the same time, the introduction of the direct enemies of socialism and the USSR into the governing bodies accelerated. Therefore, by the mid-1980s, socialism and the communist parties in those countries had become just signs. ”
Bulgarian
A similar example can be found in the history of Bulgaria. Army General Vylko Chervenkov (1900-1980) was one of the leaders of the Comintern during the war and led the Communist Party of Bulgaria in 1949-1954. From 1950 to 1956 he was the chairman of the government of the country, and then - the first deputy prime minister.
General Chervenkov condemned Khrushchev's anti-Stalinism with the same argument as Miyal and Chepichka; in 1956, he even dared to object ... against renaming the city of Stalin to Varna (reverse renaming, as you can understand). In 1960, Chervenkov invited the head of Albania, Enver Hoxha, and the Prime Minister of China, Zhou Enlai, who openly criticized Khrushchev’s policies, to visit Sofia, for which he was soon dismissed.
Finally, for the phrase he expressed in November 1961, “Removing the sarcophagus with Stalin from the Mausoleum is a shame not only for the USSR, but also for the socialist countries, the world communist movement,” Chervenkov was expelled from the party. The Bulgarian Communists had common sense to restore the ex-prime minister in the BKP in 1969, but without the right to occupy any posts even at the district level.
In the light of the events of the XNUMXst century, Chervenkov’s statements about the internal affairs of the Soviet Union are especially relevant. It was he who explicitly warned the Soviet leadership:
“People from Ukraine predominate in the leadership of the USSR from the Twentieth Congress, most of whom are communists only by the presence of a party membership card. The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine further enhances its influence on Soviet politics, including economic.
The main industrial construction in the USSR, unlike the Stalin period, is also in Ukraine. Therefore, there is a risk of substitution of all-Union interests by Ukrainian ones. And then a new, already anti-state surge of Ukrainian nationalism is inevitable, which will be inspired by the increasingly influential Ukrainian authorities in Moscow. ”
The main industrial construction in the USSR, unlike the Stalin period, is also in Ukraine. Therefore, there is a risk of substitution of all-Union interests by Ukrainian ones. And then a new, already anti-state surge of Ukrainian nationalism is inevitable, which will be inspired by the increasingly influential Ukrainian authorities in Moscow. ”
Where they did not forget the 19th year
But even on this list, the Hungarian "Bolsheviks" occupy a special position. The extraordinary leadership style of the head of the Communist Party of Hungary from 1947 to Matthias Rakosi, who in 1956 was unable to prevent the country from slipping into a civil war, has been repeatedly written on our pages (“The acts of Nikita the Wonderworker. Part 4. Hungarian Gambit ") But the revolutionary traditions characteristic of the Hungarian working-class movement after the failed revolution of 1919 did not succeed in breaking anyone.
In Hungary, there was a very strong opposition among the Communists to the Compromisers with Moscow and personally with dear Nikita Sergeevich. Its organizer was Andras Hegedyush (1922-99), an associate of Rakosi, who was simply exiled to the USSR for condemning the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU and Khrushchev’s policy towards Hungary.
Andras Hegedyush
Back in 1942, when hundreds of thousands of Hungarians fought on the Eastern Front, that is, on Soviet soil, Hegedyush did not want to “play a patriot” and joined the underground Communist Party of Hungary. He led the party at the University of Budapest and shortly after the war became secretary of the ruling Hungarian Labor Party. Until the uprising of 1956, he was the Prime Minister of Hungary, constantly insisting on ending the anti-Stalinist campaign both in his country and in the USSR.
A. Khegedyush considered such propaganda "a crushing blow to socialism and Eastern Europe," but it was unlikely that this could change much. In October 1956, he barely escaped execution by Hungarian militants, having managed to move to the location of Soviet troops. He was allowed to return to Hungary only two years later, on condition that he did not return to its state structures.
Hegedyush taught sociology at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but in his lectures, ideas that could not be considered pro-Soviet were “slipping” on a regular basis. Thus, he condemned "the suppression of the anti-fascist underground in Hungary and its participation in the liberation of the country from fascism, initiated by Janos Kadar." Some Hungarian filmmakers recall that in the mid-60s A. Hegedyush suggested writing a script for a multi-part documentary-feature film about anti-Nazi resistance in Hungary. But the authorities rejected this project.
The views of the former leader, his overt "Stalinism", of course, did not suit either Moscow or Budapest. Therefore, Hedegush was transferred to the insignificant post of the deputy head of the Statistics Committee of Hungary, which did not hinder, but rather helped him create and head the Institute of Sociology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition, he successfully taught at the Karl Marx University of Economics.
It should be noted that after Khrushchev’s resignation, trust in Khrushchev’s Janos Kadar in Moscow was very problematic. But only up to the operation "Danube", which Kadar supported without hesitation. But Andrash Hegedyush in September 1968 publicly condemned the entry of troops, not only of the Soviet, but of the entire Warsaw Pact to Prague. In addition, he advocated a collective dialogue of the pro-Soviet socialist countries with the PRC and Albania.
Apparently, Hegedyush, who had previously been unexpectedly pulled out of disgrace, himself put an end to his quite possible elevation. Indeed, many researchers of those events do not exclude that it was his candidacy in Moscow that was considered as an alternative to Kadar.
Then, in the 68th, Hegedyush resigned from all posts, and in 1973 he was expelled from the ruling HSWP: Kadar was in a hurry to get rid of a dangerous competitor. And in that 1973, A. Hegedyush established contacts with the Pole K. Miyal and set about organizing an Orthodox Communist Party in Hungary. The city of Stalinvaros was planned as a place for the party’s headquarters, where Kadar’s opponents did not want to recognize the reverse renaming of Dunaujvaros.
The primary cell of the new batch consisted of 90% of Rakosi’s associates, as well as workers and engineers of the Stalinvarosh Metallurgical Plant. Its members offered a public discussion with the USSR and the CPSU, distributing political and ideological materials from China and Albania in the country. But authorities promptly thwarted the "replay" of Miyal’s party in Hungary.
And yet in 1982, the already very elderly Hegedyush was reinstated as a teacher at the University of Economics named after Marx. But soon the stubborn communist Hegedus again began to condemn the "creeping introduction of capitalism in Hungary", for which he was once again dismissed from the University (1989).
In the early 90s, he again tried to create a pro-Stalinist Communist Party of Hungary, but the special services re-predicted the project. Although it already had no consequences for Hegedyush: the authorities considered the Hungarian ranks as the primary vindication in connection with the Soviet invasion in 1956, and not their sympathy for the Communists, it is not so important, orthodox or not.
- Alexey Chichkin, Victor Alekseev
- library.vu.edu.pk, wikipedia.org, historyweb.dennikn.sk, syl.ru
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