First Published: Turning Point,, Vol. IX, No. 10, December 1956
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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When Khrushchevism made its formal debut at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, it received “rave” reviews from a united front of Communist and anti-Communist friendly critics. It looked as though the whole world bravo’d Khrushchev, but Turning Point abstained from this broad “claque,” thereby enlisting the respect of a few adherents of political fidelity who do not confuse volume with accuracy. In this united front of Communism and anti-Communism there had to be a sucker-side; obviously, both could not gain. Since anti-Communists are now happier than ever about the eruptions in the Socialist sector of the world, and since Communists are more demoralized than ever, it should be clear WHO WERE THE SUCKERS!
Irresponsibility’s fanfare “live and learn” is highly overrated. Some facts are best learned from history because the personal experience is too expensive. Today Hungarian Communism (to mention only the worst case) is ragged because it had to experiment to find out that the leaders of counterrevolution cannot be asked to direct the building of Socialism.
In previous issues we analyzed the built-in boomerang in Khrushchevism. We noted K’s stupidity and his “meteor” characteristics. We were asked: how can the whole world be wrong and TP right? (As if the unanimities of the world have ever been right!) If, in this issue, TP indulges in the verification of its predictions, it is not with any self-satisfaction; it is to prove that the whole Communist world was blind in its acceptance of K’s de-Stalinization. Besides, we cannot feel happy about the accuracy of our predictions because the boomerang is not only the fast-moving story of K’s loss of prestige after an initial blitz; it is the story of Socialism’s worst disunity and worst casualties.
What has happened to the “claque” which applauded K so boisterously? What has happened to the Communists who beat their breasts ostentatiously (to the accompaniment of anti-Communism’s guffaws) and declared that K had “thawed” their frozen brains? We cannot believe that they are more impressed than depressed by K’s most recent accomplishments! Let us examine these by tracing the boomerang first generally and then specifically.
We described K’s basic error as the attempt to “dissolve the contradictions between peaceful coexistence and world revolution.” (TP IX, 4-5) What did we get – less peace, less revolution, and a heavy dose of counter-revolution. By placating world capitalism through the liquidation of Marx-its theories of revolution, K gave counter-revolution a shot-in-the-arm and Communism a shot-in-the-head. K corrected Stalin’s alleged failure to relax the cold war – and we got a hot war. Capitalism considered Stalinist Communism evil – but strong; sensible K met capitalism half way – by weakening Communism. Therefore, in Hungary, capitalism actually went to war!
K launched a new respectability for CP’s by depreciating Stalin and Communist principles. He reverted to the historically infamous “freedom from dogma” and used it to confuse Marxist elasticity with opportunism’s unprincipled promiscuity. His colleagues around the world used this timely amnesty from principle for their own cowardly ends; they also wanted to be more respectable, more patriotic, and less “dogmatic.” Therefore, when K proclaimed (what we prefer to call) ANY OLD WAY TO SOCIALISM, he was slapped in the face with blueprints for a return to capitalism (fascist form): the Nagy-Mindszenty-way.
K’s new freedom turned out to be the freedom for Communist Parties to be anti-Communist, the freedom for the Socialist sector of the world to be anti-Socialist and anti-Soviet.
Khrushchevism advertised an open-minded attitude that would promote a Socialist-Communist unity of which Stalin was allegedly incapable. And what did we get? We got a rupture of the Communist-Left Socialist front in Italy (the most advanced case of left unity) and, with it, the reestablishmen of more unity of a backward, rightist type. Khrushchevism was a boon to Saragatism, capitalism’s fifth column within the Socialist movement.
K atoned for Stalin’s alleged injustice to Tito – so well that he acted as an organizer for Titoism – so well that in the end he even frightened Tito. K projected the “thaw-look” in culture-–so well that a “thawed” Polish writer rewarded him with an article denouncing the slogan “Workers of the world unite.” K picked Stalin as a broad scapegoat-target. As we warned, the target proved to be so broad that it attracted attacks on the S.U. and on K. He built on the backwardness of the movement, and he found his disciples appealing to the U.S. State Department for rescue from “Russian imperialism.”
Khrushchevism is getting results: confusion and depression. Communist Parties lose parliamentary strength (e.g., 200 seats in Finland), lose their old leaders (e.g., Horner in England), and lose membership all over the world. Intellectuals (e.g., Sartre) who yesterday supported some of Communism’s good works are now suing for breach of promise. The Starobin-type Communist has graduated from ex-Communist to anti-Communist. It is understandable that Wall St. is declaring spiritual dividends.
Truly, as TP warned:
Khrushchevism is the worst blow to Socialism, the worst disgrace in the history of Communism–without exception! . . . The S.U. is still a Socialist state, and it is still for peace. But nothing is static; Socialist states move forward to Communism or they slide back towards capitalism (imperceptibly at first).
We are, in fact, already past the imperceptible phase.
It turns out that TP did not exaggerate when it said:
It not only rained – but it poured, and it poured excrement. History has no choice but to allow time for disinfecting. During this ugly inventory, a soiled Communism will not especially be open for business as usual.
Our original outline analysis stated: “Khrushchevism has sent the Communist movement toppling to rock bottom.” We accused K of “deliberately giving ammunition to world capitalism in order to utilize anti-Communist forces in his anti-Stalin campaign”; we have witnessed the firing of that ammunition. We accused K of “playing with a forced mixture which will explode in his face”; we have heard the explosion and seen the face. We made all necessary preparations – including the esthetic:
. . . . we have embroidered a boomerang as a proper coat-of-arms for K.
Khrushchevism has exposed itself, has earned skepticism from its most loyal. Are the Khrushchevites alarmed at K’s lack of principle? Not at all; they are only alarmed at his bungling, at his self-advertised stupidity. They are beginning to suspect that K’s goose was cooked in Poland – and burnt in Hungary. It is only a matter of time before this fact appears on the menu.
* * *
Now, specifically, Stalin’s death (3/6/53) gave hopes to counter-revolution. It was only three months after Stalin’s death that the first big attempt took place on June 19, 195; in East Germany. The attempt was premature; K had no yet organized the scene well. The real catastrophes cam, after the CPSU 20th Congress in February 1956.
When CP leaders around the world began to criticize K (on minor points–not on the essence of Khrushchevism) and when they turned against the S.U. and its CP, some Soviet Communist leaders began to assert themselves – no so much for principle as against idiotic bungling. When the Poznan riots occurred on June 28, 1956, it became clear that not only had K disoriented the Communists but that he had in four months reoriented all kinds of anti-Communists. The first formal reaction of Khrushchevism’s leader ship to the growing boomerang was the statement of the Central Committee of the CPSU on June 30, 1956 – two days after Poznan.
K told his critics that they were missing the point of the 20th Congress. He seemed to wonder why, in their new found liberty, they had turned on K, their liberator? How dare they insinuate his complicity in Stalin’s crimes? How dare they pry for more than K had offered them? Didn’t they understand signals? K preferred that they limit their criticism to authorized attacks on Stalin, Beria, and dogma The essence of the Central Committee’s cry of anguish was let this not become a case of dogma eat dogma!
Under attack, K rediscovered in a hurry some old “dogmas” for emergency use. He reminded his colleagues that there was such a thing as proletarian internationalism, that capitalism was the enemy against which all Communist must stand united. All this meant: don’t criticize us. Having demanded support from his critics, he reassured everyone that he had complete support inside the S.U. and outside (a claim rather difficult to repeat today).
The C.C.’s statement did not collect support because Khrushchevism had burst too many links in a chain upon which even it had to depend: the continuity of the theories and deeds of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, fashioned through a long history of principled struggle. When K undermined the merited prestige of Communism, he destroyed the feeling of international solidarity between the workers of the world and the S.U. Scandal had soiled the only prestige K owned when he gained power: the brilliant mantle of Stalin’s accomplishments.
So hard did K work to answer the confusion that he proved admirably how much confusion he had caused. Never before had Communists, criticizing their movement, had to apologize for the accomplishment of utter confusion. Never had they so ripped the achievements of Socialism that they had to end anti-climactically by explaining that all the crimes committed by Socialism are not inherent in Socialism.
This is what K had to explain to Togliatti. He had to explain that revelations about Stalin by K should not be turned against K. He handled Togliatti carefully because he did not dare provoke a counter-attack. After all, an aroused Communist leader might attack K for opportunism (even if the attack came from anger and not from principle). Pointedly, K contrasted his reprimand of Togliatti with a pat on the back for Dennis whose speech was reprinted by Pravda. Even here, K miscalculated; he embarrassed our 100%-American CPUSA by paying it a Russian compliment. In reward, the CPUSA spit in K’s face by exposing Pravda’s deletion of an important sentence from its reprint of Dennis speech – the sentence accusing the S.U. of anti-Semitism.
Other CP’s, though happy at the attack on Stalin, were embarrassed at K’s unsubtle hatchet-technique. Couldn’t he have snipped away at Stalin’s reputation with more professional surgical instruments with which finaglers usually operate when performing public post mortems? K tried to recognize this. He admitted that Stalin perpetrated his alleged evils for the benefit of socialism and from a “position of the interest of the working class, of the interest of the laboring people, of the interest of the victory of socialism and communism. We cannot say that these were the deeds of a giddy despot.” K admitted the “vast positive result” of Stalin’s efforts. K’s slander had boomeranged him into discharging a kind word – a kind word which contradicted a Congressful of lies. (But what’s a contradiction in politics!)
Khrushchevism was attempting to answer a Poznanian installment in counter-revolution. Was more coming? K was attempting to “brief the boys” so that they would not embarrass his innovations with more Poznans. He declared foreign capitalist intervention in Poznan. True enough, but what suddenly allowed capitalism such easy advances?
For some time before Stalin’s death, Gomulka, the leader of the Polish CP, had tried to foist on international Communism the opportunism of the “peaceful evolutionary development.” In November 1946, Gomulka, then General Secretary, delivered an important report in which he said: “We have rejected completely the collectivization of agriculture” and “the necessity of a dictatorship of the proletariat.” Subsequently, Gomulka’s actions led to demotion, expulsion, and, finally, imprisonment. If Stalin’s influence contributed to Gomulka’s expose, it only proves how far-seeing Stalin was. After Stalin’s death and the emergence of K, Gomulka was released, reintroduced into the Polish Party and quickly into its leadership. His role was immediately Titoist – or should we say Poznanian. There was now an open united front between Tito and Gomulka.
The boomerang was becoming visible even to the C.C. of the CPSU. The anti-K group (which, unfortunately, is not Stalinist – despite the newspapers) found it necessary to override K in order to stem the Tito-tide. A secret letter was sent from the C.C. of the CPSU to the other CP’s warning against capitulation to Titoism. Of course, this information leaked to Tito who exposed it in the headlines. Now the boomerang was even more visible. In desperation, the Soviet leaders, forcing K to take the lead, flew to Poland. This produced a paradox: K had to argue against his Polish exponent, Gomulka who had merely carried out the meaning of the 20th Congress. Recognizing K’s forced role in this Paradox, Gomulka remained stubborn and caused a crisis which necessitated a show of Red Army strength.
Khrushchevism needed an injection. K flew to Yugolavia and asked Tito to strengthen his position by offering some confidence to the Soviet leaders. This Tito would not do because he was winning. Thereupon, K persuaded him at least to fly back to the S.U. for some emergency conferences. The hoped for deals turned out to be impractical because the Soviet leaders needed Tito’s agreement to lay off and Tito, in the flush of victory, needed to lay on more. Afterward, in anger, Tito divulged the character of those talks when he admitted that he and Geroe were supposed to have come to some sort of agreement. Tito, embarrassed by Geroe’s fall and by his recent relationship with him, tried :to turn the secret against his Soviet competitors.
The Polish mess was not helped by another Khrushchevist boomerang. The Chinese CP openly endorsed Poland’s anti-Soviet fight – thereby encouraging the Hungarian revolt.[2]
With international Communism unanimous in its rejection of its past and disunited about its present, Hungary made its bow. In previous issues, we have discussed the reasons behind Khrushchevism. In this issue, we are mainly concerned with the results – the boomerang. Still, we will at least briefly mention the main reasons for the limited successes[3] of counter-revolution – using Hungary as an example which applies generally to Poland, etc.
The Rakosi leadership of the Hungarian CP was, we should remember, Khrushchevist – not Stalinist (and we will leave the defense of any of its shortcomings to K). Whatever was wrong, while Stalin was alive, Hungary was not handed over to the counter-revolutionaries. When Stalin died and K began to remodel Communism, Hungary exploded.
Basically, the Hungarian government’s disintegration, inspired by the decisions of the 20th Congress, made the counter-revolution possible. The new Khrushchevism running Hungary dispensed with the dictatorship of the proletariat– as if the enemies of Hungarian Socialism had evaporated with the victory of Socialism. Communist theory, now in exile, has always taught that without a dictatorship of the proletariat, the power of the workers and peasants cannot be held against the vanquished but un-destroyed class. K has ridiculed Stalin’s theory that the class struggle is intensified after the coming to power of Socialism. Hungary is a reminder that the Khrushchevist critics of Stalinism are the real fools.
At this point in history, the military protection for the Hungarian Socialist state was the Soviet Red Army.[4] The Red Army, whose role had been blurred by K, acted with indecision. Having dissipated its revolutionary strength, the government attempted to placate its opposition by releasing thirty thousand enemies of Socialism from prison – along with leaders like Mindszenty, and by relaxing its border vigilance and allowing an influx of both materiel and agents (and press agents!) for imperialism. This alone would not have been enough. However, the government had repeatedly disgraced itself in endorsing K’s revelations. Having confessed to all evil; it could hardly deserve respect or loyalty – even from Communists. Counter-revolution recognized this moral collapse which immobilized the people who supported Socialism. Communists did not know what to think: was Stalin criminal, and therefore, was the S.U. criminal, and therefore, were their own formerly pro-Soviet leaders criminal? The Hungarian people were demoralized by the increasing victories of Titoism, by the example of Poznan, and by the support of the Chinese CP for the attempted counter-revolution in Poland.
Counter-revolution, knowing what it wanted and seeing an opportunity at hand, became actively belligerent while the supporters of Hungarian Socialism became derelict. Counter-revolution had arms, newly released leaders, thirty thousand newly released political criminals to swell its forces, sixty thousand emigre Hungarians reentering from Austria, and Radio Free Europe (to fool it into a premature strike). Strange but factual–this was counter-revolution engineered by a Socialist state against itself.
Didn’t the government organize against itself a monster demonstration in the form of a state re-burial of Rajk’s “rehabilitated” bones? Didn’t the government “rehabilitate” Nagy and Mindszenty, who thereupon appealed to the UN and the U.S. for help in crushing Communism?
The misled counter-revolutionaries had the idea that the U.S. and the “free world” were about to launch The Long Awaited War. Reporters and photographers for leading capitalist periodicals arrived “on schedule” and took their posts in Hungary a few days before the revolt started. More and more, West German officials and Hungarian anti-Communists have accused Radio Free Europe of sparking and leading the revolt. They are angry because they were fooled into a premature waste of their strength. We can be thankful that Radio Free Europe (coordinating with Allen Dulles’ C.I.A.) organized the counter-revolution less well than Khrushchevisrn prepared it.
This was more than the opportunist leadership of the CPSU had shopped for in K’s bargain basement. Whether K liked it or not, the CPSU had to stop the show. This mess never had to happen; it never did happen under Stalin, who remembered Lenin’s warning about restoration attempts after the victory of Socialism. Even smooth Tito, upset by blundering friend K, had to admit that the final use of the Red Army in Hungary was necessary. Cannot all the little men who welcomed K be honest enough to see a mammoth fact–that it took improvements by K to produce this waste!
* * *
The resulting boomerang is the growing split in the CPSU. How blind can Soviet leaders be when the boomerang becomes open counter-revolution. This recognition is not a principled one – but a, practical one. Therefore, there will be more boomerangs leading to an even wider split.
Khrushchevisrn had to retreat a little. The Chinese CP had to make it clear that it had encouraged Poland but not Hungary. Shame on that dialectitian Mao. Perhaps China would like its own little Hungary–or do we misunderstand Chou En Lai when he invites Chiang back into the Chinese government. (And – if this is humor, it is definitely a Hungarian goulash type.)
Meanwhile, other CP’s disintegrate in confusion. Some are reticent, some take a poke at Tito but not at K, and some – like the poor American Communists – are ready to dissolve their practically non-existent Party in favor of a “new mass party of Socialism.”
* * *
A little confusion confuses; too much confusion clarifies. Khrushchevisrn is in the latter phase. There must be a few Communists who are learning that it is easier to kill a man (like Stalin) than to turn history upside down permanently. True, those who are depressed will be further depressed and those who are happy will be happier – for a while. But the Communist world cannot afford too many more Gomulkas, Nagys, and Titos.
Just as Khrushchevisrn liberated all kinds of fake Communists from the trouble of having to disguise themselves, so it will help, finally, to liberate real Communists. Of course, there aren’t, at the moment, many real Communists around. If this statement is contested, we will reformulate it to avoid any ambiguity: there aren’t any real Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist Communists around. This, no one will deny! Khrushchevisrn blasted most Communists “right out of this world.” The boomerang of Khrushchevisrn will blast the best ones back in. They will have a lot to think over. It will all take a little time because the “rehabilitation” (to borrow a favorite word from K) of international Communism can not be accomplished sooner than the congealing of basic ideas in the minds of “thawed” Communists.
History moves impolitely – yea! even without the help of Communists. People are still fighting for liberation from imperialism, and the class struggle has not subsided. Quite the contrary: the worst days of the working class in the capitalist countries lie ahead – immediately ahead.
And who will reform the ranks of Communism for us – what big name?! Is there a big name in world Communism today? We are aware of many big names only in opportunism – bankrupt names. But we are also confident, that there are Communists all over the world who are capable of thinking with integrity and dignity. And – despite a bad chapter – not least among these will be Soviet Communists. Why?
The S.U. is still the fortress of Socialism, True, the fortress is not being guarded well at the moment. A philosophical orgy is going on in the banquet halls. But not everyone is drunk. Obviously, the sober Soviet Communist has a problem on his hands: how not to be executed summarily as (what K calls) a “rotten element.” The people we are thinking of, however, will not plead that it is too dangerous to oppose K during his lifetime; only fair-weather Communists do this. Objective factors will force the real Communists of the S.U. to find ways of liquidating Khrushchevism.[5] At a certain point it will become clear to those with the most integrity that they have to make a qualitative change in their position, that they have to destroy Khruschevism and revert to what can at this point in history be stated most clearly as Stalinism (a word Stalin did not use – that which had to be removed before the Socialist world could make a fool of itself!
Then Communism will again become the brains behind the majority side of the class struggle. Then Communism will again mean internationalism and proletarian revolution.
[1] This issue can be considered an amplification of Part V (“Effects of the CPSU 20th Congress”) of our outline analysis: “Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Khrushchev” (TP IX, 4-5).
[2] t is becoming more and more clear, since Stalin’s death and K’s re-birth, that there were differences between the leadership of the S.U. and China which were kept under wraps for the sake of unity. This facade was shattered with Stalin’s death when the Chinese CP jumped on his body with only a little more delicacy than did K.
[3] If Communism does not come out of its coma soon, the successes of counter-revolution will become unlimited.
[4] Nowadays, even Communists ask what right does the Red Army have to be in Hungary, etc. At the end of World War II, the S.U. had a right to station occupation troops in certain countries and to keep them there as long as necessary for two reasons: (1) to protect the S.U. from a repetition of aggression and (2) to give protection to new Socialist states it had helped come to power after the destruction of fascism. Need Communists apologize for this?
[5] We would not take odds against K’s assassination, but we hope that he may be preserved – to be enshrined alive in the Lenin-Stalin mausoleum as a guide!