urope they simultaneously acted to disband and disarm the spontaneous committees formed by anti-fascist workers (often old CP members) which greeted their approach" Page 19
*a new form of state apparatus had made its appearance in history, based not on a degenerated revolution, but yet on nationalised property and collective (but bureaucratic) planning, in which the working class was held prisoner by a parasitic stalinist bureaucracy" Page 20
Workers' councils crushed - Hungary 1956 Europe, in which Communist Party members would take only a few key ministries, even where the Red Army was the only armed body of men capable of sustaining the feeble remnants of a capitalist state. Old, discredited bourgeois and peasant parties and capitalist politicians were resurrected for this purpose - sometimes (as in Hungary) with the aid of the Red Army itself.
Stalin's initial scheme was to retain a ring of such weakened bourgeois regimes as a bargaining chip in his dealings with imperialism as as a buffer zone" around the borders of
However in some cases the bourgeois state and capitalist class itself had been smashed by the war period to such an extent that it was virtually economy without rapid and wholesale nationalisations. In others, the bour-
parties, backed by eager wester imperialists, proved to be more active and vigorous a threat to stalinist control than Stalin had bargained for, especially as the Cold War began to take hold after Chuchill's warmongering Iron Curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946.
When the ideological offensive, coupled with the economic blandishments of the Marshall Plan and its attempt to draw the pro-capitalist parties in the buffer states into an expanded European capitalism, Stalin began to recognise that imperialism would yield no significant economic aid without unacceptable political strings attached.
As the Cold War chill intensified, Stalin made a tum from propping up bourgeois coalitions to organising a full-scale structural transformation of the east European economies and their state apparatus, following the
SUPPLEMENT
model of the degenerated Soviet Union. In 1947 the Cominform was established to link the cast European Communist Parties with those of France and Italy to spur on and coordinate the transforma tions. It is significant to note that this was two years after and long after the revolutionary wave of militancy had been repressed or contained in castem Europe: the move was based on the calculations of the Kremlin and its global interests, not at all on the aspirations or movement of the working class.
The process of transformation in-
• the removal, by open or covert pressure, of bourgeois leaders and parties from the govemment coalitions;
Il the nationalisation of major industry and private capital (from above by state decree, not by working class action):
• the consolidation and expansion of monolithic, bureaucratic stalinist parties, generally involving a forced merger with social democratic parties;
• the interpenetration of this party at all levels with the state machinery. especially the police and armed forces, ensuring total control.
This process took place at different times and tempos across the buffer states, but with remarkable similarities. It is important to remember that the model' to which these stalinist states aspired was not the revolutionary workers state established under the Bolsheviks in October 1917 - in which a mobilised working class held power in its hands through soviets (workers' councils) -but the bureaucratised USSR under Stalin, in which the Bolshevik traditions had been all but exterminated, and soviet power long extinguished. The east Buropean regimes were never healthy workers' states, but only ever deformed workers' states in which power was seized by bureaucratic formations 'in the name of' or 'on behalf of the working class, whose independent organisa-
tions remained brutally suppressed.
In the aftermath of the nationalisation of the economies, centralised state planning was introduced, and the vastly expanded Communist Party remodelled state machine. The changes took place over the heads of the proletariat but under the eyes and guns of the Red Army which stood ready to crush any resistance from the bourgeois parties: the imperialists, whose abstention from the eastern front war against Hitler had left them powerless observers of the subsequent changes implemented by Stalin, could only huff and puff their propaganda complaints,
A new form of state apparatus had made its appearance in history, based not on a gegenerated revolution, but yet on nationalised property and collective (but bureaucratic) planning, in which the working class was held prisoner by a parasitic bureaucracy: it was a curious hybrid state, spawned by the balance of class forces, the revolutionary strength and political weakness of the post-war working class.
These states inherited from Stalin not only their bureaucratic methods of internal repression, but the nationalistic policies of secking to build 'socialism in a single country. However since they rested on a much narrower and weaker economic and social base than the Soviet bureaucracy, the contradictions and instability they have encountered has created repeated crises in caster Europe, resulting in class battles and clashes in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and bringing various nationalistic rifts between the various component parties of the Warsaw Pact and the wider stalinist movement.
Now, as the whole rotten, unstable edifice is shaken (not only from the top by Gorbachev's lead on glasnost and perestroika, but also from the base by the workers and students of Warsaw, Leipzig. Berlin and now Prague) the urgent need is for a wholesale political revolution - in which the working class organises to defend the nationalised economy by driving out the stalinist bureaucracy and taking power in its own hands. This central feature of the Trotskyist political programme since the 1930s is now not only posed as a general truth but emerging as a material possibility in what promises to be an exciting new decade.
John Lister SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
Comparative facts at a glance
BULGARIA Wartime regime: "Friendly neutral" towards Nazi Germany. Wartime CP strength: Serious CP-led resistance to Nazism and Bulgarian right wing: 15,000 CP members in 1944 Date of liberation: Bloodless coup, September 1944 by CP-led Fatherland Front and section of officer corps. Post-liberation regime: In Fatherland Front govem- ment CP held only three mini- stries, including Justice and In- terior. Monarchy retained. Growth of CP: 250,000 members by January 1945 Main nationalisations com- pleted: 1947-48: carly industrialisa- tion run by state. Forced merger of CP with So- cial Democrats: August 1948 Purge of CP: 90,000 expelled, including General Secretary Kostov in November 1949 show trial. New constitution: November 1947 First Five-Year Plan: 1949-53 CZECHOSLOVAKIA Wartime regime: Invaded by Nazis, 1938 Wartime CP strength: Mass CP since launch in 1921, consistent 10-15 per cent of vote. Never dropped below 24,000 members. Slovak CP led premature uprising to welcome Red Army in August 1944. Mass uprising forced Germans from Prague. Date of liberation: 1945 by Red Army Post-liberation regime: CP in minority in bourgeois coalition. Growth of CP: from 37,000 before liberation to over 1 million by April 1946 (38 per cent of vote). Main nationalisations com- pleted: July 1945 to defuse militant workers' councils: nationalisa- tion welcomed by bourgeois SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
press. 90 per cent of industry nationalised in first year of liberation. Forced merger of CP with So- cial Democrats: June 1948 Purge of CP: 550,000 expelled, including General Secretary Slansky in 1952 show trial. New constitution : May 1948 First Five-Year Plan: 1949-53 HUNGARY Wartime regime: Horthy dictatorship in anti- Soviet alliance with Hitler; later Nazi occupation. Wartime CP strength: 10-12 party members in 1942. Date of liberation: February-April 1945 by Red Amy. Post-liberation regime: Coalition of CP with Smallholders and Socialist par- ties, headed by Horthyite General Bela Miklos. Growth of CP: from a few thousand to 500,000 by the end of 1945. Main nationalisations com- pleted: Spring 1948 Forced merger of CP with So- cial Democrats: June 1948 Purge of CP: 200,000 expelled, including former Foreign Secretary Laszlo Rajk in 1949 show trial.
Merger of CP and SPD in East Germany was met by huge protests New constitution: August 1949 First Five-Year Plan: 1950-54 POLAND Wartime regime: Invaded by Nazis 1939 Wartime CP strength: Polish CP disbanded on Stalin's orders in 1938 and leadership almost exterminated. Most wartime resistance led by nationalists Date of liberation: January 1945 by Red Army Post-liberation regime: Stalin's chosen stooge "Lublin Committee, with in clusion of Peasant Party Icader Mikolajczyk. Main nationalisations com- pleted: January 1946 Forced merger of CP with So- cial Democrats: December 1948 Purge of CP: 370,000 expelled, and General Secretary Gomulka ousted in September 1948. New constitution: July 1952 First Five-Year Plan: 1950-55 ROMANIA Wartime regime: Axis power until coup led by King ousted Marshall Antonescu's dictatorship. New regime sided with Red Army against Nazis. Wartime Communist Party
strength: Less than 1,000 in 1944 Date of liberation: August 1944 Post-liberation regime: Initially led by anti- semite Radescu, then replaced by regime under pro-CP Groza, but with fascist vice-premier Tatarescu and riddled with Iron Guard ele- ments. Growth of CP: 800,000 by October 1945 Main nationalisations completed: None until 1948 Forced merger of CP with So- cial Democrats: February 1948 Purge of CP: 200,000 expelled New constitution: April 1948 First Five-Year Plan: 1951-55 EAST GERMANY Wartime regime: Nazi dictatorship since 1933 Wartime Communist Party strength: further decimated by purges from Moscow during the war (not least of German Com munists opposed to the 1939-41 Stalin-Hitler Pact) Date of liberation: 1945, by Red Army from east and allied armies from west. Post-liberation regime: occupying Initially under Workers' anti-fascist powers. committees forcibly dissolved Main nationalisations com- pleted: Summer 1948 Forced merger of CP with So- cial Democrats: April 1946, to form SED (Socialist United Party of Ger- many) Purge of CP: 300,000 expelled from late 1948 New constitution: Autumn 1949 First Five-Year Plan: 1951-55. Page 21
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