Hungary and the Hungarian revolutionaries topple the statue of Stalin in Budapest Crisis of Stalinism
When Moscow's tanks and artillery opened up their barrage against the Hungarian working class of Budapest on November 4 1956 — and began the brutal invasion that was to leave 20,000 dead - they also demolished the illusions of tens of thousands of Communist Party members and sympathisers in Britain and elsewhere.
The British CP alone lost over 10,000 members as result of its shameless stance in defence of the repression of a workers' uprising which had challenged the political DoWeI of Hungary's Stalinist ureaucracy.
The invasion dispelled illusions in
SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Hungary 1956 This October marks the 30th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution - the great uprising of the crushed by Khruscher's tanks. As our tribute to that heroic struggle and to that experience, Socialist Viewpoint is carrying an extended series of articles by JOHN LISTER on the background and events that show the need for a the supposed "progressive" yole by Moscow's Stalinist leadership demonstrating once again in graphic fashion the profound antagonism between the bureaucratic leaders and the workers they protess to represent. For much of the period since the
10p workers against Stalinist repression that was ruthlessly emphasise the political importance of the lessons from deepening and development of the Marxist programme. Red Army had eventually overcome a host of problems and rolled back the massed armoured might of German fascism, the appearnace had been of successive defeats being inflicted upon imperialism by the Soviet Union. *Soviet troops had liberated much
of eastern Europe with no support from the Western Allies. As a result it had dictated the political terms of the new regimes established overseen the overturn of capitalism in one country after another, especially after the outbreak of the Cold War from the end of 1946.
*Communist-led partisans ousted fascist armies in Yugoslavia;
"Mao Ise Tung's Communist Party had fought back and defeated Chiang imperialist-backed forces in China in 1949;
"Communist leaderships in Korea and Vietnam had fought wars with imperialism and inflicted upon massed imperialist armies.
For those who based their political assessments on suriace appearances, the case appeared clear whatever its shortcomings, Stalinism represented in the post war period a dynamic, historically force, inflicting defeats imperialism and therefore advancing the interests of the working class.
This overwhelming impression was for some people mitigated by the gory purges and show trials which swept Eastern Europe between 1949 and 1952, and by the heavy military
repression Berlin workers and met by Russian tanks. But for may imperialist Cold War had peasant-based and forced a rethink. Kai Shek's defeats and crimes murders, trame-up victimisation of loyal communists. enough; progressive with on arms of Khruschev. and demonstrations effort to an
Armed warkers on the streets of Budapest 1956 of the East German uprising of 1953 — in which East revolted against brought impossible work norms, only to be approval Stalinist the propaganda was accepted, or the version of the events was too reactionary to carry much weight — until the rude events used of 1956 shattered their complacency Earlier in the year had come the traumatic revelations of Khruschev's carefully-publicised "Secret Speech" to the CPSU 26th Congress, which had lifted the veil on decades of the of the outrages "infallible" Joseph Stalin, the mass and trials what At the same time had come the rehabilitation of Yugoslavian leader Tito, who had been freely branded as The "fascist" following his 1948 split lagely Stalin. Now he was welcomeo ack into Moscow's fold by the oper The middle of 1956 brought strikes Poland, in but... resulting in a change of leadership in Hungary! head rising a challenge by workers to the power oi
MISTRESS the bureaucracy. The formerly disgraced bureaucrat Gomulka was
Aback in with Kremlin to head off the mass movement. The main condition of Moscow support was that Gomulka should prevent any link-up between
Polish struggles and the developing crisis in Hungary. He
This personal prestige and cynical promises to recognise the emerging workers' councils as his means to contain the situation: the workers' councils were soon to be marginalised and discarded
Even while these events were underway came the stormy upsurge of the workers' revolt in Hungary, followed by the bloody response of
many had seen as a "liberalising" Moscow ledership.
For many with illusions in Stalinism the world was turned upside down
same leaders they had applauded as they rolled back a
prostrate and unresisting capitalism had shown its most heavy-handed repression and armoured might to repress not the capitalists
Othe workers' councils of
Hungary: the road
The pre-war situation Hungary had been vicious, sustained repression following the overthrow of the 133-day Soviet Republic set up by an alliance of Bela Kun's Communist Party with the Social Democrats in 1919.
That revolution had pursued ultra-leftist course of nationalisation and anti-clericalism while rejecting the burning issue of land reform, which was they key to mobilise the country's large impoverished peasantry (even in the 1930s 85 per cent of Hungary's land holdings were below the subsistence level of 12 acres).
The counter-revolution sponsored by Romanian troops ushered in dictatorial regime under a Austro-Hungarian imperial Admiral Horty, who for the next 25 years collaborated with permutations of the old oligarchy and the rising anti-semitic "radical right" among the officer caste bureaucracy, who were towards Nazi Germany as a means of securing their ambitions.
Drawn eventually into an alliance
to 1956 in of one reactionary country was invaded by troops, headed by the an took over for the 2 months before the crash Red Army marched in. campaign, semitic and hundred German death camps. illegal and persecuted since 1919, dwindled to a dozen had members 1942, in only a few thousand at most when the former new provisional government, headed by a general, was installed in December various 1944. The leader was Matyas Rakosi, a veteran of the 1919 Revolution, who had spent 15 years in Hungarian jails, and state and who returned from drawn 1944 Stalin. nationalistic swollen to a members, recruiting wholesale from careerist forces, police and military allies the including numerous former members of the Arrow Cross. end of 1945 were permitted to take place by Stalin's military commander on the understanding that whoever
won, Ministry through with Hitler, Horthy's regime declared war on the USSR. When it attempted to pull back from this in 1944 the The German Interior and a puppet government fascist Arrow Cross This final phase of the war had seen Hungary swept by a full-scale anti- with several thousand Jews sent to The Hungarian Communist Party or SO and numbered recently-defected Horthyite Moscow in as a hard-line supporter of By the end of 1945 the Party had 500,000 staggering work Army vehicles. old regime, and The elections that were held at the wracked Masses rally in opposition to Stalinism
Othe CP would control the of the Interior - and this the police and the dreaded AVH Secret Police, which was rapidly to expand its operations to hold files on 1 million of the 10 million population oi Hungary
Tirst such Minister of the was Imre Nagy, another Moscow-trained CPer. But he was soon replaced by Laszlo Rajk, a longstanding hardliner active in the resistance to the Nazis despite having leadership. He had a popular base das close family ties to the Arrow Cross greater than the leaderhsip chosen by Moscow tor the tast growing CP.
The 1945 elections proved an embarrassment for the CP, which won only 17 per cent of the vote, trailing tar behind the 59 per cent for the right wing Smallholders Party which had worked hand in glove with the Horthy regime and which united the reactionary vote behind it. The Social Democrats also took 17 per cent of the vote yet to a certain extent this problem had been created by the Stalinists themselves, as Hugh SetonWatson reported:
"In the first months it is a curious paradox that the reconstruction of these (bourgeois) parties was largely
Cof teams of communist agitators who travelled around in Red
A coalition government was formed with leaders of the Smallholders Party (Zoltan Tildy and Ferenc Nagy) as president and Prime Minister. But tensions grew, and the impossibility of restoring capitalism in a Hungary
Aby runaway intlation (an
How Trotskyists got
exchange rate hitting the quadrillion to the pound level) became clear by the winter of 1946. The Ministry of the Interior began busily preparing show trial alleging a plot against the state. Bela lovacs, Secertary of the Smallholders party was arrested early in 1947.
In May 1947 Ferenc Nagy on a visit to doctors in Switzerland was warned to stay away and resign; new "plots"
discovered wingers fled or were arrested, while the Stalinists pieced together a new which they were able to share in 60 per cent of the vote in 1947 (the CP itself secured only 22 per cent). Tildy resigned, to be replaced as president by a social democrat - and then in June 1948 the CP forced the Socialist Party into a merger to form the
misnamed Workers Party.
Despite the rampant economic crisis, nationalisation of capitalist property had come late in Hungary compared to other countries it wrong on Stalinism In the eyes of many members and sympathisers, the accomplished
Cof capitalism in Eastern Europe - irrespective of the manner in which it was achieved or the imperfect end
Trotsky's approach to a Finland and Eastern Poland just prior to the War - had been very different. Coldly assessing the prospect that forced to overturn capitalist property relations if the Red Army were to stay any length of time, Trotsky insisted
"The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or anther however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organisation of the world proleteriat. the raising their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing ones. From this one, decisive standpoint, the politics
Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and
of Eastern Europe. The banks not nationalised until January 1948, and other sections industry later that Spring. It was not until August 1949 General adopted similar lines to those European states. beginning of the bureaucracy's first five-year plan. Both of after the start of a massive purge of the new, - a purge which was to displace 150,000-200,000 included the arrest, execution of Laszlo Rajk, who had moved from been Ministry in 1948. still Foreian Minister and a politburo He member. conspiracy with Tito, the Yugosalvian leader newly Hungarian Stalin. Rajk ws persuaded to make a full "confession" life, reunion with his family and a much new identity in the Soviet Union if he would publicly echo charges. Having confessed, Rajk was CP the decisive to world revolution. area. (...) production is But its measure. new and the only Thus must we of establish that the extension of territory dominated
were CPer who was of capitalist that Hungary a new constitution along of other East In 1950 came the these last two steps came burgeoning Hungarian CP and members, show-trial and events of 1956 Interior the Rajk was seized in June 1949 while of accused was excommunicated by by promises of his their behalf. the frame-up remains the chief obstacle on the road prestige 'The statification of the means of (...) a progressive progressiveness is relative; its specific weight depends on in Poland." the sum-total of all the other factors. (In first and foremost the by bureaucratic autocracy and parasitism, cloaked by
The purging of Rajk as a litelong threat to Rakosi's authority came at the same time as the torture of another Party veteran Janos Kadar — who was to be spared and later play a treacherous role in the 1956 events.
method of kicking Party into line fits with the pattern of similar purge trials at that time across
high-profile victim of the antiTito frenzy. However, his ghost, like that of Banquo in Macbeth, return to torment CP leader Rakosi, and play a key role in triggering the
By early 1949, Rakosis Hungary bureaucratic parody of a workers' overturned and expropriated not by bureaucracy which claimed to act on 'socialist measures, can augment the
Cof the Kremlin, engender
illusions concerning the possibility of replacing the proletarian revolution
with bureaucratic manoeuvres, and so on. This evil by far outweighs the
progressive contect of Stalinist reforms
Detence of Marxism. P 19, emphasis added)
The Hungarian events fitted the general pattern of analysis of Stalinism. But in two important Trotsky's
pre-war differed from the reality after the war.
*The first difference was that Trotsky had expected the Soviet bureaucracy to be overthrown during the war either by political revolution within the USSR or by a concerted imperialist drive to restore capitalism. In practice, the working class lacked the necessary organisation leadership, while the imperialists came out of the war divided, weakened incapable of challenging the Red Army in Europe, let alone the Soviet Union.
*In In Defence of Marxism, pointed to the means which he expected Stalin would be obliged to expropriating capitalism in Poland. He anticipated that use would be made of a controlled mobilisation of the working class.
"The appeal to independent activity on the part of the masses in the new territories and without appeal, even if worded with extreme caution, it is impossible to constitute a new regime will on the undoubtedly be suppressed by ruthless police measures in order to ensure the preponderance of the bureaucracy over the awakened revolutionary masses."
(Ibid pp18-19, emphasis added)
Czech Stalinists took power In 1948 "Prague Coup" Counter-revolutionaries overturn capitalism Trotsky's debates in the movement, respects Unfortunately this analysis Trotskyists in considerable effort and and Trotsky had use in such an morrow
rule. While Trotsky, was nationalisations place. The mobilisations countries left open to shifting In part (Resolution Congress 1951). of Stalinism certainly much "rightward" that This theme was reinforced in pre-war mass Fourth International Stalinist and further information from Finland and Poland was used to back it up. Once aspect of Trotsky's analysis was one-sidedly taken up by some the post-war period, and was expended in Vomen march through Petrograd in 1917
seeking evidence of the Stalinists utilising
mass mobilisations to overturn capitalist
Czechoslovakian events were almost in line with the predictions made by
few other situations fitted the theoretical mould. Far from resting in any way on mass mobilisations, the role of Stalinism in post-war eastern Europe was consistently to oppose and crush the mass mobilisations that did occur. It was only after the post-war revolutionary upsurge
Along finished that the main and expulsions if capitalist ministers from the coalitions took
dogmatic search for ILLONS within the East European the Trotskyist movement serious confusion. The more "radical" face projected by the Tito leadership in Yugoslavia was superficially interpreted as a result of "mass pressure"
Othe bureuacracy in revolutionary direction, while Tito's rift with Stalin was seen in this light as an ideological break with Stalinist politics rather than a clash of material interests beween two rival bureaucracies.
this was due to _a nartow definition of Stalinism as
"The subordination of the interests of the workers in every country of the world
those of the Soviet bureaucracy. of Yugoslavia, World
It is questionable whether this definition
was adequate even in the monolithic Comintern before the war; but
Thas been shown to be completely insufficient to deal with the
more complex politics of the Stalinist movement since 1945.
While they were still able to spot the
face of Stalinist reaction, many Trotskyists fell prey to the illusion
movements could push "radical", bureaucracy left-talking sections of the
itself to led movements for political revolution.
again these illusions ran up against the harsh facts of working class struggle, firstly in East Germany in 1953 and most graphically in Hungary 1956.
United in fear of revolution: Stalin with imperialist leaders. The politics of Post War Stalinism
While thousands recoiled disgust from the repressive face of Stalinism, it was simple to arrive at a scientific understanding of apparently contradictory role of the Moscow leadership before, during, and after the war. This could not be done simply on a superficial view of events.
The starting point Trotsky's analysis of the bureaucratic degeneration of the revolution after 1923-24, and emergence of a distinct, privileged, parasitic ruling caste resting on the basis of the nationalised relations established October 1917. This conception of a bureaucracy counterposed to interests and organisations of the working and excluding it from all the levers of political power, balancing between the power of the workers on the one hand and the power of imperialism encircling the USSR on the other, is |
in | indispensible to understand the twists and after World not so remained a hard one to swallow for many of the CP members who were the appalled by the events of 1956. both wings of the divided Trotskyist movement in that year to arrive at a broadly common Hungarian had to be unequivocally with against the Moscow bureaucrats, and intervene in the outcry and turmoil of Russian the the time. On the basis of this line important forces were won from the CPs Trotskyism. property following weaknesses and confusion on both the sides of the Trotskyist movement on the nature and role of Stalinism in the independent post-war period. That confusion had class already led to a breakaway by further split in movement in 1953. It was later to
and turns of Stalinists politics before War 2. But it Vietnam. However it was sufficient to enable political of the overthrow view side struggle the workers The founded - particularly in Britain - to This was possible despite serious faction the China, • one wing convinced that the USSR was "state capitalist", and brought a the Trotskyist
create further disorientation - not least in the assessment of the Cuban Revolution and the protracted war in
A coherent view of Stalinism and the contradictions within it is indispensible for the development of a perspective and programme for the
revolution which must the breuaucracy; the crucial starting point for this must be defending the political independence of the working class from all wings of the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies.
Trotskyist movement had itself as distinct international grouping, rather than fighting on to assert its status as a
Cof the Communist International, only after the actions of
Stalinist bureaucracies had brought historic defeats in Britain,
Tand most decisively in Germany(where| the CP's ultrasectarian line of denouncing the Social Democrats paved the way for Hitler's rise to power in 1933). The lack of self-critical response to these
The Allied Isolation of the USSR gave the Red Army a free hand in East Europe
disasters confirmed that remained of the Comintern "dead tor the purposes reovlution".
Trotsky emphasised that Kremlin leaders did not act from ideological motives: rather tailored their ideology to the latest twists and turns of opportunist foreign policy or moves to crush a particular current of opposition inside the USSR and then imposed and upheld their "theories" by brute force.
The Moscow overriding concern was - to defend its own power and Pores best Ween tike Soviet lance of orces between the Soviet working Class, detending the property relations establised in 1917, and world imperialism.
Under Stalin's ledership, the isolation that suffocated healthy development of the Russian revolution, a nationalist bureaucracy had emerged that saw its task as preserving the status quo with capitalism, expense of workers' struggles. In this sense, as well as in its
what | of repression was Kremlin of become counter-revolutionary. the they Trotsky even while the Comintern stil held onto the crazy sectarian line of the catastrophe in Germany. But they were borne out unmistakeably during with gress called mocratic" he leadership's - and still is bourgeoisie, chillingly, to Stalin's pact with Hitler in 1939. nationalised Trotsky's essence of Stalinism did not depend and in torward at any given moment, the upon an analysis of the material base and contradictions bureaucracy, conservative imposed through purges, terror and corruption upon the Comintern and at the its parties. brutish essential features arise:
working class opposition inside the USSR itself, the class. leadership had by 1933 caste These basic points were argued by proletariat Stalin's "Third period" that brought is stands the Popula erot Counto ailalice and which sections which led up, most analysis of the political upon the particular line being but forced to reforms of the Soviet and the regime it operate establishing From this starting point, three the
*The Soviet bureaucracy is not a but an unstable, parasitic feeding off the nationlised property relations in the USSR; internationally it seeks to balance between the strength of the Soviet the and encircling power is nor rialism, for this that reason Stalinism as a bureaucratic force in fundamental contradiction to the interests of the working class in the Soviet Union, development opposes any strengthen might the international working class and jeopardise the existing balance of forces with imperialism. *Stalinism is distinct from social democracy in that it arises and is defend non-capitalist foundations. It is not tied to seeking within particular a capitalist economy; and from its very outset it has been forced to on a global level in its relations with imperialism. In conditions where balance of with power imperialism is disturbed by other
factors, it is by no means excluded that Stalinism could employ anticapitalist measures to improve its further the independent interests of the working class.
Cof these basic elements of Stalinism has changed in the post-war
though the picture has course become much more complex and additional basic elements have to be added for a full understanding of imperialist "allies" in leaving the Red Army to shoulder almost the whole of the military struggle against German fascism in Europe produced an ironic
when the Red Army moved westwards into a ring of imperialism with effectively no voice or leverage in that area of the world. Stalin, on the other hand, having at the cost of 20 million dead clawed his inflicted) military defeat, had good imperialist armies and future threats at arm's length.
*While the terms of the post-war between Stalin and the imperialists Czechoslovakia, it sought to share influence 50-50 in Hungary Yugoslavia; and the most significant aspect was the commitment to restore capitalist control over Greece and the rest of Western Europe expense of mass resistance movements which dominated the fight against fascism. Even in victory, Stalin's instinctive reactions were counter-revolutionary
towards consolidation capitalism in Western Europe, the establishment of influenced capitalist governments in Eastern Europe. In Romania and Bulgaria the monarchy was preserved; throughout Eastern Europe, reactionary capitalist peasant parties were revived to be incorporated into coalitions.
*As direct levers of power in these countries, Stalin could simply on the Red Army; he needed national Communist parties, many of which had been very small until the final stages of the war. expansion of these parties with an influx of careerists and fascists, and their eventual forced merger with the old social democratic parties (to wipe out any alternative political focus for workers strengthen the apparatus of the CPs) ran alongside the penetration by the CPs of the key positions in the often rickety state machinery. Strategic targets for CP domination were the Ministries of the
Interior, controlling the police in particular, had led a civil war in and mobilised hundreds of thousands and held de facto state power in areas prior to driving out the fascist at the occupiers without the assistance the Red Army. In seeking to use these Communist-led had occupation or attempt annexations new national bureaucracies and the and demands and needs of the Kremlin. Kremlin- nationalisations were needed in order to re-establish a working economy, after many pro-Nazi employers had and nationalisations were used as a means break up factory committees that had bourgeoisie had fled, and wholesale not rely nationalisations were the only way to restart production. The rapid the East European economies were plundered for manufacturing plant and materials, with whole factories even ex- uprooted Soviet Union as part of a colossal Programme of war reparations. "Joint and Stock' by Moscow bureaucratic as bureaucratic looting. capitalist conition dore or ments and effectively using the East European countries as a "buffer" between the
USSR imperialist beginning in seen by had revolutionary overturn had Stalin through *While these remodelled CPs were in the main headed by old Stalinist die-hards who slipped back into their hands, after years of exile in Moscow, they also tended to include These elements that had a real record of struggle in the resistance movements, and a base of popular support in their own right. Yugoslavian leader Tito, from qualitatively partisans had the Eastern CPs as a device to control events, maintain a military working contradiction between the interests of workers' state; *In all the East European countries, purposes. country. In other instances workers workers occupations and In Yugoslavia in 1949 that: "A *Elsewhere the more advanced of according and transported to the companies were often set up a cover for this repressive class,
Tany future imperialist military threat was disrupted by the capitalist parties which Stalin's men had so carefully retrieved from the dustbin of history were suddently
Tas a potential threat. leaders were harassed, imprisoned or driven into exile by an increasingly confident use of the state machinery
capitalist holdings nationalised, and the transformation into a new type of state was evenly completed at slightly different times and tempos across Eastern Europe.
*These states appeared respects to echo the structure of the bureaucratised| Union; but while in the USSR capitalist power working class, in Eastern Europe the
bureaucratic administrative action over the heads of workers. While in Russia the armed workers and their organs of power -the soviets - had held power in their
this was not the case in Eastern Europe.
Estates had not degenerated from revolution to bureaucratism, they were different type of state, deformed
Othe very outset, and different from healthy workers' state. The only real point of comparison was with
monstrously degenerated regime under Stalin.
'In this way the experience in
Europe bears out the insistence by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky that it is impossble for the
Class to transform a bourgeois state gradually into a
"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own
" (Marx).
In eastern Europe, of course, the state machinery was seized not by the
themselves but by bureaucratised travesties of "workers' parties", and wielded in such a way as to produce a detormed caricature Stalinist leader Rakosi summed up workers' the difference in a candid statement
People's Democracy is to its function che Store foot the proletariat without
In other words, the workers have had no say in the running or planning of the nationalised economy or the social or foreign policies of the
regimes that have emerged balancing not only between imperialism and their own working
Abut also between their own national bureaucratic interests and the demands of the Kremlin.
The Bureaucracy that lost its grip
Things began to unravel Hungarian leader Rakosi from the time of Stalin's death in March 1953. The change leadership in the Kremlin was a protracted and uneasy process which disrupted Rakosi's close links with the leadership. Worse, the break in the continuity of and marginal conessions made by the new Kremlin rulers to contain demands for sweeping changes, encouraged voices backed up by reappearance of former show-trial victims trom labour camps.
Summoned to Moscow to meet the new ruling circle, Rakosi was closely questioned on his simultaneous role as Party General Secretary Prime Minister. He would hand over one of the posts suggest a deputy.
In June 1953 came uprising, riots at Pilsen Czechoslovakia and strikes demonstrations in Hungary itself. An alarmed Kremlin leadership, fearing that Rakosi's brutal repression was storing up an explosion of revolt, ordered him to hand over the Prime Minsterial post to Imre Nagy, who in Moscow's eyes had the advantges of being a reliable Muscovite with a popular base, not involved Rakosi's excesses, and Rakosi and his sidekick Erno Gero — not Jewish. Nagy outlined substantial plan for reforms of the economy, and began moves to close down its internment camps with their 100,000 political prisoners.
Nagy's handicap was that he was seen as linked politicall Malenkov - a fadina star ir Kiberan constelation, Kremlin
Kline development emphasising consumer goods and improved living standards was echoed for 18 months under Nagy in Hungary.
The boat was also Hungary by the publication autumn 1953 of an Kuckant by the Communist poet Kucska conditions in the countryside: Rakosi had presided over a collectivisation strategy that had been opposed within the party leadership by Imre Nagy at the time.
Rakosi never accepted or operated with his new
for of Soviet repression, critical the and neither nor the Berlin in and with unlike : Nagy leadership and later expelled from the Party - and appoint Erno Gero with in his place. the Nagy's reforms whose more unleashed far greater pressure for economic handle. Thousands had prisoners families confirming the horror of the rocked Makosi police regime; peasants hac in been able to witndraw from in operatives and return to guiday farming; the overtime working had been cut for industrial collectivised workers. circles of intellectuals had begun to organise and freedom co- switched off by the ousting of Nagy. Prime
x: East German youth resist in 1953 Minister: in early 1955 the climate changed and enabled him to sack - who was hounded from the however had Among change than Rakosi and Gero could of political was returned to their CO- of this Encouraged by these concessions, possible rupture demand academic country. and this was not simply p 256)
The factor which most decisively pulled out the rug from under Rakosi was Khruschev's move to consolidate his domination over the Kremlin leadership with his famous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Soviet Party Congress in February 1956.
Othe revelations which rocked the assembly of bureaucrats
Khruschev's denunciation of Stalin's split with Tito:
"The 'Yugoslav affair' contained no problems which could not have been solved through party discussions among comrades. There was no significant basis for the development
'affair; it was completely to have prevented the „ot relations with that
(in The Stalinist Legacy, Penguin,
This left Rakosi — the executor of Rajk and jailor of other leading Hungarian Communists for collaboration with the "'fascist" Tito - out on a limb.
The following month, Rakosi was forced to admit that the 1949 show trial had been a gigantic frame-up As Rakosi lost the confidence even of sections of his police apparatus, new ferment animated the intellectual and journalistic circles, but reaching even army officers and . technical workers. Rajk's widow, emerged from obscurity to demand that her husband be rehabilitated.
Struggling to retain his grip on the Party leadership, Rakosi made a tew opponents, and released some of the making vicious political attacks become the main focus of opposition to the regime.
His days were clearly numbered, and an anxious Moscow leadership intervened to replace Rakosi with his no less objectionable and unpopular sidekick Erno Gero.
Meanwhile the Polish workers had demands for reforms. By the autumn of 1956 this example had spilled over to Hungary, 100,000-strong demonstration called in Budapest on solidarity with the Polish movement. homogenous, with some workers and students carrying pictures of Lenin, other pictures of the former Prime Minister Imre Nagy. The Internationale and the Marseillaise were sung; but there was unity on one level — a gigantic statue of Stalin was pulled to the ground!
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broadcasting a stinging attack on the
converged on the radio station
only to be fired upon by the hated
secret police, the AVA. The fighting
spread, and Soviet troops garrisoned
The next day saw the start of
general strike, with the fighting and
upsurge spreading beyond Budapest
to the provinces. Nagy (with reluctant
Mooscow acquiescence) took over for
a second term as Prime Minister.
Nagy did not call for the immediate
withdrawal of the Soviet troops; nor
did he make a clean break with the
old Stalinist regime. But while failing
to meet the demands of the workers,
he made a gesture towards the right
suppressed right wing Smallholders
Party in his government.
Meanwhile the workers had begun
to sense the potential power in their
hands, rapidly organised
themselves into workers' councils
control bureaucratised
"In the space of forty-eight hours
all the factories in the country had
their elected councils, and at the
moment of the ceasefire (November
representing the
whole town or department were
formed, in particular at Miskolc.
Magyarovar and in certain suburbs
of Budapest."
Midlos Molnar, Budapest 1956)
On October 321 a Parliament of
Workers Councils for the whole of
Budapest spelled out the extent of the
frontal challenge to the power of the
ruling bureaucracy, and the extent to CUBA Radical face of stalinism choices on Cuba were to support Dissecting the politics and evolution of the Cuban leadership.
(Above) Stall The ruins which the leading layers of workers saw the revolution as taking their nationalised economy under their own control. A statement on the basic rights and responsibilities of workers' councils ,contained points, beginning
"1) The factory belongs to the workers. The latter should pay to the state a levy calculated on the basis of the output and profits. 2) The supreme controlling body of the factory is the Workers' Council, democratically elected by the workers. (...) 4) The director is employed by the factory. The director and the highest employees are to be elected by the Workers' Council. (...) 7) In the same way the contilet concerning the hiring and Workers' Council resolves firing of all workers employed in the enterprise. 8) The Workers' Council has the right to examine the balance sheets and decide the use to which the protits are to be put...
(B. Lomax, Hungary 1956,
emphasis added)
nt tanks in Poznan, Poland In 1956 Budapest after the Russian
On top of this challenge to the economic control exercised by the Hungarian bureuacracy, workers on the streets had linked students and with Hungarian troops in joint committees, and had turned their pent-up anger on the savage forces of the AVH secret police — the main arm of political repression — which had files on over 1 million of the 10 million population.
Many AVH were beaten, hounded and even lynched when they fell into the hands of the workers they had terrorised for years.
Such a far-reaching attempt to unseat a Stalinist bureaucracy from the base of its power and privilege in Hungary would have been disturbing enough for the Moscow leaders, who since Stalin's rise to power at the head of a vast conservative state bureaucracy in the 1920s, increasingly viewed any revolution as a threat to its own power and privilege.
But it was compounded by Nagy's insistence upon a complete removal of Russian troops, followed in swift
become a neutral. government under veteran assault deployment of the workers' troops, strikes up with New issue • Hungary 1956 had workers' • South Africa and much more!
succession by his announcement of intentions to leave the Warsaw Pact, leaders and declaration that Hungary would strike For the Kremlin this was too much they set up an alternative Hungarian Stalinist the on Janos Kadar, and on November 4 set nationalised about instaling him in office over the they dead bodies of the Budapest workers. Despite the bombardment and the 200,000 Russian councils and continued Socialist Viewpoint • Anti union laws - Wilson to Thatcher • Print •NHS • NUM • Labour conference analysis...
Krealin tanks in Budapest As late as December 11 the arrest of
Cof the Central Council provoked a solid 48-hour general
While the workers showed huge courage in their attempts to lay hands
positive gains of the Hungarian economy, found themselves politically limited by the effects of ten years of Stalinist repression of independent working class politics. Following on decades of dictatorial rule under the Horthy regime. However there is no
No "peaceful road"
When Khruschev sent in the tanks and heavy artillery he killed any hopes of a self-reform of the leadership after the death of Stalin.
Far from being pressurised to the left by the revolutionary mass moment of the workng class. the Moscow Budapest bureaucracies had for most part moved to stamp on the revolt. while Nagy and a handful bureaucrats had shown their inability to express, let alone lead, the struggles of the workers.
The most central political lesson of the Hungarian experience was that it underlined the correctness of Trotsky's analysis that the working inevitably run into conflict with bureaucracy. and that insurrectional overthrow bureaucracy by mass action political revolution - could establish workers' democracy and workers' states in place of the Stalinist travesty.
The need for a revolutionary
to political revolution Moscow and the "left" of class must the only the of that the - leadership based on a firm healthy of grasp fight for confirmed in the 1956 events - both in
the Hungary involvement resistance revolt challenge state working to the office. The despite property Trotsky ago, political Stalinism to spearhead the political revolution was also
Arned Hungarlan workers 1956
tumultuous mass actions of and in the bureaucratic manoeuvres that headed off the Polish mass movement.
In each case, despite the high profile
Cof intellectuals and technical staffs, the central core of the
Wto Stalinism was the industrial working class: this has again been seen in the Solidarnosc struggles in Poland since 1980. The strategic task of political revolution is to link this
with other sections of the oppressed in the establishment of new organs of working class power that can
Othe bureaucratic state machinery at every level. It is also vital to organise resistance in the ranks the armed forces; only on this basis will it be possible to smash the reactionary
machinery that represses the class, and replace it with genuine workers' democracy.
There is no "peaceful", reformist road
ousting of parasitic bureaucracy whose only hold on power and privilege depends upon clinging to
"deformed workers states". resting on nationalised relations which must be defended against imperialism, are not "almost workers' states". but alien. repressive police regimes qualitatively different from a healthy workers' state.
In saluting the courage and sacrifice of the Hungarian workes of thirty years
Marxists today must commit themselves to complete the task which that Revolution began - the overthrow of Stalinism as part of the world wide struggle for working class power.