The Red Flag: A History of Communism

by Priestland, David

  Indeed, despite valorization as the ‘owners’ of the state, workers and peasants tended to be the groups most disillusioned with Communism, for it was they who bore the brunt of Eastern Europe’s ‘revolution from above’ after 1949 – a revolution even more rapid and radical than the USSR’s in the 1930s. This economic revolution probably damaged living standards even more than in the 1930s USSR (although the income per capita was higher). Except in the more developed Czechoslovakia, investment in the industrial Plan was set at between 20 and 27 per cent of national income, compared with 9–10 per cent before.30 Consumer goods were no longer a priority, and collectivization contributed to dire food shortages.

  For Communist leaders such suffering was the inevitable price of development; without foreign help there was no alternative to reducing consumption to fund investment. The Polish secret police chief, Jakub Berman, explained:

  We had to see this realistically, and the whole thing boiled down to solving the puzzle of whether to build at the expense of consumption, which could bring the risk of upheavals along with it, and indeed this happened in 1956, or not to build and resign ourselves to a situation with no prospects.31

  Others, though, were sceptical of Berman’s reasoning. For critics, the Five-Year Plans were imperialist projects pure and simple, designed to extract resources for the Soviet military effort. The huge sums taken by the USSR in reparations reinforced these views: between $14 billion and $20 billion (thus more, possibly, than the $16 billion given by the United States to Western Europe under the Marshall Plan).32 Most of these reparations came from East Germany, but all the satellites’ economies were affected. The euphemistically named Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), founded in January 1949, was also designed in such a way that economic cooperation furthered Soviet interests.

  The perception that the USSR was an imperial power, squeezing the economic lifeblood from its East European colonies, was deeply damaging to the Communist regimes in those countries. Communism had always been most successful when it could enmesh itself within local nationalisms, and the Stalinist regimes did try to present themselves as indigenous. However, their attempts to drape themselves in national colours were often unconvincing, and soon, as Kundera demonstrated, even loyal Communists developed a bitter contempt for the Russians. As Czesław Miłosz wrote, many Polish intellectuals privately harboured ‘an unbounded contempt for Russia as a barbaric country’. Their position was ‘Socialism – yes, Russia – no’.33 Rather like Béla Kun in 1919, they came to believe that East Europeans were actually far better able to realize socialism than Russians because they were more civilized, intelligent and organized. But unable to say so openly, they hypocritically praised Russian literature, songs and actors at every turn.

  The harsh political controls could be especially unpleasant and humiliating for East European Communist elites. Show trials and purges were initially used against non-Communist rivals. The most notorious case was the trial of the Bulgarian Agrarian Party leader, Nikola Petkov, in 1947, whose ‘confession’ had to be published posthumously because he refused to cooperate at his trial. It was the defection of Yugoslavia’s Tito from the Soviet bloc in 1948, though, that brought about the wave of repressions and trials. Tito’s lèse-majesté was a serious challenge to Soviet control, and there was a real possibility that other Communists would follow him. Wolfgang Leonhard, for instance, escaped from Berlin to Belgrade, after a severe attack of ‘political tummy-ache’ as he called it. He now decided that Stalinist Communism, with its special party canteens and housing, was unbearably hypocritical.34

  Moscow responded by launching violent campaigns to root out potential ‘Titoite’ influences in East European Communist parties. Communists who had not spent some time in exile in Moscow were at particular risk. NKVD experts in staging show trials were sent to the satellite states to share their expertise in repression. The show trials and purges of alleged Titoites were particularly intense in those countries near Yugoslavia – Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. In Poland, Władisław Gomułka was also accused of Titoism in 1951, because he had objected to the harsh centralization of the Cominform and called for a national road to socialism. He, though, escaped execution.

  Together with anti-Titoism, Stalin and his secret police brought with them anti-Semitism. And many East European regimes were often happy to seek popular support by scapegoating Jewish Communists: anti-Semitic campaigns were especially pronounced in Poland, East Germany, Romania and Czechoslovakia. In the latter, the number two in the party, Rudolf Slánský, was accused of both Titoism and Zionism. His show trial in November 1952 was meticulously scripted and prepared, and indeed a dress rehearsal was recorded in case one of the defendants should retract his confession.35

  Repression was, however, difficult to direct and control. As in 1936–8, Moscow was interested in political biographies and ordered the East European parties to investigate the pasts of Communists who might be susceptible to Titoism or who had prior links with the West. But the outcome of those investigations could be shaped by locals who wanted to settle personal scores or do favours to friends, as they had been in the Terror of the 1930s. The East European terrors therefore had a logic to them, yet they also appeared unpredictable and arbitrary, creating confusion and fear. In East Germany, for instance, several Communists found themselves under suspicion because they had lived in exile in the West during the Nazi period; perhaps, their accusers argued, they had been ‘turned’ by Western spies. The inmates of concentration camps were also investigated; some were accused of cowardice, others of recklessness. And it was in these kinds of cases that local politics could come into play. Erich Honecker, the future East German leader, received a party reprimand for escaping from a Nazi prison without party permission, but this had no further consequences; Franz Dahlem, however, a serious rival to Walter Ulbricht, found himself stripped of all his offices and threatened with a trial as a result of allegations that he had tried to stop an uprising in the Mauthausen concentration camp.36 And in Albania and Romania, Enver Hoxha and Gheorghe Georghiu-Dej were able to turn Stalin’s repressions into opportunities to strengthen their own networks of clients at the expense of loyal ‘Moscow’ Communists.

  East European Communists had, therefore, been granted their wish. Stalin had destroyed the Popular Fronts, put them in power and allowed them to embark on full sovietization. But they had paid a high price. They did have considerable powers over their countries, but their influence ultimately derived from Moscow – it was, as Gomułka commented, ‘a reflected brilliance, a borrowed light’.37 Leaders even found that they were expected to synchronize their lives to coincide with Stalin’s eccentric daily routine. Jakub Berman remembered how he would go to work at 8 a.m., return home for lunch with his wife and daughter between 3 and 4 p.m., and then go back to the Central Committee for 6 where he would work until midnight or 1 a.m. Stalin remained at his desk until late in the night and his subordinate leaders had to be there in case he phoned. Every high official had to follow the same schedule.38

  In Moscow, the heads of East European parties were treated as subordinates in an imperial court, rather than heads of state in their own right. One of the most unsettling of experiences was the invitation to dine at Stalin’s Kuntsevo dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. These dinners went on all night, and the senior guests often found that they were the entertainment. According to one, Stalin tried to get them drunk so they would spill secrets. He also subjected them to practical jokes, for instance arranging for tomatoes to be left on chairs so ‘when the victim sat on it there would be loud roars of laughter’.39 On one occasion, Beria wrote the word ‘prick’ on a piece of paper and attached it to Khrushchev’s overcoat.40 There was much hilarity when, about to leave, he put it on; the brittle Khrushchev was less amused. Film-viewing and dancing were also regular features of the tense evenings. Berman – who kept his job in charge of the Polish security services despite being a Jew – was more indulgent of the bizarre soirées. H
e found they could be useful:

  BERMAN: ‘Once, I think it was in 1948, I danced with Molotov –’ [laughter]

  INTERVIEWER: ‘Surely you mean with Mrs Molotov?’

  BERMAN: ‘No, she wasn’t there; she was in a labour camp. I danced with Molotov – it must have been a waltz, or at any rate something very simple, because I don’t know the faintest thing about dancing, so I just moved my feet to the rhythm.’

  INTERVIEWER: ‘As the woman?’

  BERMAN: ‘Yes, Molotov led; I wouldn’t have known how. Actually, he wasn’t a bad dancer. I tried to keep in step with him, but what I did resembled clowning more than dancing.’

  INTERVIEWER: ‘What about Stalin, whom did he dance with?’

  BERMAN: ‘Oh, no, Stalin didn’t dance. Stalin wound the gramophone, considering it his duty as a citizen. He never left it. He would just put on records and watch.’

  …

  INTERVIEWER: ‘So you enjoyed yourselves.’

  BERMAN: ‘Yes, it was pleasant, but with an inner tension.’

  INTERVIEWER: ‘You didn’t have fun, really?’

  BERMAN: ‘Stalin really had fun. For us these dancing sessions were a good opportunity to whisper to each other things that couldn’t be said out loud. That was when Molotov warned me about being infiltrated by various hostile organizations.’41

  Not all Communists were as tolerant as Berman. The widow of the Czech minister Rudolf Margolius remembered: ‘Our lives, permeated by insecurity, became hopeless drudgery.’ Even the President, Klement Gottwald, had taken to drink, drowning his pangs of conscience, so the gossip went.42 As the realities of the High Stalinist order became clear, many early enthusiasts became disillusioned.

  IV

  The Cold War and behaviour of the Soviets in Eastern Europe also damaged the Western Communist parties. Communists remained a significant force in only three countries – France, Italy and, to a lesser extent, Finland. They attracted a triple alliance of industrial workers, intellectuals and a traditional peasantry determined not to be absorbed into the free market.43 Elsewhere these conditions were absent, and Communism soon withered – especially in Northern Europe, where the Social Democrats had a strong presence.

  The French and Italian parties – Western Europe’s biggest – also suffered declining membership numbers after 1948. In France, membership estimates show a fall from some 800,000 party members in 1948 to 300,000–400,000 between 1952 and 1972. Yet the French Communist Party benefited from its ‘outsider’ status, challenging the entrenched Parisian establishment; it took 26.6 per cent of the vote in the 1951 elections, and in 1956 55 per cent of Parisian workers voted Communist.44 The turn towards High Stalinism in the USSR did not discomfort the French party too much, for its social conservatism and anti-intellectualism, its strict discipline and its Manichaean outlook all remained close to the Stalinist worldview. It proceeded to create a counter-culture, free of the influence of America and consumerism. Morality was strict and puritanical, and every aspect of life was politicized. For members, the party continued to be the centre of intense emotional involvement. The writer Domenique Desanti found Communist life completely absorbing; she and her fellow Communists felt themselves almost wholly cut off from the outside world.45 The party had its own parallel society – its organizations for youth and sport, its children’s holiday camps – to keep people in the fold.

  Despite its closed and dogmatic culture the party attracted support beyond its committed membership. Some of the most famous intellectuals in France became fellow-travelling sympathizers – even, paradoxically, existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre whose philosophy celebrated individual responsibility. There were a number of reasons for this apparent contradiction. The Communists’ resistance record was undoubtedly important, as was their influence amongst the virtuous proletariat, and, oddly, their anti-intellectualism.46 Simple anti-Americanism and snobbery about Coca-Cola and other accoutrements of the new consumer culture also had a place. But imperialism was also a major issue. The French, supported by the United States, were fighting an anti-nationalist war in Vietnam and the Communists were the only major domestic force to oppose the fighting. It was this issue that helped push a semi-detached Sartre towards the Communist party between 1952 and 1956; he had undergone a ‘conversion’ and had developed a ‘hatred’ of the bourgeoisie.47 High Stalinism was, ironically, benefiting from anger at Western imperialism; moral outrage was being transferred from inequalities at home, to inequalities abroad. As Sartre was later to write in his preface to Franz Fanon’s great anti-imperialist polemic, The Wretched of the Earth, Europe was a ‘pale fat continent’, and the Third World was the future.48

  The consequence, of course, was that the progressive left was often willing to ignore repression in the Eastern bloc in the fight against what it perceived as the more brutal repression in the South. The most notorious case was the controversy over Viktor Kravchenko’s memoirs, I Chose Freedom, with their lengthy account of the Terror and discussion of the Gulag. When they were published in French, the party’s journal Les Lettres françaises accused Kravchenko of being part of a CIA conspiracy to discredit the USSR. Kravchenko sued in 1948, and a galaxy of non-Communist intellectuals spoke in defence of the French party and the USSR. Even though Kravchenko won, the damages were small and the moral victory belonged to the French Communists, who continued to follow a slavishly pro-Moscow line.49 Lysenko, socialist realism and Russian xenophobia were all defended by the French comrades. Similar to the French party was the Finnish. After its electoral defeat in 1948, it retreated into its own world, nurturing a workerist political culture. It continued to be highly successful in elections – in 1958 it took 23.3 per cent of the vote and became the largest parliamentary group.50

  If the French and Finnish leaderships followed Moscow’s change of line happily, their Italian comrades were much less content about it. Palmiro Togliatti’s old strategy of cross-class alliances was now heresy, and he was forced to bow to the Kremlin, fearful of being ousted by his more orthodox rival Pietro Secchia. He remained leader, but the Stalinists were in the ascendant in the party organization, and Stalin’s portraits could be seen much more commonly in party offices than Gramsci’s.51 Yet in many ways the Cominform’s Manichaean approach to politics suited the times. The Catholic Church – with the Christian Democratic Party and the organization of Catholic laypeople, Catholic Action – became the centre of a militant opposition to Communism, and in July 1949 Pope Pius XII excommunicated all Communists. The Church continued to present elections as a choice between ‘Christ or Antichrist’, rather than conventional political parties, and Communists in turn feared the emergence of a pro-Catholic fascist regime, rather like Franco’s in Spain.52 The Communists and the Catholic Church therefore faced each other as rivals, each with its own self-enclosed social and political world.53 In this atmosphere of confrontation, the popularity of Stalin was perhaps not surprising

  The two largest Communist parties of the West therefore survived the crisis of 1947–8 as major political forces. They lost support, but politics was polarized enough to sustain them in their bunkers. Stalin’s ‘two camps’ view of the world still made sense to many, even though his behaviour made it more difficult to admire the USSR. On the other side of the Soviet sphere of influence, in China, meanwhile, the Communists also found Soviet high-handedness and realpolitik difficult to stomach. But there the Soviet model was much more attractive, promising an alternative to ‘backwardness’, division and foreign occupation.

  V

  In December 1949, Mao boarded a train and prepared to take his first journey abroad. His destination was Moscow. The ten-day trip was kept secret until his arrival, and the strictest security was observed. The train was escorted by two others occupied entirely by soldiers, in front and behind; guards were also posted along the entire route. Mao was accompanied by only a small delegation, but he had also brought an eclectic selection of presents for Stalin, ranging from white cabbage and radishes from Shando
ng, to embroidery and cushions from Hunan. Whether Stalin ate and appreciated the cabbage we do not know.54

  The new master of Red China, now fifty-six, was to meet the great vozhd of world Communism for the first time on the occasion of Stalin’s seventieth birthday. Mao hoped to secure aid and recognition and a new Sino-Soviet treaty, to replace the one signed by Chiang Kaishek and approved by the Americans and British at Yalta in 1945. Despite its significance, though, the trip was far from the slick PR opportunity of the modern state visit. Indeed, it was one of the most bizarre encounters of the post-war era, as the two protagonists danced a tense pas de deux over the course of two months. Trouble started at the railway station, when Stalin failed to welcome Mao in person, against the usual protocol. The leaders did speak later that day, but Stalin made it clear he was reluctant to conclude a new treaty. He was happy to give aid, but did not want to risk upsetting the Yalta arrangements, and thus give the Americans an excuse to unpick them. Stalin also mistrusted Mao. So soon after the Yugoslav split, Stalin was worried that this guerrilla leader who had caused Moscow so much trouble over the years might well turn out to be a disloyal Asian Tito. Mao was sent to a state dacha, bristling with bugging devices so that Stalin could observe him and make up his mind. On one occasion he sent Molotov to find out ‘what kind of guy he is’. A patronizing Molotov reported back that he was a shrewd peasant leader rather like the eighteenth-century Russian rebel Pugachev. He was ‘naturally’ not a proper Marxist, and had not even read Capital. Even so, Molotov’s impression was broadly positive.