Capitulators and fellow travelers
After Stalin's death, the Soviet leadership, right up to perestroika, had a craving for strange allies, sometimes completely inexplicable. Only in recent years has it become clear that few of the communist leaders of Eastern Europe, with whom Khrushchev hugged and Brezhnev kissed, could really be considered "loyal Leninists."
However, most of the Soviet leaders, we admit, were not like that either. Isn't that why such a frank preference began with Khrushchev, which the Kremlin gave to "loyal companions"? And this despite the fact that not only in the USSR there were those who opposed both "fellow travelers" and "capitulators".
The Soviet Union brought absolutely unprecedented sacrifices to the altar of victory in the Great Patriotic War and in the Second World War in general. However, the mediocre loss of its successful results for the state and the subsequent exodus of the USSR from Eastern Europe became unprecedented in world history.
At one time, all this would quite rightly be called surrender. For many years the USSR actually destroyed itself and “displaced itself” from Eastern Europe. This surprised even one of the most consistent anti-Sovietists, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
In his opinion, "soon after Stalin, power in Moscow and in the localities fell into the hands of less and less competent leaders. Those who took care of their own power at any cost. And ideology quickly turned into a screen for careerists and flattering officials, which were more and more ridiculed in jokes. The same criterion, naturally, soon prevailed in Eastern Europe."
In such a transformation, according to Brzezinski, "there could be no place for adherence to the communist ideology, which initially shook the USSR and many of its allies." And "it is not surprising that Moscow's involvement in the arms race, although mostly successful for the USSR, was not accompanied by appropriate measures to strengthen the civilian economy and especially its consumer segment."
Such assessments can hardly be disputed. By the way, the authorities of the PRC have repeatedly expressed themselves in the same spirit (in Beijing they are not silent about this to this day), as well as Albania, North Korea, many communist parties of developing and capitalist countries. These real communists managed to preserve their parties, most of which arose after the notorious XX Congress of the CPSU. By the way, they are still in effect today, in contrast to the fellow travelers of the CPSU who have died in the bose.
It must be recalled that Lenin spoke harshly about petty-bourgeois fellow travelers long before the October Revolution. But this biting definition gained particular popularity during the Spanish Civil War, when representatives of the most motley political forces were on the side of the republic. As a result, internal contradictions, lack of unity became almost the main reason for the defeat of "red" Spain.
We will not announce the entire list … Pole, Slovak, Bulgarian
As for the strange, to put it mildly, allies of Moscow, it is worth recalling the political and personal fate of at least a few leaders of the people's democracies from the mid-50s to the end of the 80s. Among those who did not want to be either a fellow traveler or a capitulator.
Let us recall at the same time that the names of communist leaders who were not afraid to criticize the heirs of the "leader of the peoples" and their ideological turns were hushed up both under Khrushchev and under Brezhnev. The authorities reasonably feared defeat in public polemics with such figures, and later they became of interest only to historians.
Pole
The first is Kazimierz Miyal (1910-2010), a participant in the defense of Warsaw (1939) and the Warsaw Uprising (1944), a hero of the Polish People's Republic. Since the beginning of 1948, a member of the Central Committee of the PUWP (Polish United Workers' Party), in 1949-56. he headed the office of the first president of People's Poland (1947-56) Boleslav Bierut.
As you know, Bierut died suddenly in Moscow shortly after the XX Congress of the CPSU (see "Why Polish politicians have aggravated border syndrome"). After that Miyal was immediately relegated to secondary roles, to the non-decisive economic departments. Nevertheless, the experienced politician continued to speak openly not only about the collaboration of the pre-war and émigré authorities in Poland, but also against Khrushchev's anti-Stalinism.
The policy of the Polish leadership after Bierut, like the new "thaw" course of the CPSU, Miyal openly called outright betrayal of Lenin's cause. Despite the exclusion in 1964-1965. from the Central Committee and from the PUWP itself, K. Miyal did not reconcile himself, having founded the semi-legal Stalinist-"Maoist" Communist Party of Poland and was its general secretary from 1965 to 1996. In 1966 he was forced to emigrate and until 1983 he lived in Albania and the PRC.
Miyal published his views in the media, appeared on radio programs in Beijing and Tirana in Polish and Russian, as well as at local political and ideological events. Miyal's works and performances of those years were illegally distributed and, of course, not widely circulated in Poland and the USSR.
The retired politician quite reasonably accused Moscow and Warsaw of "deliberate departure from socialism," "growing incompetence from top to bottom," "growing corruption," "ideological primitiveness." That in the aggregate, as Miyal believed, led to the well-known events in the USSR and Poland at the turn of the 80s and 90s. It is characteristic that the Orthodox Communist Party headed by Miyal (and it consisted mainly of workers and engineers and technicians) survived both the PUWP and the CPSU.
In 1983, Kazimierz Miyal illegally returned from China to Poland, where he was soon imprisoned for almost a year. Until 1988, he was under house arrest, but Marshal and President Wojciech Jaruzelski still "saved" Miyal from the KGB, who demanded his extradition. And even the new Polish authorities did not dare to repress Miyal or ban the Communist Party, which was restored in 2002.
Slovak
The fate of the same age as Miyal, the Minister of Justice and Defense of Czechoslovakia, Alexei Chepichka, turned out to be no less difficult. He also fought, was a member of the anti-Nazi underground and a prisoner of Buchenwald, managed to rise to the rank of army general. He is also a hero - Czechoslovakia, and also a doctor of law. But he died in a dilapidated nursing home on the outskirts of Prague …
The sudden (almost like that of the Pole Bierut) death of the founder of Czechoslovakia Klement Gottwald (March 14, 1953) immediately after Stalin's funeral and the campaign launched in the fall of 1956 against the "personality cult" of Gottwald led to the "demotion" of A. Chepichka, appointed to the post … the head of the State Patent of the Republic (1956-1959).
He, like K. Miyal, sharply condemned the post-Stalinist policy of the USSR and Czechoslovakia and especially the anti-Stalinist hysteria in most socialist countries. In 1963-1964. The cap was expelled from the CPC, stripped of awards and military rank, and he remained under house arrest until the end of his life. Chepichka called Operation Danube in 1968 "the discrediting of socialism and the political bankruptcy of Moscow."
Let us give a brief summary of his opinion on the above issues:
“Millions of people defeated fascism and in a matter of years restored their countries with the name of Stalin, with faith in Stalin. And suddenly his "disciples" denounced Stalin shortly after his sudden and, as it turned out, violent death. All this instantly demoralized the foreign communists, the USSR, most of the socialist countries. And soon the erosion of socialism accelerated there, increasing the lack of ideology and incompetence of the party-state systems. They also tried in vain to eliminate Stalin's authority, even defamed. At the same time, the introduction of outspoken enemies of socialism and the USSR into the governing bodies accelerated. Therefore, by the mid-1980s, socialism and the Communist parties had become only signs in those countries."
Bulgarian
A similar example can be found in the history of Bulgaria. General of the Army Vylko Chervenkov (1900-1980) was one of the leaders of the Comintern during the war years and headed the Communist Party of Bulgaria in 1949-1954. From 1950 to 1956 he was the chairman of the country's government, and then - the first deputy prime minister.
General Chervenkov condemned Khrushchev's anti-Stalinism with the same argumentation as Miyal and Chepichka; in 1956 he even dared to object … against the renaming of Stalin's city to Varna (the reverse renaming, as you can understand). In 1960, Chervenkov invited the head of Albania, Enver Hoxha, and the prime minister of the PRC, Zhou Enlai, who openly criticized Khrushchev's policies, to visit Sofia, for which he was soon dismissed.
Finally, Chervenkov was expelled from the party for his phrase in November 1961, "Removing the sarcophagus with Stalin from the Mausoleum is a shame not only for the USSR, but also for the socialist countries, the world communist movement." The Bulgarian communists had enough common sense to reinstate the ex-prime minister in the BKP in 1969, but without the right to hold any posts even at the regional level.
In the light of the events of the 21st century, Chervenkov's statements about the internal affairs of the Soviet Union are especially relevant. It was he who unequivocally warned the Soviet leadership:
“The leadership of the USSR since the XX Congress is dominated by immigrants from Ukraine, most of whom are communists only by having a party membership card. The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine further enhances its influence on Soviet politics, including economic.
The main industrial construction in the USSR, in contrast to the Stalinist period, is also in Ukraine. Therefore, there is a risk of replacing all-union interests with Ukrainian ones. And then a new, already anti-state surge of Ukrainian nationalism is inevitable, which will be inspired by the more and more influential Ukrainian authorities in Moscow."
Where the 19th year has not been forgotten
But even in this list the Hungarian "Bolsheviks" occupy a special position. The extraordinary style of leadership of the head of the Hungarian Communist Party from 1947 to Matthias Rakosi, who in 1956 failed to prevent the country from sliding into civil war, has been repeatedly written on our pages ("Acts of Nikita the Wonderworker. Part 4. The Hungarian Gambit"). But the revolutionary traditions that characterized the Hungarian workers' movement after the failed revolution of 1919 were not broken by anyone.
In Hungary, there was a very strong opposition among the Communists to the compromisers with Moscow and personally with dear Nikita Sergeevich. It was organized by Andras Hegedyus (1922-99), an associate of Rakosi, who was simply exiled to the USSR for condemning the 20th Congress of the CPSU and Khrushchev's policy towards Hungary.
Back in 1942, when hundreds of thousands of Hungarians fought on the Eastern Front, that is, on Soviet soil, Hegedyush did not want to "play a patriot" and joined the underground Hungarian Communist Party. He headed the party cell at Budapest University and soon after the war became secretary of the ruling Hungarian Labor Party. Until the uprising of 1956, he was the prime minister of Hungary, constantly insisting on an end to the anti-Stalinist campaign both in his country and in the USSR.
A. Hegedyush considered such propaganda "a crushing blow to socialism and Eastern Europe," but this could hardly have changed much. In October 1956, he narrowly escaped being shot by Hungarian militants, having managed to move to the location of Soviet troops. He was allowed to return to Hungary only two years later with the condition not to return to its state structures.
Hegedyusz taught sociology at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but his lectures regularly "slipped" ideas that could in no way be considered pro-Soviet. Thus, he condemned "the suppression of the anti-fascist underground in Hungary initiated by Janos Kadar and his participation in the liberation of the country from fascism." Some Hungarian filmmakers recall that A. Hegedyush in the mid-60s proposed to write a script for a multi-part documentary film about the anti-Nazi resistance in Hungary. But the authorities rejected this project.
The views of the former leader, his undisguised "Stalinism", of course, did not suit either Moscow or Budapest. Therefore, Hedegus was transferred to the insignificant post of deputy head of the Hungarian Statistics Committee, which did not prevent, but rather helped him to create and head the Institute of Sociology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition, he successfully taught at the Karl Marx University of Economics.
It should be noted that after the resignation of Khrushchev, trust in "Khrushchev's" Janos Kadar was very problematic in Moscow. But only up to the operation "Danube", which Kadar supported without hesitation. But Andras Hegedyus in September 1968 publicly condemned the entry of troops, not only Soviet, but the entire Warsaw Pact in Prague. In addition, he advocated a collective dialogue of the pro-Soviet socialist countries with the PRC and Albania.
Apparently, Hegedyush, who had been unexpectedly pulled out of disgrace before, himself put an end to his quite possible dais. Indeed, many researchers of those events do not exclude that it was his candidacy in Moscow that was considered as an alternative to Kadar.
Then, in 1968, Hegedyus resigned from all posts, and in 1973 he was expelled from the ruling HSWP: Kadar was in a hurry to get rid of a dangerous competitor. And in that 1973 A. Hegedyush established contacts with the Pole K. Miyal and started organizing the Orthodox Communist Party in Hungary. The city of Stalinvaros was planned as the site for the party's headquarters, where opponents of Kadar did not want to recognize the reverse renaming into Dunaujvaros.
The primary cell of the new party consisted of 90% of Rakosi's associates, as well as workers and engineers of the Stalinvarosh metallurgical plant. Its members proposed a public discussion with the USSR and the CPSU, distributing political and ideological materials from the PRC and Albania in the country. But the authorities promptly stopped the "repeat" of Miyal's party in Hungary.
And yet, in 1982, the already very elderly Hegedyusz was reinstated as a teacher at the University of Economics. Marx. But soon the stubborn communist Hegedyus again began to condemn "the creeping introduction of capitalism in Hungary", for which he was once again fired from the University (1989).
In the early 90s, he again tried to create a pro-Stalinist Hungarian Communist Party, but the special services again preempted the project. Although already without consequences for Hegedyusz: the authorities considered the primary vindictiveness of the Hungarians in connection with the Soviet invasion in 1956, and not their sympathy for the Communists, it is not so important, orthodox or not.
