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From Socialist Worker, No. 98, 23 November 1968, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
After Russia’s brutal suppression of Czechoslovakia, the heretics of the Eastern Bloc are looking for shelter from the cold blast of Russia’s displeasure.
Rumania, whose westward-pointing trade relations and general independence of Moscow in foreign affairs has earned the Kremlin’s dislike, has begun nervously to get back in line.
Yugoslavia has remained defiant as in 1948 and Albania, China’s tiny supporter in Europe, has begun, oddly enough, to edge closer Tito, whose acceptance by Khrushchev back into the fold, precipitated Albania’s flight into the arms of Chairman Mao.
How real is the danger that Russia will consolidate with force what she cannot win with words?
Last month Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre and others addressed a letter to The Times in which they expressed their fears of Russian military intervention in the Balkans.
The formal withdrawal of Albania from the Warsaw Pact following the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the exchanges of military personnel between Bulgaria and Moscow and the Bulgarian press’s claim that ‘the turn of other countries will come,’ all point in one direction they said.
The letter concluded that any invasion of the dissident Balkan Powers by Russia and her satellites, East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary, would be a betrayal of ‘socialist internationalism’. But then we know how much store the Kremlin puts by that.
What would Russia gain from such acts? None of these states are so central to her defences as is Czechoslovakia but the Czech invasion was primarily to crush the spread of liberal ideas.
Albania it is true is a thorn in the flesh of the Russian bureaucracy as Tirana Radio constantly puts forward the Maoist line and denounces the ‘revisionists’.
Yugoslavia has her own problems – a slow growth rate and dissident students who, with workers’ support, are urging ‘left’ solutions such as the scaling down of wide differences in income and privilege. But President Tito has massive support for his defiance of Russia.
Stalin himself hesitated to invade the one country in Europe where the resistance had liberated itself from the Nazi invaders and where fierce patriotism combined with rugged terrain, made conventional warfare hazardous.
President Tito has said:‘Whoever tries to jeopardise our independence and sovereignty will encounter an iron wall of our peoples.’
Preparations have been made in the North for defensive guerrilla operations against the invaders. Reservists have been called up and arms have been distributed to the workers, who are now being trained in militia units.
A second line of defence is that NATO (i.e. the United States) could scarcely stand by and see the balance of power in the Mediterranean, already tipping in the Russians’ favour, change completely with their possession of the Adriatic Coast.
There is no doubt that although many of the economic ‘reforms’ instituted by Tito have meant the growth of a ‘red bourgeoisie’ opposed by old partisans and left-wing youth alike, the regime is immensely popular. Nothing could break the front of national unity against an invasion and any attempt to annex Macedonia by the Bulgarians under the guise of ‘defending socialism’ would be met with fierce and unremitting struggle by the whole Yugoslav nation.
Albania, exposed by any attack on Yugoslavia would rather ally with Tito than fall under Moscow’s control. Enver Hoxha, the mini-Stalin of this tiny mountainous state, has been conferring with his Chinese allies about what they could do to aid him in the event of a Russian invasion.
While Radio Tirana echoes Peking’s rabid denunciations of the Czechoslovak invasion, it has fallen silent on the crimes of ‘Titoist revisionism’.
Rumania is in the most exposed position of all, flanked by a hostile Bulgaria and the USSR itself (which annexed a large part of Bessarabia after the second World War). Party boss Ceausescu has let it be known that has is willing to renew the Treaty of Friendship with the USSR, but his initial condemnation of the Czech invasion still stands.
An armed militia has been created in the factories and the military alerted. General Vaile, the army chief has said: ‘All our military, from privates to generals, are ready at their combat posts (to defend) the freedom of our ancestral lands.’
A Rumanian deputy made the bitterest observation on the invasion: ‘Our minds cannot comprehend, and even less can they accept, the fact that five socialist countries have embarked on an armed intervention behind the screen of slogans about the defence of socialism, slogans jammed in the ears of all mankind by the roar of armoured cars.’
The Rumanians who were not long ago calling for the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact now face the possibility of intervention. While the ‘leading role of the party’ has never been questioned the economy has been ‘liberalised’ from the top downwards and is today undoubtedly booming.
But as in Czechoslovakia, these economic reforms are designed to gear industry to meet the demands of the world market – ownership and control are still vested in the bureaucratic ruling class. The workers have no say.
The monolith of Eastern Europe has been cracked apart and the remaining heretics may now stand or fall together. For the moment all the internal contradictions of these state capitalist regimes have been downgraded by the single great dilemma created by the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The Russians, however, are divided on the course to take. The Kremlin hawks have won for the moment in Czechoslovakia, at the cost of alienating many Western and foreign parties.
None of the other heretics represents so dramatic a threat to Russian dominance in Eastern Europe, but in the long run can they survive if the Russians see in these divergencies an ultimate threat to their own internal as well as external security? For the moment they are probably safe for none are so strategically placed as Czechoslovakia and they are unlikely to allow even the limited form of free speech that Dubcek engineered to win a mass base for his power struggle with Novotny.
The Russians are sitting on a time bomb which may explode in Prague or Budapest, Belgrade or even Kiev. The repression and the terror of Stalinism cannot be applied to the sophisticated societies of Eastern Europe today without provoking the workers and students into open revolt.
For the moment force and fraud have worked at the price of alienating world opinion and, in particular, communist world opinion. The clumsiness of the Russian response should act as a reminder that great power is still wielded in the world by Stalin’s heirs however historically bankrupt they are.
Eastern Europe is pregnant with the promise of a new order, socialism and justice, marxism and humanism all are struggling to free themselves from the corruption of the past. As socialists we must stand by those who call for an end to Moscow’s diktat and the inequalities of state capitalism.
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