Trotskyism Today no. 9

TROTSKYISM

REVOLUTION

TODAY ›

(Top) Stalin (above) Kruschev

POLITICAL

1956 Almost exactly 20 years ago today, at dawn on the 4th November 1956, Soviet tanks started their savage bombardment of Budapest. During the second Russian 'intervention' in Hungary over twenty thousand died. The man who ordered it was Nikita Kruschev, symbol of the 'liberal' turn of Moscow Stalinism.

In February 1956 his "secret speech selectively denounced Stalin's crimes. In October, he agreed to a 'new style' leadership, under Gomulka, in Poland. But in Hungary he confirmed to the hilt the Trotskyist analysis that, behind the changing facades, Stalinism remained a regime of brutal counter-revolution.

We publish here an article by ADAM WESTOBY which draws heavily on material dealing with the post-war history of Stalinism, to be published in book form next year by the Workers Socialist League.

1956 forms a turning point in post-war Malenkov never held a secure grip. Before history and particularly in the development of Krisher definitively in early him ousted 1955 it is clear that. the Stalinist leaders of Stalinism. In the events which exploded in Hungary and Poland - though in quite differ- Eastern European states were often interced- ent forms - during the autumn of that year ing not with a unified leadership in Moscow, one can see the main antagonistic social forces but with leaders of opposing currents.

which produce the crisis of post-war Stalinist The Korean armistice (on July 1953) was rule in Eastern Europe. not a sufficient easing of the Cold War to A major part of the background to them secure Malenkov's position; it was Kruschev was the changes in Moscow. Malenkov headed who to lead the steps in detente of the leadership the "collective which late 1950's. stepped uncertainly into Stalin's shoes in 1953, but But Kruschev removed Malenkov with the which could in no sense succeed him.

aid of Stalin's Foreign Minister, Molotov, the 'hard' representative of Stalinism.

What Kruschev's rise to power in 1954-5 showed was the way in which the internal mechanics of Stalinism reflected its overall position as a regime of balance.

Kruschev used Molotov's support to rid himself of Malenkov, then Molotov himself was removed in the drive to provide a new face. Kruscher's Kremlin had to perform its balancing act in the post-war period, not on a single platform, but on a set of adjacent national platforms in Europe, platforms which had to be held in step, but needed at the same time some freedom to diverge in answering their own immediate pressures and crises.

INSULATION

Each state moved, to te move for see may ter relation Stalin's death contact between the Stalin- ist heads of different Eastern European states and the insulation also such forms, banning certain public statements of 'fraternal' parties in the press of their next door neighbours. (1) The contrast between Hungary and Poland in 1956 sharply illustrates the pragmatic fashion in which Kruschev tried to secure his rule within the immediate local situation.

Nagy in Budapest was deposed (and later executed) when he found himself the figure- head of a revolutionary movement he could not control; Gomulka was tolerated in Warsaw No 9, 3rd November, 1976. 5p.

THEORETICAL SUPPLEMENT

TO SOCIALIST PRESS

Hungary 1956 - armed workers in the streets.

because he promised, while allowing reforms, to ensure that anti-Moscow movements were held in check and that Poland remained with- in the overall military and economic frame- work most important of all Gomulka undertook to isolate the struggles of Polish workers from the Hungarian revolution.

tangled machinations which led to the Hungarian 'October' of October-Novem- ber 1956. really began in the summer of 1953 when Moscow installed Imre Nagy as replace- ment to the hard-line Stalinist Rakosi number one in Budapest, but left Rakosi with an intact opposition, based on his leadership of the Party and the support of the Party apparatchiks. Nagy's qualifications as the Prime Minister to announce the New Course intended to 'detuse the growing tension in Hungary, were those of political ambiguity. He had opposed the forced march to collectivisation in 1949, and been demoted for it.

MOSCOW-TRAINED

But was a long-standing Stalinist, trained in Moscow, and it was he who deliver- ed the obituary eulogy in the Hungarian Parliament the day after Stalin's death.

He had, also, the relatively rare 'advantage' among top Hungarian Stalinists of not being Jewish, But Nagy's first period in office lasted onl up to the fall of Malenkov at the end of 1954 By Spring 1955 Rakosi had ousted him not Prime Minister but only even from the had retained as Professor position he Agriculture! During the whole of Nagy's period in office Rakosi had conducted an energetic, if veiled, campaign to obstruct and sabotage his policies. In effect the "collective' leadership in Moscow covertly warring among them- selves, played one string against another in Budanest But although Rakosi was back in office, he was not firmly there. He was unable simply to strangle the forces released during the Nagy interlude. Not the least of these were the tens of thousands of political prisoners released from internment of camps, many them Communists, purged before Stalin's death, whom Nagy had restored to responsible state and Party jobs.

EXPELLED

Nagy himself was expelled from the Party (November 1955) but he went on immediate- ly to organise a loose opposition, including many Party members, around the positions on 'national communism' he was preparing. (His

Page 2 'On Communism' , addressed to the Hungarian Party leadership and Kruschev, was completed around June 1956). Rakosi was not in a position to arrest Nagy,. nor could he suppress the seething the (originally -oppositional discussions in literary and academic) "Petofi Circles' of the Communist youth organisations in Budapest, which at this stage drew in mainly writers, intellectuals and dissident Communists.

The situation was driven forward as details filtered through of Krusche's revelations of Stalin's crimes and frame-ups, in his 'secret speech' to the 20th Congress of the CPSU.: At the end of March Rakosi reluctantly announced rehabilitation those the murdered (under his supervision, as everyone well knew) in the Rajk trials of 1949.

Trying to retrieve a slipping situation, he accompanied further economic concessions, and the release of other political prisoners, by violent press attacks on the literary circles who were opposing him. But there were further blows.

'STRIKE

In the last days of June a mass strike of workers in Poznan signalled the beginning of the political revolution in Poland. And in June, too, a further joint declaration between Tito and Kruschev approving different roads to socialism' the process of spelled out raprochement between Moscow and Belgrade which had been under way since 1954.

fraternal ties' If Yugoslavia could have with the USSR which did not involve KGB dictatorship, why not Hungary? It was the living character being taken by this question which drove Rakosi to prepare the arrest of Nagy, and hundreds of his supporters in early July. But other - equally Stalinist - elements in the Central Committee drew back from this step, and appealed to the Soviet leadership.

To the accompaniment of Tito's public approval (2) Mikoyan flew to Budapest on July 17th, removed Rakosi and replaced him with Erno Gero (known, among other things, as one of the GPU agents principally respon- sible for the murder of anti-Stalinists during the Spanish Revolution!)

RESIGNED

Rakosi (suffering reportedly from hyper- tension) resigned "for reasons of health' Yet the new head rested on the same shaky feet - the secret police (the Hungarian/ AVH organised under the direct supervision of the KGB) and the threat of Soviet armed backing. Increasingly the mass of the working class gathered behind the inchoate, largely democratic and nationalist demands of the pro-Nagy opposition. By the time Gero readmitted Nagy to the Party (October 14th) the time for reshuffling the pack was past. When the government, having vaccillated, decided to prohibit the mass demonstration of October 22nd (called - among other things - to support the Polish 'reform' movement) it was impotent to act.

100,000 marched, behind photographs of Nagy - and Lenin! As news came through of Gero attacking broadcast by those who "slander the Soviet Union' sections of the demonstrators moved to the Radio Station, where they were met by bullets from the

AVH

As fighting spread through the city, soviet tanks moved in. By the morning of the 23rd • Budapest was paralysed by a general strike..

FIGHTING

Widespread fighting, involving Red Army units, and strikes had spread to the provinces.

And. Nagy was back in the government, as Prime Minister! A short article cannot give a factual Stalin with Churchill and t Stalinist cartoon of Tito prior to 1955.

account of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (3) but some key elements must be drawn out. The treacherous role of the government figureheaded by Nagy, from October 23rd to the second Soviet intervention on November clearly than any other 4th, underlines more single event in post-war history, the correct- ness of the Trotskyist position that only new, communist parties will be able to lead the political revolution in the deformed workers' states. While Nagy prevaricated on the key issue - the withdrawal of Soviet forces - the mass enthusiasm for him subsided into a cautious tolerance for his cabinet which included many figures from the 'old regime".

councils sprang up, first in the Workers' chill and Roosevelt at Yalta 1945, dividing up Europe

TROTSKYISM

Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968.

provincial towns. They began to organise local economic life, yet still looked to the govern- national political solution.

for ment Temporarily the government retreated.

NEW GOVERNMENT

By October 31st Soviet troops had disappeared from the streets. On that day Nagy formed a new government with a majority of non-Communist members and Hungary's *neutrality' announced (ie as between the Warsaw Pact and NATO).

But behind his back was being prepared an international line-up which to give was Kruschev a free hand to suppress the political revolution. Earlier in October Eisenhower had sent private assurances to Moscow (through Tito) that NATO would not intervene against Soviet forces in Hungary. Tito himself had agreed to stand aside. By October 22nd Kruschev had accepted Gomulka the chosen leader the as "moderate" majority at the top of the Polish hierarchy, on the understanding that he would political the military and alliance preserve with the Kremlin, and restrain support for the Hungarian revolution. On October Britain and France 30th announced the Suez invasion by a joint ultimatum to Egypt. In all probability the final Soviet decision to intervene was made on November 1st.

'BANDITRY"

That morning, Kadar - ruler of Hungary to this day - made a most demagogic speech against the "political banditry' of the Rakosi clique. That night disappeared from Budapest. He was to return, escorted by tanks. continued Soviet movements army throughout country, and at dawn on the artillery bombard- November 4th a massive launched against key points in ment was followed immediately by assaults in Budapest, centres. Little infantry was the provincial used Shaken by the fraternisation that had begun to develop between Hungarians and Red Army infantrymen during the October intervention, Kruschev and Co. set about the Hungarian revolution at arm's length.

Nagy and his supporters in government fled to the Yugoslav embassy, whence they were TSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 3rd November, 1976.

Tito with Kruschev 1955. before long handed over to the KGB and eventual execution. Kadar returned to leac Peasants' Workers' Revolutionary and Government' But it took two weeks, and an estimated twenty thousand dead, before fighting ende in Hungary. And Kadar's puppet regime found itself obliged to negotiate for months with the Workers' Councils, and with the strike move ments that continued well into January.

Even when the government, backed by 200,000 Russian troops, felt strong enough to arrest the delegates of the Budapest Central Workers' Council on December l1th the was all but paralysed by a general capital strike the following day.

It would be impossible to understand the breaking of the political revolution and counter-revolution in Hungary without at least sketching the 1955-6 reform movement in Poland, which closely paralleled develop ments in Hungary: The fact that they came to a head at virtually the same moment (late October 1956) was far from an accident; it expressed the 'permanent' combined character of the revolution in Eastern Europe.

The hesitant growth of a (largely demo cratic and nationalist) opposition in 1955 was pushed forward by Gomulka's release from jail late in that year. The Poznan strike (June 1956) was put down by army action, supported, among others, by Tito and Togliatti, (liberal' leader of the Italian Communist Party), but strikes spread in other towns, bringing large sections the working class behind the radical students and intellectuals.

The repercussions of Poznan split the Polish CP leadership. The old-style Stalinist (Natolin) faction favoured political repression, wage concessions, 'detente' with the Catholic Church and fewer Jews in top posts.

A looser grouping (round Ochals) proposed continuing political concessions, but not - at this stage - the restoration of Gomulka as being too sensitive in relations with the USSR.

WORKERS' COUNCILS

In October, Workers' Councils began to be set up in numerous workplaces.

These, most of all, brought the crisis at the top of the Party to a climax. Ochals switched support to Gomulka, and rearranged under his the Politbureau • was leadership on October 17th.

An attempted coup by the Natolin faction was followed by initial mobilisation of Red Army forces within Poland. But Gomulka and Ochals threatened, in effect, to resist with the Polish national armed forces, and Kruschev then retreated. On October 21st a Central Committee meeting confirmed Gomulka's new Polit- bureau. Trading on his reputation as a victim of Stalinism Gomulka set about restoring the situation to 'normal'. His first task was to restrain those who wanted. a second front' against the Soviet speeches intervention his in Hungary; condemned all forms of anti-Soviet agitation "rabble-rousing. gradually, he economic con cessions mixture manoeuvres, of their power.

SUBORDINATED

Even so, it was not until early 1958 that they were formally subordinated to the party and the official trade unions.

In Hungary Kruschev used tanks, and

TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 3rd November, Kadar, in Poland, Gomulka. (4) But the purpose was the same. And among those who recognised it wwere Cardinal Wyszynski and the CIA-controlled Radio Free Europe, both of whom urged support for Gomulka in the elections of January 1957 History lasts a long time, but it is made in The 1956 events form weeks or hours. a crucible in which can be seen crystallising many of the basic political elements of post- war Stalinism. Every post-war eruption of the political revolution has demonstrated that to break the Stalinist dictatorship, their police and their monopoly of of essential organs state power, nothing short of a revolutionary party will serve. Yet in every serious struggle - Germany in 1956, in 1953, Poland and Hungary Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1968, Poland again in 1970-71 and in 1976 - the working class has found itself tied, by the absence of its own independent party, to the bureau- cracy's offers of reforms, or to one section of promised divided which bureaucracy reforms and 'democratisation'

'SPLITS'

And as far as the growing 'splits' within the Stalinist movement world concerned, are there is not a single 'opposition' leader who has fought for mass, independent, working class support, or to draw clearly the political divide between the workers?

movement and the bureaucracy. This is true of Tito, of Nagy and of Gomulka. And, more recently and in very different situations, it is equally true of Castro, of Dubcek and of Causescu.

The common factor in the political roads they have travelled is their attempts to acheive a new, particular, national balance of forces or feasible to the bureau- favourable more and the social strata which support it cracy within their own nation state.

Nowhere is the principle of 'non-inter- ference' in the internal affairs of other states more rigorously observed than by the native bureaucracies of Eastern .

Europe when the essentials of the state power of Soviet Stalinism are involved. Neither Tito, Gomulka, Nagy or Dubcek ever came near to appealing to the workers of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for support against the Kremlin - on the contrary one of their first concerns was to reassure Moscow that a compromise would be feasible since they would do no such thing.

TITO'S BACKING

Tito's mild disapproval of the first Soviet invasion of Hungary gave way to unambiguous backing for the Soviet Army's artillery on November 4th. (5) The first great division in the Stalinist "monolith' healed with the blood of was Budapest's proletariat. The Chinese leadership seems to have pursued - though even less publicly — a line similar to Tito's. reportedly appealed to Mao during Kruschev's visit to Warsaw on October 19th-20th, and Mao replied that China would not agree to a Soviet military intervention in Poland. ovember, 1976. Mass meeting in Budapest 1956.

A Chinese broadcast of November 1st contained a veiled warning against 'chauvinism by a big country' (6). But the Chinese Com- munist Party leadership gave full backing to the shelling of Budapest on November 4th. (7) Nonetheless, the ascension of Kruschev (in which the 'settlement' of Hungary and Poland formed a decisive step just as much as the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the ousting of his rivals) marks a qualitative state in the development of post-war Stalinism, and it is important to define its character.

'Kruschevism' signified the recognition by Soviet Stalinism that state power in the post- war workers' states could not be exercised direct from Moscow and that - depending on national circumstances - they would have to act in alliance with the new national bureau- cracies, rather than simply treating them as their puppets. Mao with Rumania's Ceaucescu Soviet military and political power was to set the limits and the general lines rather than the detail of national policies. But under- pinning the growing 'independence of the national bureaucracies was the Soviet Army, protecting them from imperialism and, more directly, their own working class.

This 'devolution' of Soviet state resulted partly working relationship which kept the general 'Soviet bloc" intact but also embraced the two most independent bureaucracies - the Yugo- slav and the Chinese.

LIMITS

And on a more fundamental level it reflected pattern of. autarchic _ like the "socialist' economic development after 1947-8 - the reactionary political limits within which the European workers states had been formed - on the mould of the capitalist states which with the aim of serving preceded them, and the interests of a narrow bureaucratic caste of • utterly opposed to those of the masses Eastern Europe. The Hungarian revolution was the breaking point of this antagonism. For twenty years it has been slandered by the paid liars of inter- national Stalinism as a conspiracy organised by the CIA, the Vatican and Horthyites.

The workers of Hungary replied to these slanders almost before they were uttered. As Kruschev poured shells on Budapest, posters appeared on the walls of its main industrial suburb: "The forty thousand aristocrats and fascists of the Czepel works strike on."

The spectre of their hatred and contempt haunts every bureaucrat in Eastern Europe to this day. 1) See Nagy, Imre On Communism, page 240 for examples. 2) To be exact Tito approved Rakosi's removal, but witheld his open approval on the very eve of the Gero until October, Budapest. first fighting in Given the inflamable state of Eastern Europe during the summer of 1956 Tito was in a position to drive a hard bargain over 'reconciliation' with the Kremlin. 3) Among many accounts perhaps the best are Hungarian Tragedy by Peter Fryer (Daily Worker correspondent in Budapest at the time, who broke with the CP and joined the Trotskyist movement), Pologne-Hongrie 1956 by (eds.) Jean-Jacques Marie and Balczs Nagy supporters of the OCI. (1966) both then Among liberal accounts: F. Fejto Budapest T Meray Thirteen Days That 1956 (1966), Zinner Shook the Kremlin, (1959) and P.

Revolution in Hungary 1962. Chris Harman's Eastern Bureaucracy and Revolution in Europe (1974) written from the standpoint of state capitalism, contains many interesting quotations. 4) A subordinate reason which may well have reduced support in the top echelons of Polish Communist Party for Soviet the Page 3 Budapest after the Stalinist bombardmen Tanks in Poznan 1956 military action is the exceptionally deadl character of Stalin's purges in that party. I 1938 the Polish CP was dissolved on th pretext of being ridden with police agents an "Trotskyites'. Almost all its leading member were called to Moscow and killed; virtuall the only ones to escape were those who wer in the jails of the Polish dictatorship.

5) Tito provided the first demonstratio that those Stalinists who have organised th revolutionary destruction of capitalism i their own right find no difficulty in crossin class lines in the interests of intra-Stalinis 'diplomacy'. [See Tito's speech at Pula o November 11th, (quoted in Zinner op cit. 1 527) where he condemned Nagy and backe that which Kadar as is most honest i Hungary']. Twelve years later Ho Chi-Min and Castro gave belated - but definite - support to the 1968 invasion of Czecho slovakia. 6) Radio Peking, November Ist., 1956.

December the Chinese leadership accurately - justification of the Hungaria intervention to a cautious defence of Stalin record (see More on the Historical Expressio of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (29t December 1956).

AN OLD BOLSHEVIK

Page 4 We reprint below an Open Letter of resignatio veteran member Arnosht Kolman (58 years' While we do not necessarily endorse everything in attempting a full political analysis of the Stalinist conspicuously silent on the period of the 1930s), attacks the bureaucracy not as a 'new ruling class' Socialists would have us believe - but, in line with of the Party" Kolman has broken from the bureaucracy but i the gains of the October Revolution. For these rea reflect also the unspoken feelings of considerabl Union) is worthy of serious study by Trotskyists.

To: L.I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, Kremlin, Moscow. i wish to inform you that I am leaving the Soviet Communist Party. I am 84 and have been a party member for 58 years.

I joined its ranks in order to fight for social justice, for a happy future for mankind. Now, after long and painful reflection, I have come to this difficult decision.

I was born in Prague and came to Russia as a prisoner of war during the First World War.

During Kerensky's rule I was held in solitary confinement for six months for anti-war propaganda, and I was freed by the October Revolution. As a Red Army soldier, I fought on four fronts for the establishment of Soviet power.

* In the 1920's I worked illegally in Germany, was a member of the Central Com- mittee of the German Communist Party. I was sentenced to five years' hard labour, but after half a year's solitary I was freed in exchange (with the Soviet Union].

COMINTERN

Afterwards I held responsible ideological posts in the Comintern, in the Central Com- mittee, in the Moscow party committee and in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

I was also elected member of the Moscow party control commission and the Moscow party district commission. I knew Lenin personally, worked with Krupskaya, Kruschev and many others. During the Second World War I worked in the Political Command of the Soviet Army in charge of units fomenting disaffection in the ranks of enemy troops. It was at this very time that my sister was burnt in a gas oven in one of Hitler's concen- tration camps, while my brother, one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Communist Youth League, was murdered by Stalin.

In 1945, I was appointed head of the Czechoslovak Communist Party's propaganda department in Prague, but after three years I was arrested and shipped back to Moscow, where I spent three and a half years without trial - three of them in solitary confinement - in the Lubianka jail.

EXILED

During this stretch, my wife and small daughter were exiled to Ulyanovsk, where they lived in appalling conditions.

After my rehabilitation, I was appointed director of the Institute of Philosophy in Prague. Since my retirement in 1963 I have

RESIGNS

We reprint below an Open Letter of resignation from the Soviet Communist Party from membership) to Party leader Leonid Brezhnev.

While we do not necessarily endorse everything in the letter, and it stops a long way short of attempting a full political analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union (remaining conspicuously silent on the period of the 1930s), the letter is particularly interesting in that it attacks the bureaucracy not as a 'new ruling class' - as the state capitalists in the International Socialists would have us believe - but, in line with Trotsky's analysis, as "the privileged castes Kolman has broken from the bureaucracy but not from socialism, and at no point attacks For these reasons his principled statement (which must the Soviet been living in Moscow as a pensioner.

After Kruschev's revelations about the bloody crimes of Stalin, euphemistically described as the 'personality cult', I began to understand how deeply distorted the Soviet Party Communist and Soviet power had and that I, as a party member must become, bear my share of responsibility for this.

TURNING POINT

However, 1968 was the real turning point for me, when I had occasion to observe the *Prague Spring" with ana see eyes what enthusiasm the united people of WIll Czechoslovakia backed the party to rekindle socialist ideals and the fight for socialism with a human face.

When your tanks and armies occupied Czechoslovakia subjecting it to your political Diktat and merciless economic exploitation - in short turning it into your colony - I lost any illusions I may have had about the nature of your regime. I understood that the Soviet Communist Party had long since ceased to be a political party, that it had been transformed into a mutual society for the early fulfilment of the Five Year Plan. Its members, congresses, even the Central Committee, have virtually no influ- ence over the shaping of the party's policies, which are determined from your high ruling perch. And in any case, about what sort of social- ism can one talk in the Soviet Union when the place of the former capitalist and landowner exploiting classes has been taken by the privi- leged castes of the party?

WEALTH

They are drowning in wealth, live isolated from the people, above them and contempt- folk, not wishing to and

LOUS

incapable of understanding their needs and sufferings. Of what sort of socialism can öne talk when you are continuing Stalin's totalitarian dictatorship within the country and a great power policy abroad? The Soviet Union lacks the most elemen- rights: of free tary democratic instead elections there voting for candidates 1S imposed from above: there political life; strikes are forbidden and the traue umons are subservient to state interests.

political discussions are forbidden and every- thing by universal censorship; s Covered information is subject to the interests of lying propaganda. Basic human rights are crudely trampled on

TROTSKYISM T

in the Soviet Union: dissidents are harshly persecuted, tens of thousands of them are languishing in jails, concentration camps and psychiatric jail hospitals, many being punished for their religious beliefs only.

In the sixtieth year of Soviet power there are no elementary intellectual freedoms and there is no freedom for the creative artists...

As far the nationalities policy as condemned, the history of the Sodiet Union is nothing uninterrupted territorial annexations, 'unification' forced of foreign lands, subjection and discrimination against many nationalities in the country, among them the Crimean Tatars, the Volga Germans, Jews, the Baltic nations, the people.

ot the Caucasus and Central Asia, etc. This makes the Soviet Union no less 'a prison of the nations' than Tsarist Russia was.

While preaching about 'international detente' and 'peaceful coexistence' the Soviet Union is in fact amassing at an increasingly fast rate nuclear weapons and rockets, preparing new generations of mass destruction weapons and is preparing for aggressive wars.

It keeps vast armies outside its frontiers, builds more and more military bases in Europe, Asia and Africa, and is preparing tor the occupation of Romania and Yugoslavia.

Under the "selfless aid' to. the guise of national liberation movements and develop- ing countries, the Soviet Union is carrying out ceaseless attempts to infiltrate their ranks and establish its military and political overlordship in various corners of the earth; it is also supplying arms and providing military support for most reactionary regimes and international terrorists. The political and social structures of the country are in a state of acute stagnation. The Soviet Union has one of the most conservative regimes in the world, with an aging leader- KYISM TODAY, Wednesday 3rd November 1976, ship... It is perfectly logical that under such circumstances and as a result of the colossal expenditure on arms, the sustenance of the vast KGB network and of the party and state apparatus, the country's economic situation grows worse and worse. Inflation and rising prices, officially denied, are accelerating.

Productivity in industry is extremely low, industrial production is of poor quality and, judged by its technical parameters, it falls way behind similar production in the West.

And is it not a tragedy that 60 years after the Revolution the agriculture of Europe's former granary is unable to produce enough bread, meat, fish and even potatoes to satisfy the needs of its own population?

Can one simply ignore all these facts with- out drawing conclusion from them?

I am not going to deny the successes achieved by the Soviet Union in ending illiter- acy, in the fields of education, science, tech- nology and in securing a better living standard for a considerable section of the population.

But man does not live by bread alone.

A human being must be able to say aloud what he thinks, write down what he thinks read what takes his fancy, choose his place of abode freely, and go wherever he wants.

AFRAID

But we are once again afraid; just as under The Russian Revolution - betrayed by Stalinism.

Stalin, we hide our manuscripts, stop trusting one another, write meaningless letters for fear of the censors and sever links with friends...

Isn't it inhuman to take away children from parents, block the reunion of families, deny exit visas to visit relations abroad and to deny the families of political prisoners the right to see their loved ones for years and even to write to eachother? Can one live amid such conditions? And how long can one live like this? I can no longer go on living like this.

My decision to leave the Communist Party does in no way mean that I will be abandon- ing the ideals of socialism with which I became acquainted in 1910 and which have since constituted the main substance of my long life. On the contrary I have come to the firm conclusion that my staying in the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party would amount to a betrayal of the ideals of social justice, human- ism and the building of a new and more human society, for the attainment of which I have strived despite my mistakes and the errors of my ways, and shall go on striving to the end of my days. Academician Arnhost (Ernest) Kolman.