[As the crisis in the SWP continues, it might
be worthwhile considering the crisis in the British Communist Party
in the mid-1950s.
Naturally, the content of the two crises differ
considerably. In the 1950s the issue facing the CP was the nature of
the newly-installed regimes in eastern Europe, culminating in the
reaction to the Hungarian Revolution. The SWP has always rejected
Stalinism and its predecessor organisation backed the Hungarian
rebels without hesitation, and so this issue would never have been a
problem.
But, nonetheless, it may be argued there are
parallels between the CP then and the SWP now.
I therefore present to you the introductory
chapter of Peter Fryer's 1956 book, Hungarian
Tragedy, so you may judge for yourself.]
There are really two Hungarian tragedies.
There is the immediate and heart-breaking tragedy
of a people's revolution – a mass uprising against tyranny and
poverty that had become insupportable – being crushed by the army
of the world's first Socialist State.
I was in Hungary when this happened. I saw for
myself that the uprising was neither organised nor controlled by
fascists or reactionaries, though reactionaries were undeniably
trying to gain control of it. I saw for myself that the Soviet troops
who were thrown into battle against 'counter-revolution' fought in
fact not fascists or reactionaries but the common people of Hungary:
workers, peasants, students and soldiers. The army that liberated
Hungary in 1944-5 from German fascist rule, that chased away the
collaborating big landowners and big capitalists and made possible
the land reform and the beginning of Socialist construction – this
army now had to fight the best sons of the Hungarian people.
At least 20,000 Hungarians dead; at least 3,500
Russians dead; tens of thousands wounded; the devastation of large
areas of Budapest; mass deportations of Hungarian patriots; hunger
verging on starvation, widespread despair and the virtual breakdown
of economic life; a burning hatred in the hearts of the people
against Russia and all things Russian that will last at least a
generation: these are the bitter fruits of the Soviet leaders'
decision to intervene a second time.
There is another tragedy too. It, too, is written
in blood on the streets and squares of Budapest. It, too, can be read
in the lines of suffering long-endured on the faces of Hungarian
citizens, in the forlorn gaze of the children who press their noses
against the windows of western cars and beg for chocolates, in the
tears of men and women who have been promised much and given little.
In the long-term tragedy of the absolute failure of the Hungarian
Communist Party, after eight years in complete control of their
country, to give the people either freedom from want or freedom from
fear.
Most Hungarian, while they do not want capitalism
back or the landowners back, today detest, and rightly so, the régime
of poverty, drabness and fear that has been presented to them as
Communism. The responsibility for this lies squarely on the shoulders
of the Communist leaders, and principally on those of Rákosi,
Farkas and Gerő, who promised
the people an earthly paradise and gave them a police state as
repressive and as reprehensible as the pre-war fascist dictatorship
of Admiral Horthy. The workers were exploited and bullied and lied
to. The peasants were exploited and bullied and lied to. The writers
and artists were squeezed into the most rigid of intellectual
strait-jackets – and bullied and lied to. To speak one's mind, to
ask an awkward question, even to speak about political questions in
language not signposted with the safe, familiar monolithic jargon,
was to run the risk of falling foul of the ubiquitous secret police.
The purpose of this highly-paid organisation was ostensibly to
protect the people from attempts at the restoration of capitalism,
but in practice it protected the power of the oligarchy. To this end
it used the most abominable methods, including censorship, thought
control, imprisonment, torture and murder. The tragedy was that such
a régime was presented as a
Socialist society, as a 'people's democracy'. As a first step on the
way to Communism.
The honest rank-and-file Communists, inside whose
party the reign of terror was in full force, saw their ideals and
principles violated, their sacrifices abused, their faith in human
beings rejected in favour of a soulless bureaucracy which
mechanically copied the Soviet model and which stifled the creative
initiative of a people that wanted to build Socialism. The honest
Communists, inside and outside Rákosi's
jails, saw their party brought into disrepute, their ideology made to
stink in the nostrils of the common people to whose elevation they
had dedicated their lives. No wonder they joined in the people's
revolution; no wonder they helped to resist the Soviet invasion.
There is yet another tragedy with which this book
must deal to some extent. But it is a British, not a Hungarian
tragedy. It is the tragedy that we British Communists who visited
Hungary did not admit, even to ourselves, the truth about what was
taking place there, that we defended tyranny with all our heart and
soul. Till the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party
half-lifted the bandage from our eyes we admitted what we called
certain 'negative aspects' of the building of Socialism. We were
confident that healthy criticism and self-criticism would enable
these 'negative aspects' to be overcome. After the Twentieth Congress
we allowed ourselves to speak of 'errors', 'abuses' 'violations of
Soviet legality' and sometimes, greatly daring, 'crimes'.but we were
still the victims of our own eagerness to see arising the bright new
society that we so desperately wanted to see in our lifetime, and
that our propaganda told us was being built.
When, in the Daily Worker
last August, I revealed that the standard of living in Hungary had
fallen since 1949, and ventured some mild criticism of certain
inessential features of Hungarian life, the paper came under heavy
fire from Communist Party functionaries. The Surrey district
secretary complained that such articles were undermining the morale
of the Party and making it hard to sell the Daily Worker.
The North-East district secretary warned me sternly to 'think again,
leave the sniping and the muckraking to the capitalist Press, and
write with passion and enthusiasm about the New Hungary you are
privileged to see'. Two months later I was privileged to see the New
Hungary collapse like a house of cards as soon as its people rose to
their feet, and I must reserve my passion and enthusiasm for the
Communists and non-Communists who fought for liberty, won it – and
had it torn from their grasp by foreign intervention. Theirs is the
glory, not ours. Yes, we Communists are always right; we know all the
answers, and if we don't our questioner has base motives – and has
he stopped beating his wife? We are the leaders; we are making
history. But here was history being made in a way that none of us had
foreseen. Our preconceived theories were shattered overnight. Painful
though it may be, if we are really Marxists we must be brave enough
to revise our theories. We must no longer try to twist or stretch or
mutilate the facts to make them fit the Procrustean bed of textbook
formulas or of Soviet policy.
I know a former Communist – he eventually left
the Party in disgust – who was appalled by what he found during a
lengthy stay in Eastern Europe as a journalist. On his return to
Britain he went to see Harry Pollitt, then general secretary of the
Communist Party, and told him everything that had distressed him.
Pollitt's reply was: 'My advice to you is to keep your mouth shut'.
The day is over when Communists will follow such advice. The Daily
Worker sent me to Hungary, then suppressed what I wrote. Much of
what I wrote was concealed even from my colleagues. Both as a
Communist and as a human being I believe it is my duty to tell the
truth about the Hungarian revolution. I believe this will help bring
about the urgently-needed redemption and rebirth of the British
Communist Party, which for too long has betrayed Socialist principles
and driven away some of its finest members by defending the
indefensible. That is why I have written this book.
