The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1988 (11. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)

1988-01-01 / 1. szám

How Communists Cheer and Boo — 26 ’’AVANTGARDIST” The boo-words “ avantgardism" and “van­­guardism” have been introduced to pillory those who would take glasnost and perestroika (openness and restructuring) further faster than Gorbachev and his colleagues want them taken. These words are not found in Lenin, but he had boo-words to serve the same purpose, which are also used by Gorbachev — “pseudo­revolutionary phrase-mongering” and particu­larly “demagogy.” Lenin branded the Workers’ Opposition’s demands for reform as “dema­gogy” at the 10th Party Congress in March, 1921; Gorbachev complained in an address to media leaders on July 14, 1987, that “social demagogues have found their way into some editorial offices.” The Party line at a particular time is regu­larly represented as a golden mean between two extremes. As Gorbachev put it in his October Revolution 70th anniversary speech on November 2, 1987, “We must learn to re­cognise, unmask and neutralise the manoeuvres of the opponents of restructuring, those who are putting a brake on it, . . . who try to drag us back to the past. Nor must we submit to pressure from the over-zealous and impatient, those who do not want to reckon with the objective logic of restructuring and who express dissatisfaction with what they regard as the slow pace of transformations." The “objective logic of restructuring” is in fact that it is the Party leadership which decides where this golden mean lies, just as it decided a quarter of a century ago where the golden mean lay between “dogmatism-sectarianism” and “revisionism.” Gorbachev denounced conservatism and “arti­ficial avantgardism” at a conference on the “second stage of restructuring” on November 20. However, it now turned out that, thanks to “dialectics”, the two go together: “Conser­vatism and artificial avantgardism, no matter bow different their rhetoric, in the long run inevitably band together in practice. This is the dialectics of politics.” Politburo member and Central Committee Secretary Alexander Yakovlev, addressing a meeting of media workers about restructuring on December 1, said: “We have seen how conservatism and vanguardism — those parti­cularly perfidious enemies of healthy develop­ment — sneak up on restructuring... Tremen­dous attention must be paid to the warning we heard in MS. Gorbachev’s [Revolution anniversary] report on conservatism. And on pseudo-revolutionary vanguardism. ... In con­ditions of Socialism you can combat conserva­tism, feigned vanguardism and negative pheno­mena with a combination of the democratic process and the establishment in society of the kind of relations... which will ensure that the system itself stimulates healthy development... We must... learn persistently and purpose­fully to do away with extremes.” What made the question particularly impor­tant was the resignation in October of Boris Yeltsin from the post of First Secretary of Moscow City Party Committee. Gorbachev accused him of “pseudo-revolutionary phrases and pseudo-determination” and “demagogy” at the Moscow City Party Committee Plenum which considered his case on November 12; other speakers denounced his adventurism, Bonapartism, political immaturity, disregard for the principles of continuity, and domina­tion. Yeltsin’s “authoritarian, conservative avant­­gardism” was the subject of an article entitled “The Kind of Restructuring we need” by Prof­essor Gavril Popov, Professor of Economics at Moscow University and basically a sympathiser with reform, published on December 16 in the weekly Moskovskie Novosti (Moscow News). Popov complained that the supporters of avantgardism included “quite a few honest people, sincere and courageous Communists and able leaders” like Yeltsin; the situation was dangerous because some of the working people supported avantgardism. Referring to Yeltsin’s resignation when he saw he was doomed to defeat, Popov said; “Thus the avantgardism of restructuring turns into the avantgardism of capitalism.“ People avoid her like the plague, her graying hair a silver wreath, but her words cut across the noise of bustling streets where she appears. Trees by the Tisza pass along her moans, age-old walls and stones try to be of help looking for her son, comforting her — only the human hearts are deaf. tBaQlaxL úJ(. Stueqed — TIBOR TOLLAS — Forgotten is the glorious revolution, they live and think only the dreary present. What did Joseph Kovács and his friends die for? j Nobody asks, it’s wiser to be silent. And Mrs. Kovács has been wandering along the Szeged streets for thirty years. She feels, as only bereaved mothers can: Silence is fraud, and words have a false ring! She knows how many hearts were broken Over the feuds of wasteful history. — Where is my boy? Why did you kill him? Where is he? Give him back to me! For the 30th anniversary of the execution of Joseph Kovács, medical student, chairman of the Szeged Revolutionary Committee in 1956. In Fifty-six he’d just turned twenty the only son his mother had. Immortalized, now he’s a legend, but why does he have to be deadI He was tortured in Csillag Prison, executed one day at daybreak. To leave no trace, his body was secretly thrown into a mass grave. His mother has been looking for him frantically since then — so they say — haunting the streets and squares of Szeged searching for her son night and day. Like a merciless, living specter she screams, pouring forth agony: — Where is my boy? Why did you kill him? Where is he? Give him bade to me! — Should a nation forget past greatness? Can the present be built on sand? A full stomach is a poor witness, the rootless tree falls down as dead. These covered-up graves are accusing us, they stand between us and what lies ahead. If the living don’t respond to your call, Insist even more: starting raising the dead! Yesterday you ran away like a coward, and now you shake hands with the murderers. You smile at them, serving as an accomplice while buried in the earth lie all your friends. Your survival is not a special virtue, wait till the final judgment is pronounced, for different ghosts will then haunt the mistreated burial grounds. You too will have to face the outraged mothers — Woe if you have no answer to their plea: — Where is my boy? Why did you kill him? Where is he? Give him back to me! Cavallino, 1987 Translated by Susan Jancso Los Angeles, October 21, 1987 AID TO THE CHURCH IN NEED: REPRESENTATIVES : In AUSTRALIA: ACN, Box 11 PO, EASTWOOD N.S.W. 2122 In GREAT BRITAIN: ACN, UK, 124, Crshalton Road, SUTTON, Surrey, SM 1 4 RL, England In IRELAND: ACN, The Norbertine Fathers, Kilnacrott, BALLYJAMES­­DUFF, Co. Cavan and: ACN, North. Ireland Sub-Centre, PO Box No 76, BELFAST BT 13 2DX In the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: ACN, 12 Fair Street, Carmel, N.Y.10512 USA 3 JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1988

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