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

1988-01-01 / 1. szám

EASTERN EUROPE 40 YEARS AGO (Continued from page 11) day published a long article along the same lines, attacking the democratic parties and ascribing the crisis to "the intrigues of inter­national reaction against democracy.’' It was reproduced on February 23 by the Czechoslovak Communist Press and by the radio, which was under Communist control. When the 12 democratic ministers submitted their resignations, President Benes refused to accept them, and resisted pressure from Gott­­wald for the formation of a new government. However, Benes was gradually driven to con­clude that the crisis was going to be settled by force, including Soviet force if necessary, just as laid down by Lenin in the quotation at the beginning of this article. There were three main instruments of this force: (1) the police, which had been turned into a Communist armed force by the com­manders whom Nősek, the Minister of the Interior, had appointed; (2) the "Workers’ Militia/’ a Communist descendant of guards appointed immediately after the war to defend factories against destruction by Nazi sympathi­sers; (3) the "Action Committees” for whose formation Gottwald had called in his Old Town Square speech. On February 20, for instance, Josef Smrkovsky, the Deputy Commander of the Workers' Militia, declared a "state of battle" for his force from 6 a.m. the following dav,- 7,000 Prague militia­men would receive 200 rounds of ammunition each. By February 24 the "Action Committees" were preventing non-Communist ministers from enter­ing their ministries and the non-Communist Press from appearing. The premises of non-Communist parties were ransacked; many people were arrested. In addition to the general objectives of terrorising and paralysing the non-Communist parties, these actions had a particular motive which became dear when in the evening of the same day, February 23, the Ministry of the Interior issued a statement that a "vast con­spiracy" had been discovered, hatched by the Czech Socialists (President Benes’s party) to seize power after the Ministerial resignations. A similar statement about a "conspiracy”, implicating the Slovak Democratic Party, was issued the same day in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. The President himself received these state­ments with scepticism, and it was clear all along that it was the non-Communists who had been acting democratically. Nevertheless, these "conspiracies” have held their place in Com­munist accounts of the events of February, 1948, despite the obvious improbability of a con­spiracy against a government which had not yet been formed. On the same day a one-hour token strike took place, and a large force of fully armed Workers' Militia paraded through the streets of Prague. In the capital alone this militia was by now some 15,000 strong. On February 25 President Benes signed the list of the new government which Prime Minister Gottwald presented to him; he had however resisted long enough to make it clear that he had done this under duress. The new government, numbering 24, con­sisted of 12 Communists, 11 who were Com­munist sympathisers or willing to co-operate with the Communists, and Jan Masaryk, who remained Foreign Minister. The Other non-Party minister, General Ludvik Svoboda, the Minister of National Defence, had given important as­sistance to the Communist takeover by not allowing the army to move. The new Minister of Justice was Alexei Cepicka, Gottwald's son-in-law, who had masterminded the Krcmán parcel-bomb plot; he now set about wreaking Communist venge­ance on those who had exposed it. His pre­decessor, the democrat Prokop Drtina, fried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by throwing himself from a window on February 27, the day the new government was sworn in. POLAND On January 28, 1948, Poland signed a trade treaty with the USSR which represented a token Soviet gesture to compensate Poland for not being allowed to receive Marshall Aid, as the Soviet Union had done with Czechoslovakia by supplying wheat (XVIII). The treaty provided for Polish-Soviet co-operation worth two million roubles over four years. On the other hand, in February, 1948, Soviet attacks began on the Central Planning Office, whose officials were mostly Western-trained. The Soviet spokesman, Hilary Mine, the Polish Minister of Industry, denounced it as "bour­geois”; planning in future was to be a direct imitation of Soviet models. HUNGARY AND ROMANIA The Soviet Union signed identical treaties of "friendship, co-operation and mutual assist­ance” with Romania on February 4 and with Hungary on February 18. The treaties were ostensibly "to obviate any threat of renewed aggression by Germany” but their main effect was to strengthen the hold of the USSR on her co-signatories. Similar treaties had been signed by the Soviet Union with Czechoslovakia in December, 1943 (III), and with Poland in April, 1945 (III). Soviet comment on them reflected Central Committee Secretary Andrei Zhdanov's thesis of the division of Europe into two camps in his inaugural address to the Cominform (XVIII); the "American imperialists", it was alleged, were transforming Western Germany into a military base. It is significant that on the same day as the Hungarian treaty was signed, February 18, the acting General Secretary of the Social Demo­cratic Party, György Marosán, accused his own party of duplicity and announced the expulsion or forced resignation of several leading Social Democrats who were not prepared to be sub­servient to the Communists, notably Antal Bán, the Minister for Industry; Anna Kéthly, a Vice- President of the National Assembly, and the President of the Trade Union Congress, Ödön Kisházy. On February 16 several leading Social Democrats were tried in their absence. Where these actions would lead became dear from Romania, where on February 21—23 the Communists and Social Democrats merged to form a new "Romanian Workers’ Party", by a process similar to that which had formed the "Socialist Unity Party” in the Soviet Zone of Germany in April, 1946 (IX). The Social Democrats' Central Committee had accepted in principle that their party should merge with the Communists in November, 1947 (XIX). The new party stated in the Fusion Congress 12 THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY (NEMZETŐR) Every—eba»d»>t^Mcifc—d—idmà+m Erscheint 2monatlich. Einzelpreis für Deutschland DM 4,— Edited by the Editorial Board Verleger, Herausgeber und Inhaber TIBOR KECSKÉSI TOLLAS NEMZETŐR Ferchenbaehstr. 88 • 8000 München 50 FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY Verantwortlicher Redakteur (Editor): MIKLÓS VARY Ferchenbarhstraße 88, D-800Q München 50 Druck (print): DANUBIA DRUCKEREI GMBH Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 AFRICA REPRESENTATIVES & SALE CAMEROON: L. T. JOHNSON, Divisional Inspectorate of Education, NKAMBE, North West Province, Republic of CAMEROON. EAST AFRICA: (2.— Sh. by air) (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania): General-Representative: International African Literary Agents P.O. Box 46055 NAIROBI, Kenya. NIGERIA (2.— Sh): Yemi OYENEYE. P. M. B. 101, Agege, Lagos. 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Resolution, passed on February 23, that it would base itself on the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and move towards the estab­lishment of a "people’s democratic" regime. The National Peasant Party, which had lost its leaders by the trial of luliu Maniu in the autumn of 1947 (XIX), merged with the small pro-Communist "Ploughmen's Front”, to which Prime Minister Petru Groza belonged, to form a "United Peasant Party” on February 21. YUGOSLAVIA On February 10, at a conference in Moscow, the first signs surfaced of the conflict between Stalin and Tito (who did not attend the con­ference) which was to dominate so much of 1948. (To be continued) JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1988

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