National Communism Research Articles

National Communism and Soviet Strategy. By D. A. Tomasic, with the assistance of Joseph Strmecki. (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press. 1957. Pp. ix, 222. $4.50.)

National Communism and Soviet Strategy. By D. A. Tomasic, with the assistance of Joseph Strmecki. (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press. 1957. Pp. ix, 222. $4.50.)

National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February-November, 1956

National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February-November, 1956

National Communism Vs. the National Way To Communism — an Italian Interpretation

SHE BREAK-AWAY of Tito's Yugoslavia in 1948, the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, the Polish revolt which led to the successful (until the present, at least) seizure of power by Gomulka in October, 1956, all have served to shake the traditional Leninist-Stalinist conceptions of the relations between the Soviet and other Communist states, between the Soviet Communist and other Communist parties. These traditional relationships could be summed up, perhaps, in the phrases guiding state and guiding party. The Soviet Union was the guiding state for all other socialist (communist) states; the Soviet Communist was the guiding party for all Communist parties. Marshall Tito was the first to raise the standard of Subsequently, in various states of eastern Europe a series of purges removed from power Communists who, whatever their real sins, were accused of advocating national communism, condemned by Stalinists as being basically anti-Soviet and therefore, by definition, harmful to the interests of the working class. The emergence of a powerful Communist China, the death of Stalin, the rise of Khruschev, the subsequent attacks on Stalin's memory and misdeeds, and the efforts to woo Tito back into the Soviet fold, culminated in 1956 with the elaboration by Khruschev, and its acceptance by the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U., of the concept that the road to socialism might take different forms in different countries, and that violent revolution was not a necessary prerequisite to success. In other words there were legitimate national ways to communism, to be distinguished from illegitimate national communism. Throughout all this the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.), the largest in the Western world, has had a hard time. The initial reaction of its leadership was to criticize the Khruschev line openly and then to fall back into a more or less formal acceptance of it, but not with much grace. Within the Palmiro Togliatti, the Secretary General, has had to fight off both the hard-core Stalinists who accused him of being too revisionist, and a group of younger, more flexible leaders who accused him of being intellectually fossilized, of being holier than the Pope, of being incapable of understanding and realizing the significance of developments in the Soviet Union, of combining extreme tactical flexibility and possibilism at the level of

National Communism vs. the National Way to Communism. An Italian Interpretation

National Communism vs. the National Way to Communism. An Italian Interpretation

Continuity of Communist Strategic Doctrine Since the Twentieth Party Congress

The Soviet leaders have not broken as abruptly with Stalinist doctrine as the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union attempted to suggest. Yet the post-Stalinist modifications of doctrine concern ing the inevitability of war and the status of the colonial and former colonial areas are directly related to the more flexible conduct of foreign relations by the Khrushchevite leadership. The course of events, themselves, rather than any premeditated doctrinal revisions was responsible for the crisis between Moscow and the national Communist parties and has given some substance, notably in Poland, to the doctrine of "national roads to socialism."

National Communism and Soviet Strategy

National Communism and Soviet Strategy

National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February-November, 1956. Edited by Paul E. Zinner. (New York: Columbia University Press. 1956. Pp. xx, 563.)

National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February-November, 1956. Edited by Paul E. Zinner. (New York: Columbia University Press. 1956. Pp. xx, 563.)

National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe, a Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February-November, 1956.

National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe, a Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February-November, 1956.

The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents and National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February–November, 1956

Journal Article The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents and National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February–November, 1956 Get access The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents. Ed. by the Russian Institute, Columbia University. Foreword by Henry L. Roberts. New York, Columbia University Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1956. vii+342 pp. $1.75. 14s.National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February–November, 1956. Ed. by Paul E. Zinner. Foreword by Henry L. Roberts. New York, Columbia University Press for the Program on East Central Europe, Columbia University; London, Oxford University Press, 1956. XX+563 pp. $2.95. 24s. Jane Degras Jane Degras Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 33, Issue 4, October 1957, Page 501, https://doi.org/10.2307/2606910 Published: 01 October 1957

National Communism and Soviet Strategy

National Communism and Soviet Strategy

De-Stalinization: Temporary Tactic or Long Term Trend?

power was so enormous that the consequences of STALIN'S his death were bound to be immense. The inevitable mystery in all political power, was especially profound in the murk of Stalin's Russia. And yet, although the autocrat's successors, especially the cocky extrovert Khrushchev, acted less secretively than the dread vozhd (Fuehrer), his death probably made it more difficult to analyze the Kremlin's policy. To be sure, the perspectives on which most Soviet specialists were in agreement have been justified. Serious students knew that difficult adjustments, possibly convulsions, would follow the dictator's death. None predicted, and perhaps none could have fully foreseen the sensational tempo of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the national Communist movement in Poland, and the anti-communist in Hungary. Today there is some fear of re-Stalinization. I doubt if a quick, undisguised relapse to the psychotic, terroristic pattern of the late Stalin era is the most likely Soviet reaction to the Hungarian revolution. Great despots like Stalin do not quickly establish themselves. His successors are mostly men in their sixties who would like to avoid repetition of Stalin's political cannibalism. As long as they are in office, they have the strongest motive, namely, self-preservation, for seeing to it that collective leadership rather than autocracy armed with terror should prevail at the center of political power. But is this possible? Can there be a gradual, selective, normalization of Stalin's revolution from above? Can the centralized Soviet state function long without a dictator? My guess is that the long-term trend in Russia, despite recent discouraging developments, is toward liberalization, socialist legality, increasing, but by Western standards depressingly limited, intellectual freedom, and a slightly more humane and rational order. Political freedom, which Russia has never enjoyed, even in 1905-1914, will probably remain indefinitely beyond the horizon. This pro-

Some Perspectives on the Nature and Role of the Western European Communist Parties

The international Communist movement is commonly described as a conspiracy and so, in part, it is. It is a conspiracy in the sense that the national Communist parties are members of a coordinated international political movement which attempts to undermine the present social and economic order and replace it with the Soviet brand of collectivism. It is also a conspiracy in the sense that Communist parties, unlike other national parties, would, if given power, deliberately place their countries under the domination of, or at least align them with the USSR. The Communist parties with their clandestine organization and their addiction to violence when they think they stand to gain by its use, simply cannot be put on a par with other political parties. All this is well known and needs no retelling.

The Cominform: A Five-Year Perspective

Five years ago the Comintern loomed once again as a spectre on the European horizon with the founding in Poland, September 1947, of the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties of the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia (expelled June 1948), France, and Italy. It has since become both fashionable and convenient to identify the “Cominform” with all aspects of international Communist activity, ranging from the most general of policy directives to an isolated Communist-led strike. The indiscriminate identification of “Cominform” with international Communist activity provides the layman with a convenient stereotype which spares him the trouble of further inquiry. For the student of Communism, however, this lack of precision merely results in obscuring the actual role of the Cominform, as it is known to us, and more particularly, its function within the configuration of various covert and overt instrumentalities of the international Communist movement. To speak, for example, of a “Cominform” policy of collectivization or of a “Cominform” purge trial in the Balkans, or to suggest by “Cominform” the whole web of controls of national Communist parties maintained by the USSR is to ascribe a role and importance to the Cominform that it simply does not have. For without minimizing the importance of the function the Cominform has come to discharge, it may be said that its role is essentially that of a central, but by no means the most important, propaganda instrument of the international Communist movement, designed primarily to provide public guidance and information to the leadership of various national Communist parties. Thus Pravda and the USSR radio broadcasts furnish daily guidance to the international Communist movement, and the World Federation of Trade Unions is continuously engaged in attempting to bring trade union activity in line with Communist policy.