Eastern Europe after Stalin: the crises of 1953–1956

Stalin’s death and Moscow’s “New Course”

When Stalin died on 5 March 1953, Georgy Malenkov succeeded him as Chairman of the Council of Ministers and highest-ranking secretary of the Central Committee. On 14 March, however, his Presidium colleagues made him give up the Secretariat, leaving Nikita Khrushchev as acting First Secretary. For a time the country was run by a troika — Malenkov over the government, Vyacheslav Molotov over diplomacy and Lavrentiy Beria over the interior ministry and secret police. Malenkov argued for shifting the economy from heavy industry to consumer goods to raise living standards, for tax cuts for peasants and for higher state prices for grain. 1

In those three months Beria, the embodiment of Stalinist police terror, paradoxically emerged as a reformer. On 4 April he released the victims of the Doctors’ Plot, and he had an amnesty promulgated that freed nearly half of the Gulag’s inmates, some 1.2 million people. On Germany he said that the GDR was “not even a real state but one kept in being only by Soviet troops”, and the other leaders suspected him of being ready to trade German reunification for American support. 2

The new collective leadership judged the satellites to be close to breaking point. In early April a report from the Soviet Control Commission in Germany gave a devastating account of the East German economy: 160,000 people had left the GDR in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 122,000 in the first four months of 1953 alone. On 2 June, the day they landed in Moscow, the Socialist Unity Party leaders Walter Ulbricht and Otto Grotewohl were handed the order “On Measures to Improve the Health of the Political Situation in the GDR”: forced collectivisation, the war on private enterprise and the pressure on the Protestant Church were to end, and investment was to shift from heavy industry to consumer goods. Malenkov warned that change was essential to avoid a catastrophe. The order did not, however, demand the reversal of the highly unpopular increase in work quotas. 3

The Hungarian leaders were summoned to a similar “consultation”. From 13 to 16 June in the Kremlin, Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan dressed down Mátyás Rákosi and the other leaders of the Hungarian Working People’s Party. Rákosi had to accept the Soviet model of collective leadership: he kept the party leadership but gave up the premiership to Imre Nagy. Initiated in the Soviet Union and first announced in East Germany, the New Course was thus extended to the other Eastern bloc countries; its three thrusts were more consumer goods, an end to terror and a relaxation of ideological standards. 4 5 6

The Kremlin meeting, which János Rainer has reconstructed from its minutes, was close to a trial. Malenkov told the Hungarians that they underestimated their shortcomings; Beria, who used the most figures, asked whether it was “acceptable in Hungary, with its population of 9,500,000, to have instituted proceedings against 1,500,000 people”, and denounced Rákosi for personally directing state security and intervening in investigations. The defence minister Mihály Farkas was to be replaced by István Bata. According to recollections, Beria said that if Rákosi did not help, “we will break his spine.” Rákosi replied: “I very much regret that I was not taught a lesson like this before.” 4

1953: Plzeň, East Berlin, Budapest

The first explosion came in Czechoslovakia, before the New Course had arrived. At 10 p.m. on 31 May 1953 the Communist government announced the currency reform it had long denied: savings were devalued at fifty to one and wages at five to one, subsidised rationing ended and work quotas rose. The night shift at the Škoda Works in Plzeň struck; the next day workers marched into the city, stormed the city hall, built barricades and put up slogans demanding the end of one-party rule. The government sent two police battalions of about 8,000 men and an army unit of 2,500 men with 80 tanks. Some 200 people were injured, none fatally, and more than 2,000 were taken prisoner. Strikes also broke out at 19 large plants across Bohemia and Moravia, involving an estimated 360,000 workers. 7

The party presented the events as provoked by agents of imperialism, the official explanation until 1989. On 8 June the measures of 31 May were recalled, except for the currency reform. The strikes, together with pressure from Moscow, pushed the Czechoslovak party towards a tentative New Course focused on workers’ living standards: in September 1953 the government announced retail price cuts and plans to build 40,000 homes in 1954, and between autumn 1953 and autumn 1956 retail prices were reduced six times. 7

In East Germany the New Course lit the fuse instead. On 11 June the Socialist Unity Party published it in its newspaper and admitted past mistakes, but kept the 10 per cent increase in work quotas which, with price rises, amounted to a 33 per cent cut in monthly pay. On 16 June 300 construction workers on East Berlin’s Stalinallee went on strike; the next day the protest became an uprising of over a million people in some 700 localities. Every one of the GDR’s 24 cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants saw unrest; outside Berlin some 339,000 people took part in demonstrations and over 225,000 went on strike. Soviet tanks entered East Berlin, martial law was declared and troops fired into crowds. Deutsche Welle counts 55 confirmed civilian deaths, newer estimates at least 125, and up to 10,000 people were detained. The uprising is covered in The East German uprising of 1953, and the state-building behind it in East Germany: from Soviet military administration to the German Democratic Republic. 3

The uprising nearly cost Ulbricht his post. On 24 June the senior Soviet officials in East Berlin reported to Moscow that he should be removed as General Secretary and that the party should move to collective leadership. But on 26 June Beria was arrested in Moscow, and on 2 July the Soviet leadership shelved far-reaching changes in East Germany in favour of an experienced, reliable, if Stalinist and unpopular, ruler. In late July Ulbricht expelled his main opponents, Wilhelm Zaisser and Rudolf Herrnstadt among them, from the Politburo, while Moscow increased economic aid and ended reparation payments by the end of the year. Beria was executed on 23 December (The Fall of Beria). 3 2

In Hungary reform came from above. On 4 July the newly elected Nagy government presented its programme to parliament in a speech broadcast nationwide. By the autumn the amnesty measures had affected almost 748,000 people; 15,761 of some 40,000 prisoners were released, and the Hortobágy deportation camp and the ÁVH internment camps were closed, so that the Hungarian gulag more or less ceased to exist. Peasants began to leave the cooperatives, whose membership fell from 376,000 to 250,000 by the end of 1953. Rákosi, however, remained party leader. The story is told in Hungary’s New Course. 4 5

Retreat and counter-attack, 1954–1955

The fate of the New Course was tied to the power struggle in Moscow. With Beria, his most hostile critic, gone, Rákosi counter-attacked, taking the chair of the commission set up to investigate the unlawful trials and trying to reverse the rehabilitation of show-trial victims. When Malenkov was forced out as premier in February 1955, accused among other things of favouring consumer goods and of closeness to Beria, his light-industry programme was abandoned as well. In Hungary the Central Committee condemned Nagy for “rightist deviation” on 9 March; he was stripped of his party offices on 14 April and dismissed as prime minister on 18 April, to be succeeded by Rákosi’s confidant András Hegedüs. 5 1 8

Yet a full return to the years before 1953 was impossible. With Khrushchev rather than Stalin at the head of the Soviet Union, Rákosi could not put Nagy on trial, and people had already experienced a more livable version of communism. Nagy wrote studies answering the charges against him and lent them to nearly a hundred readers, around whom an opposition within the party took shape; they were published in the West in 1957 as On Communism: In Defense of the New Course. In Poland the much-publicised defection of the secret police officer Józef Światło weakened the Ministry of Public Security, and Władysław Gomułka, imprisoned since 1951, was released in 1954. 5 9 10

In May 1955 the international framework of Eastern Europe changed. After West Germany joined NATO on 9 May, the Soviet Union and seven Eastern bloc states signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in Warsaw on 14 May; its stated principles included respect for the independence and sovereignty of member states and non-interference in their internal affairs. The next day, 15 May, the Austrian State Treaty was signed; the last occupation troops left by 25 October, and Austria declared its permanent neutrality. This precedent of Soviet withdrawal and neutrality would be invoked in Hungary eighteen months later (The Founding of the Warsaw Pact). 11 12 8

Khrushchev also made peace with Yugoslavia. Visiting Belgrade from 27 May to 2 June 1955, he signed with Tito the Belgrade declaration, which guaranteed non-interference in Yugoslavia’s internal affairs and legitimised different paths of socialist development. Ending the break of 1948 (The Tito–Stalin Split), the declaration embarrassed Rákosi, who in 1949 had had Rajk executed as Tito’s “chained dog” to set an example for the anti-Titoist purges; he was the main obstacle to Hungarian–Yugoslav reconciliation, and in July 1956 he told the Central Committee that Mikoyan’s suggestion that he step down might have been influenced by the fact that “Tito demanded my head”. On 17 April 1956 the Cominform, the body that had excommunicated Yugoslavia, was dissolved. 13 14 5 15

February 1956: the shock of the Secret Speech

On 25 February 1956, at a closed session of the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s purges and personality cult in his report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”. Classified as “not for publication”, the speech was nonetheless read out at party meetings across the Soviet Union, became known in the West within weeks and was printed in full by The New York Times on 5 June. Khrushchev had not consulted his East European allies, and leaders who owed their positions to Stalin’s patronage suddenly found the ground giving way. The congress and the speech are covered in The Twentieth Party Congress and the Secret Speech. 16

The shock was greatest in Poland. Bolesław Bierut, General Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, had stayed in Moscow after the congress, hospitalised with influenza that turned into pneumonia, and died of a heart attack on 12 March. With Khrushchev, who had come for the funeral, looking on, the Central Committee unanimously elected Edward Ochab First Secretary on 20 March as a compromise between the reformist Puławy and hardline Natolin factions. The party Secretariat decided, uniquely in the Eastern bloc, to circulate the Secret Speech widely, and at thousands of party meetings in late March and early April taboo subjects were raised — the Katyn massacre, the Soviet military presence, the imprisonment of Gomułka. 17 18 10

In Hungary Rákosi rehabilitated László Rajk, executed after the 1949 show trial, on 28 March while trying to gloss over his own culpability. Criticism nonetheless spread through the party, the Writers’ Union and the press, and the Petőfi Circle, a debating club founded in Nagy’s time, was revived; at its press-freedom debate on 28 June voices called for Nagy’s return. Moscow sent Mikhail Suslov to Budapest in June and Anastas Mikoyan in July, and on 18 July Rákosi resigned as First Secretary and left for the Soviet Union. His successor was his second-in-command, Ernő Gerő. The Rákosi regime and its fall are followed in Hungary from the Smallholders’ victory to the Rajk trial and The Hungarian Revolution. 14 19 5

Gerő’s concessions only deepened the crisis. On 6 October the remains of Rajk and three other victims of the purges were reburied in Budapest as a crowd of several hundred thousand looked on. According to Kramer, Gerő had seen the reburial as a way to ingratiate himself with Tito and defuse tensions, but on 12 October he confided to the Soviet ambassador Yuri Andropov that it had dealt “a massive blow” to the party leadership. Nagy was readmitted to the party on 13 October, and Gerő spent 15–22 October in Yugoslavia; while he was away, news from Poland stirred Hungary further. 19 9

Poland: from Poznań to October

On 28 June 1956 workers of Poznań’s Cegielski Factories (then named after Stalin) took to the streets over pay and taxes, and some 100,000 people gathered around Adam Mickiewicz Square. The protest turned into a gun battle around the Public Security building, and about 10,000 soldiers and Internal Security Corps troops with hundreds of tanks under Stanislav Poplavsky suppressed the city. Estimates of the dead range from 57, according to Łukasz Jastrząb of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), to slightly over 100, according to his IPN colleague Stanisław Jankowiak. The party first branded the protesters “provocateurs and imperialist agents” but soon promised wage rises and reform. The rising and the trials that followed are covered in The Poznań Uprising. 20 10

After Poznań the reformers wanted Gomułka back. Pushed out in 1948 for “right-wing nationalist deviation” and imprisoned in 1951, he was untouched by the scandals of Stalinism and so acceptable to reformers and hardliners alike. Gomułka insisted on real power to carry out reforms, and in particular on the removal from the Politburo and the defence ministry of Konstantin Rokossovsky, the Soviet marshal serving as Polish defence minister, who had sent troops against the Poznań workers. Ochab agreed and proposed Gomułka as First Secretary at the Eighth Plenum of the Central Committee, which opened on 19 October. 10 21 22

That same day Khrushchev flew to Warsaw with Mikoyan, Bulganin, Molotov, Kaganovich and Konev. Soviet armoured divisions stationed in Poland left their bases and moved towards the capital; when ordered to halt they were 100 km from Warsaw. According to Kramer, Rokossovsky’s influence did not extend to the Internal Security Corps (KBW) units of the interior ministry, which took up positions around Warsaw to defend the new leadership, so that for a brief while Poland seemed on the verge of civil war as well as of conflict with the Soviet Union. Gomułka assured Khrushchev that the reforms were internal matters and that Poland had no intention of abandoning communism or its treaties with the Soviet Union. 10 19

On 21 October the CPSU Presidium unanimously decided to “refrain from military intervention” and to “display patience”. Khrushchev told an expanded Presidium meeting on the 24th that “finding a reason for an armed conflict [with Poland] now would be very easy, but finding a way to put an end to such a conflict later on would be very hard.” That day some 500,000 people attended a rally in Warsaw, where Gomułka called for stronger ties with the Soviet Union and condemned those trying to steer Poland away from the Warsaw Pact; the Chinese Communist Party, too, supported Gomułka. By mid-November Poland had won the cancellation of its debts, the abandonment of forced collectivisation and an easing of policy towards the Catholic Church; Rokossovsky was recalled to Moscow and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński was released. 19 10

The Hungarian Revolution and two outcomes

On 23 October students in Budapest held a demonstration to express approval of the developments in Poland and to demand similar changes at home. Some 20,000 people gathered at the statue of General Bem in the afternoon, and in the evening shooting began between the ÁVH and the crowd outside the radio building. Gerő requested Soviet intervention that day, and in the early hours of the 24th Soviet tanks entered Budapest; the same day Nagy became prime minister. Across the country workers’ councils and revolutionary committees took over local government from the defunct party apparatus. The course of the revolution and its suppression are covered in The Hungarian Revolution. 19 8

For a time Moscow wavered. After the ceasefire of 28 October Soviet troops began to leave Budapest, and on the 30th the Soviet government issued a declaration admitting “violations of the principle of equality” in relations with other socialist states and promising to re-examine the Soviet troop presence in the Warsaw Pact countries. Drawing on the Malin notes, Kramer finds a consensus in the Presidium on the 30th in favour of withdrawal; on the 31st, however, Khrushchev reversed course. Israel had invaded Egypt on 29 October, and Britain and France, after an ultimatum on the 30th, began bombing Egyptian cities on the 31st; Kramer concludes that the Suez Crisis gave the Soviet leaders a powerful incentive to settle Hungary quickly and decisively. Research summarised by Csaba Békés shows, conversely, that the Hungarian events did not affect the timing of the secretly planned Anglo-French-Israeli attack. Meanwhile Gerő and the other hard-liners had left for the Soviet Union, and on the 30th the Nagy government announced its intent to restore a multi-party system based on the coalition parties of 1945. On 1 November it declared Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and its neutrality. 19 8 23 9

Having decided to intervene, Khrushchev gathered his allies’ consent. Liu Shaoqi, in Moscow since 23 October, had been relaying Mao Zedong’s view that the Hungarian working class should be allowed to put down the uprising on its own; on the 31st the whole Presidium went to the airport to tell the departing Chinese delegation of the new decision. Khrushchev met Gomułka in Brest and the Romanian, Czechoslovak and Bulgarian leaders in Bucharest. The Polish Politburo condemned the use of Soviet troops on 1 November but modified its position after Hungary’s withdrawal from the Pact and declaration of neutrality. On the night of 2 November, in ten hours of talks on the island of Brioni, Tito agreed with Khrushchev and Malenkov on intervention and urged them to install János Kádár, a prisoner of the Stalin-era purges, rather than Ferenc Münnich. 19 8 23

At dawn on 4 November Soviet forces, built up to 17 divisions for Operation Whirlwind under Marshal Konev, attacked Budapest, and Kádár proclaimed a “Revolutionary Workers’ and Peasants’ Government” at Szolnok. Resistance continued for some days in Csepel, Dunaújváros and elsewhere. Casualty counts differ: a widely used estimate is about 2,500 Hungarians and some 700 Soviet soldiers killed, while Soviet sources give 669 Soviet soldiers killed, 1,450 wounded and 51 missing, and about 4,000 Hungarian victims. Some 200,000 people fled the country, most of them to Austria. 8 23

Why did Poland end in compromise and Hungary in invasion? Kramer argues that the Polish outcome set a precedent of what would be tolerated: Gomułka promised to preserve the Communist system and remain in the Warsaw Pact, whereas the Soviet Presidium soon concluded that there was “no comparison with Poland” in Hungary. Studies of the Polish October sum it up thus: in Hungary social protest destroyed the political system, in Poland it was absorbed into it. Comparing the two crises, Johanna Granville reviews the “historical”, “personality” and “neutrality” theses and finds that the new archival sources do not radically alter them, while suggesting that Gomułka was less secure than once thought and that Nagy may at first have opposed the very decisions for which he is remembered. 19 10 24

Consequences and interpretations

In Hungary reprisals followed. According to the research of the early 1990s summarised by Békés, 35,000 people were investigated for their activities in the revolution between 1956 and 1959, 26,000 were brought to trial and 22,000 sentenced, and 13,000 were interned between 1957 and 1960; the number executed is given as 229 in one count and 280–300 in another. Nagy was seized as he left the Yugoslav embassy, taken to Romania and executed for treason on 16 June 1958. Kádár turned Rákosi’s “he who is not with us is against us” into “who is not against us is with us” and sought a domestic consensus, while remaining strictly loyal to the Soviet Union in foreign policy. 23 8 9 25

Poland’s gains were limited too. Tony Kemp-Welch writes that in 1956 Polish communists first acknowledged that society could no longer be ruled without listening to its voice, and that the party admitted the failure of its campaigns against private agriculture and the Catholic Church, both of which were promised a permanent place within the “socialist order”; but workers’ hopes for economic rationality and intellectuals’ aspirations for a freer public life were soon disappointed and did not revive until the 1970s. Gomułka’s thaw hardened in the 1960s, and mounting economic problems and popular discontent removed him from power in 1970. Norman Davies sums up the change of 1956 as Poland’s transformation from puppet state to client state. 26 10

The year 1956 also exposed the limits of the West. Declassified documents discussed by Békés show that a US National Security Council paper of July 1956 disavowed political and military intervention in the Soviet satellites, and that the Western powers, taken by surprise by the revolt in Budapest, pursued a cautious non-intervention so as not to antagonise the Soviets. Western communist parties suffered heavily: the Communist Party of Great Britain lost thousands of members, and Peter Fryer, the Daily Worker correspondent who reported the suppression, resigned when his dispatches were censored and was expelled; in France members such as the historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie resigned. Some Chinese leaders read the events in Poland and Hungary as showing the danger of overemphasising heavy industry at the expense of people’s livelihoods. 23 8 10

The opening of East European and Russian archives in the 1990s changed the interpretation. Citing the consensus for withdrawal on 30 October recorded in the Malin notes, Kramer writes that there was a chance, “if only a very slender one”, that the events of 1989 could have occurred 33 years earlier. On East Germany, the historian Corey Ross identifies two lessons the Socialist Unity Party drew from 1953: that shop-floor discontent had to be stopped before it escalated, and that a forced venture like the “accelerated construction of socialism” could never be repeated. Factory surveillance was raised, the Combat Groups of the Working Class were created and the Stasi was expanded. The crises of 1953 and 1956 set the bounds of the de-Stalinisation Moscow would allow, and those bounds were tested again twelve years later in the Prague Spring. 19 3