Socialist-bloc reformers

Definition and scope

Socialist-bloc reformers are the people and currents that designed, advocated and led reforms of economic management or of the political system inside socialist states ruled by communist parties. The German encyclopedia notes that attempts at democratisation in the countries of "real socialism" are also called reform communism (Reformkommunismus), and that from about 1970 the term "democratic socialism" was used within Eastern European reform communism, sometimes as a third way between capitalism and "really existing socialism". According to the English-language encyclopedia, some academic economists used "revisionism" as a neutral descriptor of post-Stalinist writers who criticised one-party rule and argued for freedom of the press and the arts, inner-party and sometimes multi-party democracy, independent trade unions, the abolition of bureaucratic privileges and the subordination of the police to the judiciary; Marxist-Leninists used the same word as a charge of departing from Marxism.

The scope of reform varied widely. There were economic reforms that widened enterprise autonomy and material incentives within the planned economy, and political reforms that abolished censorship, democratised the party and even raised a multi-party system. Reformers were usually members or officials of the ruling party; some changed policy with the backing of the leadership, others were removed in political crises.

Yugoslav self-management

Yugoslavia, after its break with the Soviet Union, built its own model. Under the slogan "Factories to the workers" Yugoslav communists introduced self-management in the 1950s, handing the management of socially owned enterprises to the workers. Workers' councils decided on purchases of raw materials, the type and volume of production, prices, pay and the distribution of profit, so that the economy was to a large degree market-based. The idea was theorised by Edvard Kardelj, Boris Kidrič and Milovan Đilas, and the system lasted from 1949 until the country's dissolution in 1990. See Workers' Self-Management and Titoism.

1953–1956: the New Course, the Polish October and the Hungarian Revolution

After Stalin's death Imre Nagy became Hungarian prime minister in 1953; he declared an amnesty, abolished the internment camps, ended the autonomy of the ÁVH security police, shifted support to light and food industry and eased the burdens on the peasantry. In Poland in 1956, after the Poznań workers' rising, grassroots and inner-party movements pressed for de-Stalinisation and democratisation; on 21 October Władysław Gomułka became First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, and the system was partly liberalised and some political prisoners released. In the Hungarian Revolution that began in Budapest on 23 October, Prime Minister Nagy recognised the rising as a revolution, and his government restored the multi-party system and negotiated with the Soviet Union over leaving the Warsaw Pact and neutrality, before Soviet forces crushed the resistance by 11 November. At the trial of 1958 Nagy, Miklós Gimes and Pál Maléter were sentenced to death and Ferenc Donáth to twelve years.

Economic reform: Liberman, the 1965 reform and the New Economic Mechanism

The 1960s brought a series of reforms aimed at making planning more efficient. The Soviet economist Yevsei Liberman published "Plan, Profit, Bonus" in Pravda on 9 September 1962 and took part in drafting the concept of the 1965 economic reform. That reform, launched after Khrushchev's removal, left the command economy in place but widened enterprise autonomy, allowed enterprises to dispose of profit, introduced material incentives and made profitability the main indicator of performance. Hungary introduced its New Economic Mechanism on 1 January 1968. Prepared under the coordination of Rezső Nyers, it reduced the role of central planning and widened enterprise autonomy, let some prices follow market demand and handed wage-setting, within limits, to enterprises. In 1972 Brezhnev demanded, almost as an ultimatum, that János Kádár halt the reforms. Related debates are treated under Liberman Debate, Three axes of the Kosygin reform debate and Czechoslovak economic reform of the 1960s.

The Prague Spring

In Czechoslovakia the reform wing, including Ota Šik and Josef Smrkovský, defeated Antonín Novotný at the December 1967 plenum of the Central Committee, and on 5 January 1968 Alexander Dubček became First Secretary. The Action Programme adopted on 5 April set out a reform of the socialist system in its economic, political and social aspects and named the internal democratisation of the party among the most important tasks. Censorship was relaxed in February and abolished altogether on 4 March. According to the German encyclopedia, 89 per cent of Czechoslovaks in a July 1968 poll favoured keeping socialism. This attempt at "socialism with a human face" was halted by the invasion of Warsaw Pact forces led by the Soviet Union on the night of 20–21 August, and amid the ensuing "normalisation" the Central Committee declared the Action Programme invalid in 1970.

Perestroika and the Asian reforms

Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power on 11 March 1985, spoke of the need to reform the system at the April plenum, and the January 1987 plenum declared perestroika the new state course. Gorbachev said that "without glasnost there is not and cannot be democracy". In the course of the reforms society was democratised, glasnost introduced, censorship abolished and private enterprise legalised.

In China, "reform at home, opening to the outside" began after the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978. Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang pressed for deeper market reform, while Chen Yun and Li Xiannian wanted the planned economy to remain primary, with market regulation as a supplement. Hu Yaobang was forced to resign in early 1987, accused of laxity in opposing "bourgeois liberalisation", and his death in 1989 set off a mass movement of mourning and protest. Zhao Ziyang, who had also drafted plans for political reform, was removed from all posts after the June Fourth events and spent the last sixteen years of his life under house arrest. In Vietnam the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party adopted Đổi Mới in December 1986 under General Secretary Nguyễn Văn Linh, aiming at a socialist-oriented market economy.

Around 1989 and neighbouring currents

In the late 1980s reformers inside the ruling parties of Eastern Europe took part in the transition. Imre Pozsgay, a Politburo member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, called 1956 a "popular uprising" on the radio on 28 January 1989, when the generally accepted view was "counter-revolution". Socialist-bloc reformers overlap in time and concerns with the Eurocommunism of Western communist parties but differ from it in seeking to change state policy from within a ruling party. Soviet reform is treated in detail under Perestroika and Glasnost, the Czechoslovak slogan under Socialism with a Human Face, the Chinese path under Chinese model of reform and Vietnam under Đổi Mới.