Bureaucracy and revolution in Eastern Europe

For half a century an idea has dominated the thinking of the left throughout the world - the idea that socialist countries already exist. Loyalty to the governments of the socialist third of the world has been the first claim on the solidarity of those struggling against capitalism, both in the west and in the third world. Yet, in recent years, enthusiasm has been replaced by con-fusion. In 1956 Khrushchev stunned Communists everywhere by his revelation that Stalin, 'the greatest leader, sublime strategist of all times and nations', had been responsible for rigged trials leading to the deaths of 'many thousands of honest and innocent Communists', that Stalin had carried through 'mass arrests and deportations of many thousands of people, execution without trial and without normal investigation' and had used 'mass repression' causing 'misery and suffering to whole nations'. Since Khrushchev's speech, events themselves have rained crushing blows on the heads of those who hold the 'Communist' societies to be intrinsically superior to those of Western capitalism. In Hungary in 1956 and Poland in 1970 the established regimes were shaken by movements whose working-class character could not be denied: general strikes, factory occupations, election of workers' committees, the storming of police stations and prisons. In 1968 Russian troops invaded Czechoslovakia, despite the vehement pro- test of the Communist government of that country. So blatant was
the contradiction between myth and reality that even the official Communist Parties of the West felt compelled to protest.