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People’s Democracies in Central
and Southeast Europe

p The final battles of the Second World War were still to be fought when already a number of countries in Central and Southeast Europe had begun to build a new way of life for themselves; for the moment was propitious: the Soviet armies had inflicted a smashing defeat on the main armed forces of nazi Germany. Thus, during 1944 and 1945, the peoples of Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Albania, no longer under German occupation, put an end to landlord and capitalist dominance and took over the state power. In this manner there appeared in the middle of Europe several states which took for themselves the generic name of "people’s democracies”. In their early years these countries were ruled under the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry.

p Reactionary statesmen of the capitalist world still insist that the revolutions in Central and Southeast Europe were brought in on the points of Soviet bayonets and were not a matter of historic development. Actually, such assertions are utterly false.

p The peoples of Central and Southeast Europe had suffered cruelly under their old regimes. The countries’ wealth, that is, their land, minerals, factories, banks and important shops, belonged to a small clique of wealthy proprietors who ruthlessly exploited the working people. The ruling classes had brought most of these countries to a point where they were entirely dependent on the major imperialist states; so that the working people had to live under a double oppression—domestic and foreign. The contradictions that had been rending the societies of the countries under discussion had been brought to a climax by the Second World War, the entire burden of which was carried by the working people.

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p Life—for the working people—had become unbearable. The daily bread ration had dwindled to 150-200 grammes. A working day of 12-14 hours was the rule; and a truly convict-labour regime was practised in factory and farm. Enslaved by German nazis or Italian fascists the peoples of such countries as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Albania faced the possibility of physical extermination in jails or concentration camps. Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria had lost their national independence and fallen into German servitude.

p However, the peoples of these countries rose against the invaders and their local collaborationists. Led by the working class and directed by the Communists, the patriotic forces in the countries of the Central and Southeast Europe threw off, with the help of the Soviet armies, the double yoke of the invaders and home-bred fascists.

p The workers, working peasants and tradesmen were initially joined by some of the wealthy elements, such as industrialists, merchants, bankers, high-salaried officials, kulaks, etc., in the state administration of the People’s Democracies.

p As the war drew to its close, the plunder and pillage practised both by the invaders and their local allies caused discontent among a considerable section of the bourgeoisie in the countries in question, which made them join with the working people in a movement to drive out the invaders. Bourgeois political parties thus built up substantial influence among the less well-to-do segments of the population, particularly among artisans, tradesmen and small peasants. As a rule these bourgeois parties used such popular slogans as “Freedom”, “Democracy”, "Genuine government by the people”, etc., to camouflage their true intentions; and there were many who simply could not yet make out who their genuine defenders were, the parties of the working people or the bourgeoisie.

p The establishment of People’s Democracies brought many changes into the life of people. The new governments granted the working people freedom of speech, press, assembly and organisation and, moreover, placed the needful facilities at their disposal. Fascist political and military organisations were dissolved and prohibited. Worker control was established in industrial enterprises.

The reforms introduced after the establishment of the new governments went from the beginning farther than reforms under bourgeois-democratic governments; for besides destroying fascism and all vestiges of feudal relations they set restrictions on the exploitation of the working people by the big and middle bourgeoisie.

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Peasants Get Land

p Important changes came into the lives of the peasants, too, who made up the majority of the population in the People’s Democracies. Land reforms introduced in Albania, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia between 1944 and 1946 took land away from the gentry and handed it over to the working peasants. This reform did away with landlords as a reactionary class, and the peasants could now work entirely for themselves. In Czechoslovakia, large landed estates were expropriated in the spring of 1948.

p Bulgaria, unlike the other countries, had had no landed estates owned by the gentry. Here landless and short-of-land peasants were given, in March 1946, lands expropriated from kulaks, usurers, profiteers and the church.

When the tasks which the anti-fascist segment of the bourgeoisie of the People’s Democracies had sought to accomplish jointly with the working people (i.e., destroying fascism, securing national independence and putting through an agrarian reform) had actually been accomplished, the bourgeoisie and the working class came to a parting of the ways. The working class and its allies were out to develop the revolution, that is, to further restrict and in the event eliminate the exploiting classes and strengthen the government of the working people; whereas the bourgeoisie were satisfied to go no further than the antifeudal, bourgeois-democratic reforms and anxious to prevent a socialist revolution.

Bourgeoisie
and Landlords Offer Resistance

p Elements of the exploiting classes, both those who had been put out of business and those who still carried on, made strenuous efforts to maintain their positions. The landlords endeavoured to get back their estates, using to this end the influence which the bourgeois parties were able to exert in the state administration. The old civil servants still entrenched in the administration did everything in their power to frustrate the purging of reactionary officials who were sabotaging economic reconstruction after the ravages of the war. Many capitalists, working through professional profiteers, sold goods in the black market, making huge profits and incidentally contributing to the process of inflation; and the working people, short of food, clothes and shelter, had to foot the bill.

p Reactionary elements were actively aided by the monopolies of the USA, Great Britain and other capitalist countries. 316 Underground terrorist groups, espionage, subversion and economic sabotage—such were the weapons widely used by the domestic enemy and their foreign patrons in their struggle against the people’s governments. In Poland, over 20,000 Communists and members of other democratic organisations were struck down by counter-revolutionary bands during the years when the people’s democratic form of government was taking root and gathering strength.

Under the direction of the Communist Parties, the working people fought back with determination against the encroachments of the bourgeois and landlord reactionaries. At numerous meetings, assemblies and demonstrations workers and peasants pledged themselves to prevent any return of requisitioned estates, clear all reactionary elements out of the civil service, and deal ruthlessly with terrorists, profiteers and saboteurs of the national economies. As the people increased their pressure, reactionary ministers, one after another, began giving up their posts.

Reactionary Conspiracies Collapse

p During January-May 1947, an anti-republican conspiracy headed by Ferenc Nagy, Bela Varga and others was uncovered and dealt with in Hungary. The plot had aimed at overthrowing the popular-democratic government and restoring bourgeois-landlord 317 domination. It had drawn support from among the expropriated landlords, urban bourgeoisie and kulaks. Help had been expected from the foreign imperialists, notably British and American.

p During the summer of that same year 1947 a reactionary plot was uncovered in Rumania. It came out at the trial that the members of the conspiracy, headed by Y. Maniu, leader of the National-Tsaranist (National-Peasant) Party, had plotted to overthrow the government and had received active support from the American and British intelligence services.

p A similar complete failure was the fate of an attempted counter-revolutionary putsch in Czechoslovakia. Powerless to defeat the revolution in open battle, the reactionaries, here too, had secretly armed themselves and made plans to seize important strategic installations in the capital and elsewhere throughout the country.

p This conspiracy was traced to certain capitalist countries, drawing active support, notably, from the Vatican. In February 1948, twelve reactionary bourgeois ministers demonstratively handed in their resignation. This was to have served as a signal for the putsch. The ministers had an idea that their action would cause the fall of the government and they would then be able to set up a new one, without the participation of Communists and other progressive statesmen.

p The Czechoslovak people, however, struck back vigorously at the reactionaries. Committees of action were organised by the workers, artisans and working peasants to maintain revolutionary order. A workers’ militia was organised at industrial plants to assure their safety. A huge meeting assembled in Staromesto Square, in Prague, on February 21, 1948, showed that the people were determined to make an end of reactionary plotting and placed full confidence in the Communist Party.

Popular pressure compelled President Benes to accept the ministers’ resignation and give his approval to a government formed by Klement Gottwald, leader of the Communist Party, now reinforced by more proponents of Czechoslovakia’s further democratisation. The new government enjoyed the full support of a people resolved that there should be no return of the old order. In sum, the events of February 1948 served to strengthen the people’s demociatic system of government and to establish a working-class dictatorship.

Bourgeois Parties’ Influence Ebbs

p The exposure of all these reactionary conspiracies seriouslv damaged the prestige and influence of the bourgeois and kulak 318 parties. More and more people came to realise that their slogans were just so much camouflage calculated to conceal the desire of the bourgeoisie to save their possessions and maintain the kind of order which favoured luxurious living for a small fraction of the population at the expense of the vast majority. This loss of influence among the people cut the ground from under the representatives of the bourgeois parties in the parliaments, governments, ministries, leading bodies of public organisations, etc.

p In the course of 1947 and 1948, in all of the European People’s Democracies state power was completely taken over by the working class and the closely allied working peasantry, and their governments now functioned as proletarian dictatorships.

The process of elimination of bourgeois representatives from government bodies was a comparatively peaceful one. The bourgeoisie did not risk taking up arms in defence of their positions: they sensed that people would not support them. In these circumstances the working class and its allies saw it fit to resolve the contradictions within the society by peaceful means, without resorting to armed warfare against the propertied classes.

People Take Over Industrial Plants

p As they pressed the fight for political power, the working people proceeded to take over industrial plants, banks, railways, etc. A great majority of industrial plants in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania was transferred, during 1947 and 1948, from private to state ownership, that is to say, ownership by the people as a whole. In Poland, Albania and Yugoslavia this transfer had been carried out earlier, between 1944 and 1946.

p Proprietors of minor trading establishments and workshops were allowed to keep them.

p In this manner, after eliminating the landlord class the People’s Democracies eliminated the big and middle urban capitalists as a class and proceeded to tackle the task of building a socialist society in which all citizens would enjoy equal rights in practice and not merely in words, and where each shares the good things of life proportionately to the labour performed.

Throughout the Second World War the Communists in the countries under discussion had fought staunchly against fascism and actively stood up in the post-war years for the rights and demands of the working people. This had won them great prestige among the masses. And it was natural, when socialist construction was undertaken in these countries, that the Communist and Workers’ Parties concerned should take the organisation and direction of this work in their hands.

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German Democratic Republic Formed

p The defeat of nazi Germany in the Second World War brought freedom to the German people after twelve years of nazi rule. According to the decisions of the Potsdam Conference of the Soviet, American and British leaders never again was nazism to be allowed in Germany. A new, democratic Germany was to arise on the rubble of the nazi Reich, which would live in friendship with all nations.

p The decisions of the Potsdam Conference, however, were carried out consistently only in East Germany, which was under Soviet military occupation. Here, as in the other People’s Democracies, the country’s destinies became the concern of the working people.

p The nazi party and its affiliated organisations were outlawed. In 1945 landlords, as a class, were eliminated and the requisitioned land was turned over to short-of-land farmers and farm workers. Industrial plants, banks, railways, etc., belonging to important capitalists or active nazis were confiscated and declared the property of the people.

p Reconstruction of the demolished towns and villages was begun by the German working people under the direction of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SUPG) formed in 1946 as a result of the fusion of the German Communist Party and the German Social-Democratic Party in the Soviet occupation zone and with the aid of the Soviet military administration.

p In West Germany, occupied by American, British and French troops, things worked out differently; for the Western powers purposely disregarded the decisions of the Potsdam Conference and helped the big capitalist monopolies get back on their feet. Various reactionary organisations began to stir again, while organisations and individuals who fought for a unified democratic Germany became the object of persecution.

p What the governing circles of the United States, Great Britain and France wanted was a Germany split in two and its western part turned into a staging ground for operations against the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. An agreement was reached between the Western leadership and the West German imperialists, and the Federal Republic of Germany was set up, in September 1949, as a separate state, with its capital in Bonn. The heads of the FRG made no secret of their hostility to the socialist countries nor of their intention to re-establish, by force of arms, Germany’s former power and repossess the territories which had been returned to Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries. Those in power then in Bonn proclaimed it their intention to “unite” Eastern Germany with the FRG.

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p This situation left the working people of East Germany no alternative but to unite all the patriotic forces and create a genuinely democratic state that could assure the security of the progressive achievements of the people of East Germany and fight for the creation of a united peaceful and democratic Germany.

p Thus, there was proclaimed on October 7, 1949, a German Democratic Republic. This was an event of supreme significance for the German people. For the first time in its history a state had been created whose foreign and domestic policies were conceived in the interests of the people at large instead of those of a small clique of exploiters.

Wilhelm Pieck, Chairman of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, prominent in the German and international workers’ movements, became, by election, the first president of the GDR. Otto Grotewohl, exponent of the finest traditions of German social-democracy, who had spent long years fighting to heal the split in the German workers’ movement, was appointed prime minister of the Republic. Walter Ulbricht, secretary of the SUPG Central Committee and staunch champion of the German people’s freedom, was appointed first vice-premier.

People’s Revolution Wins in China

p When the Soviet forces defeated Japan’s Kwantung Army the outcome of the war between China’s patriotic forces and the Japanese invaders became a foregone conclusion. By September 1945, the Japanese had been driven out of all the Chinese provinces they had occupied.

p When the Second World War ended, China found herself split into two camps. Three-fourths of the country were controlled by the Chiang Kai-shek government, which had at its disposal an army of several million, a considerable part of which had been trained and equipped by the Americans. Elsewhere in the liberated areas a people’s government was in control, supported by the vast majority of the population, the People’s Army of Liberation and the people’s volunteer corps. These main striking forces of the revolution were led by the Chinese Communist Party.

p In 1946, the Chiang Kai-shek clique, egged on by the comprador bourgeoisie, started military operations against the People’s Army of Liberation, which developed into a civil war that went on for more than three years. While it lasted, $6,000 million-worth of arms, ammunition and battle equipment was supplied to the Kuomintang forces by the Americans. Nothing, however, could now save the day for the Chiang clique and his overseas 321 benefactors. Fighting brilliantly, the people’s army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Kuomintang troops, and Chiang Kai-shek, with the remnants of his army, took refuge on the island of Taiwan, occupied by the armed forces of the United States in contravention of international law.

Before a huge gathering on Tien An Men square, in Peking, a Chinese People’s Republic was solemnly proclaimed on October 1, 1949. The Republic was to be ruled under a people’s democratic dictatorship. Finally rid of foreign imperialists and the “home-bred” variety of exploiters, the Chinese people embarked on the road of socialist construction.

Korean People’s Democratic Republic Formed

p Japan’s defeat in the Second World War spelled the end of her dominance in Korea. By an agreement concluded between the victorious powers, implementation of the terms of Japan’s surrender in North Korea (north of the 38th parallel) was to be supervised by the Soviet Military Command, that in South Korea by the United States Military Command.

p When North Korea had been cleared of the invaders, democratic reforms were put into effect, state power being now vested in a Provisional People’s Committee, set up in February 1946, and its local organs. Reconstruction of the demolished plants, mines, railways, etc., was begun, with the aid of the Soviet military.

p In March 1946, the Provisional People’s Committee promulgated a law on agrarian reform giving the peasants over 1,000,000 hectares of land expropriated from the gentry. Also in 1946, nationalisation was effected of industrial plants, banks, railways and means of communication which had belonged either to the Japanese or to Korean collaborators. An eight-hour working day in industry was decreed; and women and minors were equalised with men in regard to wages. Annual paid vacations were introduced, along with labour safety and free medical care. Korean became the language of instruction in schools.

p In August 1946 the Korean Communist Party and New People’s Party  [321•1  joined together to form the Korean Party of Labour in North Korea under the chairmanship of Kim II Sung. This party organised a United Democratic National Front of workers, peasants, employees, and those small entrepreneurs who were in favour of national development on democratic principles.

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p In South Korea, events took a different turn. The US Army Headquarters maintained the old colonial order, so well hated by the people, the only difference being that the Japanese were now replaced by the Americans. Unemployment, hunger and stark need were still the lot of many South Korean households. In May 1948, Syngman Rhee, traitor of the Korean people, was appointed head of the South Korean state.

p The democratic forces of Korea waged an active struggle against the regime of Syngman Rhee and his bosses. In August 1948, elections to the Supreme People’s Assembly, which was to be the people’s supreme governing body, were held throughout the country owing to the joint efforts of the progressive parties of North and South Korea. In the South they were conducted secretly. The returns bore evidence of the wish of the preponderant majority of the Korean people to see the country a united independent democratic state.

p In September 1948, the First Session of the Supreme People’s Assembly proclaimed a Korean People’s Democratic Republic, an independent state, in accordance with the will of the entire Korean nation.

p A constitution was adopted by the Supreme People’s Assembly, which legalised the rights won by the working people of North Korea. The main purpose of the KPDR was defined as the construction of the basis of socialism. The Assembly directed messages to the governments of the USA and USSR requesting a simultaneous withdrawal of their troops from Korea. Such a withdrawal would have given the Korean people an opportunity independently to decide on its future course.

p The Soviet Government was quick to comply with the Assembly’s request: by the end of 1948 all Soviet troops had been withdrawn from North Korea.

The government of the United States, on the contrary, not only failed to withdraw its forces of occupation from South Korea, but began to prepare the latter for a war against the Korean People’s Democratic Republic.

Democratic Republic of Vietnam Formed

p During the Second World War Vietnam was occupied by the Japanese army. The people of Vietnam refused, however, to put up with this regime of military occupation, just as they had refused to tolerate that of the French. Peasants and workers started guerilla warfare against the invaders, in which they were joined by the petty bourgeois, who also wanted independence for their country. The Communists were in the vanguards of this struggle. 323 And a battle-hardened People’s Army came into being in the process of this armed resistance against the invaders, while people’s committees were set up in the liberated regions as agencies of the new government.

p The entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan made an exceptionally strong impact on the war of liberation waged by the Vietnamese people. An uprising swept the country in August 1945, which toppled the government run by the Japanese and their puppets; and on September 2, a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was proclaimed, with Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnamese Communists and prominent fighter for the freedom and independence of Vietnam, elected president, and state power taken over by the republican government and the people’s committees.

p This respite from warfare was not allowed to last long, however, for late in September 1945, British troops made their appearance in the south and Chinese Kuomintang forces in the north of the country, under the pretext of assuring Japanese capitulation. France, too, rallied her forces and, in December 1946, launched an offensive on a broad front, initiating the "dirty war" against the people of Vietnam, as the working people of France aptly called it. That war was started by the French imperialists for the purpose of turning Vietnam again into a French colony and preventing its development along democratic lines.

p For eight interminable years machine-guns and submachineguns rattled and bombs and shells exploded in the fields and jungles of Vietnam, and napalm laid waste defenceless towns and villages, killed their peaceful inhabitants, slaughtered cattle and destroyed crops. And all in vain, for the Vietnamese people, led by the Working People’s Party of Vietnam (the main body of which were Communists) and supported by peace-loving peoples all over the world, inflicted defeat after defeat upon the invaders.

p Dien Bien Phu, the last stronghold left the invaders in the north, fell in May 1954, and the French were forced to negotiate an armistice, after suffering several tens of thousands battle casualties and throwing away several billion francs with nothing to show for it. An agreement to end the war was signed in July 1954, at an international conference held in Geneva. A line of demarcation running along the 17th parallel temporarily partitioned the country into North and South Vietnam. A conference decision provided for elections to an all-Vietnam parliament in two years, after which both parts of the country could join to form a single state. This last provision, however, was never carried out. The government of South Vietnam, actively supported by the US imperialists who had come to replace the French 324 colonialists, went back on their commitment in regard to the elections and decided to keep the country partitioned.

p A landlord-capitalist regime was established in South Vietnam, a reactionary regime of terror maintained solely with the aid of American dollars and bayonets. Any manifestation of discontent brought harsh retribution. The hated regime would have been smashed by the people, were it not for American interference in the domestic affairs of South Vietnam.

In the Democratic Republic of Vietnam the government is run by the working people, urban and rural. And socialist construction is well under way under the direction of the Working People’s Party of Vietnam.

World Socialist System Formed

p The revolutions in Europe and Asia were the most important event in the history of the world since the October 1917 Revolution in Russia. They resulted in thirteen countries in Europe and Asia breaking away from the world capitalist system and a consequent aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism and a further expansion of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist national liberation movement.

Following the emergence of the People’s Democracies socialism was no longer confined to two countries. The road to socialism was now followed by the People’s Republic of Albania, People’s Republic of Bulgaria, Hungarian People’s Republic, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, German Democratic Republic, Chinese People’s Republic, Korean People’s Democratic Republic, Mongolian People’s Republic, Polish People’s Republic, Rumanian People’s Republic  [324•1 , Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia,  [324•2  and Czechoslovak People’s Republic.  [324•3  Before the Second World War the countries engaged in socialist construction accounted for 17 per cent of the world’s surface and 9 per cent of its population, whereas after the war the socialist countries accounted for over 25 and 33 per cent, respectively, of our planet’s area and population. The impact and drawing power of the principles of socialism and democracy are convincingly illustrated by the people’s revolution in Cuba.

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Revolution Wins in Cuba

p On a dark night of December 1956, a small group of men came ashore in a lonely spot of the island’s south-eastern coast. Its members were Cuban patriots, revolutionaries who had been forced to leave their country to avoid persecution. They were led by a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. And their declared aim was to overthrow the reactionary regime of Batista, a tool of the United States. After an encounter with Batista’s soldiers, in which they were outmatched, only 12 out of the group of 82 remained alive. Instead of surrendering, Fidel Castro led his men into the jungles of the Sierra Maestra Range, where they took shelter and prepared to carry on their fight for the liberation of the Cuban people.

p From their jungle fastness, a small transmitter sent out a message telling the Cuban people that the aim of the revolt was not only the overthrow of Batista’s dictatorship but also the economic, political and social liberation of the country. News of the heroic struggle of the patriots in their mountain stronghold spread like wildfire over the countryside and all those to whom Batista’s regime was hateful and who were ready to take up arms against him were eager to join Castro’s group. The partisan army grew fast, and counted several thousand in its ranks by the end of 1958.

p The leaders of the insurgent forces decided to move in two columns into the interior and liberate Havana, the Cuban capital. As they liberated small towns and villages on their line of march the insurgents immediately proceeded to confiscate landed estates and to distribute them among the landless and short-of-land peasants; and this policy won great and increasing popularity for the revolution.

p By the autumn of 1958 all the eastern provinces were in the hands of the insurgents. Batista’s forces were beaten in battle after battle, active United States support notwithstanding. When the strategically important town of Santa Clara fell Batista’s position reached a critical stage. And as soon as he became convinced that he was fighting a losing battle he packed his plunder and fled to the Dominican Republic where he would be under the protection of his friend Trujillo, the local dictator.

p On January 1, 1959, the insurgents entered Havana, where they were hailed by jubilant crowds. The Cuban revolution, a people’s revolution, democratic and anti-imperialist, had won. A people’s government was presently set up, headed by Fidel Castro.

One of the first acts of the victorious revolutionary forces was to chase the United States military mission out of the country. 326 Another move was to make an end of Batista’s military intelligence and anti-communist bureau, that is to say, the two bodies chiefly responsible for the suppression of democracy. The Cuban Government could now proceed, with the full support of the Cuban people, to carry out its programme of far-reaching revolutionary and democratic reforms.