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The Cominform and the People's Democracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Adam B. Ulam
Adam B. Ulam
Affiliation:
The Russian Research Center at Harvard University.
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Extract

The creation of the Cominform in the summer of 1947 marked an important stage in the development of communism in Europe. The precise reasons that led the leaders of Soviet Communism to revive a public form of co-operation between several Communist parties remain to this day uncertain. What is obvious is the use to which the Cominform has been put during its brief existence up to now. It has acted as an added catalyst of social and political change in the satellite countries. Its resolutions, like the one on the occasion of the expulsion of Yugoslavia from that body, have laid down the broad lines of policy to be pursued by the People's Democracies on such vital issues as the question of collectivization of agriculture, the “nationalist deviation,” etc. The original concept of the Com-inform included, undoubtedly, creation of the appearance of complete autonomy of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe. The language of the speeches at the founding meeting and the choice of the seat for the new organization, outside of the Soviet Union, testify as to the serious attempt to present the collaboration between the Soviet Union and her Communist allies under a veneer of equality. If the picture thus presented seemed to lack realism to the Communist leaders from Poland or Yugoslavia, it is unreasonable to assume that the propaganda effect of the establishment of the Cominform was entirely lost upon the masses who had, since the end of the war, joined the ranks of the ruling parties in the satellite states.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , January 1951 , pp. 200 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1951

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References

1 Andrei Zhdanov's words at the founding meeting were characteristic: “The Soviet Union unswervingly holds the position that political and economic relations between states must be built exclusively on the basis of equality of the parties and mutual respect for their sovereign rights.” Zhdanov also mentioned the dissolution of the Comintern as having dealt a decisive blow to the legend “that Moscow was interfering in the internal affairs of other states, and that the Communist Parties in the various countries were acting not in the interests of their nations, but on orders from outside.” (For a Lasting Peace, Nov. 10,1947.)

2 See the report by Jacques Duclos printed in the Dec. 1, 1947 issue of For a Lasting Peace, and the report by Luigi Longo in the Jan. 1, 1948 issue.

3 But not necessarily the economic ones; one of the participants in the founding conference in denouncing the Marshall Plan adds that he is “by no means rejecting the possibility of using American credits.” (Speech by Wladislaw Gomulka, printed in For a Lasting Peace, Nov. 10, 1947.)

4 See The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948, especially letter by Tito and Kardelj, p. 53.

5 It is, of course, doubtful whether this was so in fact, but such is the official version presented in Nowe Drogi, the official organ of the Polish Workers' Party, for September-October 1948, p. 140.

6 The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute, p. 78.

7 It is almost unnecessary to add that there were considerable variations in this policy of limited toleration depending upon the peculiar social circumstances in each country and on the strength and character of the given Communist party. Some vestigial remnants of this policy are still observable, e.g., at the time this is being written, prime ministers in Hungary and Roumania are not members of the Communist parties; some non-Communist parties are still in existence in most of the satellite countries.

8 See the report of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the United Workers' Party of Poland in Nowe Drogi, November 1949, the statement by Gomullca on p. 116, and the rejoinder by Mine, p. 118.

9 See For a Lasting Peace, July 1, 1948.

10 Thus the Yugoslav News Agency reported on April 5, 1949 that Rostov had been uncovered as a former Gestapo informant, and that the Bulgarians are trying to cover it up by presenting him merely as a “deviationist.” (Borba, April 5, 1949.) A few days later, Tito himself dwelt on the subject in his speech before the People's Front of Yugoslavia: “There [in Bulgaria] the last few days have seen the arrest and apprehension of many leaders of the Communist Party of Bulgaria who stand accused of having been in the service of foreign espionage agencies. Some of those people have been the most fervent calumniators of our country and of its leaders following— and even before— the resolution of the Cominform. I shall say something only about the case of Traicho Kostov, a member of the Bulgarian Politbureau. He was arrested during the war under the regime of Ring Boris and was kept in prison together with a group of Communists. Though known as one of the main leaders, he alone had his life spared, while the others were killed. Why?… We have today proofs in our hands that among the functionaries of certain Communist Parties can be found agents of certain capitalist states. Those people had been recruited while in the hands of Gestapo, like Hebrang [anti-Tito and pro-Moscow Yugoslav Communist] and some others in our own country.” (Borba, April 10, 1949.)

11 An article in Borba for Dec. 4, 1949 re-emphasizes the charge. Kostov, according to Borba, was anti-Yugoslav and opposed the South-Slav federation, while Dimitrov favored the union of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The official Bulgarian and Soviet version maintains, of course, the opposite.

12 Tchernolcolev in For a Lasting Peace, Nov. 18, 1949.

13 Chervenkov, in For a Lasting Peace, Dec. 16, 1949.Google Scholar

14 Rabotnichsho Delo, Dec. 17, 1949.

15 A discussion of that phase of the crisis is contained in this writer's article “The Crisis in the Polish Communist Party,” Review of Politics, Vol. XII, No. 1 (January 1950).

16 Nowe Drogi, Nov. 1949, p. 64, special issue.

17 Speech by Minor, Ibid., p. 78.

18 Ibid., p. 117.

19 Ibid., p. 175.

20 Ibid., p. 104.

21 Ibid., p. 170.

22 Ibid., p. 202.

23 For a Lasting Peace, Nov. 29, 1949.

24 Until the fall of 1950 almost every issue of Thirty Days, a popular Yugoslav monthly, carried extensive stories about China, biographies of Mao, Chu-teh, etc. The same is true of Borba. Yugoslav enthusiasm for the Chinese Communists has diminished since their intervention in Korea.

25 E.g., Otto Grotewohl in an article in Oct. 28, 1949 issue of For a Lasting Peace.