Abstract
After Stalin’s death in 1953 many expectations about Eastern Europe were confounded. The region did not become an earthly paradise for the working classes, and the Soviet Union did not overtake the United States in economic performance, as Nikita Khrushchev had forecast in the heady days of the sixties. Those who predicted the imminent collapse of the ‘Soviet Empire’ in Eastern Europe1 were ultimately vindicated, but they were right chiefly for the wrong reasons, and the collapse when it came took most dissidents and critics by surprise.
Out of the crooked wood of humanity nothing straight can be made.
Immanuel Kant
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References
For example, A. Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive to 1984? (London, 1970) and G. Ionescu, The Break-up of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe (Harmondsworth, 1965). For oracular shifts by a leading analyst see the successive editions of Z. Brzezinski’s The Soviet Bloc.
E.g. C. Guirescu, A History of the Romanian Forest (Bucharest, 1980) especially pp. 236–7.
By 1980 debt-servicing accounted for half of Poland’s hard-currency earnings and over 40 per cent of Romania’s.
Between 1950 and 1980 real wages increased by 350 per cent. However there were substantial differences between countries. Poland and the Balkan states which started from particularly low bases showed the most impressive increases in terms of per capita gross national product, and more developed, less war-damaged countries like Czechoslovakia showed a lesser percentile, though a greater actual, increase. See the estimates in the World Bank Atlas for details.
Although the process began in the nineteenth century (see Chapter 4) and saw its greatest spurt under Stalin (Chapter 2) it has been a continuous phenomenon. In Bulgaria the 45 per cent engaged in agriculture in 1965 was reduced to 26 per cent by 1975. In Romania the proportions were 57 per cent and 37 per cent respectively and it has since been reduced to about 25 per cent.
For estimated production statistics see World Bank Atlas. Bulgaria may not have done very much better than her neighbour Greece in the thirty years since Stalin’s death, but Hungary narrowed her age-old developmental gap with the countries of Western Europe (I. Berend and G. Ranki calculate that by the late 1960s the gap was 7 per cent less). Soviet growth rates in the 1970s were reportedly higher on average than the six other leading world economies, including the USA and Japan, though the statistics took no account of technology and quality gaps (See W. Laqueur, Europe Since Hitler (Harmondsworth, 1982) p. 238). Of the leading seven the USSR was last in 1972 but second in 1973–4 and first in 1975. The success, however should be gauged in relation to other countries of the European periphery, e.g. Spain, Portugal and Greece, and with Eastern Europe’s historical record of economic backwardness.
Some of the implications are discussed in J. Szczepanski, Polish Society (New York, 1970) pp. 38ff.
F. Fejto, A History of the People’s Democracies (Harmondsworth, 1977) p. 58.
See J. Gold, ‘The Thorny “Non-Existent Problem”’, East European Quarterly, 13(1) pp. 47–72. Moscow would reply by hinting that it might after all return Transylvania to Hungary.
Most are hostile to their immediate neighbours. For historical reasons see Chapters 3 and 4. Czechs are suspicious of Poles and Hungarians; and Romanians dislike Bulgarians and Hungarians as well as Russians. However, Hungarians and Bulgarians, having no common frontier, have tended to get on.
Many called for more democracy, legal rights and personal freedom without being enamoured of the Western way of life. See, for example, V. Havel et al, The Power of the Powerless (London, 1985); A. Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley, 1985) and G. Konrad, Antipolitics (London, 1984). However, the range of dissident opinion tended to be wide.
Though most Poles would not admit it, Polish living standards were long maintained at the expense of the Soviet consumer. Before 1989 the USSR did not demand full interest payments, still less repayment, of its substantial share of Poland’s huge foreign debt, and the interest it charged her was much below world market rates. Poland also enjoyed supplies of Soviet energy at low prices, and was allowed to postpone payments. I am grateful to Professor P. Hanson for information on these matters.
See M. Kaser, COMECON (London, 1967).
W. Brus, ‘The “Thaw” and the New Course’ in M. Kaser, ed. The Economic History of Eastern Europe, vol. III (Oxford, 1986) p. 41.
It was only after Moscow applied strong pressure that the Czech General Swoboda was released from gaol — see J. Pelikan, The Czechoslovak Political Trials 1950–1954 (Stanford, 1971) esp. pp. 114 ff..
The government promised to improve living standards in general, and in particular to rescind a recent increase in the price of sugar, to restore transport concessions for various categories of the population and cease using ‘coercive measures’ in collecting tax arrears. It also undertook to stop the ‘administrative’ punishment of withholding ration cards from those in disfavour and to review ‘hardship’ cases among the prison population. Other important policy changes included a slowing down of collectivization (a decree of February 1953 dispossessing more farmers was cancelled), the easing of restrictions on the non-agricultural private sector, and the encouragement of emigres to return from the West by the promise of full civic rights, restoration of property and the provision of jobs commensurate with their qualifications. (Almost 200,000, mostly young, people had fled to West Germany in 1952 and the tide was swelling.) See the Communique of the East German Council of Ministers, 11 June 1953 in B. Ruhm von Oppen (ed.), Documents on Germany Under Occupation 1945–1955 (Oxford, 1955) pp. 588–90.
Nowa Kultura, 19 August 1955, translated by L. Blit, The Twentieth Century, No. 158, pp. 504ff..
Cyrankiewicz’s speech to the Sejm, 23 April 1956, Trybuna Ludu, 30 April 1956.
Resolution of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ Party, 30 June 1956, translated in P. Zinner (ed.), National Communism and Popular Revolt (New York, 1956) pp. 328–31.
Szabad Nep report in Zinner, op. cit., p. 385.
Zinner, op. cit., pp. 410–12.
Programme of the ‘Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government’, 4 November 1956 — Zinner, op. cit., pp. 476–8.
Tito’s speech of 11 November 1956 in Zinner, op. cit., pp. 527–9.
Communique of 18 November 1956, Zinner, op. cit., pp. 306–13.
See I. Berend and G. Ranki, The Twentieth Century Hungarian Economy (London, 1985), and personal communication from I. Berend.
See E. Pamlenyi (ed.), A History of Modern Hungary (London, 1975) pp. 560–2; P. Kende, Changes in the Economic Structure, National Income and Living Standards in Post-War Hungary and Berend and Ranki, Hungarian Economy, op. cit..
27. See J. Krejer, Social Structure of Divided Germany, 1976, p. 118.
On the role of the market in N.E.M. see, inter alia, M. Kaser (ed.), The Economic History of Eastern Europe 1919–1975, vol. III (Oxford, 1986). On the agricultural reforms and pricing policy see L. Fischer and P. Uren, The New Hungarian Agriculture (Montreal, 1973).
Sensitive national pride was in evidence elsewhere too. In 1985 a production in a Budapest theatre of Shaw’s Arms and the Man had to be cancelled after two performances following a protest by the Bulgarians.
See V. Kusin, The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring (Cambridge, 1971) p. 133. Thanks partly to adroit publicity, pre-war Czechoslovakia had presented itself, not altogether accurately, as a progressive, democratic, liberal state in the moral van of the nations of the world — see Chapter 3.
Husak’s speech at Ostrava, 10 September 1970 quoted in Kusin, op. cit., p. 146, note 1.
For a translation of the Charter see Havel et al, op. cit., pp. 217–21.
It was suggested that the problem was cyclical (see N. Asherson, The Polish August (London, 1981)); it turned out to be downwardly spiral.
For a translation of the Gdansk Protocol, see Asherson, op. cit., pp. 284–94.
By the end of 1989 Poland owed $41 billion, and Hungary $17 billion (the largest in the Bloc per head of population).
E. Hankiss, East European Alternatives (Oxford, 1990) p. 255.
Ceaucescu had proclaimed Romania to be a’ socialist Democracy’, however.
J. Rothschild, Return to Diversity (Oxford, 1989).
By ‘East-Central Europe’ in this context I mean Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. Oskar Halecki used it to describe a much larger area, including the Balkans. Some emigre writers (e.g. M. Kundera) dislike the term because it suggests affinity to ‘the East’, i.e. Russia and prefer the term ‘Central Europe’ (which, following Tamas Masaryk’s usage included Scandinavia as well as the Balkans) though Mitteleuropa is widely understood to include Germany.
Analysts attributed the cause of Hungary’s economic and bureaucratic problems in part to the educational system which placed heavy emphasis on vocational training. The result was a large number of engineers, accountants, etc., with a vested interest in preserving obsolescent techniques and in obstructing innovation in a period of fast-changing technology. A new education bill gave emphasis to arts subjects because they promote mental flexibility. The problem was also manifest in countries other than Hungary.
A small indication is the ruined bridge over the Danube at Esztergom. It once linked Hungary with Czechoslovakia, but was destroyed in World War II and was never rebuilt. Locals used to refer to it dryly as a symbol of ‘fraternal feeling between our two peoples’.
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© 1992 Philip Longworth
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Longworth, P. (1992). The Crooked Wood of Humanity (1953–1989). In: The Making of Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22202-5_2
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