Post-Stalinism in the USSR and Eastern Europe
i. The USSR: Stalin and "de-Stalinization"
ii. Life in the People's Democracies
iii. Unrest and Revolt in Poland and Hungary: 1956
iv. Between the Blocs: Yugoslavia


what was “"Stalinism"?”
1. politically: the dictatorship of the politburo
2. economically: centralized state planning, emphasis on heavy industry rather than consumer goods
3. ideologically: "official truth"” (Pravda)
4. cult of personality (Krushchev's term)
5. secret police, purges, terror (ultimately, the Gulag)

Q: what does the reality of Stalinism have to do with the idea of socialism as the empowerment of the workers?
one A: the complete disjunction of appearances and reality (see Václav Havel, “Power of the Powerless”)

Stalin d. 1953
1953-56: rivalry to succeed Stalin (Beria, Malenkov, Krushchev)
1956: Twentieth Party Conference
Nikita Krushchev (r. 1956-1964)
“secret” speech denouncing Stalin

Leonid Brezhnev
nomenklatura (Djilas: the "new class"): lists of “reliable” people for appointments in party, bureaucracy, industry, agriculture, army
“gerontocracy”
chronic shortages
“they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”

Eastern Europe as a laboratory for the ideologies of the twentieth century
1. post-WWI successor states: liberal nationalism
2. racial exploitation under the Nazis (or collaboration)
3. Soviet-style "People's Democracies" after WWII
4. since 1989: post-Communism, return to liberal nationalism plus integration into "Europe" = European Union, NATO

National Fronts (1945-1948)
People's Democracies
de-Stalinization: a new course?
national paths to full socialism

Soviet interventions in East-Central Europe:
East Berlin 1953 | Hungary 1956 | Czechoslovakia 1968

two cases in 1956:
1. Poland: Gomulka (reform Communist)
     concessions to peasants (stopped collectivization of agriculture)
     concessions to Catholic church
vs.
     no political liberalization (Communist party's monopoly on power)
     no challenge to Poland's place in Warsaw Pact

result:  a Polish path, no invasion

2. Hungary: Imre Nagy (reform Communist)
two key issues:
1. legalization of other political parties
2. proposal for Hungarian neutrality (like Austria)

result: Soviet invasion of Hungary in November, 1956
Janos Kadar |"goulash Communism"

Three lessons of 1956
1. The West would not intervene in eastern Europe to challenge the Cold War division of Europe.
2. In the post-Stalin era, differing "national paths to full socialism" would be possible (e.g. Poland, later Hungary)
3. The limits to de-Stalinization in eastern Europe were i) threats to the Communist Party's monopoly of power; ii) attempts
to exit the Warsaw Pact (Hungary)

The Berlin Wall (1961-1989)
Berlin a Cold War flashpoint and anomaly
brain- and skill-drain
"anti-fascist protective wall"

Postwar Yugoslavia

Tito (Josip Broz)
nationalities and republics in Yugoslavia

five keys to understanding postwar Yugoslavia:
1. the only self-liberation from Nazi occupation - Yugoslav partisan resistance
2. six states as a "socialist federal republic": Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia
3 three religious: Roman Catholicism; Orthodox Christianity; Islam
4. "Titoism": independent national paths to socialism (non-aligned movement, w/India, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia)
5. 1950s onward: attempts at economic reform ("worker self-management")