Kevin McDermott

A “polyphony of voices”? : Czech popular opinion and the Slánský Affair’

The trial of Rudolf Slanský and his thirteen codefendants in Prague in November 1952 represented the culmination of Stalinist political terror in postwar central and eastern Europe. Ever since, it has attracted much scholarly attention focusing largely on the origins, processes, and outcomes of the trial. In this article, Kevin McDermott examines a crucial, but almost totally unresearched aspect of the affair: Czech popular reactions to Slanský’s arrest and trial. Using documents from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and secret police reports from the Ministry of Interior archives, McDermott demonstrates that popular opinion was extremely diverse, ranging from strident and selective support of the official version of the court proceedings; to passive compliance and resigned accommodation; to apathy, guarded dissent, and overt opposition. Two findings are particularly noteworthy: first, virulent antisemitic sentiment was endemic; and second, many workers, rank-and-file party members, and even lower-level functionaries were highly critical of the country’s communist leaders. In conclusion, McDermott proposes that the archival record reveals the relatively broad diffusion of antisemitism in Czech society, the limits of the “Stalinization” process in the Czechoslovak party, and the failure of Stalinist terror to intimidate the population into submission and eradicate independent thinking.

Stalinist Terror in the Comintern: New Perspectives

The Stalinist terror unleashed on Soviet society in the 1930s claimed millions of victims. Western researchers have long disputed its origins, nature and impact. Rather less attention, however, has been paid to the terror in the Communist International (Comintern). Founded by Lenin in March 1919, the Comintern certainly did not escape Stalin’s wrath some twenty years later. Over two hundred Comintern officials, thousands of foreign communists and tens of thousands of foreign political 6migr6s living in the USSR were repressed in those dark years 1936-8. For Soviet historians writing in the era of Brezhnevite ’stagnation’, this assault on the Comintern remained a strictly taboo subject. The authoritative Outline History of the Communist International, published in English in 1971, devoted a mere two paragraphs to the ’cult of the Stalin personality’, as it was euphemistically called. This lamentable situation changed in the late 1980s as Gorbachev’s glasnost took hold and material from the Central Party Archive became increasingly accessible. Western experts eagerly joined their Russian colleagues in the quest for new knowledge. As a result, we are now better informed about the inner workings of the terror process in the Comintern. There is still, of course, much to learn and no definitive consensus has emerged on such a contentious and highly charged theme. To gain a clearer perspective we must await the opening up of all the relevant files, including those in the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Contemporary Historical Documents (the former Party Archive), the so-called Presidential Archive, firmly under Yeltsin’s lock and key in the Kremlin, and the KGB Archives, parts of which are

Popular resistance in Communist Czechoslovakia : The Plzeň Uprising, June 1953

This article examines an important, but little-known, event in the history of post-war Czechoslovakia: the Plzeň uprising of June 1953. After outlining the context, processes and outcomes of the revolt, I argue that the disorders were less an expression of ubiquitous political and ideological resistance to the communist regime than a reflection of the disastrous socio-economic conditions and the breakdown in relations between party and workers at the point of production. I also maintain that the conventional wisdom of the ‘Stalinised’ Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as a fully fledged ‘totalitarian’ party is in many ways wide of the mark. Finally, the uprising prompted the partys tentative turn towards a ‘New Course’ and eventually a strategy of ‘socialist consumerism’.

Archives, power and the ‘Cultural Turn’: reflections on Stalin and Stalinism

This article explores important conceptual and historiographical issues involved in writing a contemporary study of Stalin. It examines four interrelated themes: the ‘archival explosion’ since 1991; Stalins political mentality; the recent ‘cultural turn’ in historical writing; and the contradictions and limitations of Stalins power. The piece is partly based on research in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI). I argue that the archives have not radically revised our perceptions of the Soviet dictator, but have provided an unprecedented wealth of detail on the inner workings of the regime and of Stalins role within it. I suggest a ‘war‐revolution model’ as arguably the key to Stalins actions and political mentality, and contend that the ‘cultural turn’ offers new, but problematic, avenues of research. I conclude by identifying several contradictory tendencies in Stalins method of rule and outline four main sources of power limitation.

Stalinism ‘From Below’?: Social Preconditions of and Popular Responses to the Great Terror

Abstract This article engages with recent western historiography on Stalinism, in particular the origins and nature of the Great Terror. I seek to contextualise the material on the Terror by re‐examining the relationship between state and society in Stalinist Russia. The partial opening of the former Soviet archives and the new ‘cultural turn’ have in many ways altered our perception of this complex relationship by revealing ‘a polyphony of voices’ among the Soviet peoples, though at the same time not under‐estimating the awesome power of the state. As for the Terror itself, I argue that Stalin, in collaboration with central political and police elites, undoubtedly directed the mass repressions, but the targeting of communist officials, ‘alien’ ethnic minorities and social marginals garnered a measure of popular support and input. Hence, I conclude that the terror process should be analysed from a broader social perspective, while recognising the determining hand of Stalin and the centre.

Politics and Society under the Bolsheviks

When scholars met in Warsaw in August 1995 at the Fifth World Congress for Central and East European Studies, one of the main themes of discussion for the historians among them was the relationship and interaction between the Bolsheviks and society. Since the previous World Congress in Harrogate in 1990 increased right of access to Russian archives and to hitherto inaccessible materials had opened new opportunities for in-depth study of this general theme, and in particular of society’s attitudes and responses to the Bolshevik regime. It is possible that future opening of the President’s Archive and of all the files of the security police will reveal sensational details, which will be seized upon by the world’s press, and materials which will facilitate a fundamental re-evaluation of the nature and operational methods of the commanding heights of the regime in the Kremlin. What is certain, however, is that the research being undertaken by the scholars whose revised contributions to the Congress are included in this volume, and by other historians working on related topics, will significantly change, modify and expand existing interpretations of relations among the party, the regime and society, and of popular attitudes towards the regime.

Stalin and the Comintern during the 'Third Period', 1928-33:

the most controversial phases in the turbulent twenty-four year existence of the Communist International (Comintern). In 1928-9 Comintern theoreticians postulated the end of capitalist stabilization, the radicalization of the working masses, impending imperialist wars and the historic victory of revolutionary socialism. The reality could not have been more devastating or unexpectedthe Nazi rise to power, the brutal destruction of the mighty German labour movement, and the resultant imbroglio of Communist theory and practice. It is no wonder, then, that the third period of Comintern history has been the subject of intense debate. Admittedly, there is a near universal consensus among historians that the ultra-leftist tactics of the years 1929-33 proved disastrous, in some cases suicidal. Nowhere was revolutionary rhetoric translated into action; the membership of most Com-

The Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion Through the Soviet and East European Lens

McDermott and Stibbe place the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in the context of broader global upheavals in the year 1968, and then explain what these challenges to the post-war order looked like from the more regionally-specific perspective of Soviet and East European actors. Reponses to Dubcek’s reforms, both in Czechoslovakia and in neighbouring communist countries, were complex and varied. The chapter looks at how and why the ‘Warsaw Pact Five’ (the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria) reached a decision to intervene militarily in August 1968, and why Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania opposed this move. It also demonstrates how the invasion led to new and diverse ways of thinking about the state, patriotism, geography and borders across the region.

The ‘Anti-Prague Spring’: Neo-Stalinist and Ultra-Leftist Extremism in Czechoslovakia, 1968–70

McDermott and Sommer’s chapter focuses on an important, but under-researched controversy in the history of the Prague Spring: the beliefs, mentalities and impact of the ultra-reactionary ‘neo-Stalinists’ in the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Conventional wisdom has it that the party and nation stood solidly behind Dubcek’s reforms, aside from a tiny band of ‘traitors’. The authors suggest that while the bulk of party activists broadly supported the ‘renewal process’, there was a tenacious core of sectarians vocally promoting the thesis that ‘counter-revolution’ was stalking Czechoslovakia and, crucially, such ideas influenced large swathes of regional officials, party members and industrial workers. McDermott and Sommer conclude that these diffuse anti-reformist undercurrents were mobilised after the invasion to affect the relatively smooth transition from the Prague Spring to ‘normalisation’.

Wolfgang Mueller, Michael Gehler and Arnold Suppan, eds, The Revolutions of 1989: A Handbook:

lated that they should be archived on parchment. But paper became secularized, and it was cheap and foldable. Its short life span made it the ideal medium for daily newspapers designed to last for only 24 hours. Paper was a medium of modernity. It flowed through the modern city, through the offices of the legal clerks and copyists who populate nineteenth-century novels, until society was saturated with it. In the twentieth century, it was standardized for mass production. The A4 sheet, according to Müller, has been one of the ‘building blocks of modernity’ (230) – US Letter-size notwithstanding. One virtue of this book is that Müller has carefully divorced the study of paper from the study of printing. After all, paper emerged in Europe 200 years before printing, and the printing press would have been worth little without paper strong enough to absorb the press and receive the ink on both sides. Paper comes printed or unprinted, bound or unbound; it had a multitude of uses and took many different shapes. At the same time, Müller interestingly explores the relationship between manuscript and print. Behind every printed text he conjures up a mass of manuscripts full of deletions, rough drafts, additions and reversals. He examines conventional assumptions about an author’s ‘literary estate’, the value placed on a writer’s manuscripts, and the expectation that those manuscripts may contain secret new insights not revealed in the printed oeuvre. The manuscript is secret, print is public; print is definitive, but manuscripts contain many different options. The translation from German is fluent, and German examples abound. There are few errors (although a book historian called ‘Jean-Henri Martin’ appears on page 234). But this is a book that has not decided to what species it belongs. Müller discusses changes in methods of pulping, ‘sizing’ and cutting paper; he attacks McLuhan and theorizes about the qualities of manuscript production; he introduces many literary examples of the importance of paper, from Goethe and Don Quixote to Bleak House and Illusions perdues. Here Müller is wearing his other hat as Professor of Comparative Literature. His book is thus partly a history of technology, partly a venture into media theory and partly a literary history. This diversity gives the book a rich texture which a more straightforward scholarly history might struggle to achieve. It also illustrates the multi-disciplinary nature of the history of writing.