The Newsletter, vol. 1 no. 8

D ite pe the complacency of some Left-wingers. peace has NOY been restored to the Labcur Party. And the proof is what is happening in Leeds. where the National Executive is trying of the City Labour Party.

Leeds is unique among divided boroughs in having a central delegate body that hus control over the Labour group on the Council and a final sy in all Labour Party alfairs in the city.

Ga this ventral body are represented all branches of affilia trade unions. constituency parties and ward parties. It reels every month and has a full-time secretary and an office Now (he NEC is demanding that it meet only quarterly (part from an annual gene meeting and a meeting to prepare for the municipal elections): that its ward affiliations cease: and that 25 per cent of its remaining finds be distributed yeurly to the constituency parties.

The effects of these changes would be:

To cut down drastically the political discussions and resolutions; To slice off most of the active rank-and-file members. who attend as ward delegates:

To limit the co-ordination of trade union branches and Labour Partie To break up the clection organization, at present centralized and efficient: and To cripple ward efficiency in dozens of ways.

The NEC's actions are based on the Wilson report on organization, accepted by the 1955 annual conference. which said thal city parties should be restricted since they were controlled by old fogies and Cily Fathers.

But in Leeds the changes will have the opposite effect to that The following resolution was passed nem. con, at the last meeting of Leeds City Labour Party and forwarded for inciusion in the Annual Conference agenda: ‘This Conference declares that the basic industries must be nationalized in order to secure the best use of raw muteriuls aad labour. ‘lt therefore instructs the NEC to include the Confederation plan for engineering as part of the party's programme for the coming General Election and to give these measures of reorganization of indusiry under public ownership high priority in the work of the to strangle the central betly

By our Industrial Correspondent EIGHT HUNDRED dredgermen, floating-crane and hoppermen, employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, have been on strike since June 17, Main grievance of the strikers is that their working hours are excessive. They have a compulsory agreement with the employers compelling them to work 112 hours 4 fortnight.

, A further complaint is the widespread differentials prevailing among various grades.

Besides seeking a 44 hour week and a levelling of rates. the men are demanding a wage increase to bring their pay up from £8 18s. to £9 8s. a week. :

Last Tuesday the employers partly climbed down when. at a Ing with the unofficial committee, they offered to wrant this wage demand.

A mass meeting rejected the offer _ But a mass meeting of the strikers rejected this offer, insisting that it must be accompanied by a reduction in working hours. 4 The strikers are very discontented with their union. the transport and General Workers’ Union. whose district committee has not declared the strike official.

When the unien leaders recommended a return to work on the basis of the wage offer. while negotiations took place on the other outstanding gtievances. the strikers’ chief spokesman. Jove MacLean, former secretary of Liverpool Soutly branch (power workers’ section). retorted:

‘We have been led up the garden too often by false promises. : :

Though two in five of the strikers are in danger of losing Thursday. Merseyside dockers organized cofiectinas in support pension rights the strike is one hundred per cent solid. On of the dredgermen.

next Labour Government.

intended by the conference. For in Leeds the rank and file do have some control over the councillors, Last year, for instance, they reversed a Council group decision to raise Council house rents by about six shillings.

A month later they succeeded jn rescinding notices the Council group had sen! oul raising the rents by the same amount in less direct ways And the delegate meeting defeated the Council group nominse for Lord Mayor.

So it is the rank and files demvcratic rights that the NEC decisions will abolish. not domination by the City Fathers The Leeds City Labour Party is unanimous in condemning Following discussions between the shop stewards and the Management of Knowsley Cast-Metal Co. Lte.. Trafford Park. Maneliester. the 10s. a week gomd time-keeping bonus has been reintroduced.

Tt had been withdrawn on the ground that the recent IIs.with-strings’ agreement included a clause for prompt starting. and the 11s. increase was partly for that, _ Now. however. the firm says that time lost through attending hospital for accidents will affect the good Ume-keeping bonus. The Amalgamated Engineering Union district. com. mittee has instructed the stewards to insist on the original -

the changes. One trade union delegate put the reply to the NEC in a nutshell: “Not bloody likel All constituency and ward parties are being circularized with the NEC letter and the detailed reply approved by delegates The secretary of Clapham Communist Party. Irene Daborne. has resigned from the party. She intends to apply for membership of the Labour Party,

* JUNE 29. 1957 FRANCE: Paris police forbade a silent demonstration by

switch that electrocuted Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In the very shadow of Liberty's statue the witchhunt tore two ordinary Jewish people from their children. condemmed them through the mouth of a partial judge on the evidence of perjurers. and murdered them in the blaze of a manufactured hysteria. In so doing it made them no longer ordinary people, but martyrs in the ancient battle for liberty. The onrush of events has tended to blur our horror at this crime and dim our recollection of the high courage with which Ethel and Julius faced their tormentors. Tormentors—and tempters. for if this couple had chosen to confess to a crime of which they were not guilty their lives would have been spared, The defiance of this husband and wife. their love for each other and their confidence in their ultimate vindication arouse feelings which can best be translated into action on behalf of living victims of oppression. Two cases in particular seem to merit the protests of socialists for whom international solidarity does not mean blindness, deafness and docility befpre oppression.

Morton Sobell is still in Alcatraz, serving a sentence of thirty years’ imprisonment. Sobell was tried with the Rosenbergs: like them he is a victim of the McCarthyism which, far from dying out in the USA, is demonstrably—despite the Supreme Court’s welcome decisions last week—still virulent, aggressive and savagely hostile to freedom of political expression and activity, Alcatraz is a living death. As long as Sobell remains inside its walls the socialist movement is failing in a duty; it is time that British Labour acted on his behalf.

* P ROTESTS from all parts of the world have forced the Hungarian Stalinists to postpone the execution of Gyula Oberszovsky and Jozsef Gali while their cases are re-examined by the Supreme Court. The death sentence was passed when these young men, one a journalist, the other a dramatist, appealed against imprisonment. Their crime had been to produce an illegal newspaper. Many of us who sought by demonstrations and other protests to save the lives of the Rosenbergs have since felt shame that we allowed Laszlo Rajk to be murdered. Now those who killed Rajk will claim two more victims unless the protests become irresistible. Will not British communist journalists and writers follow the example set by Christopher Hill and Jack Lindsay and speak up on behalf of Oberszovsky and Gali? Will they not join in the appeal which communist writers in France have addressed to Janos Kadar to

T is now four years since the executioner threw the Left-wing intellectuals, including Francois Mauriac and Jean-Paul Sartre. against the Algerian war.

HUNGARY: Film actor Imre Soos (he played a leading part in ‘The Carousel’) was reported to have committed suicide.

He was an old friend of the writer Jozsef Gali, sentenced to death last week for producing an illegal newspaper.

USA: The Commission on Government Security recommended to Congress two new laws: one penalizing unlawful disclosures of classified information by persons outside as well as within the Government—an invasion of Press freedom; the other making admissible in a court of law evidence of subversion obtained by wire-tapping by authorized Government agencies.

spare these two lives?

Action on behalf of Sobell, Oberszovsky and Galli is imperative. It is the finest tribute we can pay to the memory of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

* AT a conference attended by thirty Scottish socialists, most of them former members of the Communist Party. a six-member committee was set up to co-ordinate activity and promote further discussion, The members are Jim Campbell. H. Gardner and H. Dunlop (Glasgow), Don Renton and Robert Hunter (Edinburgh) and myself (Fife).

Questions suggested for the committee's consideration included the formation of new groups or forums: the sales of The New Reasoner. Forum and The Newsletter; the question of political action; and the holding of a further conference, perhaps on a specific topic.

John Keenan (Fife Socialist League) said in the discussion that socialism was something more than economic security via public ownership. but was essentially a society in which the human spirit and personality could blossom in every way. He favoured the creation of a Third Force in the working-class movement.

Duncan Campbell said that if the groups represented remained mere talking-shops they would disintegrate, They should formulate a concrete programme.

Tom Barbour warned that there was no basis for a new political party. which they would tend to form if they did not remain talking-shops.

Alex McLarty (Glasgow) said political clarity was essential before any new political party could be formed. They should study the lessons of past experience in the Soviet Union.

_Hugh Dunlop stressed the need to restore the humanist tradition to the socialist and communist movements. The concept of class struggle had to be re-examined.

On the question of whether ex-Communist Party members should go into the Labour Party my own view was that the choice ‘cither the Labour Party or the Communist Party” was not urgent, and that there was plenty of scope in the trade unions, the socialist forum movement and other forms of activity.

Don Renton said while industrial comrades could find plenty to do in the trade unions there were others who would be isolated unless they joined the Labour Party.

The decision to set up a Scottish Committee was unanimous. Two of those present were still in the Communist Party and a few belonged to the Labour Party.

MERSEY UNION TO BE BORN ON JULY 7 The Merseyside lightermen who are leaving the Transport and General Workers’ Union have called a meeting for July 7, at which their new union will be instituted and membership cards issued, There are about 400 lightermen and bargemen on Merseyside. The new union, to be called the North-Western Lightermens Association. will have the support of about 85 per cent of them,

FungE 29.

From the Hungarian News and Information Service :

Special Service No. 1241 lith June 1957

NEWS OF WRITERS AND ACTORS Cultural life is so flourishing in Hungary today that it is difficult to imagine the country was reeling under the shock of insurrection only eight months ago.

...

through the prism of their class preconceptions, and who to a great exlent merely repeated what had already been said over Lr the Soviet Government and the Kadadr administration and over again by Hungarian communists and socialists and wish to challenge the findings of the United Nations by foreign friends of the Hungarian workers. special committee on Hungary. one clear course of That tribunal is the Hungarian working class. which is far action is open to them. from having said its last word on the matters to which the special committee devoted its five months’ labours.

Let them appeal to the working-class movement of the world to set up its own commission of inquiry. with the participation By an illuminating accident the day the committee's report of Yugoslavia. China and India. appeared was the very day chosen by Hungarian Stalinism to excel even its Russian masters in an act of savage retribution.

Even the sternest socialist critic of the second Russian intervention in Hungary would have confidence in the findings _ Three young people who had been sentenced to terms of of such a commission. imprisonment for “counter-revolutionary” activity were senFailing this. the report of the special committee cannot but tenced to death on appeal. carry enormous weight, despite the fact that it consisted of They included the 30-year-old journalist Gyula Oberszovrepresentatives of Australia. Ceylon, Denmark. Tunisia and sky and the 27-year-old playwright Jozsef Gali, who had been Uruguay—and the description of the report as a ‘crude. false. sentenced to three years” and one year’s imprisonment respecdisgusting job’, as ‘interference’ in Hungary's “domestic af- tively for writing and producing an illegal newspaper. fairs’ and as a ‘deceitful report’ carries no weight at all.

These details were omitted from the report which the Daily If the Soviet Government had confidence in its argu- Worker placed inconspicuously apart from its treatment of ments about “White Terror’ and ‘counter-revolution’ then why the United Nations document, did it not utilize the special committee as a platform from Omitted also was a section of the Reuter report which attriwhich to proclaim the truth?

buted to the judge the remark that ‘the case must be considered as a political question’.

Would not stand examination The Kadir régime was conceived and born in slaughter.

It had every opportunity to present its case to the commilthis act of the pecan Supreme Court shows that terror is tee: by failing to do sa it not only showed a sovereign conthe only mean by which it can remain alive. tempt for world public opinion, but also recognized in deeds that its reasons for this aggressive act would not stund critical ; ane agony of the Hungarian people goes on. Their cup is examination. ull.

War administration. too, had the opportunity of stat- In studying and evaluating the special committee’s renort ing its case. By failing to do so it, too. displayed before the on a nation in agony one objection must be met: that this whole world its lack of confidence in ils contentions. is a report from a capitalist source. and that therefore its assessment of events in a socialist country is suspect.

Above all, by refusing to grant the committee permission to conduct its jnvestigations on Hungarian soil. Kadar made it Tn reply to this a number of arguments suggest themselves. abundantly clear that he has much to hide, both about the First. the committee went about its work, as even the most present and about the past. and that his White Papers on cursory examination of the report shows, with scrupulous, not ‘counter-revolution’ and “White Terror are documents which to say rigorous. fairness. carry so little authority that their authors fear an impartial test.

Tt was up to Kadar to produce the ‘White Terrorists’, ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and “fascist plotters Not communist journalists, novelists and playwrights, Vir.

The Ceyfonese signatory to the United Naiions Kadar. Not poets. Not young electrical workers. Not gen- report on Hungary, Mr. R. S. Gunewardene, said in darmerie from 1919, whom Ruakosi left unpunished for eleven Colombo on Saturday that not one witness before the years. special committee had wanted a change in Hungary's But Horthyites. agents of American imperialism. anti-Sem- social or economic system. ites, ‘older men in leather coats’. bearers of foreign money No one was prepared (o let the factories go back to and foreign arms. the capitalists. If the revolution had been inspired by He cannot prodiice them—and therefore. in the words of the the western Powers they would have wanted to break Daily Worker. ‘the Hungarian Government did not recognize with the social and economic systems and return to a the committee’. capitalist system.

The bureaucracy which rules in Budapest by the grace of ‘They wanted a socialist republic based on Marxist Russian tanks is arrogant enough to suppose that it need not and Leninist principles, with greater friendship with answer for its crimes. Russia and other socialist countries, But they also But there is a higher tribunal than the five United Nations wanted independence from any foreign control.’ gentlemen who gazed wonderingly at a political revolution

(One only wishes that a similar examination might be made by a United Nations tribunal of Britain's crimes in Cyprus and Kenya.)

Secondly. the Daily Worker, which now rejects a United Nations report as ‘deceitful’. has never been reluctant to utilize to the full such United Nations documents as have suited its current political line.

One recalls the speeches of an Australian delegate during the debates on Korea and the reports of the Economic Commission for Europe. Marxists cannot dismiss out of hand the findings of such tribunals as this merely because they are presented by the bourgeoisie.

Thirdly—and most important—the two volumes of this report, as has already been indicated, contain little that is absolutely new.

The evidence merely rounds out the story whose main lines have already been sketched by the British socialist journalist Basil Davidson and the Polish communist journalist Wiktor Woroszylski.

The conclusions for the most part merely repeat and elaborate what has already been put forward by those who held that the Hungarian people, arms in hand. had the will, the strength, the courage. the determination. the élan and the morale to beat back and thwart any attempt to destroy the socialist property relations on which, for a few exhilarating days, they had begun to erect socialist democracy.

Hungary’s friends are vindicated Is it too much to suggest that it was this aspect of the report —its vindication of what communist and socialist defenders of the Hungarian Revolution have been saying for eight months —which most embarrassed the editor of the Daily Worker. to whom fell the thankless task of ‘refuting’ it?

It was a task he performed without a spark of conviction or enthusiasm; so unconvincingly that he had to have, not one, not two. but three further bites at the cherry: a full-scale editorial and an interpretative article next day, and yet another article this Wednesday. Each time he Jays down his pen, thinking he has exorcized this report. it returns to haunt him.

Not that the special committee is either wholly accurate in its facts or wholly balanced in its conclusions. It is not necessary that it should be for its report to have immense value.

A revolution is a highly complex and self-contradictory thing. and it is too much to expect gentlemen from Australia, Ceylon, Denmark, Tunis and Uruguay, for all their impartiality and humanitarian sentiments, to see the full significance for the history of the world socialist revolution of those twelve turbulent days.

Nevertheless events of such dimensions cannot fail to make their impression. even at second-hand, on honest observers.

Certain fundamental aspects—i.e., certain class aspects—of the Hungarian Revolution do shine out from these pages: for instance, the réle of the workers’ councils, the leading part layed by communists. right up to and including the final galant. doomed resistance; the intention of the Hungarian people to defend to the end their socialist economic gains:

‘No putsch by reactionary landlords or by dispossessed industrialists could have prevailed against the determination of these fully aroused workers and peasants to defend the reforms they had gained and to pursue their fulfilment.”

The slanders and the smears with which the Stalinist leaders of the Communist Parties have sought to bespatter and obscure the Hungarian workers’ resistance meet in this report, if it is properly understood and critically evaluated. a tremendous rebuff.

Neither Moscow's invective nor the crude attempts of the State Department and the British Foreign Office to use the Teport as a weapon in the cold war will alter the fundamental class nature of the Hungarian revolution, nor the resolution of the Hungarian workers one day to avenge the crimes that have been committed against them, sweep away the joint tyranny of foreign occupation and native bureaucracy and its reborn AVH, and establish socialist democracy.

A page of present-day history—a page whose importance will without doubt grow as the years go by—has been documented in abundance.

Do some still stick their heads in the sand? No matter. Their attitude proves nothing about Hungary. but it proves a good deal about these self-styled ‘Marxists’. JuNE 29, 1957

A Newsletter Analysis THE speech by Mao Tse-tung on ‘The Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People’ deserves the most serious attention and the qualified support of communists and socialists throughout the world.

The speech is not only an analysis of the fundamental problems of socialist construction in a backward country, but also —and this is more important—it constitutes an implicit challenge to the Soviet rulers for the ideological leadership of the communist world.

‘The theoretical and political conclusions of this speech undoubtedly transcend the specific conditions of China, and apply equally to the USSR and East Europe.

Khrushchew’s denial on television of the universality of Mao’s observations on contradictions between leaders and led shows how important Mao's observations were—and how dangerous their logic is.* Two questions stand out. Why was the speech released to the public four months after it was made? And why does it differ substantially from the version circulating in Warsaw?

The answer to both questions could be the desire of the Peking leaders not to tread on the Kremlin's two largest corns: Hungary and Stalin.

The speech. notable for its lack of jargon and its refreshing simplicity. is divided into twelve sections. dealing with the various kinds of contradiction existing in Chinese socicty and how they can be overcome or resolved.

1) TWO TYPES OF CONTRADICTION The first section deals with two different types of contradiction: that between the Chinese people as a whole and their main enemies—the imperialists, landlords and big bureaucratic-capitalists—a fundamental contradiction that can be resolved only by force: and those among various strata and classes inside the Chinese nation. These can be solved without resort to force.

This is what Mao says: ‘While we stand for freedom with leadership and democracy under centralized guidance, in no sense do we mean that coercive measures should be taken to settle ideological matters and questions involving the distinetion between right and wrong among the people.

‘Any attempt to deal with ideological matters or questions involving right and wrong by administrative orders or coercive measures will not only be ineffective but harmful . . . we can only use democratic methods. methods of discussion, of criticism, of persuasion and education, not coercive, high-handed methods.’

These words are a devastating judgment not only on the former practices of the Chinese Communist Party in regard to, say. the Chinese Trotskyists, but also on the present practices of the Russian and East European Communist Parties.

Contradictions, stresses Mao, exist in socialist society. They stem from the fact that, in China, socialist relations of production, while they assist the growth of the productive forces, nevertheless are far from perfect and do not correspond to the level of development of the productive forces, From this is also derived the contradiction between the economic basis of society and its political superstructure.

This goes to the roots of the political and economic crisis in the Stalinist world.

2) THE SUPPRESSION OF COUNTER-REVOLUTION This section is an unsparing criticism of these who wishfully believe that a peaceful and gradual transition to socialism is possible and necessary. Unfortunately it is marred by wholly misleading references to Hungary.

*This is also underlined by the Daily Worker's apprehension in its editorial of June 20: ‘It would be entirely opposed to the spirit of the speech. however, if il became the basis of any form of dogmatism.’

:

JuNE 29, 1957

necessity to consolidate the system.

The most cogent argument in favour of the co-operative system is given in the bald statistics of production: an increase from 210.000 million catties in 1949 to 360,000 million in 1956.

The question of distribution is of paramount importance: “We must find the correct way to handle the three-way relationship between the tax revenue of the State, accumulation of funds in the co-operatives and the personal income of the peasant. . . . Accumulation is essential for both the State and co-operatives, but in neither case should this be overdone.”

The immediate aim is to raise the standard of life of the poor peasants to that of the middle peasants, and to cut the wages of a ‘small number of workers and government personnel’.

BUSINESSMEN

Here Mao, in dealing with students’ demonstrations and

This section deals with the transformation of private enterprise to publicly-owned or State-owned property.

The extreme weakness of the national bourgeoisie has enabled the régime to take over private industry in stages and to convert a section of the bourgeoisie into managerial personnel.

Those who still operate their own industries are paid a fixed rate of interest on their capital.

Nowhere in this section is there any mention of workers’ Sentrol.

$5) THE INTELLECTUALS The events in Hungary and Poland have had an undoubted Act on the intellectuals. and the policy of the party in the t past has tended to disillusion them.

“It seems as if Marxism. that was once all the rage. is not so much in fashion now, Mao admits. ‘A thorough change in world outlook takes a long time, and we should go about it patiently and not be impetuous.”

Mao is obviously worried about the growth of great-Han

®auvinism and the future of the national minorities, which itute six per cent of the population but occupy 50 to ot) cer cent of the country’s area.

Tibet is the greatest worry. Reforms there have been postpened during the five-year plan, and when they will be accomplished ‘can only be decided when the great majority of the people of Tibet and their leading public figures consider it Practical’.

7) PLANNING Mao seems to realize that the government cannot handle and eéminister everything.

‘Social organizations and the masses themselves can work wat ways and means to take care of many matters involving eerie and things. . . . We should give guidance to social or©s= zations and the masses of the people everywhere in taking ech action.”

8) “LETTING A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM’

This is the most interesting and important section of the Eve policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hunchools of thought contend is designed to promote the shing of the arts and the progress of science. . . . sounds the death-knell of Zhdanovism in art and sciOver and over again Mao inveighs against arbitrariness = ideological work.

Crede coercive methods should not be used in this strugBut only the method of painstaking reasoning. ... . What ect always develops in the course of struggle with what zg. The true, the good and the beautiful always exist in on with the false, the evil and the ugly, and grow in 2 with the latter.

As mankind in general rejects an untruth and accepts a a a new truth will begin struggling with new erroneous Sa Such struggles will never end. This is the law of developof truth, and it is certainly also the law of development of Marxism.’

This is a defence of agricultural co-operatives and of the workers’ strikes in 1956, traces the sources of these acts not to the masses but to the bureaucratic actions of the leadership.

He demands an implacable war on bureaucracy and fuller collaboration between the masses and the leaders in the. solution of problems.

‘The guiding spirits in disturbances should not be removed from their jobs or expelled without good reason... . We should turn such things to advantage to help us get rid of bureaucracy.’

10) GOOD THINGS AND BAD THINGS Here once again. to use a phrase of Mao's himself, a “good thing is turned into a bad thing’ by false references to Hungary.

Mao deals with the question of war and peace in a very general way and expresses the view that the whole structure of imperialism will collapse in the next war.

Ali) ECONOMY ‘Practising economy is like washing one’s face.’ says Mao. However it appears that everyone in China does not wash his face. metaphorically speaking.

‘A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel—an unwillingness to share the joys and hardships of the masses, a concern for personal position and gain. This is very bad~ The solution: ‘Transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number of them will return to productive work. Here once again there is no talk of workers’ management or control.

12) INDUSTRIALIZATION Mao tries to establish the relations between light industry, heavy industry and agriculture, and speaks of the potentially vast market for heavy industry in agricultural development and the necessity for inducing a correspondingly greater developaa in light industry during the second and third five-year plans.

This belated retreat from Soviet methods of planning will be welcomed by the workers and peasants of China.

+ * Mao ends his speech with a metaphorical ‘Hurrah’ for the USSR and for peaceful co-existence with the capitalist world. Whether the Kremlin will shout “Hurrah for Mao Tse-tung’ temains to be seen. M.B.

HOLLAND From our Amsterdam Correspondent

THE Communist publishing house Pegasus was too hasty in the action it brought against another firm of publishers, De Bezige Bij, over Vladimir Dudintsev’s novel Nor by Bread Alone.

Pegasus claimed it had obtained the exclusive right to publish a Dutch translation and sued Bezige Bij, which announced that it was going to publish one.

But. said the president of the court, Bezige Bij had announced that they would only publish their translation if the Pegasus version was not a true translation of the original Russian edition. (The second edition was allered after the book had been attacked as a ‘libel on Soviet reality’)

Pegasus were ordered to pay the costs—about £15.

In the issue of June 15 (p. 38) it was stated that at a Communist Party Congress report-back meeting in Leeds the vote on the Congress decisions was 32 in fayour, 27 against.

This is inaccurate. A resolution condemning the decisions was submitted to the chair, but was not read out. and the mecting was asked to vote on whether resolutions should be taken. The figures given were for that vote.

June 29. 1957

1954 Edition 1956 Edition * 1902, March: Batum demonstration directed by Nothing Stalin. 1917, March 12 (2S): Stalin returns from exile. Nothing THE June issue of L’Etincelle (The 1917, Oct. 16 (29): The CC elects a Party Centre, Nothing Spark), one of the opposition jour- with Stalin at its head, charged with directing nals published by French commun- the insurrection. ists, makes a comparison between 1917. Oct. 24 (Noy. 6) in the evening: Lenin ar- establishes himself al Central Committee member Georges rives at Smolny to direct the insurrection to- Smoiny to direct the insurgether with Stalin. rection.

Cogniot’s latest book ‘Knowledge of 1918, August: Cowardly attack by the Socialist- Cowardly attack by the Socialthe USSR’ (Editions sociales, 1956)

Revolutionaries Bukharinists against ist-Revolutionaries agains! and the book of which it is in fact a new edition, ‘Short Sincere Guide August-December: Defence of Tsaritsin (now Nothing to the Soviet Union’ (Editions soci- Stalingrad) by Stalin and Voroshiloy. ales, 1954). 1919, May-October: Denikin’s offensive wiped out Denikin’s offensive wiped oul by Stalin’s plan (Second Entente Campaign). (Second Entente Campaign).

The adjacent extracts from the 1919, June-July: Defence of Petrograd against Victorious defence of Petrochronology at the back of the book Yudenich by Stalin. grad against Yudenich. are given: 1924, April: Appearance of Stalin's work: Foun- Nothing dations of Leninism.

* 1934, Dec. 1: Cowardly assassination of Sergei Assassination of Sergei Kirov. Kirov by the Trotskyist-Zinovievist-Bukharinist bandits.

(USSR

From our Sydney Correspondent THE rehabilitation of Stalin’s victims is usually made SIXTEEN members of the Como-Oakley (Sydney) branch known in the Soviet Union in an indirect, allusive way. of the Communist Party have been expelled for organiz- A recent instance is that of Eidemann. ing an ‘anti-leadership opposition’ and distributing Some readers will recall his name as that of one of the Red ‘doubtful’ literature. Army officers executed along with Tukhacheysky in 1937. (See These expelled members are carrying on the fight for what ‘Eight Soviet Generals Plotted against Peace’. published at the they call a ‘Marxist-Leninist party in Australia cleansed of time by the Friends of the Soviet Union. as the British-Soviet the Stalinist leadership’. Friendship Society was then called.)

Though anyone distributing or discussing the Khrushchev In a recent article in Literaturnaya Gazeta on the history of report is liable to immediate expulsion, a member of Banks- Soviet Latvian literature the following passage appeared: town (Sydney) branch has brought out the full text. and it is ‘Robert Eidemann, one of the most talented of Soviet Latcirculating widely through the party. vian writers. was at the same time an outstanding commander A dissident member of the Central Committee. W. Bill. in the Civil War. commandant of the Frunze Military Acawhom the rank and file looked on as a champion. but whose demy. a member of the Revolutionary Military Council and unorthodox views on democratic centralism were bitterly at- the head of Osoaviakhim [Civil Defence]. tacked by the Sharkey-Dixon leadership, has now recanted.

‘He made his name in the literary field as a novelist. shortIn the May 1957 issue of Communist Review he apologizes story writer and playwright... 7 for his mistake and puts it down to “petit bourgeois infiltra- L.H. tion into my thinking and an insufficient understanding of dialectical materialism’, A PEOPLE WHO HAVE TRAVELLED FAR THE policy of ‘let’s-pretend-these-things-never-hap[ POLAND pened’ is carried rather far in an article in Pravda of June 20 about the visit to Mé&cow of a song-and-dance company from the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous GOMULKA JOINS A FACTORY BRANCH Republic.

All employees of the Polish United Workers’ Party on all This little republic, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, levels must now belong to basic parly organizations in fac- is inhabited by two peoples. the Kabardians and the Balkars tories and take part in their activities. In 1944 the latter were deported en masse—some 40,000 Ascording to a report in Polish Facts and. Figures (June men, women and children—to Kirgizia. in Central Asia, on members of the political bureau and of the secretariat have the ground that some of them had allegedly collaborated with already been allocated to basic organizations at Warsaw facthe German invaders. tories. The name of the republic was changed to 'Kabardia’, the Wladyslaw Gomulka is now a member of the party organiza- portion where the Balkars had lived being ceded to Georgia. tion at the Zeran motor-car factory. Premier Jozef Cyran- Following Khrushchev’s ‘secret’ speech the status quo has kiewiez of the organization at the M. Nowotho mechanical been restored and the Balkars allowed to return home. works. and Aleksander Zawadzki. president of the Council of In the light of all this—none of which is mentioned—the State. of the organization at the Rosa Luxemburg works.

Tue NEWSLETTER following passage, which concludes the Pravda article (written by the Deputy Premier of the Republic) is perhaps meant to be understood ironically:

‘Our people have travelled far, Great transformations have taken place in our republic thanks to the Leninist national policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government. the only policy which brings happiness and prosperity to all peoples.”

Since Stalin's death the lot of the Jews has steadily improved and the fear is disappearing.

Before I deal with the answers that were received regarding the position of the Jewish people today. I would like, albeit briefly, to deal with several of the general statements regarding Stalin’s actions during the latter years of his life.

This will make it a bit easier to understand some of the paradoxical situations which developed in the USSR.

According to people who were in the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party. Stalin justified all of his actions with

*BLar’. meaning ‘pull’, is a word that does not often appear in print in Russia.

it oceurs. however. in an article by Alexander Latsis in the Literaturnaya Gazeta of June 4; and this is hardly surprising. since the subject of the article is *blat—in connection with admissions to institutions of higher education.

Latsis writes of how influential people use their pull withthe staff of a college to get their young relatives admitted Tegardless of actual merit.

There has been an improvement in the situation lately, in so far as there are now two or three examiners in each case. instead of one (examinations are oral).

But Latsis is not satisfied that all scope for the working of “bla has been removed, He calls for ‘strengthening public supervision of entrance examinations’ (in which, as he observes. ‘people's fates are decided’) and for the dismissal of examiners caught in dishonest. practices. the excuse that they were in the interest of socialism in the USSR.

His false theory that as socialism advances the class struggle intensifies rather than weakens. his conviction that war is inevitable and his mania that he was personally surrounded by enemies, all led to the most outrageous acts.

This has a bearing on the fact that officially the government never pursued a policy of deliberate anti-Semitism and Jews were able to hold the highest positions in the worst limes, But when a certain woman doctor, who was one of Beria’s agents among medical personnel. accused the doctors who attended Zhdanov of deliberately allowing him to die, Stalin’s demented brain immediately sensed a conspiracy that must be rooted out.

Under Stalin’s one-man rule. without the slightest regard for law or hurnan decency the whole State apparatus was sct into motion with devilish speed.

‘The Press and radio began to spread the Stalin-Beria story that there had been uncovered a doctors’ plot—a group of ‘devils in white’ who were serving ‘the imperialists, the Zionists and the Jewish Jvint Distribution Committee of America’.

By J. B. Salsberg (This is the sixth in the series of articles, ‘Talks with Soviet Leaders on the Jewish Question’.)

THE third group of questions concerned the charges and reports of anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union.

From all of these conversations. including those with ordinary Jewish citizens; I was able to conclude that until the end of the war there was little evidence of anti-Jewish discrimination, that there was no significant sign of discrimination against Jews and that until then there had been absolutely no public expression of anti-Semitism.

After the war there did begin to be felt and heard antiSemitic opinions and actions in various parts of the Soviet Union. This was especially true of the districts which had been occupied for a long period by the Axis.

Tn the last dark years of Stalin's one-man rule there were times when his acts bore a definite anti-Semitic character.

(Here it should be noted that—although it does not make the experience of the Jewish people any Jess severe—Stalin exbited even more hatred and distrust toward a number of small peoples. With the greatest brutality he drove these peoples from their ancient homes and sent them to distant exile without the consent of the party or government.)

The most bitter period of the Jewish people was from 1948 to the spring of 1953, when Stalin died. Bitter as gall was the period of the doctors’ frameup.

During the course of these four or five years very many Jews were displaced from high positions in the party and from certain government posts (particularly from the foreign servance).

Great fear seized the Jews _ Jewish students also found it more difficult to enter university and certain heads of factories were not to anxious to hire Jews. Great fear seized the Jewish masses.

_ It may be paradoxical but if is nevertheless true that even during the worst years Jews continued to occupy innumerable positions of the highest rank.

Not only Lazar Kaganovich, who to this day is one of the top leaders of the government, but actually many thousands of Jews held and were promoted in their positions as professors, teachers. writers, artists, musicians, singers, actors, engineers. factory directors, etc. In fact Jews were to be found in most trades and enterprises.

Naturally, the doctors confessed to all of the fabricated charges. This made the position of the Jewish people very' unpleasant.

And yet in the very midst of this atmosphere of terror there occurred such cases as that of the Jewish woman, resident in Moscow, a former Canadian. who could not obtain employment because she was Jewish.

She wrote a letter to Stalin Tn her despair she wrote a letter 10 Stalin outlining her case and requesting either a job or to be sent back to Canada.

A few days later she received a call from Stalin’s office. She was asked the name of the last firm that refused to hire her and was then instructed to go there immediately and demand employment.

When she arrived she was met by the director. He received her like a VIP. apologized to her profusely and immediately put her to work.

So there you have the paradox occurring at the very moment of the most outrageous frame-up which shook the Soviet Jewish community to its very foundations.

The poisonous admixture of false theories. despotic dictatorial practices, years of lawlessness and brutality (legitimatized by the theory that the end justifies the means), suspicion of Jews. particularly the Yiddish speaking, because they might be susceptible to bourgeois and Zionist influences from abroad, and Stalin’s persecution mania together with the absence of any official or theoretically justified anti-Semitism. provides us with the background to the events of 1948-49, to the doctors’ plot and to the other tragic happenings which persisted until Stalin’s death.

And while the major factors making up the above-mentioned Stalinist admixture haye been overcome, if is my opinion that certain elements of his policies still remain in operation.

Now, regarding the charges and rumours that there is antiSemitism and discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union:

There is no doubt that the heritage of anti-Semitism still persists among certain of the backward clements of the Soviet population, But it is impossible to speak of anti-Semitism as an official government policy when we find Jewish cabinet ministers. Jewish writers (who enjoy nationwide popularity), Jewish artists and scientists of every description, including the head of the all-union atomic energy development.

Nevertheless there does exist an incomprehensible caution. a peculiar sensitivity when it comes to taking an open, bold (Continued overleaf)

June 29, 1957 Electronic computers are very much faster than humans. so

By J. H. Bradley IN RECENT YEARS much attention has been paid to various types of electronic computing machine, in automatic control of machine tools, accounting. recording bookings for airline passengers. and many other fields.

These machines were developed largely because of the de- change. _ velopment of radar and. associated techniques. This article is concerned with the application of a digital computer to weather forecasting.

It has been knewn for many years that the quantities used in meteorology—temperature. pressure. humidity, ete——were connected by certain fairly simply differential equations.

If these could be solved, they would give a weather forecast starting from any given conditions.

The solution was in fect well known. but so tedious te apply that humans coula not keep up with the weather, It vould take two days to work out tomorrow's weather!

SALSBERG (Continued from previous page)

and militant position against manifestations of backwardness This often leads to acts that are essentially discriminatory.

Why. for example. is there no official declaration regardi Stalin’s anti-Jewish actions?

Js it because other Soviet peoples will ask why the government issues a special declaration only about Jews? J] cannot be content with this reply. uM I asked why il is that passports and other personal documents of Jewish citizens are marked “Yevrei’ Gew). When I asked how this practice squares with the statement that most Jews were fully integrated, J got no clear or satisfactory answer, I inquired why Pravda had omitted the reference to Jewish writers from its reprint of Eugene Dennis’ article.* One of the editors of this Soviet paper replied that this was done because it was a ‘controversial question in the USSR’ Now what kind of an excuse is this? Since when does Pravda fear to handle controversial questions?

At one of the official sessions I inquired about Madame Furtseva’s famous interview with the National Guardian. I quoted from the Guardian those sections in which Mme. Furtmethods have been developed in Dunstable and Moscow for using such machines.

One of the series of special computers under construction by the USSR Academy of Sciences is called ‘Weather’.

The solutions can only be approximate, but are usually rather better than so-called experience, especially under diflicult conditions.

Thus the Meteorological Office has been known to forecast continued fine weather for a Bank Holiday, when the computer correctly showed rain, Conditions had been static for some days, and nobody could tell when they would begin to The method used is to make the machine work out the sseather say three hours ahead. using the situation at the moment. The three-hour forecast is used as a basis for a six hour forecast. and so on.

Since the computer works only in terms of numbers (arithmetic). not in terms of variables (algebraic functions). it cannot use all the information available on a map.

A cold front might be given by specifying ten points through which it passed. Thus the results can only be approximate. though this may be less serious than the fact that there is only a finite number of measuring stations to start with.

This example is not only in my opinion a slap in the face to the four eliminated Jewish students: it is also a eriticism of those responsible for the Soviet Union's nationalities policy.

‘The explanation is full of colossal contradictions. How does it tally with the ‘integration’ theory and the concept that Jews ‘are expressing themselves in the culture of the people among whom they live?

This was the explanation every time I asked why full opportunities were not provided for a rebirth of Jewish culture.

Who examined. and why. the chosen student from Minsk. Moscow or Kiev. to find out if he was a hundred per cent White Russian. Great Russian or Ukrainian or if he was only a Jewish White Russian, Jewish Great Russian or Jewish Ukrainian? Are there two classes of citizens in the Soviet republics?

In my opinion such practices are in complete contradiction with the most elementary concepts of socialist equality. In my opinion this is an example of inconsistency and of a-catering to the most backward elements in Soviet society, And in my opinion it is a form of discrimination that must be fought. exposed and eliminated.

seva explains that in some government departments there was too great a concentration of Jews so that they were transferred io other jobs.

To my great regret and shame I] must record the fact that. although one of the chief leaders Who answered me neither corroborated or denied Mme. Furtseva’s words, his own explanation more than confirmed the essence of her statement The truth is, he tried very hard to prove to me by examples that the transfer or dismissal of Jewish employees in republics which were originally backward but which now have ‘their own’ intelligentsia and professionals able to fill the positions that Jews or Russians once held had. nothing to do with antiSem R _is the meaning of “their own’ in a socialist country? Why yield to the demands of undemocratic elements?

Sull worse was the example given of the importance in State which includes many nations and peoples of alway taking ino account the sensitivity of these nations and peoples He described the problem that arose when the government decided to send six talented musie students to an international competition.

It.so happened that afl of the six chosen were Jewish.

But in the interests of good relations among peoples there was interference and only two Jews and four fram other peoples were sent.

‘And the first prize in the festival was won by a Georgian” he added. .

*The omitted passage was: *. . . snuffing out the lives of more thanva score of Jewish cultural leaders... © Published by Peter Frver, 180, Clapham High St.. London, S.W.4 ON the eve of today’s special general meeting of the Society for Cultural Relations, a group of Birmingham University members of the SCR have circulated a memorandum expressing support for the aims of Mr. Donald Veall’s motion.

The memorandum puts forward a positive programme for the Society’s future work.

The group consists of Miss E. Koutaissoff and Messrs, Geoffrey Barker. R. W. Davies and Robert Smith.

They note that the potential value of the Society has been handicapped “by the unrepresentative character of ils leadership and by political bias’.

They urge that changes be made beth in the Executive Committee and in the editorial control of the Anglo-Soviet Journal which shall “make certain beyand the slightest possibility of doubt that a policy altogether free from bias and distortion is intraduced’.

Once the necessary changes have been made and the Society’s activity turned in the direction of the supply of objective information of use to professional people. it will be possible to draw persons of high standing imto the leadership. pune the Society's membership and put it on a firm financial MASTS.

WITHOUT COMMENT

Pravda for June 21 devotes two half-columns to an appreciative review of “The Soviet Union and Socialism’ by “the well-known British publicist Andrew Rothstein’, The review is headed: ‘The Truth about the Soviet Union’.

Printed by Plough Press, Led., r.o. 180. Clapbam High St.. London, S.W.4.