October 1956

It started in February 1956.  The occasion was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s XXth Congress, the first such party meeting to be held after Joseph Stalin’s death.  On the last day of the congress [February 25^th], Nikita Khrushchev delivered the Secret Speech.  In this six-hour marathon, Khrushchev detailed Stalin’s crimes – a criticism of his dictatorial methods, the terror of the 1930s, the relocation of entire populations, and his incompetence that nearly brought the Soviet Union to ruin in World War II.  He conveniently left out his own role in Stalin’s reign of terror.  He was careful to praise Communism while criticizing Stalin.  But he took the opportunity to club the dead guy and those who supported him as a way to affirm his own grip on power.  No foreigners were allowed to hear the speech, but transcriptions of the speech were subsequently distributed to the Soviet Union’s satellites in Eastern Europe.  Once the speech hit the streets in Poland, the fun and games began.

Poland

Prior to 1956, however, Poland was implementing Soviet-style central planning via its First Six-Year Plan.  Polish United Workers’ Party chief Boleslaw Bierut executed plays from the Stalinist playbook of the Soviets’ first Five Year Plan.  Emphasis was on accelerating development of heavy industry, collectivizing agriculture by force, and a rigid command economy.  Communist Poland became a mirror of the Soviet Union – a police state with rigid ideological regimentation that persecuted the Roman Catholic Church.  The Communists imprisoned Polish Prelate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski and eight other high Polish Catholics.  Like the Soviet Union, collectivization of Polish agriculture met with strong peasant resistance.  But unlike the Soviets, the Polish Communists didn’t instigate a terror-famine to bring the peasants to heel.

Two weeks after Khrushchev’s speech, Bierut died.  In 1948 Bierut had won a power struggle with Wladyslaw Gomulka.  At that time Stalin thought of Gomulka as a Titoist because Gomulka had disagreed with him about the “Polish way to socialism.”  For Stalin, his way – the Soviet way - was the only way.  Gomulka, like Tito in Yugoslavia, disagreed with the “one size fits all” approach.  This line of thinking got Gomulka stripped of power and thrown in jail.  But Gomulka was a rare thing – he was a Communist who was popular.  Gomulka was a Polish Communist who fought the Nazis in the Polish Underground – Bierut fled to Soviet-occupied Poland after the Nazis attacked in 1939 so he could avoid military service.  He spent four years in the Soviet Union during the war.  He was Stalin’s man.  After Stalin died, he was seen as an enemy of the Polish people, and Bierut was guilty by association.  After Bierut’s death, he was succeeded by Edward Ochab, but a schism between reformers and conservatives in the Polish United Workers’ Party [PZPR] showed itself.

Polish attitudes toward the Soviet Union were shaped by events of World War II.  One event that fed Polish antagonism toward the Soviets was the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.  While the Polish Home Army and the Nazis fought in Warsaw, the Red Army sat on the banks of the Vistula River.  They didn’t lift a finger to help the Polish uprising.  That left the Nazis a free hand to destroy the outmanned and outgunned Polish Home Army.  The Soviets had also perpetrated the Katyń massacre.  As part of the Secret Protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern half of Poland.  During the occupation, Stalin’s NKVD executed over 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyń Forest.  Russian officers of Polish descent served in the Polish Army, most notably Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky.  At Moscow’s insistence, Rokossovsky was Poland’s Minister of Defense.   Stalinism was felt in Poland in several ways:  the state security apparatus was large, political dissidents were imprisoned, and there was an iron-fisted rule that was heavily reliant on fear.  And there was the Six-Year Plan…

During the implementation of the Six-Year Plan, the standard of living started falling.  The workers were overworked and underpaid, denied bonuses, and saw their benefits cut. Working conditions deteriorated and there were shortages of food and popular consumer goods.  Farmers who owned medium and large farms found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy – such was the intended effect of collectivization.  The farmers didn’t produce as much, resulting in the food shortages in cities like Poznań.  The proletariat had enough.  Workers from the Joseph Stalin Poznań Metal Works walked off the job on June 28, 1956.  They were joined by workers from other factories in Poznań until their ranks swelled into the thousands.  This evolved into a general strike.  Quietly, they marched toward the city center.  Their intent was to force the PZPR and the city council to negotiate better living and working conditions.  But the character of this huge demonstration turned from economic to political.  The mood was anti-Communist and anti-Soviet.  They shouted slogans:  "We want bread ", "We are hungry", "Away with workforce exploitation!", "We want a free Poland", "Freedom", "Away with Bolshevism", "—we demand free elections under the UN control!", "Away with Russkis", "Away with the Russians!", "Away with communists", "Away with the red bourgeoisie!", "We want God".  They forced their way into the local party headquarters.  Rumors spread that a delegation of workers sent to negotiate with the authorities was detained, and the crowd broke into a local prison to free them.  In the process, they liberated small arms and ammunition.  Some protesters headed to the local office for Public Security.  Then things got really ugly when gunfire was exchanged between the protesters and the police.  More groups of armed protesters seized and disarmed local police stations in Poznań.  The strike spread to Luboń, Swarzędz and Kostrzyn.  Then the authorities called in the army – two armored divisions and two infantry divisions [approximately 10,000 troops and 360 tanks].  It took them two days to restore order.  Casualty totals vary from source to source.  Some say 70 protesters were killed, others say 57 or 58.  Between 600-700 protesters were wounded.  The casualty totals were relatively low, but the party bosses in Warsaw were shaken by the workers’ protest against the self-proclaimed workers’ state.

Word of the events in Poznań spread across the country.  Poles across the country began to voice their dissatisfaction with the state of their lives.  They too wanted higher wages and better working conditions.  They too wanted more food.  The Communist leadership in Poland realized much change was needed to avoid another Poznań.  In August 1956, Wladyslaw Gomulka was rehabilitated and readmitted to the PZPR.  People across the country were hopeful that Gomulka would return to power.  The thinking was if Gomulka was in power, the events in Poznań wouldn’t have happened.  There was hope that the man who was imprisoned for his defiance of Stalin would restore the Polish nation.  But Gomulka was not restored to power just yet.  Those arrested in Poznań were put on trial in late-September 1956.  Unlike in Stalin’s time, these trials were not held in secret.  The treatment of those arrested was discussed openly. People across the country followed the trials closely.  The mood across the country was one of apprehension – Poznań could happen again, only this time on a national scale.

On October 12, Gomulka expressed the need for a more equal relationship between Poland and the Soviet Union.  He wanted Russian troops out of Poland and wanted to end the forced export of goods to the Soviet Union.  Though he wanted Russian troops to be gone, Gomulka wanted to reform the system, not abolish it.  He wanted more independence for Poland, but didn’t want to sever links with Moscow.  Several days later Gomulka met with the PZPR Politburo, and the press announced he would participate in the 8^th Plenum of the PZPR.  On October 19^th Poland received some uninvited guests from Moscow – Khrushchev, Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan and Lazar Kaganovich.  These Soviet leaders wanted to prevent the Plenum from happening, but they failed.  The following day Gomulka was unanimously elected the First Secretary of the PZPR – he was back in charge.  Khrushchev had told Gomulka that he would use Soviet troops to restore order in Poland.  Gomulka invited him to try, but also told him that Russian moves would be met with armed resistance by the Polish army.  Units from the Group of Soviet Forces in western Poland were advancing on Warsaw.  But a funny thing happened – Khrushchev blinked.  Gomulka assured him he wanted to maintain the Communist system in Poland.  Marshal Konev’s troops were ordered back to their barracks and Khrushchev’s delegation went home.

The Red Army didn’t go home, but changes to Poland’s leadership did come.  Rokossovsky was sent packing, as well as 32 Soviet generals and colonels serving in the Polish army.  Conservatives were purged from the Politburo.  Cardinal Wyszynski was released from jail.  Workers in some sectors of the economy were given higher wages.  Compulsory exports to the Soviet Union weren’t eliminated, but they were reduced.  Taxes on farmers were reduced, and collectivization of agriculture was reversed.  There was tangible progress on the social and economic fronts, although it wasn’t to last very long.  The big takeaway from what has been called the Polish October was that the citizenry complained, and instead of a massive nationwide crackdown, those who were in charge listened.  People in Hungary who were chafing under the Soviet yoke followed the events in Poland closely.  They hoped they get a similar deal with the Soviets as the Poles got.  Things didn’t turn out that way.

Hungary

The parallels between what occurred in Poland and what would happen in Hungary shortly thereafter are uncanny.  Like in Poland, the Soviet Red Army liberated Hungary from the Nazis.  And like their compatriots in Poland, Soviet troops in Hungary didn’t go home after World War II ended.  Like Poland, there was an intense drive to collectivize agriculture and industrialize that nearly left the country in ruin.  Hungary had its own version of Boleslaw Bierut – his name was Mátyás Rákosi.  After the Communists solidified their grip on power by 1949, the self-styled ‘Stalin’s best pupil’ had over 300,000 Hungarians purged – they were either exiled, locked up, or killed.  Shortly after Stalin’s death in March 1953, Rákosi was replaced by the kinder, gentler Imre Nagy.  Nagy released political prisoners, there was stuff in stores for people to buy, and life improved.  But after two years, Nagy was too popular for Kremlin tastes.  Rákosi made a comeback.  Repression returned, but the deposed Nagy was still popular.  Nobody liked Rákosi, so after a year he was replaced [again] by a guy who was equally hard-line as Rákosi, Erno Gero.  The face of the Communist party changed, but the policies didn’t.  Hungary’s version of the KGB [the AVO, or AVH depending on which translation you subscribe to] continued to arrest and jail people. 

Here’s where the parallels between Poland and Hungary stop.  In Hungary, dissent against the ruling class came from university students, not the industrial workers as had been the case in Poland.  On October 23, 1956 students who were inspired by what happened in Poland staged a peaceful protest.  They had a list of sixteen demands.  Among those demands:

-          a new government led by Imre Nagy;

-          all leaders of the Stalin-Rákosi era be immediately relieved of their duties;

-          multi-party elections for a new National Assembly;

-          abolishing the compulsory teaching of Russian in schools;

-          removal of Soviet troops from Hungary

When the protest began it numbered about 20,000 people.  Later that evening the number was 200,000.   They tore red stars from buildings, and pulled down a statue of Stalin [leaving only the boots].  They were chanting “Russians go home!”  Police opened fire and killed several people.  Then Gero sent in the Army, but the troops wouldn’t fire on their own people.  Faced with this development, Gero declared martial law and asked for Soviet “assistance.”  The Soviet tanks arrived early the next morning.  The Soviets put Imre Nagy back in charge of the government.  The sight of Soviet tanks killing Hungarians shocked the Communisty party Central Committee, and they replaced Gero with János Kádár, a Nagy ally. Khrushchev thought it best to kill the Hungarians with kindness rather than with tanks.  This didn’t last long.

On October 28, Soviet troops left Hungary.  Political parties that had been banned before now reformed [Smallholders Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Petofi Peasants Party].  People lynched hundreds of AVO.  The citizens of Budapest took over radio stations.  Here’s where things began to go wrong for Hungary.  Nagy promised multi-party elections and a coalition government.  In Poland, Gomulka convinced his Soviet masters that Poland would remain a one-party state.  In Hungary, Nagy was promising to share power with others.  He also declared Hungarian neutrality [like Austria in 1955], promised withdrawal for the Warsaw Pact, and wanted Soviet troops gone.  This was the bridge too far for the Kremlin.  Operation Whirlwind combined air strikes, artillery, and the coordinated tank-infantry action of 17 divisions. Soviet artillery and tank fire was heard in all districts of Budapest.  The Hungarian Army put up sporadic and uncoordinated resistance. On November 4^th, the Soviet tanks [about 1000 of them] came back to Budapest.  At 5:20 a.m. on November 4, Nagy broadcast his final plea to the nation and the world, announcing that Soviet Forces were attacking Budapest and that the Government remained at its post:

‘This is Imre Nagy speaking. Today at daybreak Soviet forces started an attack against our capital, obviously with the intention to overthrow the legal Hungarian democratic government. Our troops are still fighting; the Government is still in its place. I notify the people of our country and the entire world of this fact.’

That was the last anyone heard from Imre Nagy.  The ‘entire world’ that Nagy had appealed to, ignored him.  On the afternoon of the 4^th, Nagy sought refuge in the Yugoslav embassy.  About 4,000 Hungarians were killed, and approximately 200,000 fled to Austria.  After Nagy fled, the Soviets replaced him with János Kádár.  Thousands were executed or imprisoned by Kadar’s regime in reprisal.  Nagy, lured out of the embassy by a promise of safe passage to Belgrade, a promise written by Kádár himself, was arrested and taken to Romania. Later, he was smuggled back into Hungary, charged with treason, tried and was hung on 16 June 1958. He was buried in an unmarked grave within the prison yard where he was held.  Kádár ruled Hungary with an iron fist until May 1988.

U.S. Reaction

How did the United States react to the events in Hungary?  Not well.  The Eisenhower Administration paid lip service to the Hungarian struggle against the Soviets, but as far as any tangible aid was concerned, none was forthcoming.  US actions didn’t match its rhetoric.  During the 1952 presidential campaign, John Foster Dulles and other Republicans denounced the Truman strategy of containment.  Republicans favored a strategy of rollback, the policy of pressuring the Soviets out of Eastern Europe, possibly through military means, and, in effect, liberating the “captive nations” that had previously been “liberated” by the Soviets at the end of the Second World War.  While Dulles’ rhetoric about rollback was meant to satisfy the McCarthys of the Republican party, the Hungarians truly believed it.  Unbeknownst to them, rollback was more a slogan than official policy.  Hungarian émigré journalists at Radio Free Europe’s Voice of Free Hungary in Munich fed Dulles’s liberation and rollback propaganda to Eastern Europe for years.  During the revolution, RFE Hungarian language programs not only broadcast news of the situation, it also appealed to Hungarians to fight the Soviets.  In an internal review of RFE after the revolution, one broadcast ["Special Short World Press Review" #1 of November 4^th] was singled out as having violated policy against raising false hope for those in captive nations.  This broadcast hinted that ‘help was on the way’:

"If the Soviet troops really attack Hungary, if our expectations should hold true and Hungarians hold-out for three or four days, then the pressure upon the government of the United States to send military help to the Freedom Fighters will become irresistible!"

Other broadcasts gave Hungarians instructions on how to make Molotov Cocktails, how to sabotage railroads and telephone lines, and they clearly implied foreign aid was coming.  Where the Voice of Free Poland had urged restraint by protesters during the Polish October, the Voice of Free Hungary went the other way in encouraging resistance.  A Hungarian fighter named Aniko Vajda said the following:

"Radio Free Europe, they were saying, "hang on for three weeks. Three more weeks, we come in. We help you." So we fight for the last drop of blood we were holding onto. And what happened was, it was lying to us. Nobody came."

RFE didn’t do Imre Nagy any favors.  Without real actionable intelligence, RFE Hungarian émigré broadcasters made defamatory statements about him.  One broadcaster, Janos Olvedi, stated: 

"Instead of introducing real reforms, the [Nagy] regime tried to solve every problem by introducing only half-measures. They ignore the will of the people. Instead of setting up a popular representation, they continued to govern by way of a sham parliament."

Another broadcaster, Andor Gellert, said:

"Imre Nagy agreed to the invasion of Soviet troops. Already on this very day this step of his is put down as one of the greatest acts of treachery in Hungary's history. And this will be remembered forever. Imre Nagy, who covered his hands in Hungarian blood ... where are the traitors ... who are the murderers? Imre Nagy and his government ... only Cardinal Mindszenty has spoken out fearlessly."

These broadcasts [and others] reflected the US government’s loss of faith in Nagy, discrediting Nagy’s ability to control the public and doubting his popularity.

Hungary was a victim of other concurrent events.  On October 29, the UK, France and Israel invaded Egypt.  Months earlier, Gamel Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.  The British and the French wanted it back.  The Israelis were more than willing to help.  All three countries are American allies.  The Americans found it difficult to criticize Soviet actions in Hungary while their own allies were doing the same thing in Egypt.  The Eisenhower Administration was more engaged in the Suez Crisis, proving that it couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.  Adding to the Hungarians’ woes was the 1956 American presidential election.  While Eisenhower’s advisors were dealing with Suez, there was an election to be won.  Hungary was not on the back burner – it wasn’t even on the same stove as the Suez Crisis.

Eisenhower knew there was no way the US could help Hungary militarily, and he said as much.  Hungary is a landlocked country, then surrounded by Soviet satellites and Austria, which had declared its permanent neutrality in 1955.  There was no way to get American and/or NATO troops to Hungary without starting a war with the Soviets.  But that was no consolation to the Hungarians.  The Soviets had their Eastern European buffer zone and were in no mood to lose it.  The Chinese Communists pressured the Soviets into not giving in, and so they didn’t.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was not the United States’ finest hour.  It was here that policymakers were given a heavy dose of reality, that words alone can’t change the behavior of brutal regimes.  They were also taught [I’m not sure the lesson was ‘learned’] that words have consequences.  To raise expectations of a captive people and not follow up the rhetoric with action is a very quick way to lose credibility in the eyes of those captive peoples.  The Cold War continued until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.  Hungary was stuck with János Kádár until 1988.  On the 31^st anniversary of his execution, Imre Nagy was given a hero’s burial in a ceremony attended by more than 100,000 people.  Later that year, the People’s Republic of Hungary ceased to exist, replaced by the Republic of Hungary.  As fate would have it, this momentous occasion happened on October 23, 1989 – the 33^rd anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.

Robert Conquest - The Harvest of Sorrow

Millions of people died of starvation in Ukraine during the 1930s.  How many millions of victims is unknown.  Nikita Khrushchev said in Khrushchev Remembers “I can’t give an exact figure because no one was keeping count.  All we know is that people were dying in enormous numbers.”  What caused so many people to die?  Some said it was bad weather that caused bad harvests.  Others have said it was the fault of the kulaks [the relatively well-to-do peasants] for slaughtering animals and refusing to plant grain.  Some [most notably Walter Duranty of the New York Times] claimed this didn’t happen at all.  Historian Robert Conquest lays blame at the feet of Stalin and the Bolsheviks.  He not only said the forced collectivization of Soviet agricultural and the “de-kulakization” of the peasantry were to blame for so many deaths, he claims it was a deliberate act of genocide that killed so many Ukrainians in the 1930s.  The subtitle of his work The Harvest of Sorrow conveys the exact message he wants to impart to his readers – Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine. 

In his introduction, Conquest describes Ukraine during this time as “a vast Belsen.”  Here he equates the Holodomor [“to kill by starvation” or “extermination by hunger”] with the Holocaust.  By his estimates, Stalin’s war against the peasants killed more people in the same amount of time as those Russians who died during the First World War.  Stalin instituted two policies in his war on the peasants – collectivization and de-kulakization.  Collectivization meant the abolition of private property in land, and the concentration of individual peasant farms into larger collective farms controlled by the Communist Party.  De-kulakization meant the killing, or deportation to the Arctic Circle with their families, of millions of peasants who didn’t go along with the program. 

The Party and the Peasants - Karl Marx didn't think much of peasants; neither did Lenin.  Marx referred to the peasantry as “rural idiots.”  Neither saw the peasantry as being part of the "proletariat," i.e. city factory workers.  In Lenin's eyes they were workers, but the peasants were also landowners, so by the Marxist definition they were capitalists.  Lenin sought to modernize Russian agriculture by organizing the peasants' landholdings into collective farms that produced according to a plan.  The Bolsheviks viewed the peasants' as stupid, illiterate individualistic savages that lacked social consciousness.  Such was the Bolshevik antipathy toward the peasants.  The Bolshevik base was the industrialized workers in urban areas.  The peasants’ function was to feed the urban workers. 

Ukrainian Nationalism - Bolsheviks had no use for nationalities.  Marx and Engels wrote that the proletariat was "the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc, within present society." Lenin later defined nationhood as a "historical category marking a particular economic epoch, that of capitalism."

Conquest illustrates the existence of a unique Ukrainian state dating back to the Kievan Rus.  After it was conquered by the Mongols in 1240, this realm drifted westward, first to become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later as part of Poland.  Ukrainian was an official language of Lithuania.  Under Polish rule, Ukrainian printing presses and schools appeared in the 16th Century.  The Cossacks, who were Ukrainian freebooters who had gone east to hunt and fish, had learned to fight the Tatars.  In time they were able to establish a military Republic free from Poland.  The Hetmen who controlled this republic allied themselves with Sweden in order to limit Russian interference in the republic's affairs.  But Sweden fought the Russians in 1709 and lost, leaving the Hetmen without a protector. 

While the Russians nominally recognized the Hetmanate, they gradually tightened their control until they abolished it in 1764.  With the disappearance of the Hetmanate came the disappearance of Ukrainian statehood until after World War I.  Ukrainian peasants became serfs.  Ukrainian language and cultures came under attack.  Russians thought of the Ukrainian language as just a dialect of Russian.  Books that were 'religious and educational' were banned.  Ukrainian papers and schools were closed.  But despite Russification efforts, intellectuals and poets kept the Ukrainian national ideal alive.

When the Tsar fell in March 1917, Ukrainian parties established a Ukrainian Central Council (Rada).  At first the Rada gained some autonomy from Russia, but a week after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, the Rada proclaimed a Ukrainian People's republic that did not recognize Bolshevik authority.  Conquest details how Ukrainian alternated between Soviet and non-Soviet rule during the Russian Civil War (1918-21). The Bolsheviks eventually won and assumed control over Ukraine.  Of all the former Russian Empire’s territories to declare independence after the end of WW I [Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine], Ukraine was the only independent country to fall into Soviet control.

War Communism – This was a simple policy, the goal of which was to keep the Red Army stocked with weapons and the urban workers stocked with food.  This policy was in place during the Russian Civil War [1918-21].  But the term “War Communism” is a misnomer.  The grain requisition policy had been in place before hostilities began during the Russian Civil War.  Industries were nationalized and placed under a centralized management [management by the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party].  The “dictatorship of the proletariat” outlawed strikes by the workers they claimed to represent.  Private enterprise was banned.  The Red Army controlled the railways.  The most odious part of War Communism was the prodrazvyorstka, the “requisition” of surplus grain from the peasants to feed the urban workers.  Armed units were sent to villages to confiscate surplus grain.  When they didn’t find any, they beat and tortured peasants until the quota was met.  Over time the government didn’t make any distinction between what was indeed a surplus or the last stocks of food and seed.  Peasants had no incentive to plant, and food production fell.  There were hundreds of peasant uprisings against this policy. The ruble collapsed and was replaced by a barter system.  For the most part, wages were paid in goods rather than with money.  Industrial production sank to one-fifth of the pre-WW I years. 

The Kronstadt Rebellion – The sailors who garrisoned the Kronstadt fortress in the Baltic were among the strongest supporters of the Bolsheviks.  They had heard of workers strikes in Petrograd.  A committee of Kronstadt sailors went to Petrograd to investigate, and learned of the heavy-handed Bolshevik repression of those strikes.  Crews from the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting and made a list of fifteen demands to the Bolsheviks.  These demands included free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, assembly and organization to workers, peasants, anarchists and left-socialists.  The sailors also revived the slogan from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution [“All power to the Soviets”] and added “and not to parties.”  There were problems aplenty throughout the land, and the Kronstadt sailors pointed the finger directly at the Bolsheviks.  The Bolsheviks responded by blaming the rebellion on French counterintelligence and ex-Tsarist officers.  They delivered a simple ultimatum to Kronstadt – come to your senses or face the consequences.  The sailors would have none of that, and so what started as a non-violent rebellion in late February 1921 turned bloody as the Bolsheviks aimed to crush the rebellion without mercy.  The violent phase of the rebellion lasted ten days.  The Bolsheviks suffered 10,000 killed to re-take the fortress, and thousands who defended the fortress were either shot or deported to Siberia.  But the Kronstadt sailors made their point, and Lenin recognized it as such.

New Economic Policy (NEP) – When the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, the peasantry made up eighty percent of the Russian population.  The Bolsheviks’ hold on power at the end of the civil war was tenuous.  The Kronstadt Rebellion was the Bolsheviks’ “wake-up call.”  Lenin and others in the collective Soviet leadership had put down the rebellion, but they also realized the sailors involved in the rebellion represented part of their base as a party, so they had better do something to avoid more episodes like Kronstadt.  The result was the New Economic Policy [NEP].  War Communism was abolished, and a sort of free enterprise system was re-introduced.  Peasants were allowed to sell their grain, and instead of forced grain requisitioning, the peasants were to pay a tax in the form of raw agricultural products.  Since the peasants were allowed to keep some of their products and sell whatever they wanted, they had more incentive to produce.  People were allowed to own small enterprises, while the state maintained control over heavy industry, trade, and the banking system.  The leftists of the party [most especially Kamenev and Zinoviev] saw the NEP as a sellout to capitalism, but Lenin was willing to bite this bullet in order to get Russia on a more-solid economic footing.

Ukrainization – Lenin attempted to pacify their minorities by granting them certain national and civil rights.  These actions included the increased usage of the Ukrainian language in schools, books, radio programs, and movies.  Representation of Ukrainians in local government increased.  A national Ukrainian Orthodox Church was created.  Between 1920-30, Ukrainian communists refused to follow Moscow’s lead.  By the late 1920s they had exceeded the limits of Ukrainization set by Moscow.  Thus, Ukraine posed a serious threat to the Soviet Union.  Stalin saw the loyalty to a Ukrainian national ideal was in direct competition with loyalty to the Soviet state.  Stalin saw the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine as a means to “correct” the “incorrect implementation” of Ukrainization.  After Stalin consolidated his power in the late 1920’s he instituted the first Five Year Plan.  The priority of the plan was the growing of a large Soviet heavy industrial base.  To achieve that end, the Soviet Union would abolish private industry for good and nationalize all commerce.  To pay for the industrialization, the Soviet Union would export as much grain from its “breadbasket” [Ukraine] in return for foreign capital.  Collectivization would be the way for the Soviets to maximize their grain exports to support the plan.

De-kulakization - There was a grain crisis at the beginning of 1928, or so the Soviet leadership thought.   Stalin falsely claimed that grain production was only half of what it was before World War I, and for this he blamed the kulaks. His solution was the transition from individual peasant farming to collective, socialized conduct of agriculture, and in the process declared war against the capitalist elements of the peasants - the kulaks.  The problem with that was the Soviets had a hard time in what defined a kulak.  When Lenin himself was asked to define a kulak, he pretty much said "you'll know one when you see one."  A kulak could be one who rents out farm machinery, tools, or draft animals, or trades in grain.  A kulak could also be defined as a well-off peasant who lends money to others (with interest, of course).  The kulak was an invention of the Bolsheviks.  Originally meant to classify rich peasant farmers who employed other farmers, the term “kulak” eventually came to mean whatever the Bolsheviks wanted it to mean.  In Soviet Russia, anybody could be accused of being a kulak.

Stalin declared that 'de-kulakization' was the essential element in forming and developing collective farms.  In getting rid of the kulaks the state divided them into three categories - the first should be arrested and shot or imprisoned while their families were exiled. The second would be merely exiled.  The third 'non-violent' category would be put on some sort of probation and admitted to the collective farms.  Removal of the kulak from the rest of the peasantry was intended to decapitate peasant resistance.  Stalin wanted to liquidate the kulaks as a class.  Conquest deals with population figures [census data taken before and after] and many individual stories of deportations to mines, camps, and other settlements.  In the mass movement of peasants away from what used to be their lands, many died en route to their destinations.

Collectivization – When Lenin returned to Russia from exile in 1917, he promised the people three things if he was to assume power – peace, bread and land.  The peasants mostly held their land in the form of large numbers of strips scattered throughout the fields of the village community.  The NEP was seen as that promise fulfilled.  But when the Soviets began to collectivize agriculture, the peasants saw that as the breaking of a promise.  The purpose of collectivization was to establish party control over grain supply.  The Bolsheviks would evict the peasants from their plots of land, which they would then “collectivize” into large, state-owned farms.  These giant collective farms would be the factories of the countryside: they would turn independent peasants into rural proletarians and facilitate the mechanization of agriculture-as well as party control.  Joining the collective farms [kolkhozy] was mandatory.  The peasants opposed collectivization.  They would not reap the benefits they had during the NEP, and they felt that collectivization was little more than a return to serfdom.  They protested peacefully at collectivization meetings, but when that didn’t work they resorted to other, less-passive means.  They’d burn their crops [including their seed grain] and slaughter their animals.  With collectivization came the closing of churches, destruction of religious icons, and the arresting of priests.  The Bolshevik attack on churches angered the peasants and gave them more incentive to resist.  Because of the high grain quotas for grain, the peasants received less for their labor than before.  The Bolsheviks sent thousands of industrial workers to the countryside to enforce collectivization.  These activists were sent in to remove all foodstuffs from the homes of the villagers.  They also introduced internal passports that required the peasants to have permission to leave the kolkhozy, so they couldn’t leave to go search for food elsewhere.

The kolkhozy and all that they held [land, grain, livestock] were declared “state property.”  Stalin himself wrote the law that was a Draconian measure against theft/damage against Soviet state property.  This law [the law on five ears of grain’] was directed at the starving Ukrainian peasants who cut off ears of grain to save their own lives.  Children who were caught picking a handful of ears of grain from fields that until collectivization had belonged to their parents were also convicted.  This law resulted in mass arrests and executions.

Famine and mass starvation was not restricted to Ukraine.  Conquest also highlights the effects of the famine on Kazakhstan, the Don region and the Kuban.  Because the famine affected these regions in addition to Ukraine, other Soviet scholars resist the classification of the terror-famine as genocide.  What they don’t recognize is that Ukraine was the only region where the border was sealed so that no one could leave, and famine relief couldn’t get into the region.  He argues that this act of isolating the Ukrainians from the rest of the country and starving them to death fits the definition of genocide.

The cost – The famine was centered in the fertile Ukraine.  Stored grain in the region was not released to the peasants.  Nobody could get out of Ukraine, and nobody could get into Ukraine to deliver food to the starving masses.  Ukrainian grain was exported to other parts of the Soviet Union – workers had to be fed, after all.  Stalin had inflated the grain procurement quotas in Ukraine, leaving the Ukrainians little if anything to eat.  Stalin had the Ukrainian borders sealed, where small bread rations existed, and from crossing into Russia, where there was no hunger. With the best statistics available to him, Conquest concluded 14.5 million people either died in 1930-37 of unnatural causes or were sent to camps where they perished not much later.  Of these, about 6.5 million died during the anti-kulak campaign, and about seven million during the famine of 1932-33.  These figures cited by Conquest are all estimates.  Those who disagree with Conquest quibble about the number – was it 14.5 million, was it 10 million, or was it just 3.5 million?   I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Stalin – “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic!”  Critics of Conquest’s work quibble about the numbers but they don’t deny that a lot of people died.  

Ukrainian farmers weren’t staved in order to force them into the collective farms.  They were starved because the peasants were the nucleus of Ukrainian nationalism.  The Ukrainian peasants were the keepers of the old traditions of independent farming, and other aspects of the Ukrainian national ideal.  They were the last bulwark against totalitarian Soviet control.  Stalin tipped his hand when he said “the peasantry constitutes the main army of the national movement; there is no powerful national movement without the peasant army.”   Given what Conquest presented in his book, it is not by accident that the final word he uses in his book in “genocide.”  

Putin in Syria

What does Vladimir Putin want?  He already has it.  The Russians are back in the Middle East in a way they haven’t been since 1973.  They have boots on the ground in the region that cannot be ignored.  Putin is establishing a political and military foothold in the eastern Mediterranean.  Putin is the proactive one that is driving events – everyone else is reacting to him.  Barack Obama came to Washington as the guy who wanted to get the US out of two wars in the Middle East.  He’s not about to risk getting the US into one.  When Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, he crossed one of Barack Obama’s “red lines.”  But once the “red line” was crossed, nothing happened.  Obama wants regime change in Syria, but like the Saudis he doesn’t want to do the dirty work himself.  Putin wants Assad to stay right where he is, and he’s put Russian men and materiel in Syria to back it up, as if to say to Barack Obama “what are you going to do about it?”  Putin just put a chip on his shoulder and dared Barack Obama to knock it off.  It’s been over 1,500 days since the Obama Administration declared Assad’s “days are numbered.”  1,500 is a pretty big number, and Assad is still there.  Putin isn’t propping up Assad out of the goodness of his heart.  Doing so advances Russia’s interest in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean.  The poking of Barack Obama in the eye [again] while doing so is just a bonus.

The day after Obama and Putin spoke to the UN General Assembly, Russia launched airstrikes in Syria.  Those airstrikes and those from the following day weren’t directed at ISIS.  They were directed at groups opposed to Assad.  This much is clear – Russia and Iran will deal with Assad’s opponents.  When they are gone, Russia will present Saudi Arabia, Turkey and all the other countries in the region with a clear choice – ISIS or Assad.  ISIS is an existential thread to the Saudis and some of the others; Assad is not.  Would you care to guess which of the two evils they’ll choose?

While the US is spending millions of dollars to train 6 people to fight against ISIS, Russia has boots on the ground.  What do the Russians have in Syria?  They already have a naval base in Tartus, which has been there since the 1970s.   New construction at the airport in Latakia has been ongoing since June of this year.  Yet, despite these improvements to the airport infrastructure, the presence of Russian equipment has taken policymakers in Washington by surprise.  Since the beginning of September personnel and heavy equipment began to appear in Latakia; roughly 30 combat aircraft [Su-24, Su-25, and Su-30] and at least a half-dozen ground-attack helicopters [Mi-24].  There appear to be half-dozen tanks and quite a few BTR-series armored personnel carriers. 

[Photos courtesy of Stratfor]

NATO Commander Gen. Breedlove is worried about all the toys the Russians brought to Syria.  He suggested the weaponry included SA-15 and SA-22 surface-to-air missile defense systems.  He said "I have not seen ISIL flying any airplanes that require SA15s or SA22s…"  Could SA-10s be far behind?  Who are those missiles for?  Those weapons are meant for our guys, of course.  There is another thing to consider what the Su-30s are doing in a theater where there is no ISIS air threat.  My friend Tom directed my attention to an article on the War Is Boring site.  Author Dave Majumdar opines that Russia may be using these aircraft to gather intelligence on the F-22.  He quotes a “senior U.S. Air Force intelligence official” –

 "While it appears the Russians are following their standard doctrine with regard to the deployment/employment of their ground and air assets, it’s certainly not out of the question to use their newer air-to-air assets as a form of ‘operational testing’ in the real world environment… It may be a way for them to ‘characterize’ the F-22’s radar emissions on their radar warning receivers (RWR) in a real-world environment.“

Another official put it more succinctly - “$100 says their air players are there to soak up trons from our fifth-gen stuff.”  The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes complete sense.

Ralph Peters foresees that what could happen next is that one of our aircraft gets “accidentally” shot down by the Russians.  If that happened, this would be Vladimir Putin telling Barack Obama “your move, Sparky.”  Then what?  Perhaps our guys and the Russians can get together to deconflict airspace before that happens.  I certainly hope they do.

One thing is certain – because of Putin’s actions in Syria, nobody is talking about Ukraine.  A couple of days ago, President Obama approved $20 million to provide Ukraine with the Q36 Firefinder radar system.  This radar is designed to detect and track incoming artillery and rocket fire and determine their point of origin.  This is a nice gesture, but only a token gesture that won’t get Vladimir Putin’s attention.  Ukrainian President Poroshenko will probably thank Mr. Obama, but what he really wants are lots of Javelin anti-tank missiles.  The US Army, the Marine Corps and Australian special forces used the Javelin in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They were used against tanks, APCs and troop trucks in Iraq, and against weapons crews, lightly armoured and unarmoured vehicles, caves, fortified positions and individuals.  The anti-tank warheads can penetrate reactive armour, while a multi-purpose warhead is a fragmentation warhead for use against people.  If the Ukrainians had these weapons, they could make life miserable for Putin’s little green men who “aren’t there.”

Hillary Clinton's Emails Considered Some More

"When it comes to classified information, the standards are not at all black and white..." Brian Fallon, Clinton campaign press secretary, uttered these words last month while trying to explain how classified information ended up on Hillary Clinton’s unclassified, unsecure email server.  Actually Mr. Fallon, the rules are very straightforward.  When in doubt, consult a security classification guide. It is situations like this for which they were written in the first place. And if the SCG doesn't address a specific issue, the rule is "when in doubt, protect the information." 

What kind of information gets classified?  President Obama signed an executive order that makes uniform rules throughout the government for classifying and protecting information.  According to Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information, if information falls into one of eight categories, it is considered to be classified.  Below I have listed those categories, taken verbatim from EO 13526:

Sec. 1.4.  Classification Categories. Information shall not be considered for classification unless its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable ordescribable damage to the national security in accordance with section 1.2 of this order, and it pertains to one or more of the following:

(a) Military plans, weapons systems, or operations;

(b) Foreign government information;

(c) Intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology;

(d) Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources;

(e) Scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security;

(f) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities;

(g) Vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures,

projects, plans, or protection services relating to the national security; or

(h) The development, production, or use of weapons of mass destruction.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign team has repeatedly tried to dodge responsibility for her distribution of classified information by claiming the information was not marked at the time.  Information found in her email archive contains classified information – all of it unmarked.  Intelligence professionals have combed through [and are continuing to comb through] tens of thousands of pages of email HRC sent/received from 2009-13.  So far, they found lots of classified stuff.  It’s unmarked, but that is irrelevant.  The nature of the material found is such that it was “born classified.”

What sort of information did they find?  They found correspondence between HRC and foreign leaders that fits under the “foreign government information” [EO 13526, Sec 1.4 (b) and Sec 1.4(d)].  They found information about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program [EO 13526, Sec 1.4(h)].  They also found information derived from Sensitive Compartmented Information that if compromised could give away intelligence collection sources and methods [EO 13526, Sec 1.4 (c)].  Additionally, in one email sent to George Mitchell [who was a special envoy for peace in the Middle East], HRC asked him to respond to her private email address, which she knew [emphasis mine] was unclassified.  The information passed between the two was unmarked when it was sent, but subsequently marked as classified.  The date of the classification was the date the emails were sent, not on the day they were marked as classified.  Such “foreign government information” and information dealing with “foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources” is considered as being classified the minute it is created. “It’s born classified,” said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO).

A lot of HRC’s email is being redacted, with the classification dates being the day the information was created.  She also shared classified information with Sid Blumenthal, who did not [and probably still does not] hold a security clearance.  Hillary Clinton signed non-disclosure agreements when she became Secretary of State.  She also received training on the handling of classified information.  Those are conditions for having access to this sort of information in the first place.  For her to say that she didn’t knowingly send classified information to others is simply false.   As Secretary of State, HRC had original classification authority. She was trusted to judge when information should be marked classified. She should have known that kind of information needed to be protected. By using the excuse that she didn’t know what is or is not classified she admits she lacks the judgment needed to protect the nation’s secrets.  While she had original classification authority, that authority extended only to classified information held within the State Department.  She did not have the authority to downgrade or declassify any information provided by DoD.

Under federal law, information is classified by nature, not by marking. As a result, federal classification authorities deemed that the information was classified the very second it originated.  She was not merely a helpless, passive recipient of classified national security information; she was the originator. And not only did she intentionally originate the classified information, she intentionally disseminated it via an unsecured, unsanctioned private e-mail server.  In my job, whenever I want to send a classified email on SIPRNET, there is another safeguard in place to ensure information is afforded the appropriate protection.  Before I click the “Send” button, Microsoft Outlook asks me for a classification for the email.  Outlook won’t send it until I do that.  The State Department has a system called SMART that does something similar to what I just described.  Mrs. Clinton had this capability available to her, yet she chose to forgo it.  Her defense to date is that she can’t tell the difference between what is classified and what is not classified.  Given such a defense one can conclude that she is either lying or she is incompetent. 

Christopher Budd wrote a very good article about HRC’s email problems for GeekWire.com.  The article is titled Why the Clinton email server story matters — and why it may be worse than you think.  In his article he wrote that from an information security point of view, this can represent one of the most serious branches of data handling for three reasons – 1) The Secretary of State [whomever it is] is a high value target who handles the most sensitive information; 2) Nation-state actors are the most likely to gather the top talent need to collect information against such a high value target; and 3) the combination of reasons 1 and 2 will see the cream of the crop gunning for the target.  Given these reasons, a DIY home email server is the worst possible way to protect sensitive information from a cyberattack or other such hack.   He argues that using something as common as Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook is still better than HRC’s “solution” because they at least have some expertise in dealing with an external threat.  He also argues that unless HRC’s email server was being protected by the government using the same levels of protection that official servers are, we have no choice but to assume that this server has been compromised by foreign intelligence agents. 

Budd questions if the State Department had clear enough policies and procedures that were communicated effectively enough to its employees about the propriety of using such DIY systems as HRC had done.  He says the answer to this question is important in determining whether this data breach is a failure of one individual or if there is a bigger problem that could repeat with another Secretary of State.

In his conclusion, he states that the subject of information compromise hasn’t been addressed properly [at least not publicly].  The questions not being asked include 1) How secure was the server? 2) Who was protecting it?; 3) Is there evidence of compromise? He hopes that eventually this will receive an appropriate investigation, but is resigned to these details getting “lost in the shuffle” because of the focus on “more interesting, but less important points.”

I will conclude by quoting Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.  He is the one who has ordered the State Department to release HRC’s email archive.  His pithy comment about the entire matter sums it up quite nicely - “We wouldn’t be here today if the employee had followed government policy.”