National Communism, a Breach in Cold War Ideology

In second half of the 1950s there was much speculation about the emergence in Eastern Europe of a new of “national” communism. In June 1955 Khrushchev travelled to Belgrade and patched up Soviet relations with Yugoslavia. In February 1956 Khrushchev linked his secret speech to a reconsideration of Lenin’s views on the nationality question, and on 30 October 1956 the Soviet Union published the Declaration by the Government of the USSR on the Principles of Development and Further Strengthening of Friendship and Coo-operation between the Soviet Union and other Socialist States which asserted that “the countries of the great commonwealth of socialist nations can build their mutual relations only on the principles of complete equality, of respect for territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty, and non-interference in one another’s internal affairs”. The Declaration was supposed to help regularise the growing national assertiveness of both the Hungarian and Polish communist governments. It worked in respect of Poland, whose crisis relations with the Soviet Union were calmed just ten days prior to the publishing of the Declaration. However, the Declaration had no impact in Hungary, despite the document’s clear statement that Soviet troops could only be deployed in Hungary with the consent of that people’s government Soviet intervention in Hungary on 4 November seemed to put an end to national communism, and yet the Declaration was not entirely buried, for it was used as the basis on which the Romanian government negotiated the withdrawal of Soviet troops in April 1958. Nor did Khrushchev’s decision to re-issue Lenin’s writings on the nationality question go without consequences. Within the Baltic States, but particularly in Latvia, a distinctly nationalist communist movement developed during 1958 and 1959, which made one of the most detested communist regimes almost popular. Yet by the autumn of 1959 a wide-ranging purge had begun in Latvia and orthodoxy was restored. This paper will look at those in the Soviet leadership who tried to block the national communist process, first those surrounding Molotov who fought tooth and nail to try and prevent rapprochement with Tito, and second those like Suslov who made the case against the Latvian national communists. It will be suggested that both old Stalinists and neo-Stalinists shared an understanding of communism which simply found it impossible to accept a road to the future which did not mimic their own understanding of Russia’s revolution. The dismissal of Khrushchev cemented the triumph of this neo-Stalinist ideology, which in foreign policy terms meant the imposition of the Brezhnev doctrine in Czechoslovakia in 1968.