[ISTER : concessions of, heading ff the struggles…]

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ISTER : concessions of, heading ff the struggles of the orking class in Eastern urope, sooner than press head with direct confronItion.

In 1956 Kruschev's now ¡mous 'secret speech' to he 20th Congress of the PSU attempted to give the mpression of a clean break rith the crimes of Stalin, nd staged a selective rehabilitation" of many gures Stalin had executed. But these moves rebouned on Kruschev. In particlar, they weakened the ontrol of veteran Stalinist ader Rakosi, while encourging the Hungarian masses › seek a complete end to ureaucracy.

As it began to move orward, the Hungarian orking class felt its way fontaneously towards the instruction of workers' ›uncils-bodies outside the introl of, and standing as a rect challenge to, the alinist state apparatus.

Uprising By the time the Hungarn Stalinists recognised the sed to change course, and stalled left' bureaucrat nre Nagy, an uprising was ready spreading from udapest throughout the luntry, at the centre of hich were the indepenint workers councils. In desperation at this rect threat of political volution, massive military rce was used by the emlin to crush the rising d massacre the antireaucratic fighters.

Meanwhile, to head off the threat of similar events in Poland, 'left' bureaucrat Gomulka was given support by the Kremlin-on condition that he would prevent any Polish working class support for the Hungarian uprising.

As European Stalinism found itself wracked with confusion as to the best tactical means of controlling the working class, the growing inter-bureaucratic disputes between the Chinese and Russian bureaucracy led to a further division in the post-war Stalinist "monolith"

Undisturbed

But throughout this period the Czechoslovak CP remained relatively undisturbed, under its hard-line Stalinist leaders.

Few steps were taken to follow the "liberalisation" measures of the USSR, Hungary or Poland. The hard liners of Prague continued to rely exclusively on Stalinist use of secret police and rigid censorship.

This set-up first ran into crisis as a virtual economic breakdown emerged in the mid-1960s as a result of the bureaucratic deformation of the economy and slavish adherence to Soviet models of "planning".

Fearful of the impact this could have in stimulating workers' struggles, a tendency within the bureaucracy began to advocate a number . of • economic reforms.

This at once found an echo from workers and among students-but did not at first lead to any changes.

Dissent and criticism grew sharper-to the point where the working class itself began to move into action.

In Spring 1968 Novotny was pushed aside and his fellow bureaucrat Alexander Dubcek took over.

The Dubcek regime made a series of concessions to the increasingly militant workers' movement-in particular through relaxing censorship and police repression of free discussion.

This was what most alarmed the Kremlin bureaucracy. Limited economic concessions, even token concessions on political prisoners was one thing: but slackening political control at a point of working class mobilisation threatened the very stability of the bureaucracy itself.

control Dubcek soon reached the end of his possible concessions. But the workers demanded more. Normally dead Communist Party meetings were invaded by workers voicing their demands.

Elsewhere in Europe, Dubcek saw the French working class engage in the massive general strike of May-June 1968 and recognised that the Czech situation was getting out of his control.

In June 1968 he invited Soviet troops for manouevres in Czechoslovakia, still hoping to find a compromise solution to stabilise the situation.

But the political ferment continued. Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed was set up in type ready for publication.

Though workers' councils on the level of Hungary 1956 had not yet appeared, this danger was increasingly feared by Moscow.

Demonstrations

On August 20, heavily armed units of the Soviet, East German and Polish armed forces drove into Czechoslovakia and took up positions.

The hostility of Czech workers did not find expression in armed resistance on the scale of Hungary. Prague radio called on Czechs not to resist. The political development had not reached the level of independence where such resistance could have been successful.

But demonstrations by workers and students in Czechoslovakia against the invasion continued throughout 1968 and into 1969.

Without a conscious leadership, however, such actions were confined to the level of protest.

Dubcek was hauled off to Moscow where he was persuaded to reverse the liberalisation measures of the "Prague Spring".

He remained nominally in office until April 1969, dismantling the remnants of his brief bureaucratic attempt to establish "socialism with a human face"

These events were crushing blow to all those who argued that the Stalinbureaucracy could reform itself and move towards the establishment of workers' democracy.

The secret police swung into action with vicious repression against those who had played a leading role in the 1968 events.

Many intellectuals and militant workers were sacked. Students were forced to give up courses.

The counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, which since 1933 has consciously centred on robbing the working class of its political independence in the vain effort to stabilise the parasitic bureaucracies in the workers' states is demonstrated clearly by the Czech events of 1968.

But to find a way forward for the working class in its struggle to throw off this . reactionary caste which feeds off the nationalised economy it is necessary to look back furtherto the workers' councils thrown up in the Hungarian events, the Councils spontaneously created by Czech workers as the Red Army approached in 1945 and the Soviets which formed the organised expression of proletarian power after the October 1917 revolution in Russia.

In order to win political power in: the post-war workers' states, or regain the political power in the degenerated Soviet state, workers must organise themselves in such councils or Soviets independently of the bureaucracy.

For such independence to be more than simply a form it is necessary to build Trotskyist revolutionary parties in these countries to give leadership in these councils, and to fight for a programme which starts with the defence of the nationalised property relations but leads to the overthrow of the Stalinist Political leadership This programme must include the eradication of bureaucratic privileges and the establishment •of genuine workers' management of production and distribution; the legalisation of soviet parties and the genuine freedom of trade unions; the abolition of the Stalinist secret police and the formation of workers* militia; and an end to the oppression of national minorities within the workers states.

But above all the necessity is to build a political leadership theoretically equipped to expose and defeat the left' elements of the bureaucracy that have played such a key role in preserving Stalinism in the post-war period.

Such a leadership must be firmly grounded on the programme and principles established by Leon Trotsky in his struggle against Stalinism and must be built as a part of a reconstructed Fourth International.