AN OBVIOUS NONSTARTER: THE POPULAR FRONT IN EASTERN EUROPE PDF

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773 cinquante - troisieme annee LIII 201 7/4 Comité de rédaction Raïa Zaïmova, rédacteur en chef, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (Институт за балканистика с Център по тракология – ИБЦТ, София) Fikret Adanır, Université Sabancı (Sabancı Üniversitesi, Istanbul), Ivo Banac, U...

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773

cinquante - troisieme annee

LIII 201 7/4

Comité de rédaction Raïa Zaïmova, rédacteur en chef, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (Институт за балканистика с Център по тракология – ИБЦТ, София) Fikret Adanır, Université Sabancı (Sabancı Üniversitesi, Istanbul), Ivo Banac, Université Yale (Yale University, Connecticut), Stanoje Bojanin, Institut d’Études byzantines, Belgrade (Византолошки институт САНУ, Београд), Ulf Brunnbauer, Université de Ratisbonne (Universität Regensburg), Nathalie Clayer, CNRS; EHESS, Paris, Nadia Danova, Académie bulgare des Sciences (БАН, София), Raymond Detrez, Université de Gand (Universitеit Gent), Rossitsa Gradeva, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ИБЦТ, София), Francesco Guida, Université de Rome III (Università degli Studi di Roma Tre), Wolfgang Höpken, Université de Leipzig (Universität Leipzig), Ivan Ilchev, Université de Sofia (СУ „Св. Климент Охридски“), Pascalis Kitromilidis, Université d’Athènes (Εθνικόν και Καποδιστριακόν Πανεπιστήμιον Αθηνών), Alexandre Kostov, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ИБЦТ, София), Ana Lalaj, Centre d’Études albanaises (Qendra e Studimeve Albanologjike, Tirana), Dobrinka Parusheva, Université de Plovdiv; Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ПУ „Паисий Хилендарски“; ИБЦТ, София), Roumiana Preshlenova, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ИБЦТ, София), Ljubodrag P. Ristic, Institut d’Études balkaniques, Belgrade (Балканолошки институт САНУ, Београд), Liliana Simeonova, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ИБЦТ, София), Elena Siupiur, Institut d’Études Sud-Est Européennes, Bucarest (Institutul de Studii Sud-Est Europene, Academia Română, Bucureşti), Vassilka Tăpkova-Zaïmova, Académie bulgare des Sciences (БАН, София), Maria Todorova, Université de l’Illinois (University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign), Galina Valtchinova, Université de Toulouse II Malamir Spassov, secrétaire scientifique du Comité de rédaction, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ИБЦТ, София) Мargarita Serafimova, coordinatrice de la revue, Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (ИБЦТ, София)

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES • Revue trimestrielle éditée par l’Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie (Académie bulgare des Sciences) • Adresse : 45, rue Moskovska, Sofia 1000, BULGARIE • Tél./Fax : (+ 359 2) 980 62 97 • Web: http://www.etudesbalk.org/ • E-mail : [email protected] • URL : www.cl.bas.bg/Balkan-Studies • Département d’échange international de livres de l’Académie bulgare des Sciences : [email protected] • Bibliothèque en ligne : http://www.ceeol.com Mise en page : FABER ISSN 0324-1645 © Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie 2017

ACADÉMIE BULGARE DES SCIENCES INSTITUT D’ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES & CENTRE DE THRACOLOGIE

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES LІІІ / 4

Politics and Society in Bulgaria and Romania in the 20th Century Guest Editor Alexandre Kostov

Sofia ∙ 2017

Ce numéro de la revue est publié avec l’aide financière du Fonds « Recherches scientifiques » (Ministère de l’éducation et de la science de Bulgarie) This issue is published with the financial support of the National Research Fund (Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science)

ISSN 0324 – 1645

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES Sofia ∙ 2017 ∙ LІІІ ◆ 4

ACADÉMIE BULGARE DES SCIENCES INSTITUT D’ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES & CENTRE DE THRACOLOGIE

Sommaire Alexandre KOSTOV, Editor’s Notes....................................................................... 593 Cristina DIAC, An Obvious Nonstarter: the Popular Front in Eastern Europe.......................................................................................................595 Blagovest NJAGULOV, Loyalties under Strain: The Dobrudja “Mahzar” of 1940...................................................................................................................... 650 Aneta MIHAYLOVA, The Paris Peace Conference of 1946 and the Redrafting of Borders in Europe: The Bitter Experience of Two Former German Satellites........................................................................ 666 Dobrinka PARUSHEVA, Coping With Housing Crisis: Post-World Wars’ Experience in Bulgaria........................................................................................... 689 Alexandre KOSTOV, The Trade Relations of China with Bulgaria and Romania in the East-European Context (1950 – 1978)......................... 705 Florin-Răzvan MIHAI, The Soviet Communist Party, Its Eastern Satellites and the International Communist Movement. A Comparative Study of the Bulgarian and Romanian Communist Parties (1964 – 1989)........... 729 Ana-Maria CĂTĂNUŞ, “Living in truth”. Narratives of Romanian Dissent in the 1970s and 1980s.......................................................................................... 753

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES, LІІІ, 2017, 4

Dear readers, I have the pleasure to introduce to you a special issue of our journal “Etudes balkaniques”. Ever since its establishment more than half a century ago, the Institute of Balkan Studies (merged with the Centre of Thracology in 2010) has been developing research cooperation with similar institutions in the region and beyond. The outcome of these activities is dozens of conferences and joint publications. Along with its traditional long-standing partners, the Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology has established new contacts. In 2015, a team from the Institute started a research project with the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism with the Romanian Academy on the topic “Politics and Society in Bulgaria and Romania in the 20th century”. This collaboration with the Romanian colleagues resulted in investigations in archives and libraries in both countries, work meetings and developing articles and studies. We had a problem, compiling this issue, because we needed to choose only a few of all the interesting and important research papers written. In the end, due to volume limitations, we selected the works of seven authors. Along with the project framework, reflected in its title, in most of the articles, presented in this issue, other similarities can be found, related mostly to the history of Bulgaria and Romania, together or separately, before or after 1945. Furthermore, their comparative nature is clearly visible – two-sided, Balkan or Eastern-European. The topics are relatively equally distributed between domestic social and political aspects on one hand, and issues of foreign policy and international relations, on the other. The authors have had freedom of choice of the topic and its presentation and the texts, included in the issue, reflect fully their personal view. We hope that the articles will be of interest not only for the specialists, but for a wider audience as well. Enjoy reading! Prof. Dr. Alexandre KOSTOV Director of Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology 593

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES, LІІІ, 2017, 4

AN OBVIOUS NONSTARTER: THE POPULAR FRONT IN EASTERN EUROPE

Cristina Diac National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism, Romanian Academy

Abstract: Designed to confront serious problems, and to prevent their extension, the Popular Front policy adopted by Komintern in the mid 30’s payed the price for all the mistakes of the past. This article explores, in a comparative fashion, how the Eastern European communist parties behaved in the Popular Front era, what they managed to achieve and what they didn’t, and what caused that state of affairs. The analyze takes into consideration Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and explores the attitude of the communist parties from these countries towards the Versailles System, the „national problem“, social-democracy, fascism (as ideology and as political force). Besides all these issues, inherent to Eastern European communist parties, this articles discusses the way in which Komintern itself dealt with “the fascist menace”. Keywords: Komintern, Popular Fronts, Eastern European Communist Movement, Fascism, Social-Democracy, The National Problem

When it comes to discuss about the Popular Fronts (P.F.) in Eastern Europe, historians dealing with European history unanimously agree on the complete failure of this policy. In spite of the numerous differences among the countries in the region, there were a few, but not unimportant common features, which made them more alike than it appeared at a first glance. Any attempt to explain why the popular front policy, determined by the Comintern at its 7th Congress from July-August 1935, failed to accomplish its main goal – to contain fascism – sends the explanations backwards, to the end of the WWI or even further, to the second half of the 19th century. Where do the similarities come from? First, all these countries, as its appeared on the political map in interwar, were a consequence of the peace treaties signed and sealed in 1919 – 1920. Good for some of them (Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland), a nightmare for others (Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria), the stipulations of the Versailles system peace treaties were the 595

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backbone of their foreign policy in interwar, and this is where the analysis must start from. Second, in domestic affairs, with some normal nuances and differences, ‘social stagnation, economic backwardness, and political primitivism were typical of East Europe at the time’1. As this article aims to explain, the popular front policy was about defending the ‘bourgeois democracy’; temporarily, as a painful but necessary step toward the ‘Bolshevik revolution’ still to come in a near future, but the communist European parties were asked to defend the states as they appeared on Europe’s political map in the mid – 1930s. The task proved hard, or even impossible for those who had learned to see the democratic system as ‘the evil’, the most dangerous enemy of communism. And, on the other hand, for this region specifically, what would democracy fight for, as the democratic traditions were so weak and insufficiently internalised by both the political system and by the average voters? Regarding the Popular front policy, since far more similarities could be noticed than differences, this analysis has chosen to treat the Eastern Europe as a single block. Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia will be taken into consideration. In order to understand how the P.F. policy worked or didn’t work in Eastern Europe, five groups of agencies are necessary to be scrutinized: the Comintern/ Soviet State, the communist parties, the state of democracy, the other political forces which the communists were supposed to ally with and the fascist parties/forces/movements. Any success or failure is not believed to be produced by a unique, simple cause or moment in time, the success or the failure resulted, after all, from the intersection of these five agencies. In its first part, this article will scrutinize the Eastern European communism between the two world wars, more precisely, the communist parties from Eastern Europe, and their major peculiarities: what they stood for, how big in numbers they were, how important their influence used to be within the political scene. The second part will investigate the Soviet diplomatic interests in the | mid-1930s, how the Comintern was supposed to support them, and how the communist parties, as Comintern’s section, reacted to the new policy. Despite the fact that some scholars, as this article will largely explain further, consider that the Comintern as an organization had yet a small space of manoeuvring, 1 

R. L. Tokés, Popular Front in the Balkans: 3. Hungary, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, N 3, Popular Fronts, p. 85.

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or a little autonomy from the Soviet state, this article presumes that the P.F. policy was an instrument of the Soviet diplomacy during its ‘collective security’ period. And as the Soviet security interests at that time aimed at the Western part of the continent, although not officially, the Comintern took the liberty not to push too hard in the East, not to say that it was simply disinterested in this region. The second assumption when it comes to analysing the Comintern/Soviet factor is the fact that, in the mid-1930s, Stalin and the Soviets were actually undecided who the main enemy was: the fascism, generically speaking, whereby they understood the Nazi Germany, or the ‘rotted, bourgeois’, Western democracy? This was one of the main theoretical, ideological dilemmas, which shuffled the European communist parties and made their mission quite impossible. As it will be shown, during the P.F. era, the communist parties were asked by the Comintern to defend the ‘bourgeois’ democracy as it was at that moment in time. The main shortcoming of this request came from the fact that the only party that had pushed for P.F. policy was the French Communist Party (P.C.F.), which had applied this policy empirically, even before it was officially adopted at the 7th Congress of the Comintern, in the late summer of 1935. Then the model was extended, indiscriminately, to the entire Europe. For many reasons, which this article is going to discuss, the P.C.F. was rather an atypical party than an average one, and certainly very different from its Eastern European counterparts. And that is why it is important to know what these parties were supposed to fight for, how the ‘democracy’ looked like in Eastern Europe?

The Eastern European communist parties Almost everywhere in the interwar Eastern Europe, the communist movement and its parties appeared weak and insignificant. The economy and, subsequently, the social structure of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia2, Hungary3, 2 

According to the occupational structure of Yugoslavia, in 1921, from a total of an active population of 6 million persons, 81,1 percent were occupied in agriculture. The number decreased by 4,8 percent until 1931, remaining just 76, 3 percent. Only 8,5 percent of the active population worked in industry and crafts in 1921, and 10,7 percent ten years later, with 2,2 percent more. John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 153. 3  In 1920, immediately after the Trianon Peace Treaty, the peasantry represented 4,5 million in a total of 7,6 million population (almost 60 %). From the 4,5 million peasants, the

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Poland4 didn’t look encouraging for an ideology designed, theoretically, for workers, and sometimes in practice against them. Except Czechoslovakia, and partially Austria, most of the countries in the region were underdeveloped, with an economy based mostly on a subsistence agriculture and a very large amount of needy, peasants. The initial stages of the industrialization process led to a very thin ‘working class’, recently emanated from the very poor peasants. Explaining why the Polish workers faced so quietly the high rates of unemployment during the Great Depression, Norman Davis stated that the Polish worker was anyway far better paid than his rural relatives, and his living standard – better than if he had stayed in the countryside. The Polish worker was just happy of not being a peasant any more5, and the same assumption is probably also true for Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. Moreover, confronted with huge economic shortages and social problems caused by WWI, the state, so to say the ‘mainstream’ forces, took over the task of protecting the needy people, still very unequal within Eastern Europe6. The 8-hour work day was introduced in Czechoslovakia in 1918, and unemployment allowance and paid leaves – in 1925. After 1918, most of the countries introduced social insurance systems for diseases, work related and commuting accidents, and age. Yugoslavia introduced the disease and work-related insurance in 1922, Poland – a disease insurance in 1918 and the unemployment allowance in 1919 – both for workers from businesses with more than five employees. Czechoslovakia also introduced an age insurance and disability allowance in 1926. In Hungary, Bethlem government introduced the health insurance system. All of these concerned the urban workers only, and didn’t deal with the cohorts of rural workers and servants. But by doing so, the states took the initiative to address the huge social problems emerging at the end of the WWI, slowly depriving the left of one of its major reasons to contest the social order. very needy one represented 46 %. Paul Lendvai, Ungurii. Timp de un mileniu învingători în înfrângeri, Traducere din germană de Maria Nastasia și Ion Nastasia, Ediția a III-a, Humanitas, București, 2013, p. 384, 397. 4  In interwar Poland, according to the 1921 census, 75 percent of the population lived in the countryside. Norman Davies, Istoria Poloniei. Terenul de joacă al lui Dumnezeu, vol. II: Din 1795 până în prezent, Traducere de Carmen Barti, Polirom, 2014, p. 333. 5  Ibid. p. 335. 6  All the date from Roman Krakovsky, L’Europe centrale et orientale de 1918 à la chute du mur de Berlin. Paris, Armand Colin, 2017, pp. 98 – 99.

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Except Czechoslovakia, not the social issue, but the agrarian profile of Eastern societies and the absence of a convincing proletariat made the Eastern European communist parties some pariahs. If it had been just that, they would have remained some minor political forces, entitled to get a few parliamentary seats, according to their minuscule electoral base, not bigger than more or less 10 percent of the population. The unique political stance regarding ‘the national questions’ ‘saved’ them from insignificance. From unimportant, they became dangerous. Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, in their inter-war boundaries, had arisen from the ashes of the former German, Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, which made them ready to push the old, competing nationalisms to a new phase. Except, maybe, Hungary, all the successor states inherited a large amount of ethnic minorities, and a ‘dominant’ ethnic group – the Romanians in Romania, the Serbs in Yugoslavia, the Poles in Poland, the Czechs (with a rather small margin) in Czechoslovakia – which claimed the supremacy. At the end of WWI, Lenin labelled the new, victorious states Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia as ‘imperialistic’, created by armed forces, France’s puppets, products of Western imperialism, artificial states which should have never been established. Therefore, the full right of nations to self-determination up to the point of secession was the cornerstone of the Bolshevik stance concerning the ‘national question’ in Eastern Europe. With their ‘internationalist’ ideology, recognising and supporting the right of nations to self-determination up to secession, put the communist parties in a dire contradiction with the dominant philosophy and ideology of the new states. Obviously, the ‘national question’ in Eastern Europe was far more complex and complicated than the sketchy remarks aforementioned. Even the socalled four victorious states looked very differently. But what’s worth mentioning at this phase is that from Prague to Bucharest, and from Warsaw to Belgrade, the communists challenged the new states, and this was what made them so ‘special’ after all. But if it is so easy to say what the Eastern European communists didn’t want, it is far more difficult to say what exactly they, or more correctly all of them, stood for with regard to the ‘national question’. Beyond the propagandа rhetoric, calling for a Bolshevik revolution as a miraculous solution for every single problem in the region, nothing else was clearly drawn in this respect.

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The supranational organization, which the communist parties were subordinated to, made th...