SOVIET HISTORIANS DEMAND MORE FACTS
. The Eoonomist of May. 15 calls. attention to. a document published in the April. issue of the Polish emigré monthly Kultura reporting a debate June 17-18, 1964, at the Historical Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
The document is of interest for what it reveals about the intellectual ferment in the Soviet Union.
‘The discussion at the Institute was about the draft text. of the ninth volume of the History of the USSR, covering the years from 1933 to 1941. :
On the prison camps, A. P. Korushev argued that the official . history should at least tell how much concentration camp labor. was used in pre-war Soviet projects. He also wanted to know if the Stalin-Hitler pact contained secret clauses. If so they should be revealed, Also the lessons of the Finnish war should be discussed.
Another speaker criticized the lack of explanation for the development of repressive measures and the use of torture to obtain. "confessions." The draft did not name enough of Stalin's victims,
Another speaker said that the breakdown of democracy in the Soviet Union was due to Stalin and not to Hitler and that the “cult” period should be analyzed. 4
Professor Genkin took the opposite view, holding that the speakers were too critical. The tendency to omit Stalin in recent publications was unwise, she held, Her argument that the Soviet archives are no longer inaccessible led to a sharp exchange and queries as to what sections are opens”
Another speaker wanted details about Soviet involvement in the Spanish civil war, illumination of the personality of Nikolayev, who was charged with assassinating Kirov, and the names of the men ~ who led the campaign against the historian Pokrovsky.
A.V.Snegov created a sensation when he conceded that the 1930s were a contradictory period in the Soviet Union, marked by both progress and regression, The half-truths in the draft volume were better, he held, than the flat lies of previous Soviet histor- — ians, but it should contain more factual material, When he asked whether it had been unavoidable to shoot Zinoviev and Kamenev as traitors, somebody in the hall answered "no,"
"Mr. Snegov went on to argue that the psychological puzzle of Stalin must be solved and an answer given to the question: what did he do for Russia? Stalin's provocative policy towards minority peoples should also be discussed. . In.general, he urged, Soviet historians must stop repeating stalinist formulas about rightists, leftists and trotskyists; nothing had harmed the reputation of socialism more than Stalin's behaviour in the 1930s, . He asked. whether the murder in Moscow of the lédding Polish communists had been really necessary; or had it been a- precious gift for Hitler? He wondered why the book praised the partition of Poland between the Germans and the Russians in 1939. What had this really done to facilitate the defence of Russia?" oe
points made by other speakers included the argument that Soviet historians must stop depicting everything in crude black and white; that the volume did not explain. the repressions; that it should contain more about rural living conditions; that the book was too superficial; that a more penetrating analysis is needed of Stalin's personality as has been done with Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. “A young lecturer also wanted it to be explained why many people have still not been rehabilitated, though the charges made against them have been largely discredited."
One of the drafters of the book, a woman, pleaded that no serious study had been possible until after the first attacks on the "personality cult." Until then one could only write about the exceptionally good or bad.
"We still tend to act that way," she continued. “We are still, in this respect, under Stalin's influence. Have we managed to produce a balanced opinion of a personality, including its good and bad features? (cries from the hall of tno'),. And yet nobody is
genuine workers councils. which would take away from the bureaucratic machine the property which it had in reality usurped (the example of the Yugoslav workers councils was considered to be tainted with 'technocracy'),
"There is no need to say that these authors spoke against the 'reactionary! role of the Polish clergy and for.a return to prole= tarian internationalism, borrowing some arguments from the Chinese on this. All these theories, which despite their at times utopian character, seem to have found a certain audience among the young intellectuals of the 'second Communist generation,' were developed last autumn by Modzelewski and Kuron in a 128-page manifesto, which only a few privileged people know about, among them Mr. Gomulka himself...Because the police, turning up tin time,! hastened to confiscate the dangerous manuscript and put the authors behind bars. Seven conspirators were implicated in the affair, but, as is frequent in Poland, were all released after several hours of detention, Accord ing to the latest report, the trial involving subversion, which was doubtful in the first place, will not take place,'
OKINAWA SEAMEN REJECT U.S. REQUEST
A U.S. request to man-an LST (landing ship, tank) going to south. Vietnam from Naha was turned down by the All-Okinawa U.S. - Forces Workers-Union (Zengunro)..May 14. The U.S.“demanded 20 seamen within an hour... The union met at once and turned down the request stating that putting their men on the U.S. military craft would run™ counter to the Okinawan people's aspiration for peace and that it. was impossible for the Japanese to make a decision on such an important matter in an hour,
CEYLON