PROTESTS POLITICAL TRIALS IN POLAND
[On April 24 Isaac Deutscher, the well-known writer on Soviet affairs and author of a biographical trilogy on Leon Trotsky, sent. an "Open Letter to Wladyslaw Gomulka and the Central Committee of. the Polish ‘Workers Party" protesting the imprisonment of. Communists critical of the regime. The letter was released to the press “April 28 and received some publicity in London where Deutscher lives.
[The following is the complete text of Isaac Deutscher's open letter. ]
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I am addressing this Letter to you in order to protest against the recent secret trials and convictions of Ludwik Hass, Karol Modzelewski, Kazimierz Badowski, Romuald Smiech, Kuron, and other members of your Party. According to all available reports, these men have been deprived of liberty solely because they have voiced views critical of your policy or certain aspects of it, and because they have expressed disappointment with the bureaucratic arbitrariness © and corruption which they see rampant in their country. The charge against them is that they have circulated leaflets and a pamphlet containing "false information detrimental to the State and its: © supreme authorities" -- the Public Prosecutor, it seems, did not. accuse them of any crime or offence graver than that.
If this is the accusation, then the persecution of these men is disgraceful and scandalous. Several questions must be asked: Why, in the first: instance, have the Courts held their hearings in camera? Surely, no matter of State security was or could have been involved. All the defendants have. been academic teachers and students, and what they have tried. to do was to communicate their views to fellow students. why have, they not been given. a fair and open trial? the pleas of ‘defence? Is it because the proceédings have been so absurd: and shameful, that. you yourselves feel that you cannot justify or excuse them; and, ‘so you prefer to cover them with silence and oblivion? As far as. I know, Prosecutor and judges have not impugned the defendants' motives or cast any serious doubt on their integrity. The accused men have proclaimed themselves to be, and have behaved like, devoted non-conformist Communists, profoundly convinced of the truth and validity of revolutionary Marxisn.
I know that one of them Ludwik Hass was, even before the 2) second World War, a member of the Communist, so-called Trotskyist, organization, of which I was one of the founders and mouthpiece.’ He: then spent 17 years in Stalin's prisons, concentration camps, and” places of deportation. Released in 1957, he returned to Poland so free from all bitterness and so strongly animated by his faith in a better Socialist future that he at once decided to join your Party; and he was accepted as member. No-one asked him to renounce his past, and he did not deny his old "Trotskyist" views even for a moment -~ on the contrary, he upheld them frankly and untiringly. This circumstance alone testifies to his courage and integrity. Do you, Wladyslaw Gomulka, really believe that you have, in your "apparatus" and administration, many people of comparable disinterestedness and idealism? Look around you, look at the crowds of time-servers that surround you, at all those opportunists without principle and honour who fawn on you as they fawned on Bierut, and as some of them fawned even on Rydz-Smigly and Pilsudski. On how many of these bureaucrats can your Government, and can Socialisn, count in an hour of danger, as it can count on the people you have put in prison?
Recently still ‘your Government claimed with a certain: pride that there were no political prisoners in Poland since 1956. This claim, if true, was indeed something to be proud of in a country the jails of which had always, under all regimes, been full of political prisoners, especially of Communist prisoners. You have not, as far ast know, jailed and put in chains any of your all too numerous and virulent ‘anti-Communist opponents; and you deserve credit for the moderation with ‘which you treat them. But why do you deny such treatment to your critics on the Left? Hass, Modzelewski and their friends have been brought to the Courtrooms hand-cuffed and under heavy guards. Eye-witness accounts say that they raised their chained fists in the :old Communist salute and sang the Internationale. This detail speaks eloquently about their political characters and loyalties. How many of your dignitaries, Wladyslaw Gomulka, would nowadays intone the internationale - of their. ‘own free will and choice?
I have been informed - ‘that: before the. trial, during the interrogation, the official who conducted it alleged that Hass and other defendants had worked in’ contact with me. I do not know whether the Prosecutor’ took up this charge in the..Courtroom. In any case, the: allegation’is a complete falsehood. Let:me say that if the defendants had tried to get in touch with me, I would have readily responded... But the fact is that I have had no contact whatsoever with any of them. I have not even seen a.single one of their leaflets or pamphiets. I judge their behaviour solely from reports reaching me by word of: mouth or through Western European newspapers.
I ought perhaps to explain that since the second World War... I have not participated in Polish political life in any way; and. that, not being a member of any political organization, Trotskyist or otherwise, I am speaking only for myself. I. should add, however, that on a few very rare occasions I have broken my self-imposed political abstinence. I protested when you, Wladyslaw Gomulka, were imprisoned and slandered in the last years of the Stalin era. Knowing full well that I could not share all your views, I expressed solidarity with you. Similarly, I do not know whether I can fully approve the views and behaviour of Hass, Modzelewski and their comrades. But in their case as in yours I think I can recognize. reactionary policy terror for what it is and tell slander. from: ‘truth.
Another’-occasion on: which’ I. allowed : ‘myself to have. a say on. Polish political matters was in°1957, when I explained in a special essay "The Tragedy of Polish: ‘Communism between the World Wars." You. may remember that your censors, Stalinists of the so-called Natolin group, confiseated the essay when Polityka tried to publish it; and. that then you, Wladyslaw Gomulka, ordered the essay to be. widely distributed among Party members. In those far-off days, just after . the "Polish spring in October," you held that Polish Communists ought to know my account of the havoc that Stalin made of their Party,. delivering nearly all its leaders to the firing squad. You knew that I had been one of those very few Communists who, in 1948, protested |. against that crime and against the disbandment and denigration of what had once been our common Party. Moscow "rehabilitated" the
Polish Party and its leaders only after 17 or 18 years; and then you, Wladyslaw Gomulka, apologized for having kept silent in 1938, although you had not believed the Stalinist slanders. I do not believe that you are right now in persecuting and imprisoning members of your own Party and your critics on the Left; and I cannot keep silent. -
May I remind you of your own words spoken at the famous 8th Session of the Central Committee in October 1956? "The cult of the personality was not a matter just of Stalin's person," you stated then. "This was a system which had been transplanted from the USSR to nearly all Communist Parties....We have finished or rather we are finishin with that systen once and | for all. Your italics.
But are you not to some extent reestablishing that system? Do you wish these trials to mark the tenth anniversary of: your own. rehabilitation and of that "spring in October, " during which you raised so- many’ ‘hopes for the future? —
In the name of those hopes and in the name of your own record,. the record of a fighter and of a political prisoner under Pilsudski and Stalin, I appeal to you and to your colleagues of the Central Committee: Do’ not: allow this miscarriage of justice to last!. Dispel the secrecy that surrounds the cases of Hass, Modzelewski, and- Domap comrades. If you think that they are guilty of grave offences, then publish the full report of the Court proceedings and let it speak for itself. In any case, I appeal to you to order an immediate and public revision of the trial. If you’ refuse these demands, you will stand condemned as epigones of Stalinism, guilty of stifling your own Party and compromising the. future of Socialism.
SOVIET LITERARY