Stalinism crumbles as millions take to streets in East Europe

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Tearing down the Berlin Wall: The protesting millions want democracy so they socialized economy work, not because they want to return to capitalism.

The bureaucratic monolith throughout the world dominated by Stalinism is crumbling at an accelerating tempo. The stunning electoral defeats of the Soviet and Polish Stalinist parties earlier this year sent cold shivers down the spines of every one of the repressive regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia. They are running fast to try to regain some semblance of credibility.

The Hungarian Stalinists are frantically rushing to forestall an explosion of protests against their long history of bureaucratic misrule and repression. Desperately striving to evade responsibility for the current economic crisis, they seek to wipe out the memory of their reactionary past by changing the name of their ruling party from Communist to Socialist. This is also intended to underscore their pledge to make dramatic changes in the political and economic structure of Hungary, including projecting "free" elections.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian bureaucracy's open-door policy to capitalist investment, which has gone much further toward the restoration of capitalism than any in Eastern Europe, has brought no improvement in productivity or in living standards.

And this failure to get results is panicking the bureaucracy into more desperate concessions to foreign investors, who are being allowed to "snap-up" sectors of Hungarian industry. The biggest takeover so far has been the $150 million purchase of control over a Hungarian light-bulb manufacturer, the Tungsram Co.; one of Hungary's largest industrial concers and major export producer.

Andras Gabor, president of Tungsram, said that "Hungary is on the way to democracy and the development of a free-enterprise system. G.E.'s participation in Tungsram gives us the opportunity both to grow our lighting business and to embrace this process of change."

Following the dramatic events in East Germany, even the ossified Bulgarian Stalinists have had to dump their long time "glorious" leader, Todor I. Zhivkov, and have been furiously working to heap all blame on strike shakes him for their own willing participation in despotic rule.

But rather than being inspired with hope that real changes would be forthcoming, the people massed 50,000-strong in Sofia to declare their non-confidence in the bureaucracy's promises, and to demand more radical democratic change than was promised by the "reformers."

East Germany's example has also triggered an avalanche of mass mobilizations in Prague, Czechoslovakia, that started with hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, and then, by Nov. 20-21, had amassed over 200,000 daily in the streets. The crowds demanded democracy and the ouster of the Stalinist government. [See accompanying story on the upsurge in Czechoslovakia.] Only Rumania and Albania have not yet erupted, but it's only a matter of time.

And Alexander Dubcek, who led the 1968 Prague Spring and then was kicked out of the leadership of Czech Stalinism by Soviet troops, is now being rehabilitated by Gorbachev as the most likely candidate for "reform" in his desperate efforts to save buin Czechoslovakia.

Ascending wave of demonstrations A closer look at the upsurge in East Germany is necessary for understanding what has happened and what the future holds in store for the bureaucratized workers' states. And as we shall see, the impact of the events in the East is disrupting the status quo in all of Europe, giving powerful impetus to the coming worldwide revolutionary process.

The new stage of the crisis of world (continued on page 10;