Month: February 2021

One thing I found very interesting was at the beginning of the reading its stated that the Soviets allowed western books to be translated. Kovaly states that the books made life in the west look grim. “gave such a grim picture of life in the west that we would only conclude that the party was right, that the west had reached the terminal stages of moral and economic decay.” (Kovaly 94) After researching the authors he was right they wrote about was pretty bleak in the US the books sold pretty well and I’m sure most of the readers only thought of them as entertainment but the soviets were smart enough to use these books as propaganda. Even more interesting was Howard Fast the first author mentioned was actually a member of the American Communist Party which probably another reason the Soviets allowed the books to be in their country. I just think it was a great move on the soviets to use what Americans most likely thought of as harmless books and turn them into great pieces of propaganda.

Kovaly’s rendering of the particular heinousness of show trials is thorough and evocative. What most interests me is the complicated ways in which she reacts to her ostracism–she experiences obvious fear, but also displays grit and anger and vulnerability and even bitter humor in some ways. Her struggle to provide basic necessities for herself and her family, her treatment by other people–especially women–in public, her unawareness of and anxiety about Rudolf’s whereabouts, her run-ins with the inspectors–all of these things intersect in such a way that really complicates the narrative about wives of show trial victims touched upon in last week’s readings, laying some really powerful empathetic groundwork. This section with the inspectors is especially rich; what do you make of this idea of agencies’ abuse of the people’s trust? How does their underlying greed undermine the system they enforce? In what ways does this specific scene unravel or reinforce Kovaly’s worldview? How does Kovaly reclaim some sense of power with her comment to Comrade Inspectress? The interaction I’m thinking of is on page 130:

“She pulled me aside and whispered ‘I’ll see to it that your car is released if you sell it to me cheap.’ It was one of my rarest pleasures of the time to give her a crushing glance and to say, very loudly, ‘But Comrade, that would be dishonest!’” (Kovaly 130).

Something that really stood out to me is the dramatic irony of a line that Rudolph says. When asked if he could be arrested, he claims that “cannot happen” (Kovály 102) and “people cannot be held in jail for no reason at all” (Kovály 102). I don’t blame him for being hopeful, as everyone wants their government to be fair. He does mention previously though that when a man from his office was arrested, he was shocked because the coworker seemed to be a “decent fellow” (Kovály 95) and one would never have guessed that he was a traitor. I feel like it is wishful thinking to believe that a seemingly normal man would be a traitor and not believe that the government was arresting those who dissented.

Additionally, his wife even begged him to quit his job and brought attention to the fact that most of the people who were arrested were Jews; however, he completely dismissed those remarks. This also highlights certain gender roles, where a husband may not take his wife seriously when she is raising valid points. Why did he not listening to her reasoning? Could Rudolph have avoided his fate if he had listened to his wife and quit his job? Also, with Slansky’s arrest and famous show trial, I can imagine that many people would begin to be a little more careful about what they say and do.

I am not trying to blame Rudolph by any means for being arrested, but I do think it raises questions about how aware the public was of the doings of the government and the show trials. Were a majority of people, like Rudolph, trusting of the government until they were the ones being questioned? Did they see the wrong doings but ignored them? I feel a possibility is that he had wishful thinking and despite of everything going on, he wanted to pretend that the government was not mistreating its people.

A heart-breaking account of the events of the Czechoslovakian “show trials” is told though the lense of Heda Kovaly. Many of the events surrounding the Slansky show trial and the 20th Congress of the Communist Part make several appearances throughout the sections that we have read from prior readings. Echoing from those sources, Kovaly writes, “even the most casual encounter with me could arouse suspicion and invite disaster. I understand that and could bear the isolation better than most people in the same situation” (Kovaly 117). In a piece of dialogue, she writes as well that, “If the system was fair and good, it would provide ways for compensating for error. If it can only function when the leadership is made up of geniuses and all the people are [100%] honest and infallible, then it’s a bad system” (Kovaly 103-104). The one other important parallel she makes is when she states, “In Czechoslovakia, as in the Communist countries of Europe at the times of being unemployed was not merely unfortunate; it was illegal. But in a country where all the jobs had become government jobs, who would employ an outcast like myself?” (Kovaly 120). Each of these quotes echoes the themes paranoia and ostratization, of women and country turning on an individual caught up in the show trials, it even questions the efficacy of the whole governmental system. But, the question that primarily arises from these quotes is how much influence her flight into the West influence how she recollected the particulars? Certainly, much of this can be taken at face value, and that her larger picture holds some light to the events that had taken place. However, she accounts as to her and a small handful of people (immediate family members) had been caught up in these events. The majority are in fact people who are actively displacing her, following with “company policy,” and treating her poorly because of her connections to those on trial. How should we handle the divide within the nation (the Kovalys vs. the ostracizers) as historians when recreating the events of the Stalinization? Is it possible (or even should historians) attempt to sterilize the emotions of the events by present just the bare necessities, or do insights like these memoirs (equipped with time and editorial minded consumption of the material) help to better illuminate the events we had read about in the other sources we have read?

Contrary to what the title might suggest, Kovaly writes rather fluidly about her experiences but I can’t help but notice a constant haze about the way she writes. I remember reading a portion from Under a Cruel Star in HIS 240 and thinking the same thing. I hate to make a comparison to 1984 because it feels like low-hanging fruit but the atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt seems to rhyme with the experiences recounted by Kovaly. I think this should be attributed to her remembered mental state at the time of her husband’s conviction but also to the culture that had been created in Czechoslovakia surrounding Party arrests.

This culture, however, where “Comrades at the Ministry of Justice were instructed to limit the financial compensation to the next of kin strictly to the value of the confiscated property at the lowest possible estimate of its worth” (Kovaly 176), is incomprehensible to me. The defendants used in the Slánský trial were simply pawns in a showing of anti-Semitic, state-sponsored propaganda. The recurring theme among these show trials seems to be the anti-semitic threads that offer a little bit of plausible deniability to the public. Kovaly’s memoir insinuates that party officials in the aftermath of her husband’s death seemed to understand the weight and meaning behind the trial, along with a significant number of her acquaintances. The first question this brings me to is how do we get there? How do people permit this to happen? And what benefit does this have for the communist party of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union? What are the long term problems of practices like this?

Kovaly offers to us the perspective of Hungarian life before the revolution – something I think we were all missing when we read through the interviews for Monday’s class. This is an important insight we now have.

In pages 93-104, Kovaly describes in detail the lead up to the revolution. This included a shortage of basic household resources, the devaluation of currency, a housing crisis, and general discomfort and horrible living conditions for everyone – especially the elderly. However, she speaks more to the struggle her husband faces as he starts to see the reality of the communist party.

“If you’re right, if it is really a fraud, then Ive been an accomplice in a terrible crime. And if I had to believe that, I could not go on living…” (Kovaly, 104)

I can’t help but wonder if this mentality is something a majority of party officials, who were devoted to the party because they thought it was doing good, felt the same way. Could this be the reason why so many people supported the revolution? To make good on the crimes they may have committed while being an official in the party?

As the story goes on, we find out that Rudolf is arrested, and later, we find out his devastating fate. Kovaly, after her last time speaking with him, finds a newfound strength to get away from the officers who escorted her to the prison. Unfortunately, though, the party offered her no explanation for his death, except that he was “involved” in treasonous activities. Even still, they refuse her a death certificate or a copy of a verdict. What would be the reason for this? Was it a matter of covering their tracks?

At the end of this story, we see that Kovaly had finally had some sort of resolution. She began the healing process with her son in Bulgaria, which seemed to at least provide some solace for losing her husband.

What can we learn from this memoir from Kovaly? Are all of the Soviet leaders in this story “bad”? And, what kind of impression does this leave on you after reading the interviews?

In comparison to the interviews we read about the Hungarian Revolution, Under a Cruel Star contained everything that I believe was lacking: daily life before the conflict, a deeply personal account, and daily life after the conflict. With Heda Margolius Kovaly’s writing, I not only understood the show trials as a historical event, but was provided with a deeply humanistic and primary account of life in Eastern Europe during Stalinization. Further, we received the account that was missing (and that Augustine noted) from so many of the interviews we read for Monday’s class; here, we have the account of a woman who took on many roles, as women in the Soviet Union did, as a mother, a homemaker, a wife, and a worker. Due to the nature of her many roles, her writing not only offered insight into the series of political events from the show trials to its aftermath, but into the gender roles in Eastern Europe at the time.

Through her perspective as a woman living through Stalinization, Kovaly emphasizes the arduous tasks that women faced, especially following the arrest or loss of a husband. Finding housing, work, or food was not easy – let alone when your husband is believed to be a traitor. Prior to her husband’s arrest, she was expected to take on the character of the ideal Communist wife. In addition to work and homemaking, this involved entertaining guests and attending Party functions which, given the action of the President, it was clear she did not enjoy. However, it became evident in her description that being everything (a mother, a wife, an employee, and a party member) was expected of women in Czechoslovakian and Communist society. Though we only read a portion of the memoir, I sensed a shift in her role following her husband’s arrest. While she still was bearing a substantial amount of responsibility, if not more than before, Kovaly’s determination and strong-minded attitude come through as she begins to transition into the role of an activist on her husband’s behalf.

Considering the shock of the ministers she met with near the end of the reading, with one noting that she was the only widow to respond in such a way, in what way was her response considered atypical? Was she atypical for believing and defending her husband? Was she atypical for criticizing the Communist Party? Or, was she simply atypical for being a strong-willed woman?

In the reading for this week, East Central Europe, 1953–1956 by Bekes, throughout the reading is seems like after the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union had an array of strikes and uprisings about either the economy or the jobs the people had. Throughout eastern Europe there were many uprisings from the people “On May 3, 1953, workers in tobacco factories near Plovdiv and Khaskovo in the southern part of Bulgaria, the country seen as most loyal to the Soviet Union, went on strike and organized a demonstration against inflated productivity demands” (Bekes, 336). Although this is one out of many, it was really surprising that some of the countries wanted a communist government without stalinism in it and others wanted to eradicate communism. “What might have been especially worrying for them was how the demonstrations had started out as demands of an economic nature, but had evolved in a matter of hours into widespread protests calling for the elimination of the Communist system by the industrial working class, a segment of the population that should have been the ideological base of the regime.” (Bekes, 338). Later on in the reading It was very clear that the people of Hungary wanted to have a communist type system but someone who was not aligned in the ideas of stalinism. In the reading “In Hungary, Rákosi managed to muster Soviet support to stay in power until July 1956, although conditions for an anti-Stalinist turn had been ripening since the fall of 1955.” (Bekes, 344). But later on, the Soviet Union leaders still decides to put someone with strong ideas of stalin knowing that the majority of those who lived in Hungary did not want that “Hungarian Workers’ Party Central Committee to elect Ernő Gerő, another leading Stalinist, as first secretary of the party. This displeased the Hungarians who – since the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU – had been expecting a more flexible and reformed Communist system” (Bekes, 346). My question to the class would be do you think the revolution between Hungary and the Soviet Union was inevitable from the start or could there have been a change in communist power early on in Hungary to calm the conflict? Also, right after Stalin died do you think that other countries may have seen it as an opportunity to leave the Soviet Union?

In his post, John made the point that there was “a strong sentiment of ‘hate’ for the ‘Russian occupation'” and highlights the subject of the interview’s point that the “rebellion was spontaneous.” This is interesting for several reasons. It reveals the conditions that lead to failed attempts at revolution – a want for it but a lack of widespread support via organization. Now, the finger can be pointed at the US for not intervening in support of such revolutions under Soviet-occupied territories…but then the question arises as to what the result of that could have been as far as conflicts are considered and if such revolutions even had any real chance to begin with.

On page 8 of the interview in document 0110 with an 18 year old, you get the sense that things escalated rather quickly. Chanting and shouting encouraged the Soviet flag to be removed from the stage nearby and the crowd of demonstrators seemed to become more emotional as these events unfolded. Such events are most of the time hard to organize support of on a broad international scale before they are crushed and come to an end. It also means that there is not a great depth of logistical or strategic planning as to how they are going to achieve these goals. Sure, there might be an initial plan, but as the movement gets carrier away it appears that there either aren’t any secondary plans or emotions prevail so much that plans are more or less disregarded. There is a great similarity here to the June Rebellion in France in 1832 (the subject of Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables), where barricades were constructed in Paris to oppose the military called in to suppress the movement, but once they are breached the movement essentially disintegrates as protesters flee for fear of their lives.

Therefore, were such revolutions as this worth the US potentially wasting resources and international political difficulty if they are almost doomed to fail? And, by extension, by the US not doing so, does that immediately make it guilty of neglecting these protesters, or merely smart for not interfering when the time was not yet perceived to be ripe?

In Interview 106, a majority of the information highlighted is about the actual Hungarian Revolution, on the side of those who were against the communist regime. This can be seen in a majority of the answers, about the reason why people were willing to take part in the revolution. However, there is a question that has been sticking out to me as I read through these – were they published to further prove the United States’ point that communism = evil? Is there a deeper reason as to why these interviews were recorded, or is it just to preserve an important part of history?