Unrest Spreads In East Europe Satellites

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28150, 13 December 1956, Page 15

Unrest Spreads In East Europe Satellites

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, December 12. A dramatic admission of opposition in Lithuania came last night from Moscow, according to the Daily Mail.” It was made by Lithuania’s Communist Party leader, Mr A. Snechkus. who said: “The Hungarian revolution encouraged Lithuanian reactionaries, who have begun to raise their heads.” Mr Snechkus. who was reported by a Communist newspaper, admitted serious mistakes in the national policies of Lithuania, the Baltic State taken over by Russia in 1940 and incorporated in the Soviet Union. But, according to the British United Press, he added: “We cannot remain passive while certain individuals distort reality and idealise bourgeois times, thereby imbuing a youth which never saw the bourgeois system with false views.” Mr Snechkus also criticised certain cultural and scientific leaders for spreading “unhealthy alien moods and erroneous ideas which have nothing in common with Marxism.” He said certain university students were particularly apt at believing "lies spread by the class enemy while some teachers, though aware of such unhealthy moods among students, de

not actively combat educational shortcomings.”

Mr Snechkus’s speech was reported in the newspaper “Soviet Lithuania.” Names and details of the elements operating in Lithuania were not given. The "Daily Mail” said Mr Snechkus’s remarks followed the new trend of nervousness among Communist leaders in the Baltic States, noted since the Hungarian revolt. Similar warnings have been broadcast by the Estonian and Latvian radios, the newspaper said. Czech Admission In Prague, a member of the Czech Communist Party’s central committee, Mr Frantisek Dvorsky, said in a speech published last night that when the Hungarian disorders broke out, certain elements in Czechoslovakia came into the open, thinking the time had come for them to

stage an uprising. He said an incident occurred at Kosice, in Slovakia, just north of the Hungarian border. (At the time the Czech authorities denied reports of unrest in Slovakia, which has a strong Hungarian minority).

Another committee member, Mr Vasil Bilak, claimed that at the start of the Hungarian rising, some Czech Communists ceased attending party

meetings because they wanted to see how the situation developed. A trade union official, Mr Vaclav Kolar, criticised serious shortcomings in the presentation of foreign news in the Czech press. He said news from abroad was over-simplified. But there was no question of publishing reports which were not in the interest of the working class and the unity of socialist countries.

It was announced in Warsaw last night that Poland will pay for damage caused to the Soviet Consulate in Stettin when rioters broke windows in an attempt to enter the building. Warsaw radio said juveniles started the demonstrations when police attempted to arrest a “drunken teenager.’-’

“The hooligans attacked police and shouted provocative slogans,’’ the broadcast said. “A group of demonstrators tried to demolish the windows of the Soviet Consulate in downtrodden Stettin and tried to force their way into "the building. “Many hooligans were arrested and all those guilty will receive serious punishment.’’ The broadcast said dockyard workers and soldiers eventually dispersed the demonstrators. Reports reaching Warsaw from Stettin later said that some of the big crowd which gathered near the Soviet Consulate were students and workers trying to carry out a planned protest against Soviet armed intervention in Hungary.