EAST CENTRAL EUROPE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 3

EAST CENTRAL EUROPE

Eastern Europe In The Postwar World. Hubert Ripka. Methuen. 266 pp.

The author of this book was a journalist of distinction in Czechoslavakia before going into exile in 1938. Later he became a Minister of State in the exiled Czechoslovakian Government in London, and a member of the restored Government in his own country. In 1948 he again left Czechoslavakia, and died in 1958. In the introduction to this posthumous work Mr Hugh Seton-Watson describes him as “one of the best minds that made Czechoslovkia admired in the years before Munich.” The early chapters provide the historical background to the nations of East Central Europe, inhabited by many different peoples, lacking a common cultural or political tradition, subject to pressure from East and West alike and having a variety of economic and social structures. After 1918 the small newlyindependent nations of the area had a similar variety of political regimes, generally authoritarian without any particular ideology, with democratic elements everywhere strong and triumphant in Czechoslovakia. Such an area could not of course escape the attentions of the Great Powers, and Dr. Ripka takes his readers through its subsequent history to 1945. . He claims that after 1945 the United States and Great Britain failed to recognise that whoever held East Central Europe held the predominating position; otherwise they could have prevented the expansion of Russian power there, a power which after the Czechoslovakian coup in 1948 entered a new phase when the anti-Communist parties were liquidated, religious persecution began and the whole of life was forced into the Soviet pattern. Economically there was an overconcentration on heavy in. dustry, and the impoverishment of the satellite peoples. Dr. Ripka insists that any suggestion that the Communist phase in Eastern Europe was inevitable is quite wrong, for the conditions were more favourable to democracy in 1945 than they had been in 1918.

A new era of Soviet development came with Stalin’s death in 1956. The Soviet rulers had to adopt gentler tactics owing to the social discontent caused by their predecessor. The need for a gentler approach was an encouragement to those in the satellite countries who desired liberty. So there were demonstrations in Czechoslovakia and a revolt in East Germany in 1953, but by 1956 Khrushchev felt able to attack Stalin and Stalinism, not realising that this would lead to general criticism of the whole Soviet regime, and to two major risings, to each of which Dr. Ripka gives a whole chapter, in Poland and Hungary. Dr. Ripka is critical of the Western attitude during these revolts: “Lack of ’ an effective Western policy during the Polish and Hungarian revolutions helped the Russians to regain, in a relatively short time, the 'mastery of an empire that was about to disintegrate.” The return to complete enslavement had a number of effects. One was increased tension with the recently reconciled Tito, who did not like the use of the Red Army to attack another State, even though he preferred this to democratic freedom which as a Communist he could not approve. China made use of the oppor. tunity to claim equally for herself; the enslaved coun. tries became a “colonial problem" for Russia. Organised communism was weakened and Soviet power severely shaken. Moscow became the centre of counter, revolution, determined to suppress liberty in a satellite world of strong nationalism and revived liberalism. Dr. Ripka claims that the epochmaking importance of the Hungarian revolution was not only that it was a revolt against tyranny but that it established at the same time the positive aims of a new social order. He believes that in spite of everything that has hap-

pened it is probable that Western diplomatists will again under-estimate th? importance of East Central Europe, and that most people do not realise the terrible consequences of continuing Soviet hegemony there. While it continues there is no possibility of a genuine European settlement, and liberation requires Western political aid. Dr. Ripka concludes with a plea for an active policy and diplomacy on the part of the Western Powers. This should be based on a . determination to preserve and strengthen the Western alliance, the building of a united Europe and the peaceful liberation of East Central Europe as a basic aim, all this accompanied by propaganda to assure those behind the Iron Curtain, where communism has lost its appeal, that there is no reactionary intention to restore the old regimes.