Iron Curtain (57 page)
Authors: Anne Applebaum
In Germany, some of the attempts to retrain workers to fill cultural jobs also ended in fiasco. At one point, the writer
Erich Loest was assigned to teach a group of factory workers to become
Volkskorrespondenten
, people’s correspondents. The logic was straightforward: if the proletariat could be trained in journalism, then newspapers would by definition become ideologically correct, and there would be no need for bourgeois journalists. Or so the theory went. In practice, Loest’s particular task—the training of workers to become theater critics—was less than successful:
There were fifteen people—twelve women, three men—they were workers. They had been asked at their enterprise, “We need people for
this group, who of you likes going to the theater?” And they had put their hands up and been selected: “Well, Hildegard, you are a member of this group now.” We went to the theater together and afterward or the next day we met. And I told them, tried to tell them, what a theater review is about. And then we wrote a review together. I was twenty-five by then and I had liked going to the theater … It was horrible. We were all unhappy. I was unhappy, they were even more unhappy … They were supposed to write a theater review, they could not do that, and they did not learn it with me. After half a year the whole thing collapsed. We carried on for one winter.
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But, in a narrower sense, these policies succeeded: eventually they changed the composition of the urban intelligentsia. One Pole remembers that at his elite Warsaw school in the 1950s, almost everybody came from a rural background. When the teacher asked the children where they were going on summer vacation, they answered almost in unison: “I’m going to stay with my grandparents in the countryside.” It took him many years to realize that in most European capitals, the vast majority of people did not have grandparents who lived on tiny farms and grew potatoes.
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The social advance policy did also produce a generation of loyal if not necessarily talented communist party leaders. As one historian explains, some people saw right from the beginning that the system could provide them with a clear path to upward mobility, regardless of their background and regardless of their abilities, if they played by the rules:
They were active in the party, they always had something to say at meetings and consultations—and it was always something “in line” and “correct” as we said back then. They defended the position of the directors and the party organization, they took part in after-work “cultural” activities and made other social contributions. Whatever the quality of their work and their professional training, they advanced quickly, though not necessarily in the workplace. More often they were promoted into the administration, or sent away on courses … sometimes they wound up in the party apparatus.
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A glance at the sociological backgrounds of the Eastern European communist leadership in the 1980s reveals that many activists from modest backgrounds
did eventually climb to the very top.
Mieczysław Rakowski was born into a peasant family, operated a lathe as a teenager, received a doctorate from the Warsaw Institute for Social Sciences in 1956, and became prime minister of Poland in 1988. Miloš Jakeš was born into a peasant family, worked in a shoe factory, obtained a degree from the
Moscow Higher Party School in 1958, and was named general secretary of the Czechoslovak communist party in 1987.
Egon Krenz was the child of East
Prussian refugees, became the leader of the Young Pioneers in the 1970s, and was named prime minister of East Germany in October 1989, a job he held until December 1989. All of these men were among the most outstanding beneficiaries of the “social advance.” And all of them reached the summit of power too late to enjoy it.
During the school and work day, the communist educational establishment could keep children, students, young people, and young workers safe from the forces of reaction. But after school—on weekends, in the summers—they could still be exposed to any number of harmful ideas. Makarenko had believed that Soviet children and teenagers should be occupied at all times, with collective work, sport, or study. By the late 1940s, bureaucrats in Eastern Europe were striving toward the same ideal. At a 1951 Polish teachers’ conference, much time was devoted to extracurricular education. Those present agreed that it should be used “to deepen and broaden education obtained in school … to create conditions for collective life, and to support valuable, socially useful character traits in the spirit of socialist morality.”
More to the point, one speaker declared, after-school programs would keep children safe from bad influences: “The failure to organize the time children spend outside school creates conditions that encourage hostile activity on the part of reactionary priests as well as other reactionary elements and imperialist agents.” Examples of such negative activity, as presented at the conference, included the “organization of children’s day care in the basement of the Warsaw basilica” as well as the “participation of priests in various sporting and other organizations for children” (though not that many priests, at that point, were in a position to do so).
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In order to keep children and young workers away from these reactionary contacts, the educational establishments across the bloc created a vast program of after-school and evening clubs, teams, and organizations, all of them under state control though not necessarily political. Some of these official
after-school programs were even deliberately apolitical, including everything from music and folk dancing to painting and needlework. Chess clubs were especially popular. The idea was to draw children into a place where they could be subtly influenced. If nothing else, organizers had the satisfaction of knowing that children were singing, sewing, or checkmating one another in rooms where Stalin’s portrait hung on the wall, under the supervision of ideologically reliable educators. All of these activities were free, and hence very attractive to working parents.
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More overtly political activities were also available. In Poland, the Society of the Friends of Children organized not only after-school clubs but “mass actions” such as the decoration of communal New Year’s trees (as opposed to Christmas trees). In Hungary, the Young Pioneers organized Michurinist clubs, which experimented with cotton and other plants in the manner of
Ivan Michurin, a botanist colleague of Lysenko and an opponent of genetics.
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The German Young Pioneers also participated in young technician and young natural scientist clubs, all intended to lead children in professional directions useful to the party.
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But the real prize, for dedicated communist educators, was the summer vacation, two long months of idleness that presented enticing possibilities for those who wanted to influence the young. At summer camp, young people were not only away from their families and any other reactionary influences but inside an environment that, in theory, the party and the youth movements could control down to the last detail. Of course, summer camps were nothing new in this part of the world. But in Eastern Europe only the state was allowed to organize youth summer camps—and the state took them very seriously indeed. In Germany, summer camps were of sufficient importance to merit Politburo and Central Committee debate. In Poland, the Education Ministry set up a special Commission on the Matter of Summer Vacations for Children and Youth in 1948.
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At first such experiences were available only to the most ideologically correct. In the first few years after the war, only about 10 percent of German children attended summer camps. But the German Politburo soon saw that it was the ideologically
incorrect
children who most needed camps that could teach them “firm friendship with all peace-loving human beings, especially with the people of the great Soviet Union and the best friend and teacher of all children, the great Stalin.” In 1949, the German communists therefore launched a new campaign—
Frohe Ferientage für alle Kinder
(“Happy Holidays
for All the Children”)—and obliged state companies to sponsor it. By the summer of 1951, some 75 percent of children in the Soviet zone of Germany attended some kind of overnight summer program.
Once these camps were up and running, no detail was left to chance. In Germany, guidelines for the directors of the camps were composed by the central council of the
Free German Youth and the communist party Central Committee. These dictated everything from the number of hours to be spent swimming during the three-week camp session (eighteen) to the number of hours to be spent singing (two and a half). Campers were to be instructed in the merits of the Five-Year Plan, and were taught the history of the Komsomol, the Soviet youth association, “the vanguard of the democratic youth of the world.” There would be group readings of
How the Steel Was Tempered
, a novel by the Soviet writer Nikolai Ostrovskii. Every day would start with gymnastics and a morning roll call, and on certain days special ceremonies would be observed: July 18, the “Day of the International Brigades”; August 6, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima; August 18, the day Ernst Thälmann had been murdered in
Buchenwald.
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Traditional games—tag, hide-and-seek, capture the flag—were also adapted for the new era. In 1950, for example, one observer described a German summer camp game as follows:
Boys and girls were hidden on the slopes, under bushes and trees, crawling forward under camouflage … We happened to come across a Pioneer leader with a red armband and asked her what the children were playing. She explained to us that the children were divided into two armies, the People’s Army and the capitalist army. She pointed to the Free German Youth banner placed on a mountain, which was to be conquered by the capitalist army … On a different hill the “People’s Army” were calling to the capitalist army: “Do not fight for the capitalists, defect to the People’s Army” and similar slogans. During the fight they had to rip off the armbands of the opponents. A Pioneer without an armband was considered dead.
Afterward, a camp leader explained that these war games were preparing the children to “struggle for peace”: “The children must know what to defend!”
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Nor was teaching confined only to games. At about this time, the central
council of the
Hungarian youth movement also issued instructions to directors of summer camps in Hungary. Among other things, they advised them on the correct methods of dealing with rebellious campers. Cliques should be broken up, but “not with violence.” To command the respect of campers, the group leaders should set an example: every morning, they should get up and get dressed before anyone else.
If all else failed, punishments should be meted out—but only punishments that, in the manner of Makarenko, would have a positive impact on the group as a whole. Punishment through “excommunication” was highly recommended, for example: if a camper refused to go along with group activities, other campers should refuse to call him “comrade” and refuse to speak with him. This peer pressure not only would make the recalcitrant camper change his mind and rejoin the group, but others would see that it was a great honor to be called “comrade” and would strive hard to be worthy of the title.
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As the camps expanded, standards slipped. It was one thing to declare that every child must attend summer camp; it was quite another to build and supply the camps and to train the instructors at short notice. An inspection of some day camps in the Hungarian countryside in 1950 revealed that although children were in theory busy from eight in the morning until six in the evening, in practice they went home much earlier. Some even left before lunch. By the time the camp leaders were preparing the all-important, end-of-day flag-lowering ceremony, “everybody was gone.” The inspectors complained that the camp leaders lacked organization and initiative: “In none of these camps did we see organized group activities, hours devoted to education.” Worse, some of the camp leaders “didn’t understand the importance of fighting against clerical reactionaries … one group leader was playing the organ in the church.” The proposed solution: “more ideological education.”
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As a result of these kinds of problems, the employment opportunities for enthusiastic youth activists were virtually limitless, although these jobs were not easy.
Krzysztof Pomian was the leader of the young Polish communists in the Warsaw district of Mokotów in the early 1950s:
To be a youth leader meant endless meetings, lasting until very late hours in the night, even for schoolchildren. Meetings, group singing sessions, marches, demonstrations, checking whether everyone was at the May 1 celebration, at the July 22 celebration … Those who went
to these meetings with a feeling of responsibility were deadly serious, others took it all with a grain of salt … Green shirts, red ties, singing the “Hymn of Youth” before lessons—it was all easier for me because I came from a communist family, and the forced communist “liturgy” didn’t bother me as much as it did others.
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Still, those who stuck with it could remain “youth leaders” for many years. Honecker finally resigned as the
Free German Youth leader in 1955, at the age of forty-three, whereupon he slid seamlessly into the leadership of the East German communist party. Józef Tejchma, a Union of Polish Youth activist from 1948 until 1956, when he was twenty-nine, went on to become minister of culture in 1974. András Hegedüs, who attended the founding meetings of the young Hungarian communists in 1945, found himself unexpectedly named prime minister of Hungary a decade later, just before being forced to flee the country following the Hungarian Revolution. For those who played the game, the rewards could be high—but so could the price.
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Children and young people offered the most enticing prospects to party propagandists—they were, literally, the party’s future. But party activists also felt that they had a special mission to win over blue-collar industrial workers, the men and women (but mainly men) in whose name the revolution had been carried out. In order to raise the consciousness of the working class, they therefore turned factories and workplaces into centers for ideological education too, using some of the same techniques—lectures, banners, posters, rallies—as they deployed in schools. By the late 1940s, work itself had been redefined as a political activity. To do a factory job, especially in heavy industry, became a form of service not just to the state or to the economy but to the party itself.