The Communist Century by Chris Kostov

Author:Chris Kostov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Communism, Revolution, Russia, China, October, Bolshevik, Gorbachev
ISBN: 9781785382178
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2015
Published: 2015-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Anti-communism in the Soviet Bloc

In Africa, Asia and Nicaragua, anti-communists preferred to use civil wars in order to overthrow communist regimes. The anti-communist forces were also encouraged and sometimes trained and financed by the US and other western countries to restrict the expansion of the Soviet and Chinese communist influence in new areas of the world. Many of these long civil wars were described in the previous chapter. Following the end of WWII until the 1960s, anti-communism in Eastern Europe had two faces: the non-violent political and intellectual opposition, which was completely crushed by the cruel Stalinist repressions across the region and the violent armed guerrilla struggle which lacked resources and eventually disappeared by the 1960s. After the mid-1950s until the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, the anti-communist resistance was mainly dominated by non-violent dissident movements, strikes, peaceful protests and attempts for a peaceful transition which turned violent only when the local authorities and Soviet troops intervened. Certainly, throughout the Cold War, the Soviets were always eager to interfere and abort any attempt for a change of the political regime in their satellite countries. Violence and fear seemed to be the only ways to keep the status quo.

After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, armed anti-communist guerrillas appeared almost everywhere in Eastern Europe. Between1944-1960, former Royal military officers, intellectuals and peasants who opposed collectivisation of their lands spontaneously joined groups of 10 to 40 people and started armed resistance against the communist regime in Romania. The number of the anti-communist partisans reached 20,000 even though they were scattered across the country in small groups. The rebels were poorly armed without any coordination between the different groups but nevertheless, they seriously bothered the communist authorities and the Securitate secret service did their best to eradicate them. The communist propaganda referred to them as fascist terrorists whereas the common Romanians called them not even partisans but haiduci – which was originally applied to the anti-Ottoman Romanian and other Balkan rebels in the past, i.e. the term implied that many people considered them to be national heroes. However, these groups were eliminated one by one. Hundreds of rebels were executed and a few thousand anti-communist partisans and collaborators were arrested, tortured and sent to prison with long-term sentences.

The Polish anti-communists also launched an active armed resistance movement against the Polish communist regime and the Soviet occupiers after the Second World War. Former soldiers of the Polish Home Army (AK) attacked police stations, communist concentration camps and members of the communist authorities. In May 1945, the anti-communist partisans led by Major Franciszek Przysiężniak even managed to defeat a Soviet NKVD regiment near the Polish village of Kuryłó wka and killed 70 Soviet secret agents. The communist propaganda referred to these anti-communist partisans with the term “cursed soldiers.” The Soviets executed thousands of these anti-communist partisans on the spot or in GULAG and many more were imprisoned. In 1956, there were at least 35,000 former Home Army members in Polish prisons.

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