WORKERS! PARTY by Isaac Deutscher* I am addressing this letter to you in order to protest against the recent secret trials and convictions of Iudwik Hass, Karol Modzalawski, Kazimierz Radawski,Romsald, Smiech, Kuron and other members of your party, According to all available reports, these men have been deprived of liberty solely because they hsve voiced views critical of your policy or certain aspects of it, and because they have expressed disappointment with the bureaucratic arbitrariness and corruption, which they see rampant in their country, The charge against them is that they have circulated leaflets and a pamphlet containing 'false information detrimental to the state and its supreme authorities! the Public Prosecutor it seems did not accuse them of any crime or offence greater than that. If this is the accusation, then the persecution of these men is disgraceful and scandzlous. Several questions must be asked: Why, in the first instance have the Courts held their hearings in camera? Surely, no matter of state security was, or could have been involved, All the defendents have been academic teachers and students, and what they have tried to do was to comunicate their views to fellow students. Why have they not been given a fair and open trial? Why have your own newspapers not even summarized the indictments and the pleas of defence? Is it because the proceedings have been so absurd and shameful that you yourselves feel that you cannot justify or excuse themg and so you prefer to cover them with silence and oblivion? As far as I know, prosecutor and judge have not impugned the defendants'motives or cast any serious doubt on their integrity. The accused men have proclaimed themselves to be, and have behaved like, devoted non-conformist Communists, profoundly convinced of the truth and validity of revolutionary marxism, I know that one of them, Ludwik Hass was, even before the second world war, a member of the Communist, so called Trotskyist, organisation, of which I was one of the founders and mouthpiece, He then spent 17 years in Stalin's prisons, concentration camps and places of deportation. Released in 1957, he returned to Poland and so free from all bitterness and so strongly animated in his faith in a better Socialist future that he at once decided to join your party, and he was accepted as member, No one asked him to renounce his past, and he did not deny his old 'Trotskyist' views even for a moment= on the contray, he upheld them frankly and untiringly. This circumstance alone testifies to his courage and integrity, Do you, Wladislaw Gomulka, really believe that you have in your ‘apparatus? and administration, many people of comparable disinterestedness and idealism? Look around you, look at the crowds of time servers that serve you, at all these opportunists without principle and honour who fawn on you as they fawned on Bierut, and as some of them fawned even on Rydz-Smigly and Pilsudski. Or how many of these bureaucrats can your Government, and even socialism, count on in an hour of danger, as it can count on the people you have put in prison? Recently still your Government claimed with a certain pride that there were no political prisohers in Poland since 1956, This claim, if true, was indeed something to be proud of in a country, the jails of which had always, under all regimes, been full of political prisoners, especially Communist prisoners, You have not, as far as I know, jailed and put in chains any of your all too numerous and virulent anti-Communist opponents, and you deserve credit for the moderation with which you treat them. But why do you deny such treatment to your critics on the left? Hass, Modzolawski and their friends have been brought to the courtroom handcuffed and under heavy guards. Eye witness accounts say that they raised their hands in the old Communist
salute and sang the Internationale... How many of your dignitaries, Wladislaw Gomulka, would nowadays intone the Internationale of their own free will and choice? I have been informed that before the trial, during the interrogation, the official who conducted it alleged that Hass and other defendents had worked in contact with me, I do not know whether the Prosecutor took up this charge in the Courtroom. In any case, the allegation is a complete falsehood. let us say that if the defendants had tried to get in touch with me, I would have readily responded, But the fact is that I have had no contacf whatsoever with them, I have not even seen a single one of their leaflets and pamphlets. I judge their behaviour solely from reports reaching me by word of mouth or through Western European newspapers. I ought perhaps to explain tha since the second world war I have not participated in Polish political life in any way, and that, not being a member of any political organisation, 'Trotskyist! or otherwise, I am speaking only for myself. I should add, however, that on a very few rare occasions I have broken my self imposed political abstinence, I protested when you, Wladislaw Gomulka, were imprisoned and slandered in the last years of the Stalin era, Knowing full well that I could not share all your views, I expressed solidarity with you. Similarly, I do not know whether I can fully approve the views and the behaviour of Hass, Modzolowsky and their comrades, But in their case as in yours I think I can recognise reactionary police terror for what it is and tell slander from truth. ‘nother occasion on which I allowed myself to have a say on Polish political matters was in 1957, when I explained in a special essay "The Tragedy of Polish Communism between the World Wars," You may remember that your censors, Stalinists of the so-called Natolin group, confiscated the essay when Polityka tried tried to publish its and then you,Wladyslaw Gomulka,ordered the essay to be widely distributed among Party members.In those far-off days, just after the "Polish spring in October",you held that Polish Communists ought 3 know ny account of the havoc. that Starlin made of their Party,delivering nearly/ ts leaders tm the firing squad. You know that I had been one of those very Communists who,in 1938,protested against that crime and against the disbandment and denigration of what had once been our common Party, Moscow "rehabilitated" the Polish Party and its leaders only after 17 or 18 years; and then you,Wladyslaw Gomulka,apologised for having kept silent in 1938, although you had not believed in the Stalinist slanderg, I do not believe that you are right now in persecuting and impris’ oning members of ,your om Party and your critics on the Left; and I cannot keep silent. May I remind you of yur own words spoken at the famous 8th Session of the Central Committee in October 1956? "The cult of the personality was not a matter just of Stalirs person", you stated then,"This was a system which had been transplanted from the USSR to nearly all Communist Parties... We have finished or rather we are finishing with that system once and for all",(Your emphasis). But are you not “some extent reestablishing that system? Do you wish these trials to mark the tenth anniversary of your own rehabilitation and of that "spring in October",during which you raised so many hopes for the future? In the name of those hapes and your own record as a fighter and political prisoner under Pilsudski and Stalin,do not allow this miscarriage of justice to last!Dispel the secrecy surrounding the cases of Hass ,Modzelewski,and comrades.If you think they are guilty,then publish.the full report of court proceedings and let it speak for itself,In any case, I appeal to you to order an immediate and public revision of the trial.If you refuse these demands,you will stand condemned as epigones of Stalinism,guilty of stifling your ownParty and compromising the future of socialism. * issued on Thursday, April 28th, to the press,