Table of contents
A. Plan of Investigation………………………………. 3
B. Summary of Evidence…………………………….. 3
C. Evaluation of Sources……………………………... 4
D. Analysis……………………………………………. 4
E. Conclusion………………………………………… 6
F. List of Sources………………………………………………6
Internal Assessment
In which way did Ostpolitik provide a change in West German foreign policy in regards to East Germany?
A Plan of the investigation
This investigation seeks to evaluate the change in West German foreign policy in the period from 1969 to 1974 analysing the central document of the West German policy in regards to East Germany, the Basic Treaty of 1972, and in particular Heinrich August Winkler’s interpretation of Ostpolitik in his study “Germany. The Long Road West. Volume 2: 1933-1990”. Following Winkler’s analysis, this investigation will focus on the political aspect and the international policy at that time. In B, the main source will be put in the broader context of German foreign policy since 1955 and the other main treaties of Ostpolitik presenting in which way Brandt’s new approach constituted a dramatic change in Germany’s foreign policy. After the evaluation of the Treaty and Winkler’s broader interpretation of Ostpolitk in part C, they will be analysed in part D under the focus of the importance of US foreign policy for the Ostpolitik leading to a conclusion of the central question in E.
B Summary of evidence
The dramatic change of German foreign policy in the period from 1969-1974 can only be understood in the context of German foreign policy since 1955 when West Germany officially became a sovereign state and the main doctrine of West German policy, the Hallstein Doctrine, was formulated. It declared that “every country which has diplomatic relations with the GDR will not be allowed to have diplomatic relations with the FRG”. West Germany was regarded as the only legitimate state presenting Germany as a whole. Proving successful in 1957, when West Germany cut off its ties with Yugoslavia who had officially recognized East Germany as a separate state, East Germany was forced to tie its alignment with the USSR. But there was another side to the Hallstein Doctrine, which prevented an open policy towards other East European states. The Warsaw Pact states had recognized the GDR in 1949-50 and therefore West Germany was refrained from establishing diplomatic relations with those countries.
In the meantime during the 1960s, the relations between the two superpowers had changed. After the Berlin crises in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy started to promote a new approach in US foreign policy towards the USSR looking for a way of cooperation. In a speech at the American University of Washington in June 1963, Kennedy emphasized to look for a strategy of peace between the USA and the USSR. The leading opposition party of West Germany, the Social Democrats, who opposed the Hallstein Doctrine, developed a new foreign policy concept “Change through Rapprochement”. It sought to recognize East Germany as a sovereign state by putting aside the idea of German unification for the near future. The main idea was that changes in East Germany could only be made in a long term through numerous little steps which were necessary for the reunification of both German states emphasizing on stronger cooperation with the goal of dismantling the status quo in the long run.
This concept became a political reality after Brandt had been elected Chancellor in 1969. He immediately began talks with leaders from East Germany and East European countries meeting with the East German prime-minister Willi Stoph. These talks were the first direct talks between top German politicians since 1948 taking place in West and East Germany in 1970. Even so Brandt refused to recognize East Germany as a sovereign state, communication lines were opened.
After policy goals were made with the United States, Brandt entered negotiations with the USSR in which both countries renounced the use of force. The FRG agreed to make no territorial claims recognizing the borders in Eastern Europe. TheTreaty with Moscow was the first treaty of the Ostpolitik signed on August 12th 1970. It followed the Warsaw Treaty four month later with a similar content towards Poland. This policy was backed by the USA who had started negotiations about the status of Berlin leading to the Agreement on Berlin on 3rd September 1971 with France, England and the USSR, marking a relaxation of tension in East-West relations, in particular since it guaranteed civil communications between West Berlin and the FRG. It was the Treaty with East Berlin (Basic Treaty) however that proved to be the central and controversial document of Ostpolitik. Both states had committed themselves in the treaty to develop normal relations on the basis of equality. Recognizing each other’s independence and sovereignty as well as territorial integrity, both sides agreed to exchange permanent missions in Bonn and East Berlin avoiding the pivotal question of German unification. Brandt faced tough opposition. Many of his conservative critics feared that by neglecting the goal of unification he was selling out to the Communists. When West and East Germany became members of the UN in 1973, the new reality of two German states had become a fact. West Germany had lost his right to be the only sovereign speaking for Germany as a whole and therefore the Hallstein Doctrine was abolished. This new policy of direct talks, negotiations and treaties with the USSR, Poland and GDR and later on with Czechoslovakia in December 1973 was backed by the USA. In this regard, Brandt’s approach “Change though Rapprochement” led from a foreign policy of isolation of the GDR to a policy of cooperation and legal recognition overcoming the Cold War situation between the two German states which had dominated their relation under the Hallstein Doctrine.
C Evaluation of the sources
The Basic treaty was the most controversial of all treaties signed during Ostpolitik and has to be seen in the context of the other treaties. Its purpose was to regulate the relationship between the two Germanys on a mutual agreement that would make it possible to facilitate regulations concerning the improvement of having economical, cultural and political exchanges with de facto recognition to the GDR. Instead of embassies permanent legations were opened in both German states as it was stressed in supplementary text leading the way open to a later reunification. Its value lies in the fact that numerous improvements followed the treaty such as the “Besucherregelung”, which allowed West German Citizens to visit East Germany and also facilitated family reunions for East German Citizens aged over 60 years to travel to West Germany. However, the limitation lied in the unresolved question of German unity leading to the concept of two German states within one German nation. East Germany stressed the idea that it had become a sovereign state, while West Germany continued to claim that the German question was not resolved finally.
Winkler’s leading question is, why Germany, much later than Great Britain and France, became a national state and even later a democracy. It is under this perspective that he focuses on the Ostpolitik. His two volumes of Germany.The Long Road West which were published 10 years after the German reunification are a major source for modern German history. The value of this book is that Winkler argues clearly under a central question, leaving room for critical remarks. He analysis the Ostpolitik in the second volume (279-290 and 296-314) mainly in the context of international politics rejecting the idea that it was mainly a European or German question. Arguing this way, Winkler is convinced that external factors dominated German foreign policy at that time and that the Ostpolitik was not a reaction to the changes within the German society.
The purpose of this source is the argument that Ostpolitik lead to a new political reality in Germany and Europe. By recognizing the political sovereignty, both German states became more independent in their political decisions and it seemed a new reality had come true: a Europe with two German states. Winkler focuses on the importance of the US foreign policy under Kennedy and Nixon to show that Ostpolitik depended heavenly on the changes of US foreign policy. In this regard Ostpolitik has to be studied mainly in the context of international politics rather than in the context of German or European history. The limitation of Winkler’s analysis may lie in a too one sided focus on US policy as the main factor of the Ostpolitik. Historians like Jürgen Kocka strengthen the point that the events of 1989 and in that regard the Ostpolitik should be seen in the context of historical continuities in European history. Winkler’s point of view is linked to his conviction that the Western Alliance under the guidance of the USA is the best solution to the German question leaving little room for alternative analysis of the Ostpolitik in the framework of a European history.
D Analysis
The dramatic changes of German foreign policy from 1969-1974 have to be put into the context of the German foreign policy since 1955. The Hallstein Doctrine was a typical approach of foreign policy during the first period of the Cold War until the Berlin and Cuba Missile Crises. Germany and Berlin which had been the major battleground of the Cold War in Europe were the division line between West and East. Adenauer’s intention was clear from the beginning: integration of FRG into the Western world renouncing to the immediate reunification of Germany. The changes of international politics in particular of the US administration under President Kennedy made this policy unreasonable. In this context a new approach of German foreign policy could be formulated. The new concept “Change through Rapprochement” reflected much better the intentions of the Kennedy administration than the Hallstein Doctrine.
There is no serious disagreement about the fact that “Challenge through Rapprochement” abolished the Hallstein Doctrine. Even revisionist historians like Hillgruber during the period before the German Reunification did not put this fact into question.
Concerning the question in which way it came to this change in German foreign policy, many historians in recent years emphasize on the external factors. While Winkler strongly focuses on Kennedy’s state visit to Germany in 1963 emphasizing the importance of US foreign policy during the whole period of the Ostpolitik, historians like Görtemaker argue that Ostpolitik became an engine of change in 1970 and has to be seen from that year on in the context of European policy. The immediate impact was not only the improvement of inner German relations but that this policy resulted directly in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe beginning in November 1972 and ending in August 1975. Ostpolitik in that regard developed much more into a European policy leading to the Helsinki agreement giving space for human right activists in East Europe.
The Ostpolitik overcame the Cold War mentality between the two German states, but did not resolved in any way the German question. This policy was in the interest of the US foreign policy and in this regard is as much their product as a new approach by Chancellor Brandt. It was in both interests that the Hallstein Doctrine was abolished leading to a policy of cooperation between the two German states.
E Conclusion
When it comes to the question in which way Ostpolitik provided a change in West German foreign policy in regards to East Germany, the answer seems to be clear. The improving relations between the two German states following the Ostpolitik and the Basic Treaty overcame years of a non dialogue between the two German sides and little improvements for family affairs and visiting rights took place. It helped to overcome the Cold War mentality. “Change through Rapprochement” was therefore a dramatic change in the way that German foreign policy towards Eastern Europe focused on dialogue instead of isolating the GDR. The Basic treaty recognized the existence of two German states and made therefore an end to the Hallstein Doctrine. Winkler’s analysis supports this idea by making clear that Ostpolitik opened a new chapter of dialogue between the two German states. By putting the Ostpolitk in the context of American foreign policy, Winkler makes clear, that West German foreign policy depended heavily on American policy.
Words: 2000
F List of sources
Bahr, Egon, "Wandel durch Annäherung" ["Change through Rapprochement"], speech
delivered on July 15, 1963, at the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing
(http://germanhistorydocs.ghi- dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=81)
Berger, Stefan, Historians and nation-building in Germany after reunification, August 1995
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2279/is_n148/ai_17474757/pg_18)
Deutsch-Polnisches Jahrbuch 2005. Polish-German Annual 13/2005.
(http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=770ded1f-d6e3-4f6b-9986-
cca69865ae17&articleId=54e09275-1640-43a7-995a-5af8bfa8c9e1)
Görtemaker, Manfred. 1994. Entspannung und Neue Ostpolitik (Détente and New Ostpolitik),
in: Informationen zur politischen Bildung, 4.Quartal 1994, S.34-41. (Informations about
political education. 1.Quarter 1994, 34-41).
Görtemaker, Manfred. 1994. Vom Kalten Krieg zur Ära der Entspannung. (From the Cold
War to the policy of detente), in: Informationen zur politischen Bildung, 4.Quartal 1994,
S.26-33). (Informations about political education. 1.Quarter 1994,
26-33).
Grundlagenvertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der DDR, 21.Dezember
1972, in: Informationen zur politischen Bildung 4.Quartal 1994, p.39. (The Basic Treaty, in:
Informations about political education. 1.Quarter 1994).
Hillgruber, Andreas. 1980. Deutsche Geschichte 1945-1975. Die deutsche Frage in der
Weltpolitik. Frankfurt-Berlin-Wien. (German history 1945-1975. The German question in
the perspective of world history. Frankfurt-Berlin-Vienna 1980).
Le Quintrec, Guillaume und Peter Geiss. 2006. Histoire/Geschichte. Europa und die Welt
seit 1945. Leipzig (Guillaume Le Quintrec and Peter Geiss, History. Europe and the World
since 1945. Leipzig 2006).
Löwenthal, Richard. 1974. Vom Kalten Krieg zur Ostpolitik, in: Die zweite Republik. 25 Jahre
Bundesrepublik Deutschland – eine Bilanz, hrsg. Von Richard Löwenthal und Hans- Peter
Schwarz. Stuttgart. (From the cold war to the Ostpolitik. The Second Republic. 25 years
history of the German Federal Republic – a resume. Edited by Richard Löwenthal and
Peter Schwarz, Stuttgart 1974).
Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin - Berlin 3 September 1971 (http://www.ena.lu)
Schöllgen, Gregor. 2001. Willy Brandt. Die Biographie. Berlin/München 2001. (Willy Brandt,
the biography. Berlin/Munich 2001).
Weber, Jürgen/Pfändtner, Bernhard. 1995. Vom Zweiten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart,
Bamberg. (From the Second World War to the Present, Bamberg 1995).
Winkler, Heinrich August. 2000. Der lange Weg nach Westen, Zweiter Band, Deutsche
Geschichte vom „Dritten Reich“ bis zur Wiedervereinigung. München 2000. (Germany.
The Long Road West. Volume 2: 1933-1990, Oxford University Press.)
Showing posts with label Internal Assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internal Assessment. Show all posts
To what extent did the legislative structure of Czechoslovakia under the Husák regime in Czechoslovakia contribute to the breakup Czechs and Slovaks?
Investigation plan…………………….….………..………………….…page 3
Summary of evidence…………………..…...…………………...........….page 4
Evaluation of sources…………….……..…………….……………....…page 9
Analysis…………………………….……….….…………………....…page 11
Conclusion……………………..…...……………………..………...…page 16
List of sources……………..………..………………..……………..….page 18
Appendix A1…………………………………………………………..page 21
Appendix A2…………………………….…………………………….page 22
Appendix A3…………………………….…………………………….page 24
Investigation plan
To what extent did the legislative structure of Czechoslovakia under the Husák regime contribute to the breakup of Czechs and Slovaks?
This research examines the relationships between the two main ethnical groups living in the federative Czechoslovakia before it broke up. The Czech-Slovak relations were influenced by many factors before the final split. However this research is focused to examine only the influence of the legislative structure of the Husák’s centralised federalism in communistic Czechoslovakia.
Czech historian Rychlík’s Rozpad Československa was used as the primary source, providing a deep overview of the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. Pollák, chronicler of the former Slovak president as well as Pavol Dubček, son of Alexander Dubček, were interviewed. Secondary sources, the majority of which are Czech and Slovakian, will be used to provide insight from books, newspapers and various statistics to analyse the relationships between the two nations in Czechoslovakia under Husák’s rule.
(Investigation Plan- 148 words)
Summary of evidence
Czechoslovakia at its establishment after the Pittsburgh Agreement was an artificial state contradicting the idea of self-determination as it included many nations, including the majority Czechs and Slovaks. [1] First president T. G. Masaryk denied self-determination for Slovaks stating “The Slovaks are Bohemians in spite of their using their dialect as their literary language”[2]. Leff called the policies of Czech politicians the assimilation of Slovaks under a common umbrella of Czechoslovakism.[3] Goebbels in the dying days of the Third Reich had prophesised that Czechoslovakia would become “the organising centre of Bolshevik plots against Europe.”[4] Indeed, Czechoslovakia finally fell under the direct rule of Moscow after the February 1948 coup.[5] During the time of so-called normalization post-1969[6], Head of State Husák declared his intention to return to the idea of “real socialism”.[7] Although communists proclaimed themselves the biggest nationalists,[8] the legislative structure of federation during this time exacerbated national problems between Czechs and Slovaks. The conflicts, which had their origins during Husák’s regime, culminated in final the separation of these nations in 1992, were:
1. Social
Because Marxist-Leninism could not justify the connection of Czechs and Slovaks in one nation because it emphasised national traditions over communist ideology, legislative restrictions were partially based on emphasizing common ideas of Czechoslovakism,[9] while ideas of self-determination were forbidden. [10] For Czechs this negated the ideas of Masaryk and Beneš since they asserted Slovaks were a part of Czech culture, while Slovaks were denied studying Hlinka and Tiso, supporters of independence.[11] This censorship was ensured by having teachers and professors appointed after strict verification by the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ) and by state directives which allowed work from ‘forbidden’ authors to be read only after special authorisation, which was practically impossible to get.[12] This ultimately caused both sides to feel denied of their national history and to subsequently blame each other.
2. Political
Furthermore, the ‘federative’ system in Czechoslovakia, modelled on the USSR, caused Czechs and Slovaks to have unequal powers which limited the real meaning of federation.[13] Although both Czechs and Slovaks had their own governments[14], from 1970 the decisions of these governments could be vetoed by the federative government under restrictions of the KSČ led from Prague.[15] De facto, other institutions were directly subordinate to Prague’s KSČ, such as the Slovak Communist Party (KSS), various ministries[16], Slovak National Council (SNR), National Front (NF), army, security institutions, or courts.[17] Members and plenums of these institutions were fully organised by the KSČ. Even the results of ‘elections’ of Slovakia’s federative government and KSS were decided in Prague before actual elections, because the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (ÚV KSČ) was arranging all three governments in Czechoslovakia.[18] Čarnogurský argues Slovaks were not a real part of this federation having lost control over Slovakia and its internal affairs.[19]
3. Economic
Finally, economic measures under Husák were unequal. Slovak economist Slavo Koštúch stated as early as 1971: “You are saying that we are brothers, but our wallets are not sisters.”[20] Slovakian economists agreed that the country’s budget, depending on Slovakian money through the highest taxes of all socialist countries[21], were charged from Slovakian industries with only a miniscule amount returning to Slovakia; the rest being spent on Czech infrastructure and rebuilding the capital city.[22] This strengthened the view that Slovakia was economically exploited by Czechs and Moravians. Czech economists such as Komárek, Zeman and Klaus [23] retorted that the economy in fact suffered because Czech was providing enormous amounts of money to Slovakia rather than rebuilding the ‘homeland’.[24] This caused both sides to feel that the federation was inefficient and exploitative.
(Summary of evidence- 597 words)
Evaluation of sources
Czech historian Jan Rychlík’s, Rozpad Československa: Česko-slovenské vzťahy was published in Slovakia in 2002 with the stated purpose of analysing the causes for the disintegration of Czechoslovakia.[25] Rychlík took full advantage of the opening of the Soviet and Czechoslovakian archives and the first-hand experiences of Czechoslovak politicians[26] who provided him interviews, to support his argument. However the archives were not fully profitable for research given that Slovakia does not allow documents within the last 30 years to be made public and not all documents in the Czech Republic were available in the public archive. [27] His analysis of the relations between Czechs and Slovaks is helped by the fact that he studied and worked in both countries. During Husák’s regime, he experienced the impact of communism on Czechoslovakia first-hand. Given that his main focus of the book is analysing of the last three years of federation (1989-1992), he tends to gloss over important events of the 1970s and 1980s which later influenced events.
Pavol Pollák, a Slovakian politician in communist-era Czechoslovakia, was Alexander Dubček’s collaborator from the start of the latter’s political career until his ‘disappearance’. His specialty was mainly within the Soviet-Czechoslovak communication sphere.[28] After disintegration he worked as a chronicler for Slovakian president Kováč. The purpose of the interview was to gauge the view of a politician in the position of providing a unique and personal analysis of the impact of communist legislation on Czech-Slovak relations, particularly given his role over such a long period of time. As a chronicler in the presidential agency, he had access to the national and communist archives, which were opened after 1992. While acknowledging his support of a common Czechoslovak federation, he admits disagreeing with Husák’s centralised model of federation which at times colours his opinions of a number of the sources. A number of topics, including comparison of Husák’s and Dubček’s government, were not fully open to discussion given his continued loyalty to the latter.
(Evaluation of sources- 323 word)
Analysis
The Husák era was most important in the history of the Czechoslovak nations because it marked the start of normalisation up to abolition of communism in the USSR, leading to the division of for the first time in 460 years.[29] Far from strengthening and ‘normalising’ Czechoslovakia, the hard-line rule of Gustav Husák created even more internal conflicts, leading to final disintegration in 1992.
The structure of the state should be studied when considering its legislation. Although Czechoslovakia was a federation, it was still a communist state based on the centralistic model of the USSR federation with the centre in Prague.[30] Nevertheless, Husák’s state did not seek to assimilate Slovaks under the common culture of Czechoslovakism as happened in the Soviet model with non-Russian nationalities, but sought good relations under the motto qietum non movere while propagating socialism as the best solution for solving the Czech-Slovak ‘question’.[31]
Although both nations in Czechoslovakia felt their national historical identities threatened during the communist era, Czech and Slovak cultures were strengthened in many ways. The similar languages helped Czechoslovaks to be naturally bilingual since the mass-media provided information in both languages, such as national television CSTV.[32] Abolition of national festivals such as 28th September and 29th August, and emphasising the “Czechoslovakia’s Day of Liberation by Soviet troops” created common customs and cultures for both nations resulting in a Czechoslovak culture containing two subcultures which were mutually interconnected creating a European country in times of peaceful internal stability appear strong and united[33].
Most agree that Slovaks never had the power to run their own internal affairs at any time in their history stretching back four centuries,[34] but Steiner argues that under Husák, Slovakia was finally regarded as a separate part of the national unit and administrative region.[35] From the time of normalization, Husák, a Slovak, was head of the KSČ and also president of Czechoslovakia; it appeared to many that the Slovaks were actually the ones “running the show”.[36] Besides Husák, the government included many other Slovaks in important positions[37], although they were in the minority according to the proportional division of government, which allowed 1500 Slovaks to 4500 Czechs in new federal institutions.[38] These views created the opinion among Czechs that they were ruled by the minority, antagonising Czech-Slovak relations. Nevertheless, the KSČ had the power to deny decisions of both national governments when it felt it was necessary to run the federation.[39] Slovak Husák himself could not be considered to have worked for Slovakian prosperity; although his 1969 motto was “Slovakia for Slovakians” emphasising the Slovak nationality,[40] the opposite became true. He did not give Slovaks their promised constitution or national arms and in public he only spoke Czech, leading to the Slovakian complaint that he was a “Prague Slovak”.[41]
Thirdly, both nations in the common federation felt that the economical measures of the legislation are unfair. High transfer of resources from Czech lands to Slovakia, which was the reason for dissatisfaction of Czechs, was caused by the big gap between living conditions in both republics, which had to be eliminated.[42] Nevertheless, it is important to consider that it is difficult to follow the financial flows in Czechoslovakia in that era because of common federative budget, so it is hard to arbitrate between ‘exploiting’ of Slovak economy and ‘suffering’ of Czech one. It is important to consider that Czechoslovak economy was working as uniform economy of one state, and it is necessary and natural even today that the ‘richer’ parts of one country have to supply ‘poorer’ ones, such as also ‘poorer’ parts of the country have to pay taxes even though the infrastructure of the ‘richer’ part could profit from these taxes more.[43] So the whole economic conflict was just artificially made up as the result of the high tension between two nations living in the same state.
(Analysis- 638 words)
Conclusion
The hard-line communist regime in Czechoslovakia occurred during so-called normalization of Czechoslovakia after Gustav Husák became the first secretary of the KSČ in 1969. The legislative measures and restrictions of this regime caused disagreements about some national, political and economical questions between Czechs and Slovaks in the common state. Both nations were felt to be denied for their national spirit, felt to be aggrieved because of the division of powers and felt to suffer because of the economical measures in the communist Czechoslovakia. These were also some of the causes that led to the final division of these two ‘brotherly’ nations after Husák left the position of head of the state and after the fall of communism in November 1989, when the separation was possible, since Czechoslovakia was not anymore occupied by the soviet troops[44] and under influence of the USSR. However, legislation in this communist regime did not have only negative influence on the relationships between Czechs and Slovaks and living conditions in Czechoslovakia, since the big part of the nation was finally against the separation of this federation.[45]
(Conclusion- 180 words)
List of sources
Bibliography
• Brager, L. B.: The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe. Philadelphia 2004
• Cottrell, C. R.: The Czech Republic- Arbitrary Borders. Philadelphia 2005
• Hochman, J.: Nádej zomiera posledná Bratislava 1993
• Hradecka, V. - Koudelka, F.: Kádrova politika a nomenklatúra KSČ. Prague 1998
• Hubl, M.: Cesty k moci. Prague 1990
• Kirschbaum, S. J.: A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival. New York 1995
• Kishlansky M. – Geary P. - O’Brien P.: Societies and Cultures in World History. New York 1995
• Leff, Skalnik, C.: National Conflict in Czechoslovakia. Princeton 1988
• Lettrich, J.: History of Modern Slovakia New York 1955
• Millar R. J.: Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR Cambridge 1988
• Millar, R. J. – Wolchik, L. S.: The Social Legacy of Communism Washington 1997
• Naďovič, S.: Foertsch H. - Karacsony, I. - Ostrowski, Z.: The Great Withdrawal. Bratislava 2005
• Nejedlý, Z.: Komunisté- dedici velkých tradic českého národa. 4. ed. Prague 1951
• Nogueres, H.: Munich, Peace for Our Time. New York 1965
• Plevza, V.: Historie československé současnosti. Prague 1978
• Roberts J. M.: The Penguin History of the World London 1997
• Rychlík, J.: Rozpad Československa: Česko-slovenské vzťahy. Bratislava 2002
• Šaling, S. – Šalingová Ivanová, M. – Manikova, Z.: Slovník cudzích slov. Bratislava 2002
• Steiner, E.: The Slovak Dilemma. London 1973
• Tkáč, M.: Národ bez peňazí. Bratislava 1992
• Tomašek, D.: Pozor, Cenzurováno. Prague 1994
• Wessel, S. M.: Loyalitaten in Tsechoslowakischen Republic 1918-1938. Munich 2004
• Žatkuliak, J.: Normalizácia česko-slovenskej federácie roku 1970 a jej následky. Banská Bystrica 1997
Newspapers
• Journal Alternativa: “Interview with Jan Čarnogurský” 2/1989
• The New York Times: "Prague Turns on Those Who Brought the 'Spring'", Tagliabue, John 24 Feb. 1992
• Journal Pravda: “The structure of the federative government” 27. Feb. 1969
Internet
• Danielle Seiler: Czechoslovakia: A state of perceived bias. 28 April 1998, (Date accessed: November 2007)
• Policy research department of the World Bank: Cash social transfers, direct taxes, and income distribution in late socialism. September 1993, (Date accessed: November 2007)
• The sociological institute SAV Bratislava: Československá Česká a Slovenská európska identita. April 2002, (Date accessed: November 2007)
• Open society archives: Eastern Europe’s Communist Leaders. 1 September 1966, (Date accessed: November 2007)
Interviews
• Dubček P., interview held during personal meeting, 14th July 2007, Bratislava, Slovakia
• Pollák P., interview held during meeting in his apartment, 2nd August, Bratislava, Slovakia
Appendixes
Appendix A1
Abbreviations used in the assessment
• FZ- (Federálne Zhromaždenie) Federal Congress
• CNR- (Česká Národní Rada) Czech National Council
• KSČ- (Komunistická Strana Československa) Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
• KSS- (Komunistická Strana Slovenska) Communist Party of Slovakia
• ÚV KSČ- (Ústredný Výbor Komunistickej Strany Československa) Central Committee of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
• SNR- (Slovenská Národná Rada) Slovak National Council
• NF- (Národná Fronta) National Front
[1] Lettrich (p. 289)
[2] Masaryk propagated that Slovaks are actually the same nation as Czechs. He wanted to include Slovaks, a ‘tribe’, under the Czech culture. Kirschbaum (p. 149)
[3] Skalnik Leff (p. 136)
[4] Nogueres (p. 249-251)
[5] The communist coup in the last non-communist country in Eastern Europe destroyed all beliefs for Czechoslovakia’s independence. Roberts (p. 939)
[6] Hochman (p. 212) called it a step back to totalitarian Czechoslovakia after promising democratisation by Dubček in 1968 during Prague Spring. The resulting Soviet invasion was already the second betrayal by allies (the first one was Munich 1938) resulted in the most cynic joke in Czechoslovakia: “Every Czech knows what is the luckiest country in the world: Israel, because it is surrounded only by enemies” Brager (p. 99)
[7] “Real socialism” supposed to eliminate the ‘mistakes’ made during the Prague Spring. It was used as the reason to made KSČ centralised and autocratic. Rychlík (p. 15)
[8] According to Nejdlý (p. 71) Marxism proclaimed that “proletariat does not have homeland”, however the communism after 1945 which came to Eastern Europe and Asia was contrary, since it was based on ideas of patriotism, independence and national unity.
[9] Wessel (p. 23) states that Czechoslovakism was a political ideology from the first Czechoslovak republic (1918-1938), which stated that Czechs and Slovaks are one Czechoslovak nation including two ‘tribes’. Cottrell (p. 56) continues that the constitution of 1920 deemed “Czechoslovak” as the official language of the new republic, and designed Slovaks as “state people”, not members of a national minority.
[10] Dubček P., interview, 2nd August 2007
[11] According to secret directive of the Ministry of culture from 31 May 1972, all books that could called as ‘harmful’ or ‘revisionist’ were forbidden for public- Rychlík (p. 20)
[12] According to Tomašek (p. 154-155) this supposed to guarantee that no public discussions, which could disrupt the Czech-Slovak relations, will be held.
[13] Real meaning of Czechoslovak world federácia (federation) meant- “political connection of two or more states with equality before one constitution and where each state has the control of its internal affairs”, however this wasn’t the case. Šaling- Ivanová Šalingová- Maníková (p. 191)
[14] Czechs had ČNR- Česká Národní Rada, while Slovaks had SNR- Slovenská Národná Rada
[15] Therefore the real meaning of “federation” had been lost. Real Czechoslovak federation would have two non-subordinate political bodies like it was in Tito’s Yugoslavia. Rychlík (p. 26)
[16] Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Industry Development and Ministry of Internal Affairs were indeed subordinated to KSČ
[17] This gave Husák power to appoint ‘his people’ for the important positions in the state institutions. Hradecká (p. 97) An analogy could be the way how Stalin came to absolute power in the Soviet Union, which was also through these powers and connections.
[18] Rychlík (p.29) provides the example: Jozef Lenárt was announced to be the new secretary of KSS even before the actual elections. Indeed, as Pollák related to me, the political results of all elections were a foregone conclusion as the communist party always obtained more than 99% of the votes (interview, 2nd August 2007).
[19] “With federation we received formal coequality in the state, but still cannot solve our internal affairs by ourselves, because communism does not allow it. This overshadows all the assets of federation. By assets I mean national affairs, the nation should solve by itself, such as mainly education, culture, or partially economy.” Journal Alternativa, 2/1989, p. 41
[20] Koštúch- after KSČ declined the idea of two independent economies in the federation. Hubl (p.42-43)
[21] Direct and payroll taxes of some socialist countries in 1980s can be seen in Table 2- Appendix A2
[22] Tkáč (126) discusses that while central government was locating not profitable primary industry businesses to Slovakia, the secondary and tertiary industry of the federation was located mainly in Czech lands, so naturally Czech lands profited more money from the material that Slovakia produced.
[23] All would later become Czech politicians while arguing about the perceived exploitation of the Czech economy by Slovakia and thus justifying Czech independence. Pavol Pollák, interview 2nd August 2007
[24] The transfer of resources from the Czech lands to Slovak region can be seen in Table 2 in Appendix A2
[25] In author’s own words, the period of the federation during normalization with the final years of disintegration in 1989-1992 are the most important things to analyse to understand the Czech- Slovak relationships- Rychlík (p. 9)
[26] In particular Petr Pithard, Ján Čarnorurský, Václav Žák, Martin Porubjak, Mikuláš Huba, Anton Hrnko, Jacek Balouch, Gyorgy Varga and others
[27] Therefore Rychlík could not use the national archives for the research of 1980s and 90s. This made him use mainly private archives and the archives of non-governmental organisations. Jan Rychlík (p. 9)
[28] Pollák also was previously a member of Interhelpo, which included more than a thousand idealistic Czechoslovak Communists who formed an industrial cooperation with the Soviet Union which remained in existence until 1943- http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/17-3-143.shtml
[29] Except the period of WWII when Czech lands were occupied by the Nazi Germany, both nations were in one country since 1526 when Ferdinand I included Czech lands into Habsburg monarchy
[30] However, Žatkuliak (p.251) states that the ideas of communism and a federation are contradictory. While communism is based on so-called democratic centralism with subordination lower party sections to higher ones like in army, federation requires division of powers.
[31] Normalisation historian Plevza (p. 36-42) states that the important moment, the creation of Czechoslovakia, was destroyed because of bureaucratic politicians (Masaryk, Beneš) who made Czechoslovakia easily destroyable by Germany. The communist putsch in 1948 opened the doors for the right solution for Czech-Slovak relations, however it still had some small ‘mistakes’ (Dubček). After 1968, KSČ finally realised the right Marxist-Leninists policies in national questions.
[32] The good example for importance of language could be seen here in China, where all the movies have Mandarin subtitles, so all the ethnical minorities speaking different dialects can understand them.
[33] Same nation cultures and same everyday problems in both republics created apparently one solid nation. However, big social and political changes in 1980s and 90s actually showed that the common national awareness was actually weak. Rychlík (p. 25)
[34] Kishlansky- Geary- O’Brien (p. 981) stated that Slovaks were never accepted as a national unit running own internal affairs. During Habsburg’s monarchy, word “Slovaks” were not even used, then during the first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1948) there was only Czechoslovak nation, not Slovak one, and even during the short period during the World War II, when Slovakia declared independence, Tiso made agreement with Hitler according to which Slovakia was like a protectorate of Nazi Germany.
[35] Slovaks were recognised as a different nation and national unit and had their own government (SNR) according to Steiner (p. 41)
[36] Leff (p. 251). An analogy today could be Scot-educated Tony Blair and Scot Gordon Brown running #s 10 and 11 Downing St while the Midlothian question allows for Scotland to have a say in English issues.
[37] Slovaks- Minister of Foreign Affairs was Chnoupek, his deputy Nálepka, Minister of National Security Dzúr, Minister of Foreign Trades Barčák and the Ministries of Industry Stancel and Bahýl.- Rychlík (p.31)
[38] However, it was problematic to maintain this ratio since three out of seven ministries in the federation crated in 1969 maintained already from 1960s, where Czechs were in clear superiority. Pravda, 27. 2. 1969
[39] However even Slovak politician Karol Laco defends this veto power of the KSČ, so the common politics of Czechoslovakia were able to be achieved Rychlík (p. 27)
[40] Ibid (p. 33)
[41] However Pollák stated that Husák could not afford strengthening of Slovak patriotism, because it would result in destabilisation of internal affairs and bad image in the view of Moscow. For Husák it was much more profitable to be the head of whole Czechoslovakia, than to be just a head of ‘poor’ Slovakia.
[42] E.g. the income per capita gap in 1948 was 40% between Czech Lands and Slovakia, however thanks to the transfer of resources, in 1970s this gap was reduces to half- http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-42098-14735/unrestricted/etd.pdf. According to Millar and Wolchik, in book The social legacy of communism (p. 219), under Husák Czechoslovakia was socially and economically one of the best socialist countries. See Appendix A2 Table 3. However, Millar in his other book, Politics, work, and daily life in the USSR (p. 172), argues that the social position of Czechoslovak citizens was one of the worst from all the Eastern European countries in 1980s, since Czechoslovakia was the most egalitarian from all the countries.
[43] Rychlík (p. 43) argues that these financial supplies are negligible in one-nation country, however because of high tension between Czechs and Slovaks, politicians often used the economic reasons to accuse the other side.
[44] The last soviet soldier in Czechoslovakia, Colonel General Eduard Vorobiov left Czechoslovakia in Jun 21 1991. Naďovič- Foertsch- Karacsony- Ostrowski (p. 88)
[45] In 1993, only one year after Czechoslovakia was separated, more than 40 % of the nation assessed the separation of these two nations as negative. see Appendix A3 (Figure 1 and Figure 2)
Summary of evidence…………………..…...…………………...........….page 4
Evaluation of sources…………….……..…………….……………....…page 9
Analysis…………………………….……….….…………………....…page 11
Conclusion……………………..…...……………………..………...…page 16
List of sources……………..………..………………..……………..….page 18
Appendix A1…………………………………………………………..page 21
Appendix A2…………………………….…………………………….page 22
Appendix A3…………………………….…………………………….page 24
Investigation plan
To what extent did the legislative structure of Czechoslovakia under the Husák regime contribute to the breakup of Czechs and Slovaks?
This research examines the relationships between the two main ethnical groups living in the federative Czechoslovakia before it broke up. The Czech-Slovak relations were influenced by many factors before the final split. However this research is focused to examine only the influence of the legislative structure of the Husák’s centralised federalism in communistic Czechoslovakia.
Czech historian Rychlík’s Rozpad Československa was used as the primary source, providing a deep overview of the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. Pollák, chronicler of the former Slovak president as well as Pavol Dubček, son of Alexander Dubček, were interviewed. Secondary sources, the majority of which are Czech and Slovakian, will be used to provide insight from books, newspapers and various statistics to analyse the relationships between the two nations in Czechoslovakia under Husák’s rule.
(Investigation Plan- 148 words)
Summary of evidence
Czechoslovakia at its establishment after the Pittsburgh Agreement was an artificial state contradicting the idea of self-determination as it included many nations, including the majority Czechs and Slovaks. [1] First president T. G. Masaryk denied self-determination for Slovaks stating “The Slovaks are Bohemians in spite of their using their dialect as their literary language”[2]. Leff called the policies of Czech politicians the assimilation of Slovaks under a common umbrella of Czechoslovakism.[3] Goebbels in the dying days of the Third Reich had prophesised that Czechoslovakia would become “the organising centre of Bolshevik plots against Europe.”[4] Indeed, Czechoslovakia finally fell under the direct rule of Moscow after the February 1948 coup.[5] During the time of so-called normalization post-1969[6], Head of State Husák declared his intention to return to the idea of “real socialism”.[7] Although communists proclaimed themselves the biggest nationalists,[8] the legislative structure of federation during this time exacerbated national problems between Czechs and Slovaks. The conflicts, which had their origins during Husák’s regime, culminated in final the separation of these nations in 1992, were:
1. Social
Because Marxist-Leninism could not justify the connection of Czechs and Slovaks in one nation because it emphasised national traditions over communist ideology, legislative restrictions were partially based on emphasizing common ideas of Czechoslovakism,[9] while ideas of self-determination were forbidden. [10] For Czechs this negated the ideas of Masaryk and Beneš since they asserted Slovaks were a part of Czech culture, while Slovaks were denied studying Hlinka and Tiso, supporters of independence.[11] This censorship was ensured by having teachers and professors appointed after strict verification by the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ) and by state directives which allowed work from ‘forbidden’ authors to be read only after special authorisation, which was practically impossible to get.[12] This ultimately caused both sides to feel denied of their national history and to subsequently blame each other.
2. Political
Furthermore, the ‘federative’ system in Czechoslovakia, modelled on the USSR, caused Czechs and Slovaks to have unequal powers which limited the real meaning of federation.[13] Although both Czechs and Slovaks had their own governments[14], from 1970 the decisions of these governments could be vetoed by the federative government under restrictions of the KSČ led from Prague.[15] De facto, other institutions were directly subordinate to Prague’s KSČ, such as the Slovak Communist Party (KSS), various ministries[16], Slovak National Council (SNR), National Front (NF), army, security institutions, or courts.[17] Members and plenums of these institutions were fully organised by the KSČ. Even the results of ‘elections’ of Slovakia’s federative government and KSS were decided in Prague before actual elections, because the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (ÚV KSČ) was arranging all three governments in Czechoslovakia.[18] Čarnogurský argues Slovaks were not a real part of this federation having lost control over Slovakia and its internal affairs.[19]
3. Economic
Finally, economic measures under Husák were unequal. Slovak economist Slavo Koštúch stated as early as 1971: “You are saying that we are brothers, but our wallets are not sisters.”[20] Slovakian economists agreed that the country’s budget, depending on Slovakian money through the highest taxes of all socialist countries[21], were charged from Slovakian industries with only a miniscule amount returning to Slovakia; the rest being spent on Czech infrastructure and rebuilding the capital city.[22] This strengthened the view that Slovakia was economically exploited by Czechs and Moravians. Czech economists such as Komárek, Zeman and Klaus [23] retorted that the economy in fact suffered because Czech was providing enormous amounts of money to Slovakia rather than rebuilding the ‘homeland’.[24] This caused both sides to feel that the federation was inefficient and exploitative.
(Summary of evidence- 597 words)
Evaluation of sources
Czech historian Jan Rychlík’s, Rozpad Československa: Česko-slovenské vzťahy was published in Slovakia in 2002 with the stated purpose of analysing the causes for the disintegration of Czechoslovakia.[25] Rychlík took full advantage of the opening of the Soviet and Czechoslovakian archives and the first-hand experiences of Czechoslovak politicians[26] who provided him interviews, to support his argument. However the archives were not fully profitable for research given that Slovakia does not allow documents within the last 30 years to be made public and not all documents in the Czech Republic were available in the public archive. [27] His analysis of the relations between Czechs and Slovaks is helped by the fact that he studied and worked in both countries. During Husák’s regime, he experienced the impact of communism on Czechoslovakia first-hand. Given that his main focus of the book is analysing of the last three years of federation (1989-1992), he tends to gloss over important events of the 1970s and 1980s which later influenced events.
Pavol Pollák, a Slovakian politician in communist-era Czechoslovakia, was Alexander Dubček’s collaborator from the start of the latter’s political career until his ‘disappearance’. His specialty was mainly within the Soviet-Czechoslovak communication sphere.[28] After disintegration he worked as a chronicler for Slovakian president Kováč. The purpose of the interview was to gauge the view of a politician in the position of providing a unique and personal analysis of the impact of communist legislation on Czech-Slovak relations, particularly given his role over such a long period of time. As a chronicler in the presidential agency, he had access to the national and communist archives, which were opened after 1992. While acknowledging his support of a common Czechoslovak federation, he admits disagreeing with Husák’s centralised model of federation which at times colours his opinions of a number of the sources. A number of topics, including comparison of Husák’s and Dubček’s government, were not fully open to discussion given his continued loyalty to the latter.
(Evaluation of sources- 323 word)
Analysis
The Husák era was most important in the history of the Czechoslovak nations because it marked the start of normalisation up to abolition of communism in the USSR, leading to the division of for the first time in 460 years.[29] Far from strengthening and ‘normalising’ Czechoslovakia, the hard-line rule of Gustav Husák created even more internal conflicts, leading to final disintegration in 1992.
The structure of the state should be studied when considering its legislation. Although Czechoslovakia was a federation, it was still a communist state based on the centralistic model of the USSR federation with the centre in Prague.[30] Nevertheless, Husák’s state did not seek to assimilate Slovaks under the common culture of Czechoslovakism as happened in the Soviet model with non-Russian nationalities, but sought good relations under the motto qietum non movere while propagating socialism as the best solution for solving the Czech-Slovak ‘question’.[31]
Although both nations in Czechoslovakia felt their national historical identities threatened during the communist era, Czech and Slovak cultures were strengthened in many ways. The similar languages helped Czechoslovaks to be naturally bilingual since the mass-media provided information in both languages, such as national television CSTV.[32] Abolition of national festivals such as 28th September and 29th August, and emphasising the “Czechoslovakia’s Day of Liberation by Soviet troops” created common customs and cultures for both nations resulting in a Czechoslovak culture containing two subcultures which were mutually interconnected creating a European country in times of peaceful internal stability appear strong and united[33].
Most agree that Slovaks never had the power to run their own internal affairs at any time in their history stretching back four centuries,[34] but Steiner argues that under Husák, Slovakia was finally regarded as a separate part of the national unit and administrative region.[35] From the time of normalization, Husák, a Slovak, was head of the KSČ and also president of Czechoslovakia; it appeared to many that the Slovaks were actually the ones “running the show”.[36] Besides Husák, the government included many other Slovaks in important positions[37], although they were in the minority according to the proportional division of government, which allowed 1500 Slovaks to 4500 Czechs in new federal institutions.[38] These views created the opinion among Czechs that they were ruled by the minority, antagonising Czech-Slovak relations. Nevertheless, the KSČ had the power to deny decisions of both national governments when it felt it was necessary to run the federation.[39] Slovak Husák himself could not be considered to have worked for Slovakian prosperity; although his 1969 motto was “Slovakia for Slovakians” emphasising the Slovak nationality,[40] the opposite became true. He did not give Slovaks their promised constitution or national arms and in public he only spoke Czech, leading to the Slovakian complaint that he was a “Prague Slovak”.[41]
Thirdly, both nations in the common federation felt that the economical measures of the legislation are unfair. High transfer of resources from Czech lands to Slovakia, which was the reason for dissatisfaction of Czechs, was caused by the big gap between living conditions in both republics, which had to be eliminated.[42] Nevertheless, it is important to consider that it is difficult to follow the financial flows in Czechoslovakia in that era because of common federative budget, so it is hard to arbitrate between ‘exploiting’ of Slovak economy and ‘suffering’ of Czech one. It is important to consider that Czechoslovak economy was working as uniform economy of one state, and it is necessary and natural even today that the ‘richer’ parts of one country have to supply ‘poorer’ ones, such as also ‘poorer’ parts of the country have to pay taxes even though the infrastructure of the ‘richer’ part could profit from these taxes more.[43] So the whole economic conflict was just artificially made up as the result of the high tension between two nations living in the same state.
(Analysis- 638 words)
Conclusion
The hard-line communist regime in Czechoslovakia occurred during so-called normalization of Czechoslovakia after Gustav Husák became the first secretary of the KSČ in 1969. The legislative measures and restrictions of this regime caused disagreements about some national, political and economical questions between Czechs and Slovaks in the common state. Both nations were felt to be denied for their national spirit, felt to be aggrieved because of the division of powers and felt to suffer because of the economical measures in the communist Czechoslovakia. These were also some of the causes that led to the final division of these two ‘brotherly’ nations after Husák left the position of head of the state and after the fall of communism in November 1989, when the separation was possible, since Czechoslovakia was not anymore occupied by the soviet troops[44] and under influence of the USSR. However, legislation in this communist regime did not have only negative influence on the relationships between Czechs and Slovaks and living conditions in Czechoslovakia, since the big part of the nation was finally against the separation of this federation.[45]
(Conclusion- 180 words)
List of sources
Bibliography
• Brager, L. B.: The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe. Philadelphia 2004
• Cottrell, C. R.: The Czech Republic- Arbitrary Borders. Philadelphia 2005
• Hochman, J.: Nádej zomiera posledná Bratislava 1993
• Hradecka, V. - Koudelka, F.: Kádrova politika a nomenklatúra KSČ. Prague 1998
• Hubl, M.: Cesty k moci. Prague 1990
• Kirschbaum, S. J.: A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival. New York 1995
• Kishlansky M. – Geary P. - O’Brien P.: Societies and Cultures in World History. New York 1995
• Leff, Skalnik, C.: National Conflict in Czechoslovakia. Princeton 1988
• Lettrich, J.: History of Modern Slovakia New York 1955
• Millar R. J.: Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR Cambridge 1988
• Millar, R. J. – Wolchik, L. S.: The Social Legacy of Communism Washington 1997
• Naďovič, S.: Foertsch H. - Karacsony, I. - Ostrowski, Z.: The Great Withdrawal. Bratislava 2005
• Nejedlý, Z.: Komunisté- dedici velkých tradic českého národa. 4. ed. Prague 1951
• Nogueres, H.: Munich, Peace for Our Time. New York 1965
• Plevza, V.: Historie československé současnosti. Prague 1978
• Roberts J. M.: The Penguin History of the World London 1997
• Rychlík, J.: Rozpad Československa: Česko-slovenské vzťahy. Bratislava 2002
• Šaling, S. – Šalingová Ivanová, M. – Manikova, Z.: Slovník cudzích slov. Bratislava 2002
• Steiner, E.: The Slovak Dilemma. London 1973
• Tkáč, M.: Národ bez peňazí. Bratislava 1992
• Tomašek, D.: Pozor, Cenzurováno. Prague 1994
• Wessel, S. M.: Loyalitaten in Tsechoslowakischen Republic 1918-1938. Munich 2004
• Žatkuliak, J.: Normalizácia česko-slovenskej federácie roku 1970 a jej následky. Banská Bystrica 1997
Newspapers
• Journal Alternativa: “Interview with Jan Čarnogurský” 2/1989
• The New York Times: "Prague Turns on Those Who Brought the 'Spring'", Tagliabue, John 24 Feb. 1992
• Journal Pravda: “The structure of the federative government” 27. Feb. 1969
Internet
• Danielle Seiler: Czechoslovakia: A state of perceived bias. 28 April 1998,
• Policy research department of the World Bank: Cash social transfers, direct taxes, and income distribution in late socialism. September 1993,
• The sociological institute SAV Bratislava: Československá Česká a Slovenská európska identita. April 2002,
• Open society archives: Eastern Europe’s Communist Leaders. 1 September 1966,
Interviews
• Dubček P., interview held during personal meeting, 14th July 2007, Bratislava, Slovakia
• Pollák P., interview held during meeting in his apartment, 2nd August, Bratislava, Slovakia
Appendixes
Appendix A1
Abbreviations used in the assessment
• FZ- (Federálne Zhromaždenie) Federal Congress
• CNR- (Česká Národní Rada) Czech National Council
• KSČ- (Komunistická Strana Československa) Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
• KSS- (Komunistická Strana Slovenska) Communist Party of Slovakia
• ÚV KSČ- (Ústredný Výbor Komunistickej Strany Československa) Central Committee of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
• SNR- (Slovenská Národná Rada) Slovak National Council
• NF- (Národná Fronta) National Front
[1] Lettrich (p. 289)
[2] Masaryk propagated that Slovaks are actually the same nation as Czechs. He wanted to include Slovaks, a ‘tribe’, under the Czech culture. Kirschbaum (p. 149)
[3] Skalnik Leff (p. 136)
[4] Nogueres (p. 249-251)
[5] The communist coup in the last non-communist country in Eastern Europe destroyed all beliefs for Czechoslovakia’s independence. Roberts (p. 939)
[6] Hochman (p. 212) called it a step back to totalitarian Czechoslovakia after promising democratisation by Dubček in 1968 during Prague Spring. The resulting Soviet invasion was already the second betrayal by allies (the first one was Munich 1938) resulted in the most cynic joke in Czechoslovakia: “Every Czech knows what is the luckiest country in the world: Israel, because it is surrounded only by enemies” Brager (p. 99)
[7] “Real socialism” supposed to eliminate the ‘mistakes’ made during the Prague Spring. It was used as the reason to made KSČ centralised and autocratic. Rychlík (p. 15)
[8] According to Nejdlý (p. 71) Marxism proclaimed that “proletariat does not have homeland”, however the communism after 1945 which came to Eastern Europe and Asia was contrary, since it was based on ideas of patriotism, independence and national unity.
[9] Wessel (p. 23) states that Czechoslovakism was a political ideology from the first Czechoslovak republic (1918-1938), which stated that Czechs and Slovaks are one Czechoslovak nation including two ‘tribes’. Cottrell (p. 56) continues that the constitution of 1920 deemed “Czechoslovak” as the official language of the new republic, and designed Slovaks as “state people”, not members of a national minority.
[10] Dubček P., interview, 2nd August 2007
[11] According to secret directive of the Ministry of culture from 31 May 1972, all books that could called as ‘harmful’ or ‘revisionist’ were forbidden for public- Rychlík (p. 20)
[12] According to Tomašek (p. 154-155) this supposed to guarantee that no public discussions, which could disrupt the Czech-Slovak relations, will be held.
[13] Real meaning of Czechoslovak world federácia (federation) meant- “political connection of two or more states with equality before one constitution and where each state has the control of its internal affairs”, however this wasn’t the case. Šaling- Ivanová Šalingová- Maníková (p. 191)
[14] Czechs had ČNR- Česká Národní Rada, while Slovaks had SNR- Slovenská Národná Rada
[15] Therefore the real meaning of “federation” had been lost. Real Czechoslovak federation would have two non-subordinate political bodies like it was in Tito’s Yugoslavia. Rychlík (p. 26)
[16] Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Industry Development and Ministry of Internal Affairs were indeed subordinated to KSČ
[17] This gave Husák power to appoint ‘his people’ for the important positions in the state institutions. Hradecká (p. 97) An analogy could be the way how Stalin came to absolute power in the Soviet Union, which was also through these powers and connections.
[18] Rychlík (p.29) provides the example: Jozef Lenárt was announced to be the new secretary of KSS even before the actual elections. Indeed, as Pollák related to me, the political results of all elections were a foregone conclusion as the communist party always obtained more than 99% of the votes (interview, 2nd August 2007).
[19] “With federation we received formal coequality in the state, but still cannot solve our internal affairs by ourselves, because communism does not allow it. This overshadows all the assets of federation. By assets I mean national affairs, the nation should solve by itself, such as mainly education, culture, or partially economy.” Journal Alternativa, 2/1989, p. 41
[20] Koštúch- after KSČ declined the idea of two independent economies in the federation. Hubl (p.42-43)
[21] Direct and payroll taxes of some socialist countries in 1980s can be seen in Table 2- Appendix A2
[22] Tkáč (126) discusses that while central government was locating not profitable primary industry businesses to Slovakia, the secondary and tertiary industry of the federation was located mainly in Czech lands, so naturally Czech lands profited more money from the material that Slovakia produced.
[23] All would later become Czech politicians while arguing about the perceived exploitation of the Czech economy by Slovakia and thus justifying Czech independence. Pavol Pollák, interview 2nd August 2007
[24] The transfer of resources from the Czech lands to Slovak region can be seen in Table 2 in Appendix A2
[25] In author’s own words, the period of the federation during normalization with the final years of disintegration in 1989-1992 are the most important things to analyse to understand the Czech- Slovak relationships- Rychlík (p. 9)
[26] In particular Petr Pithard, Ján Čarnorurský, Václav Žák, Martin Porubjak, Mikuláš Huba, Anton Hrnko, Jacek Balouch, Gyorgy Varga and others
[27] Therefore Rychlík could not use the national archives for the research of 1980s and 90s. This made him use mainly private archives and the archives of non-governmental organisations. Jan Rychlík (p. 9)
[28] Pollák also was previously a member of Interhelpo, which included more than a thousand idealistic Czechoslovak Communists who formed an industrial cooperation with the Soviet Union which remained in existence until 1943- http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/17-3-143.shtml
[29] Except the period of WWII when Czech lands were occupied by the Nazi Germany, both nations were in one country since 1526 when Ferdinand I included Czech lands into Habsburg monarchy
[30] However, Žatkuliak (p.251) states that the ideas of communism and a federation are contradictory. While communism is based on so-called democratic centralism with subordination lower party sections to higher ones like in army, federation requires division of powers.
[31] Normalisation historian Plevza (p. 36-42) states that the important moment, the creation of Czechoslovakia, was destroyed because of bureaucratic politicians (Masaryk, Beneš) who made Czechoslovakia easily destroyable by Germany. The communist putsch in 1948 opened the doors for the right solution for Czech-Slovak relations, however it still had some small ‘mistakes’ (Dubček). After 1968, KSČ finally realised the right Marxist-Leninists policies in national questions.
[32] The good example for importance of language could be seen here in China, where all the movies have Mandarin subtitles, so all the ethnical minorities speaking different dialects can understand them.
[33] Same nation cultures and same everyday problems in both republics created apparently one solid nation. However, big social and political changes in 1980s and 90s actually showed that the common national awareness was actually weak. Rychlík (p. 25)
[34] Kishlansky- Geary- O’Brien (p. 981) stated that Slovaks were never accepted as a national unit running own internal affairs. During Habsburg’s monarchy, word “Slovaks” were not even used, then during the first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1948) there was only Czechoslovak nation, not Slovak one, and even during the short period during the World War II, when Slovakia declared independence, Tiso made agreement with Hitler according to which Slovakia was like a protectorate of Nazi Germany.
[35] Slovaks were recognised as a different nation and national unit and had their own government (SNR) according to Steiner (p. 41)
[36] Leff (p. 251). An analogy today could be Scot-educated Tony Blair and Scot Gordon Brown running #s 10 and 11 Downing St while the Midlothian question allows for Scotland to have a say in English issues.
[37] Slovaks- Minister of Foreign Affairs was Chnoupek, his deputy Nálepka, Minister of National Security Dzúr, Minister of Foreign Trades Barčák and the Ministries of Industry Stancel and Bahýl.- Rychlík (p.31)
[38] However, it was problematic to maintain this ratio since three out of seven ministries in the federation crated in 1969 maintained already from 1960s, where Czechs were in clear superiority. Pravda, 27. 2. 1969
[39] However even Slovak politician Karol Laco defends this veto power of the KSČ, so the common politics of Czechoslovakia were able to be achieved Rychlík (p. 27)
[40] Ibid (p. 33)
[41] However Pollák stated that Husák could not afford strengthening of Slovak patriotism, because it would result in destabilisation of internal affairs and bad image in the view of Moscow. For Husák it was much more profitable to be the head of whole Czechoslovakia, than to be just a head of ‘poor’ Slovakia.
[42] E.g. the income per capita gap in 1948 was 40% between Czech Lands and Slovakia, however thanks to the transfer of resources, in 1970s this gap was reduces to half- http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-42098-14735/unrestricted/etd.pdf. According to Millar and Wolchik, in book The social legacy of communism (p. 219), under Husák Czechoslovakia was socially and economically one of the best socialist countries. See Appendix A2 Table 3. However, Millar in his other book, Politics, work, and daily life in the USSR (p. 172), argues that the social position of Czechoslovak citizens was one of the worst from all the Eastern European countries in 1980s, since Czechoslovakia was the most egalitarian from all the countries.
[43] Rychlík (p. 43) argues that these financial supplies are negligible in one-nation country, however because of high tension between Czechs and Slovaks, politicians often used the economic reasons to accuse the other side.
[44] The last soviet soldier in Czechoslovakia, Colonel General Eduard Vorobiov left Czechoslovakia in Jun 21 1991. Naďovič- Foertsch- Karacsony- Ostrowski (p. 88)
[45] In 1993, only one year after Czechoslovakia was separated, more than 40 % of the nation assessed the separation of these two nations as negative. see Appendix A3 (Figure 1 and Figure 2)
Was the Holmodor an intentional genocidal policy by the Soviet Union Leadership?
Was the Holmodor an intentional genocidal policy by the Soviet Union Leadership?
A: Plan of Investigation
1. Subject- Was the Holdomor an intentional genocidal policy of the Soviet Union leadership?
2. Methods- Will use two basic sets of sources, newspapers written at the time from prominent journalists such as Walter Duranty, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Gareth Jones as well as later books written by prominent historians such as Robert Conquest. The summary of evidence will consist of three basic sections the policies taken by the Soviet Union leading to the famine, their policies during the famine and a section focusing on the famine itself. For section C the one source will be two of Walter Duranty's articles in the New York Times and the other Robert Conquest's book Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine.
Words:120
B: Summary of Evidence
Stalin had introduced forced collectivization in 1928. The policy was meant to combine the smaller farms into larger ‘more efficient’ collective farms called kolkhozes. The 25 million peasant farmsteads were turned into 200,000 collective farms. This forced collectivization however, was highly unpopular among the peasants who resisted in a variety of ways including the slaughtering of their live stock as well as the burning of their crops culminating in large scale revolts braking out in mostly non-Russian areas including Ukraine. Such peasants were then bunched under the term “Kulaks” on which he declared “war”. It is estimated 5 million Soviet citizens were eventually classified as kulaks and either stripped of their land to be given the poorest land in the area, were deported to other nearby regions of the country or, in extreme cases to distant inhospitable regions without shelter or resources, or sent to gulags. The overall result was the inverse of what had been desired- rather then increasing the food output, the grain output dropped and livestock numbers fell; “famine was the natural outcome”.
The Holmodor refers specifically to such famine within Ukraine between 1932-33 which was part of a larger famine within the Soviet Union. The meaning of the word itself is debated, but is often translated as “death by hunger”. The actual number of casualties is recognized to be somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million though estimates vary. Cannibalism became widespread as the starving became more and more desperate resulting in the publishing of slogan by the Soviet authorities “Eating dead children is barbarism”. Disease, particularly typhoid, was widespread.
The Soviets pursued a number of policies during the famine 1932, introducing the law “On Safeguarding Socialist Property” which made stealing food punishable by death . The borders of the Ukraine were sealed by Red Army Units, and when aid arrived it was sent to all areas except the Ukraine. People trying to flee were rounded up and returned to famine stricken areas. The government went house to house in Ukraine removing all grain; in March 1933 220,000 starving people who left trying to find grain were returned as soon as they were caught. The quota was cut three times before the famine ended in 1934 when Stalin called a stop to the forced seizure of grain.
543 words
C: Evaluation of Sources
Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine
Written by well respected Robert Conquest, viewed by many as one of the foremost Soviet historians, the book has been described as “(t)he first major scholarly book on the horrors of collectivization” and hailed as “the most comprehensive history of the soviet agricultural crisis,” especially as Conquest himself states his focus on the Holmodor. However, having been published before the opening of the Soviet Archives, the book omits numerous sources that have come to light which indicate that many of the numbers and facts used in the book exceed the actual numbers. Furthermore, Conquest has since rescinded his claim in the book that the Holomodor was an intentional policy, instead saying that had Soviet policy of collectivization and dekulakization been dropped when the famine became eminent many lives could have been saved. Many of the book’s detractors claim that that the book is merely propaganda with “more than half of the references are come from extreme-right-wing Ukrainian émigrés”; As one of the advisors of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Conquest's true motives for the book have become suspect.
The second source consists of two articles by Walter Duranty- the now infamous “Russians Hungry But Not Starving” published on March 31st 1933 and the second less known piece “Soviet Industry Shows Big Gains” published the following week on April 6. At the time they were written the two pieces were valuable both as a “first hand account” and the fact Walter Duranty was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for his work on the Soviet Union. Also the pieces were published in the New York Times one of the most respected newspapers. However it has since been proven that famine occurred, which Duranty had flatly denied in both pieces. In fact efforts have been made to rescind Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and he was referred to by fellow journalist Malcolm Muggeridge as “the greatest liar I have met in journalism”.
Words: 470
D: Analysis
The famine is considered one of the greatest national calamities of modern Ukrainian history, an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. The famine is such a flash point that the Ukrainian Communist Party refused to even acknowledge that it occurred until 1990, over 55 years after it happened. The current Ukrainian president has announced his attention to make denial of the Holodomor illegal. To date over 19 countries other then Ukraine have recognized it as an act of genocide and the European Parliament adopted a resolution on October 23, 2008 recognizing the famine calling it “an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity” and calling “on the countries which emerged following the break-up of the Soviet Union to open up their archives on the Holodomor”. The document also “strongly condemns these acts, directed against the Ukrainian peasantry, and marked by mass annihilation and violations of human rights and freedoms”.
But was the famine actually the result of a genocidal policy by Stalin? Duranty, possibly the most prominent journalist in the Soviet Union, completely denied the famine, claiming that “conditions are bad, but there is no famine”. His sources were “Soviet commissariats and in foreign embassies with their network of consuls, [...] Britons working as specialists and from my personal connections, Russian and foreign”, sources he fails to ascribe a name to, are “more trustworthy information than I could get by a brief trip through any one area”. He instead inserts any deaths are the result of “diseases due to malnutrition.” A number of prominent Westerners in 1934 agreed with him. However there can be question now of the falsity of their reports especially with the Soviet admitting its occurrence in the 80s and the Ukrainian Communist Party adopting a resolution in 1990 also acknowledging the disaster took place. In fact Duranty's work has become so discredited an attempt to revoke his Pulitzer Prize was put forward and even encouraged by the New York Times.
Robert Conquest on the other hand refers to the catastrophe as a “terror famine” and “inflicted for its own sake” is supported to differing extents by large number of historians. His assertion that the famine was the result of “the setting of grain quotas far above the possible, removing of handful of foods and preventing of help from outside” is collaborated by historian Jasper Becker, “Stalin allowed relief to all other areas”, “Party deliberately and consciously took all grain it could from the peasants” and Robert Service, “starving majority […] had to fulfill state's requirements”. Peter Wiles says “Conquest's research has established beyond a doubt that the famine was deliberately inflicted there for the ethnic reasons to undermine the Ukrainian nation”. However not all historians agree with Conquest and Becker, both Martens and Tottle are critical of Conquest's arguments asserting that the famine was actually caused not by Stalin but by four factors, a civil war perpetrated by the Kulaks and Czarist elements, the drought, the typhoid epidemic and some by the disorder resulting from the economic and social changes and pointing to the drought rather then Soviet policy. Both Marten's and Tottle's arguments are vastly weakened by the Russian's Federation co-sponsorship of a 2003 resolution holding the Soviet Union responsible for the famine which appears to be an admission of guilt. The official documents in the archives likewise “convincingly demonstrates that the blame for the suffering and deaths of millions of people lies squarely with the Stalinist leadership”. However Robert Service notes using the definition of genocide as killing an entire ethnic group or nationality then the Holdomor doesn't really apply. Other nationalities in the Ukraine were in conditions just as poor as the Ukrainians and the grain quotas were cut multiple times 3 times at the report of famines.
Words: 797
E: Conclusion
While clearly Duranty and Conquest don't agree on whether or not the Soviets are to blame for the Holomodor its clear they agree on the answer to whether or not it was genocide. Both believe that the famine was not the result of a genocidal policy when genocide is defined as “the killing of an entire national or ethnic group”. This is a position also supported by historians Service, Tottle, and Martens among others. But Service and Conquest do accuse Stalin of failing to act adequately to prevent or stop the continuation of the famine which means while he was not guilty of genocide the Soviet leader were guilty of a kind of extreme case of criminal malfeasance.
Words 126
F: List of Sources
Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1996
Conquest, Robert. Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine Oxford University Press US, 1987
Duranty, Walter. “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving”. New York Times New York, March 31st, 1933
Martens, Ludo. “The Resolution on Dekulakization”. Another View of Stalin 1995
Meurs, Mielke. Many Shades of Red Rowman and Littlefield, 1999
“Resolution on the Commemoration of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian artificial famine(1932-1933)”. European Parliament Oct. 23, 2008. June 9, 2009
Service, Robert. A History of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladamir Putin Harvard University Press: New Haven, 2005
Sysyn, Frank. “The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-3: The Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Research and Public Discussion”. Studies in Comparative Genocide Ed: Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, Palgrave Macmillan 1999. pg. 182
Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard Progress Books: Toronto Canada, 1987
Tucker, Robert C. “Stalinism as Revolution from Above”. Stalinism Ed: Robert C. Tucker Transaction Publishers, 1999
A: Plan of Investigation
1. Subject- Was the Holdomor an intentional genocidal policy of the Soviet Union leadership?
2. Methods- Will use two basic sets of sources, newspapers written at the time from prominent journalists such as Walter Duranty, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Gareth Jones as well as later books written by prominent historians such as Robert Conquest. The summary of evidence will consist of three basic sections the policies taken by the Soviet Union leading to the famine, their policies during the famine and a section focusing on the famine itself. For section C the one source will be two of Walter Duranty's articles in the New York Times and the other Robert Conquest's book Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine.
Words:120
B: Summary of Evidence
Stalin had introduced forced collectivization in 1928. The policy was meant to combine the smaller farms into larger ‘more efficient’ collective farms called kolkhozes. The 25 million peasant farmsteads were turned into 200,000 collective farms. This forced collectivization however, was highly unpopular among the peasants who resisted in a variety of ways including the slaughtering of their live stock as well as the burning of their crops culminating in large scale revolts braking out in mostly non-Russian areas including Ukraine. Such peasants were then bunched under the term “Kulaks” on which he declared “war”. It is estimated 5 million Soviet citizens were eventually classified as kulaks and either stripped of their land to be given the poorest land in the area, were deported to other nearby regions of the country or, in extreme cases to distant inhospitable regions without shelter or resources, or sent to gulags. The overall result was the inverse of what had been desired- rather then increasing the food output, the grain output dropped and livestock numbers fell; “famine was the natural outcome”.
The Holmodor refers specifically to such famine within Ukraine between 1932-33 which was part of a larger famine within the Soviet Union. The meaning of the word itself is debated, but is often translated as “death by hunger”. The actual number of casualties is recognized to be somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million though estimates vary. Cannibalism became widespread as the starving became more and more desperate resulting in the publishing of slogan by the Soviet authorities “Eating dead children is barbarism”. Disease, particularly typhoid, was widespread.
The Soviets pursued a number of policies during the famine 1932, introducing the law “On Safeguarding Socialist Property” which made stealing food punishable by death . The borders of the Ukraine were sealed by Red Army Units, and when aid arrived it was sent to all areas except the Ukraine. People trying to flee were rounded up and returned to famine stricken areas. The government went house to house in Ukraine removing all grain; in March 1933 220,000 starving people who left trying to find grain were returned as soon as they were caught. The quota was cut three times before the famine ended in 1934 when Stalin called a stop to the forced seizure of grain.
543 words
C: Evaluation of Sources
Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine
Written by well respected Robert Conquest, viewed by many as one of the foremost Soviet historians, the book has been described as “(t)he first major scholarly book on the horrors of collectivization” and hailed as “the most comprehensive history of the soviet agricultural crisis,” especially as Conquest himself states his focus on the Holmodor. However, having been published before the opening of the Soviet Archives, the book omits numerous sources that have come to light which indicate that many of the numbers and facts used in the book exceed the actual numbers. Furthermore, Conquest has since rescinded his claim in the book that the Holomodor was an intentional policy, instead saying that had Soviet policy of collectivization and dekulakization been dropped when the famine became eminent many lives could have been saved. Many of the book’s detractors claim that that the book is merely propaganda with “more than half of the references are come from extreme-right-wing Ukrainian émigrés”; As one of the advisors of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Conquest's true motives for the book have become suspect.
The second source consists of two articles by Walter Duranty- the now infamous “Russians Hungry But Not Starving” published on March 31st 1933 and the second less known piece “Soviet Industry Shows Big Gains” published the following week on April 6. At the time they were written the two pieces were valuable both as a “first hand account” and the fact Walter Duranty was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for his work on the Soviet Union. Also the pieces were published in the New York Times one of the most respected newspapers. However it has since been proven that famine occurred, which Duranty had flatly denied in both pieces. In fact efforts have been made to rescind Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and he was referred to by fellow journalist Malcolm Muggeridge as “the greatest liar I have met in journalism”.
Words: 470
D: Analysis
The famine is considered one of the greatest national calamities of modern Ukrainian history, an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. The famine is such a flash point that the Ukrainian Communist Party refused to even acknowledge that it occurred until 1990, over 55 years after it happened. The current Ukrainian president has announced his attention to make denial of the Holodomor illegal. To date over 19 countries other then Ukraine have recognized it as an act of genocide and the European Parliament adopted a resolution on October 23, 2008 recognizing the famine calling it “an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity” and calling “on the countries which emerged following the break-up of the Soviet Union to open up their archives on the Holodomor”. The document also “strongly condemns these acts, directed against the Ukrainian peasantry, and marked by mass annihilation and violations of human rights and freedoms”.
But was the famine actually the result of a genocidal policy by Stalin? Duranty, possibly the most prominent journalist in the Soviet Union, completely denied the famine, claiming that “conditions are bad, but there is no famine”. His sources were “Soviet commissariats and in foreign embassies with their network of consuls, [...] Britons working as specialists and from my personal connections, Russian and foreign”, sources he fails to ascribe a name to, are “more trustworthy information than I could get by a brief trip through any one area”. He instead inserts any deaths are the result of “diseases due to malnutrition.” A number of prominent Westerners in 1934 agreed with him. However there can be question now of the falsity of their reports especially with the Soviet admitting its occurrence in the 80s and the Ukrainian Communist Party adopting a resolution in 1990 also acknowledging the disaster took place. In fact Duranty's work has become so discredited an attempt to revoke his Pulitzer Prize was put forward and even encouraged by the New York Times.
Robert Conquest on the other hand refers to the catastrophe as a “terror famine” and “inflicted for its own sake” is supported to differing extents by large number of historians. His assertion that the famine was the result of “the setting of grain quotas far above the possible, removing of handful of foods and preventing of help from outside” is collaborated by historian Jasper Becker, “Stalin allowed relief to all other areas”, “Party deliberately and consciously took all grain it could from the peasants” and Robert Service, “starving majority […] had to fulfill state's requirements”. Peter Wiles says “Conquest's research has established beyond a doubt that the famine was deliberately inflicted there for the ethnic reasons to undermine the Ukrainian nation”. However not all historians agree with Conquest and Becker, both Martens and Tottle are critical of Conquest's arguments asserting that the famine was actually caused not by Stalin but by four factors, a civil war perpetrated by the Kulaks and Czarist elements, the drought, the typhoid epidemic and some by the disorder resulting from the economic and social changes and pointing to the drought rather then Soviet policy. Both Marten's and Tottle's arguments are vastly weakened by the Russian's Federation co-sponsorship of a 2003 resolution holding the Soviet Union responsible for the famine which appears to be an admission of guilt. The official documents in the archives likewise “convincingly demonstrates that the blame for the suffering and deaths of millions of people lies squarely with the Stalinist leadership”. However Robert Service notes using the definition of genocide as killing an entire ethnic group or nationality then the Holdomor doesn't really apply. Other nationalities in the Ukraine were in conditions just as poor as the Ukrainians and the grain quotas were cut multiple times 3 times at the report of famines.
Words: 797
E: Conclusion
While clearly Duranty and Conquest don't agree on whether or not the Soviets are to blame for the Holomodor its clear they agree on the answer to whether or not it was genocide. Both believe that the famine was not the result of a genocidal policy when genocide is defined as “the killing of an entire national or ethnic group”. This is a position also supported by historians Service, Tottle, and Martens among others. But Service and Conquest do accuse Stalin of failing to act adequately to prevent or stop the continuation of the famine which means while he was not guilty of genocide the Soviet leader were guilty of a kind of extreme case of criminal malfeasance.
Words 126
F: List of Sources
Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1996
Conquest, Robert. Harvest of Sorrows: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine Oxford University Press US, 1987
Duranty, Walter. “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving”. New York Times New York, March 31st, 1933
Martens, Ludo. “The Resolution on Dekulakization”. Another View of Stalin 1995
Meurs, Mielke. Many Shades of Red Rowman and Littlefield, 1999
“Resolution on the Commemoration of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian artificial famine(1932-1933)”. European Parliament Oct. 23, 2008. June 9, 2009
Service, Robert. A History of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladamir Putin Harvard University Press: New Haven, 2005
Sysyn, Frank. “The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-3: The Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Research and Public Discussion”. Studies in Comparative Genocide Ed: Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, Palgrave Macmillan 1999. pg. 182
Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard Progress Books: Toronto Canada, 1987
Tucker, Robert C. “Stalinism as Revolution from Above”. Stalinism Ed: Robert C. Tucker Transaction Publishers, 1999
How Many were Slaughtered in Nanking
A.
The investigation justifies the number of lives claimed by the Nanjing Massacre in the 1930s. In respond to this assessment, a primary source- a letter written by John Rabe to Hitler, a Chinese documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking, and various perspectives from Chinese and Japanese historians, will be examined. Two of the sources in this investigation, a letter by John Rabe to Hitler in 1938, and a documentary novel called the Rape of Nanking composed by Iris Chang, will be accessed through origin, purpose, value, and limitation.
B.
In December 1937 the Japanese army marched into the Nanjing city beginning a reign of terror. “The troops murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in horrific ways.” It was estimated the duration of the war had culminated in the death of twenty million Chinese. The city was practically collapsed into a defenseless habitat as “the government left Nanjing defenseless declaring it to be an “open city””. This therefore ensured massacres to prevail in all areas within and around the city. Since then, controversy aroused between groups from mainly China and Japan surrounds the number of people massacred by the Japanese troops during the years of the massacre. In one case a Chinese-German-made film called 拉贝日记 (John Rabe) has revealed the fact 300,000 people were killed when its film critic Song Ziwen asserts on the state-run Xinmin website, “'We always emphasize that 300,000 people were killed.” Similarily, numbers of Chinese official documents/historians point to the fact of apporximatly 300,000 deaths. Wu Tienwei, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University, estimates a death toll of above 300,000. Sun Zhaiwei, a historian at the Jiangsu Acedemy of Social Sciences, concludes a number closing to 380,000. Contradictary, John Rabe’s diary and several Japanese historians have asserted realtively low figures compared to those submitted by the Chinese. In a letter addressing to Hitler from John Rabe in 1938 he stated, “We foreigners view the figure as having been from about 50,000 to 60,000.” Japanese historian, Hata Ikuhiko, argued a death toll of approxmaitely 38000 to 42000 whereas he regarded the Chinese estimate of 300,000 deaths as exaggerdated. Moreover, Fujiwara Akira, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, has come up with an estimation of 200,000 deaths.
C.
The first source to be evaluated according to its origin, purpose, value, and limitation is a primary source, a letter written in June 1938 by John Rabe to Hitler. The letter upholds a purpose “to persuade Hitler to intervene and stop the inhuman acts of violence committed by the Japanese.” The value of it lies in the fact it is a primary source written by an eye witness of the massacre. Moreover, its weight was shown when it was aimed at addressing to Hitler himself. The limitation of it is it failed to observe the full duration of the Nanjing Massacre since John Rabe left Nanjing in February 1938. The letter hasn’t been verified by any authority but exclusively accounted from the view of a foreigner whose observation in the area had been limited. The second source to be evaluated is an English history documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking. Its purpose is to narrate the events of the massacre from perspectives of the Japanese military, Chinese victims, and westerners. Its value is shown in its ability to blend in three various aspects to reconstruct a wider and more realistic context of history. It was also the “first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city.” The limitation is the book procured the information through various sources instead of first hand experiences. The book has been criticized for its nature of “seriously flawed” and “full of misinformation and harebrained explanations.” This’ perhaps due to the fact she lacks the experience with the subject matter.
D.
The majority of the Chinese historians share a similar perspective on the fact of approximately 300,000 people were massacred throughout the course. Such fact is that certain of them based their research on the official Chinese burial records. Many people were desperate in dodging the gun fire by diving into the water while the fire persisted. This certainly would challenge the reliability of the burial records since some bodies might have been washed away or sunken to the riverbed. This inaccuracy also applies to the circumstance when gasoline was being set fire on corpses. Some experts including those from Japan have questioned the reliability of the 300,000 figure in areas concerning of double counting, and miscounting. The fact burial records were exclusively acquired from burial grounds miles away from the seashore; this therefore eliminated the possibility of taking into account of those corpses that were washed onshore then buried on spot. There were people questioning if 300,000 people existed inside the Nanking city after the Japanese troops marched in. This query was contradicted by numbers of Chinese official documents stating the number of people inside the city at that time were approximately 500,000. Nevertheless, although those factors stated above are influential to the death toll of 300,000, there still existed an uncertainty of whether those assumptions actually took place during the massacre for most of them were theories and infer. Contrary, the estimation of 300,000 deaths was reinforced by numerous primary elements. Interviews were conducted on 1,700 survivors of the massacre and arrived at a conclusion of 340,000 deaths. There was one case when the Japanese foreign minister Hirota Koki in January 1938 ordered to forward a telegram to America informing no less than 300,000 people were killed. And that was only the first month of the massacre. This is very ponderous evidence since it was devised by Japanese at that time.
Drawing to a conclusion from the analysis carried out, there is a higher possibility the 300,000 death toll is comparatively justified than the other assumptions. As have been briefly mentioned above, relatively low figures are often based on imaginative factors and theories such as double counting, miscounting, and so on, whereas the 300,000 death toll is closely associated with researches and investigations that were carried out practically namely interviews, and most importantly the recognition of certain Japanese officials.
Japanese wartime atrocities
No combatant in the Second World War more routinely perpetrated battlefield atrocities—abuses committed against enemy soldiers—than the Japanese. And while no atrocity of World War II was of greater enormity than the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese also perpetrated war crimes against civil- ian populations in occupied countries. Collectively, these may have killed even more people than the atrocities committed by the forces of Hitler’s Germany.
Whereas German war crimes and persecutions may be attributed in some part to Nazi racial mythology, which classified Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other groups as racially inferior and even sub- human, Japanese abuses may in significant part be ascribed to Bushido, the traditional warrior code of the Samurai, which defined surrender, not death, in battle as the greatest of disgraces. Bushido gave victors absolute power over those captured or conquered, who, having suffered the ultimate disgrace in surrendering rather than fighting to the death, were legitimately liable to whatever mistreatment the victor chose to mete out.
Although both the German and the Japanese officers and troops accused of war crimes were tried by Allied tribunals after the war, the Japanese atrocities are not nearly as well documented as those perpetrated by the Germans, and the numbers involved are widely disputed, some authorities claiming that Chinese civilian casualties during 1937–45 (and including those incurred during the Sino-Japanese War) numbered some 30 million killed. Many civilians died of neglect, starvation, and disease; many, however, were murdered outright or subjected to rape, torture, medical experimentation, and experimentation related to biological warfare. While German atrocities were committed against civilians on a genocidal scale comparable to that of the Japanese atrocities, German military commanders typically attempted to treat military prisoners of war (POW)
with a degree of honour, except in the case of Soviet POWs. In contrast, Japanese commanders, observing Bushido, deliberately abused, neglected, enslaved, and tortured prisoners of war, for example, the Bataan Death March. Less well known than the infamous Japanese POW camps were the prison ships on which the Japanese transported thousands of Allied prisoners. Conditions onboard were appalling, as prisoners were crammed into the cargo holds of decrepit and marginally seaworthy freighters and supplied with little food and water and no sanitary facilities. Many died of this treatment alone. As usual, guards were, in the main, sadistic and abusive. Because the prison ships were unmarked and appeared to Allied submarines and other warships and aircraft as nothing more or less than enemy freighters, they were frequently attacked and sunk, with the loss of most or all aboard.
The most infamous instances of Japanese atrocities include:
1. The Rape of Nanking, in which 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed, began in December 1937. Modes of murder included torture, immolation, burial alive, and beheading in addition to simple shooting. Among those killed in actual combat during the Japanese invasion of northern China, some were victims of biological warfare agents.
2. At Tol Plantation, in Rabaul (on New Britain in the Solomon Islands chain), Japanese troops shot or bayoneted more than 100 Australian troops during February 1942 after they surrendered.
3. On Ballalae Island in the Solomons, between 1942 and the end of the war, 516 British POWs perished under forced labour. They had been transported from the Fall of Singapore to Ballalae to build an airstrip. This figure represents a 100 percent casualty rate.
4. In China’s Kinso and Chekiang Provinces, Japa- nese troops exacted terrible reprisals against Chinese civilians after the capture (and summary execution) of three U.S. airmen who had crash landed after the successful Doolittle Tokyo Raid. During their hunt for other Doolittle raiders, Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese and razed entire villages.
5. On Ambon Island in the Dutch East Indies, Japanese troops beheaded more than 200 Australian and Dutch POWs during February 1943.
6. In January 1943, following the valiant defence of Wake Island by U.S. Marines and civilian contractors, the finally victorious Japanese machine gunned 98 of the American contractors, who had been building the island’s military facilities.
7. During June 1945, at Kalagon, Burma (modern Myanmar), Japanese troops on the hunt for British-led Burmese guerrillas surrounded the village and bayoneted or shot to death more than 600 villagers.
8. At Sandakan, North Borneo, during this same month, some 2,000 British and Austra- lian POWs died. Most had been starved or marched to death, others succumbed to disease, and many were simply murdered. Here also, some 4,000 Javanese civilians died under Japanese enslavement as labourers.
9. In July, at Loa Kulu, Borneo, Japanese soldiers brutally murdered 140 men, then seized their wives and children, many of whom were thrown to their deaths down a deep mine shaft.
10. In this same month, at Cheribon, Java, Japanese naval personnel herded 90 civilian prison- ers onto the deck of a submarine, sailed, then submerged, leaving the men, women, and children to drown or to be attacked by sharks. A single badly injured survivor of a shark attack lived just long enough to report what had happened.
11. Yet another war crime was the rape of thousands of so-called comfort women, women forced into sexual slavery to serve the sexual needs of Japanese troops at designated military “comfort stations.” Most of these women were Korean, but they were transported to outposts on many fronts. Japanese warrior tradition held that sex before battle had talismanic or magical properties that could protect against injury or death.
Bibliography
Further reading: Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Penguin, 1998; Daws, Gavin. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. New York: Perennial, 1996; Hicks, George L. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York: Norton, 1997; Pearson, Judith. Belly of the Beast: A POW’s Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival Aboard the Infamous WWII Japanese Hellship, the Oryoku Maru. New York: New American Library, 2001; Tanaka, Yuki, and Toshiyuki Tanaka. Hid- den Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Denver: Westview Press, 1998.
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
Plan of Investigation
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place July 7th, 1937. Japanese and Chinese scholars hold diametrically opposing views of what actually occurred throughout the course of the incident; the one fact most agree on is that it became the cassus belli of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. From the Mukden Incident of 1931, tensions between Japan and China escalated and this latest Incident served as “the trigger for the Sino-Japanese War.” Analysis of contemporary Japanese, Chinese and Western historians’ books, study of the memoirs and statements made by actual combatants and participants on both sides, and a personal interview with a very knowledgeable Chinese scholar is hoped to disclose Marco Polo Bridge Incident’s course of the event, focusing on its causes, the mysteries around the “first shot” and the so called “lost soldier”, and the subsequent events following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
155 Words
Summary of Evidence
To determine the extent to which the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a deliberate act of Japanese aggression or an unfortunate series of misunderstandings, one must understand both the preceding events and the course of the events itself.
Preceding Events:
China in the 1930s was tumultuous due to the Civil War between Nationalists and Communists. During the Central Plains War, Japan fabricated the Mukden Incident and set up Manchukuo in Manchuria. Between February and May of 1933, the Kwantung Army began its offensive in Rehe Province and signing the Tanggu Truce on May 31st, recognising Rehe Province as part of Manchukuo. In June of 1935, the He-Umezu Agreement was signed, forcing the Nationalist government to leave Hebei Province, allowing Japanese troops to control areas around Beiping, (situated in Hebei Province). In June that same year, 6000 additional soldiers were stationed in the Hebei area adding to a total of 8400 soldiers.
The Course of Marco Polo Bridge Incident
From May 1937, Japanese troops in Fengtai conducted daily and nightly military exercises at a wasteland 1 kilometre north of Wanping Town. Foreign powers were allowed to hold military manoeuvres without informing the authorities provided they used blank ammunition. However, on July 7th Chinese troops reported to their brigade commander that Japanese troops were armed with live ammunition and their manoeuvres were different from usual; Japanese troops from the 7th and 8th Companies had stopped manoeuvres around 10:30 PM. At 10:40, Private 2nd Class Shimura was reported to be missing. A Japanese agent telephoned Jicha authorities to claim that while the 1st company was manoeuvring, shots were fired at them from the Chinese garrison in Wanping creating chaos, and they needed to enter Wanping Town to search for this lost soldier. If prevented, Japanese armed troops would enter. Chinese troops subsequently reported Japanese troops approaching Wanping Town but the Chinese officers in Wanping allowed Japanese commanders to enter the town to search unmolested. Either during or immediately after negotiations, Japanese troops began to shoot at Chinese troops situated at Marco Polo Bridge.
Negotiations resumed after fighting came to a halt at 9 AM on the 8th, but broke down shortly afterwards. A stalemate continued until Japanese infantry reinforcement arrived around 3:00 PM and captured the bridge. Negotiations offered by the Japanese with the demand that Chinese troops retreat from the Left Shore were rejected. . Fighting ensued, and the Chinese re-captured the bridge at 9AM on the 9th.
By the 10th, Japanese troops severed all routes connecting Wanping to Beiping and Japanese reinforcements, including heavy artillery, planes, and tanks, were transported to the area. On that day, the Japanese chief of staff listed 4 requirements for Chinese troops to prevent further fighting:
Apologise to the Japanese Armies and punish those responsible.
Take action against those who initiated the incident.
Chinese troops around Marco Polo Bridge should be removed.
Ban all Communist and anti-Japanese Organizations.
On July 11th, General Zhang signed the agreement with Colonel Matsui. That same day, the Konoe Cabinet sent three divisions to Northern China. The Nationalist government still attempted to negotiate through 3rd parties. Chiang made a speech on the 17th providing 4 solutions to the problem and decided not to declare war. On the 19th, General Zhang agreed to a similar agreement. After taking over Marco Polo Bridge after a fierce battle erupted on the 21st, Japan launched an attack on Beijing, capturing it on July 27th. Chiang realized that war was unavoidable and resistance officially began. Within a month the Chinese General Headquarters declared a general mobilization.
596 Words
Evaluation of Sources:
Interview on December 25th, 2007 with Luo Cunkang, Manager of Research Department at Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression,
Luo Cunkang is one of the spokesman for the only official comprehensive memorial for the “Resistance against Japanese Aggression” in China” , and his role for the interview, as I was referred to him by other museum directors, is to promote the core ethos of the Hall and to provide a general Chinese scholar’s standpoint on this incident, a topic he specializes. His exhaustive knowledge of the incident is due both to his studies and to his numerous encounters with soldiers or relatives of soldiers present at the incident and with other Chinese scholars. He had numerous meetings with Japanese scholars and was very respectful towards Japanese views. He spoke about the incident itself and also discussed its significance in the context of 20th Century Asia. It must be said that he, being a manager in the museum, is a representative for the memorial so it could be suggested he is limited in expressing his own opinions, and doubts regarding the event, and has to be careful with usage of words since it needs to follow the purpose of the museum.
Sankichi Yasui, Marco Polo Bridge Incident (Hong Kong, Kehua Publisher, 1999)
Professor Yasui Sankichi of Kobe University wrote this book for a Japanese audience to present the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as objectively and factually as possible. He was the head of the Japanese China Modern History Research Centre. Published in Hong Kong, the book was translated and directly published without deletion of content. Some errors present in the Japanese edition, published in 1993, were amended for this translation edition, published in 1999, due to newly available information and research. It is dedicated to describing the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and his opinions are based on the numerous quotes from Japanese soldiers and officers present at the Incident , not found in most Chinese books. Thus many valuable insights describing minutia of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident are offered, leading the author to state how “some of my perspectives differ from orthodox Chinese perspectives that may make Chinese readers feel uneasy.” Nevertheless it has been criticized stating that whilst the Sino-Japanese War was a war resulting from Japanese invasion, the cause of the Incident itself was an accident.
393 Words
Analysis:
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident has been regarded as the catalyst for the 8 year Sino-Japanese War and can possibly even be considered the opening of World War II.
Furthermore it was significant in uniting the Chinese people because it was the start of China’s resistance. Chiang Kai-Shek attempted to preserve peace but ultimately recognized the inevitability of war. This incident instigated Chinese citizens to fight against the Japanese invasion.
Although it occurred half a century ago, scholars around the world still have not agreed upon who initiated the incident. Some scholars like Professor Nakumura Akita, Historian Masanori Ito , and Higashinakano Shudo blame Communists for purposely instigating the incident to create chaos between the Nationalists and the Japanese. On the other hand, Orthodox historians like Surugadai University professor Inoue Hisashi, Taiwanese scholar Yunhan Li , and Chinese scholar Sibai Sun claim Japan initiated the incident as a pretext for a full-scale invasion. They state that the Japanese army already fabricated a series of events to reach the surroundings of Beiping, and the Incident was merely a continuation of Japan’s expansion and so the incident of the “lost soldier” was fictitious. Other scholars and historians like Yasui Sankichi and Hattori Takushiro say the initial cause of the incident was completely accidental.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” have been the primary sources of controversy. The Chinese claimed that the Japanese fired the first shot when both sides were negotiating after Colonel Matsui demanded to enter Wanping. Japanese troops claimed that the Chinese fired the first shot around 10:40 when they were manoeuvring west of Marco Polo Bridge. The significance of the “first shot” is that it resulted in a soldier getting lost. The key instigator of the incident rests in the “lost soldier.”
The matter of the lost soldier (2nd Class Private Shimura) is a different story. The Chinese, by all accounts, stated that the Japanese demanded to enter Wanping town to find the lost soldier.
Most Chinese scholars and some Japanese scholars believe that this soldier was discovered to be “lost” at around 10:40 and was reported to the Captain. It can be concluded that Shimura was discovered long before Japanese officials informed Jicha authorities to discuss the issue of the lost soldier. Some Japanese writers question whether Colonel Matsui used the lost soldier as a reason to enter Wanping Town. Scholars like Professor Hata and Professor Nakamura Akira stated that General Jin’s allegation that Colonel Matsui demanded to enter the town due to the lost soldier is false. However, despite the fact that soldiers’ memoirs omitted this event, this incident was announced in 1938’s official symposium, and telegrams sent between Chinese officials show that his disappearance was indeed a reason for Japanese officials to enter the town.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” were occasional incidents in themselves and they were not orchestrated, but Company Commander Shimizu Setsuro’s demand of Chinese troops to retreat from Marco Polo Bridge or otherwise be attacked was a very provocative move that lead to conflict. Author Iris Chang stated this move was provoking a full-scale war with China. He, along with Japanese troops, exploited these accidents and Konoe cabinet’s decision to send another 3 divisions within days also demonstrates Japan’s ambitions to expand since it also follows, as argued by as Dexin Cai. However, scholars like Shougang Zhang and Shengze Zhang argue that both governments attempted to avoid war to some levels but due their national policies, they had no choice to fight or else be considered a weakling so it ultimately resulted in an all-out war.
597 Words
Conclusion
The first shot starting the Marco Polo Bridge Incident continues to be debated amongst scholars. To this day the war is a major point of contention between China and Japan and remains a major roadblock for Sino-Japanese relations. Wading through the nationalism and ideology that pervades such discussion both sides of the sea of Japan is a minefield and, based on past Japanese actions in Manchuria and the available evidence, it appears that the Japanese troops purposely used the excuse of the lost soldier to attack and occupy Wanping. It can be concluded the Konoe Cabinet, through the deployment of more troops in the days after the Incident, used the opportunity to expand their Manchukuo territories and exploited the originally small event to achieve their aims. The Chinese government, after impassively responding to Japanese interests for the past 8 years, decided finally to defend rather than submit. Both resulted in this minor incident quickly escalating into full-scale war. It can be assumed that even if the Incident did not take place, another minor event would have instigated the war. Tensions were stored already due to series of similar incidents and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident became the trigger.
198 Words
List of Sources
Article
Dong, Linyi, “Why is it that the LuGou Bridge Incident became the beginning of the wars all over the country? Shandong Normal University Newspaper, 4th Edition, 1987.
“From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor, Who was responsible?” ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2007.
Books
Akira, Nakamura. The road to the Greater East Asian War. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1990.
Benson, John, and Takao Matsumura. Japan 1865-1945: From isolation to occupation. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
Brower, Daniel R. The World in the 20th Century-The Age of Global War and Revolution. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1992.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
CPC Central Committee Party School Communist Party Historical Archives Center, The LuGou Bridge Incident and Beijing and Tianjing Anti-Japanese War. Beijing: CPC Central Committee Party School Research, Office 1986.
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the Worlds. London: Penguin Books, 2007.
Harries, Meirion, and Susan Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House, 1991.
Hattori, Takushiro. The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War (1). Yuxiang Zhang, Trans, Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1984.
Hunter, Alan. Peace Studies in the Chinese Century. Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006.
Li, Yunhan. Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Taiwan Dongdatushu Company, 1987.
Liu, Dejun. Research works about Anti-Japanese war, Jinan: Jilu Book Publisher. 2005.
Liu, Yifei. The records of Incident of LuGou Bridge blooded War ---7.7 Incident. Beijing: Tuan Jie Publishers, 1994
McClain, James L. A Modern History, Japan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
New History Textbook 2005 version. Fushosha, 49
Qu, Jiayuan, and Zhaoqin Bai, History about LuGou Bridge Incident, Beijing: Beijing Publishers, 1997.
Rhoads, Murphey, A History of Asia. Lin Huang, trans, Beijing, Hainian Publisher, 2005.
Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Group, 1999.
Sankichi, Yasui. Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Guifang Shi and Xutian Wang, trans. Hong Kong: Kehua Chuban Corporation, 1999.
Shudo, Higashinakano. The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction: A Historian's Quest for the Truth, Sekai Shuppan, Inc, 2005.
Takushiro, Hattori. Great East Asia War History (1). Shangwu Yinshua Guan.
Wu, Yuexing, Zhibo Lin, Hua Lin, and Youyu Liu. Stories of LuGou Bridge Incident. Beijing: Beijing People’s University Publisher, 1987.
Yang, Qing, and Yang Wang. Articles about the Anti-Japanese War during recent 10 years. Beijing: Zhong Gong Dang Shi Chu, 2005.
Zhang, Chunxiang. The Incident of LuGou Bridge and eight-year Anti-Japanese War, Beijing: Beijing Chu Ban She, 1990.
CD-Rom
Encarta 2005 Reference Library. CD-ROM. Microsoft, 2004
Interview
Luo, Cunkang, personal interview, December 25th, 2007.
Magazine
Tucker-Jones, Anthony. “Clash of the Titans.” Military Illustrated Feb 2008: 9.
Pamphlet
Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression Pamphlet, English Edition.
Videos
The records of Anti-Japanese War, Dir Xiaochun You, VCD, Tianjin Taida Audio&Video Distribution Co, 25 July 2007.
Anti-Japanese War, Dir. Ermao Huang, VCD, Guangdong Youlin Audio& Video Distribution Co, 2002.
Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series, Dir. Frank Capra, DVD, Good Times Video, 1943.
Website
“International Sino-Japanese Conference”, 12 February 2008, http://chinajapan.org/articles/10.2/10.2news2-7.pdf
People’s Republic of China Japanese History Editorial Board, 15 Feb, 2008. http://www.chinarshgb.cn/htm/xxjg.html
Qi, Xiaojing, “Japanese Historian stated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident is an inevitable outcome of Japanese’s policy of expansionism and invasion”, October 2007, February 10th, 2008, http://2006.chinataiwan.org/web/webportal/W5272501/Uqxjing/A514011.html,
(http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kyokasho/net21/e_yukou_seimei20001205.htm#++++) 8 February, 2008.
The investigation justifies the number of lives claimed by the Nanjing Massacre in the 1930s. In respond to this assessment, a primary source- a letter written by John Rabe to Hitler, a Chinese documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking, and various perspectives from Chinese and Japanese historians, will be examined. Two of the sources in this investigation, a letter by John Rabe to Hitler in 1938, and a documentary novel called the Rape of Nanking composed by Iris Chang, will be accessed through origin, purpose, value, and limitation.
B.
In December 1937 the Japanese army marched into the Nanjing city beginning a reign of terror. “The troops murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in horrific ways.” It was estimated the duration of the war had culminated in the death of twenty million Chinese. The city was practically collapsed into a defenseless habitat as “the government left Nanjing defenseless declaring it to be an “open city””. This therefore ensured massacres to prevail in all areas within and around the city. Since then, controversy aroused between groups from mainly China and Japan surrounds the number of people massacred by the Japanese troops during the years of the massacre. In one case a Chinese-German-made film called 拉贝日记 (John Rabe) has revealed the fact 300,000 people were killed when its film critic Song Ziwen asserts on the state-run Xinmin website, “'We always emphasize that 300,000 people were killed.” Similarily, numbers of Chinese official documents/historians point to the fact of apporximatly 300,000 deaths. Wu Tienwei, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University, estimates a death toll of above 300,000. Sun Zhaiwei, a historian at the Jiangsu Acedemy of Social Sciences, concludes a number closing to 380,000. Contradictary, John Rabe’s diary and several Japanese historians have asserted realtively low figures compared to those submitted by the Chinese. In a letter addressing to Hitler from John Rabe in 1938 he stated, “We foreigners view the figure as having been from about 50,000 to 60,000.” Japanese historian, Hata Ikuhiko, argued a death toll of approxmaitely 38000 to 42000 whereas he regarded the Chinese estimate of 300,000 deaths as exaggerdated. Moreover, Fujiwara Akira, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, has come up with an estimation of 200,000 deaths.
C.
The first source to be evaluated according to its origin, purpose, value, and limitation is a primary source, a letter written in June 1938 by John Rabe to Hitler. The letter upholds a purpose “to persuade Hitler to intervene and stop the inhuman acts of violence committed by the Japanese.” The value of it lies in the fact it is a primary source written by an eye witness of the massacre. Moreover, its weight was shown when it was aimed at addressing to Hitler himself. The limitation of it is it failed to observe the full duration of the Nanjing Massacre since John Rabe left Nanjing in February 1938. The letter hasn’t been verified by any authority but exclusively accounted from the view of a foreigner whose observation in the area had been limited. The second source to be evaluated is an English history documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking. Its purpose is to narrate the events of the massacre from perspectives of the Japanese military, Chinese victims, and westerners. Its value is shown in its ability to blend in three various aspects to reconstruct a wider and more realistic context of history. It was also the “first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city.” The limitation is the book procured the information through various sources instead of first hand experiences. The book has been criticized for its nature of “seriously flawed” and “full of misinformation and harebrained explanations.” This’ perhaps due to the fact she lacks the experience with the subject matter.
D.
The majority of the Chinese historians share a similar perspective on the fact of approximately 300,000 people were massacred throughout the course. Such fact is that certain of them based their research on the official Chinese burial records. Many people were desperate in dodging the gun fire by diving into the water while the fire persisted. This certainly would challenge the reliability of the burial records since some bodies might have been washed away or sunken to the riverbed. This inaccuracy also applies to the circumstance when gasoline was being set fire on corpses. Some experts including those from Japan have questioned the reliability of the 300,000 figure in areas concerning of double counting, and miscounting. The fact burial records were exclusively acquired from burial grounds miles away from the seashore; this therefore eliminated the possibility of taking into account of those corpses that were washed onshore then buried on spot. There were people questioning if 300,000 people existed inside the Nanking city after the Japanese troops marched in. This query was contradicted by numbers of Chinese official documents stating the number of people inside the city at that time were approximately 500,000. Nevertheless, although those factors stated above are influential to the death toll of 300,000, there still existed an uncertainty of whether those assumptions actually took place during the massacre for most of them were theories and infer. Contrary, the estimation of 300,000 deaths was reinforced by numerous primary elements. Interviews were conducted on 1,700 survivors of the massacre and arrived at a conclusion of 340,000 deaths. There was one case when the Japanese foreign minister Hirota Koki in January 1938 ordered to forward a telegram to America informing no less than 300,000 people were killed. And that was only the first month of the massacre. This is very ponderous evidence since it was devised by Japanese at that time.
Drawing to a conclusion from the analysis carried out, there is a higher possibility the 300,000 death toll is comparatively justified than the other assumptions. As have been briefly mentioned above, relatively low figures are often based on imaginative factors and theories such as double counting, miscounting, and so on, whereas the 300,000 death toll is closely associated with researches and investigations that were carried out practically namely interviews, and most importantly the recognition of certain Japanese officials.
Japanese wartime atrocities
No combatant in the Second World War more routinely perpetrated battlefield atrocities—abuses committed against enemy soldiers—than the Japanese. And while no atrocity of World War II was of greater enormity than the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese also perpetrated war crimes against civil- ian populations in occupied countries. Collectively, these may have killed even more people than the atrocities committed by the forces of Hitler’s Germany.
Whereas German war crimes and persecutions may be attributed in some part to Nazi racial mythology, which classified Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other groups as racially inferior and even sub- human, Japanese abuses may in significant part be ascribed to Bushido, the traditional warrior code of the Samurai, which defined surrender, not death, in battle as the greatest of disgraces. Bushido gave victors absolute power over those captured or conquered, who, having suffered the ultimate disgrace in surrendering rather than fighting to the death, were legitimately liable to whatever mistreatment the victor chose to mete out.
Although both the German and the Japanese officers and troops accused of war crimes were tried by Allied tribunals after the war, the Japanese atrocities are not nearly as well documented as those perpetrated by the Germans, and the numbers involved are widely disputed, some authorities claiming that Chinese civilian casualties during 1937–45 (and including those incurred during the Sino-Japanese War) numbered some 30 million killed. Many civilians died of neglect, starvation, and disease; many, however, were murdered outright or subjected to rape, torture, medical experimentation, and experimentation related to biological warfare. While German atrocities were committed against civilians on a genocidal scale comparable to that of the Japanese atrocities, German military commanders typically attempted to treat military prisoners of war (POW)
with a degree of honour, except in the case of Soviet POWs. In contrast, Japanese commanders, observing Bushido, deliberately abused, neglected, enslaved, and tortured prisoners of war, for example, the Bataan Death March. Less well known than the infamous Japanese POW camps were the prison ships on which the Japanese transported thousands of Allied prisoners. Conditions onboard were appalling, as prisoners were crammed into the cargo holds of decrepit and marginally seaworthy freighters and supplied with little food and water and no sanitary facilities. Many died of this treatment alone. As usual, guards were, in the main, sadistic and abusive. Because the prison ships were unmarked and appeared to Allied submarines and other warships and aircraft as nothing more or less than enemy freighters, they were frequently attacked and sunk, with the loss of most or all aboard.
The most infamous instances of Japanese atrocities include:
1. The Rape of Nanking, in which 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed, began in December 1937. Modes of murder included torture, immolation, burial alive, and beheading in addition to simple shooting. Among those killed in actual combat during the Japanese invasion of northern China, some were victims of biological warfare agents.
2. At Tol Plantation, in Rabaul (on New Britain in the Solomon Islands chain), Japanese troops shot or bayoneted more than 100 Australian troops during February 1942 after they surrendered.
3. On Ballalae Island in the Solomons, between 1942 and the end of the war, 516 British POWs perished under forced labour. They had been transported from the Fall of Singapore to Ballalae to build an airstrip. This figure represents a 100 percent casualty rate.
4. In China’s Kinso and Chekiang Provinces, Japa- nese troops exacted terrible reprisals against Chinese civilians after the capture (and summary execution) of three U.S. airmen who had crash landed after the successful Doolittle Tokyo Raid. During their hunt for other Doolittle raiders, Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese and razed entire villages.
5. On Ambon Island in the Dutch East Indies, Japanese troops beheaded more than 200 Australian and Dutch POWs during February 1943.
6. In January 1943, following the valiant defence of Wake Island by U.S. Marines and civilian contractors, the finally victorious Japanese machine gunned 98 of the American contractors, who had been building the island’s military facilities.
7. During June 1945, at Kalagon, Burma (modern Myanmar), Japanese troops on the hunt for British-led Burmese guerrillas surrounded the village and bayoneted or shot to death more than 600 villagers.
8. At Sandakan, North Borneo, during this same month, some 2,000 British and Austra- lian POWs died. Most had been starved or marched to death, others succumbed to disease, and many were simply murdered. Here also, some 4,000 Javanese civilians died under Japanese enslavement as labourers.
9. In July, at Loa Kulu, Borneo, Japanese soldiers brutally murdered 140 men, then seized their wives and children, many of whom were thrown to their deaths down a deep mine shaft.
10. In this same month, at Cheribon, Java, Japanese naval personnel herded 90 civilian prison- ers onto the deck of a submarine, sailed, then submerged, leaving the men, women, and children to drown or to be attacked by sharks. A single badly injured survivor of a shark attack lived just long enough to report what had happened.
11. Yet another war crime was the rape of thousands of so-called comfort women, women forced into sexual slavery to serve the sexual needs of Japanese troops at designated military “comfort stations.” Most of these women were Korean, but they were transported to outposts on many fronts. Japanese warrior tradition held that sex before battle had talismanic or magical properties that could protect against injury or death.
Bibliography
Further reading: Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Penguin, 1998; Daws, Gavin. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. New York: Perennial, 1996; Hicks, George L. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York: Norton, 1997; Pearson, Judith. Belly of the Beast: A POW’s Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival Aboard the Infamous WWII Japanese Hellship, the Oryoku Maru. New York: New American Library, 2001; Tanaka, Yuki, and Toshiyuki Tanaka. Hid- den Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Denver: Westview Press, 1998.
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
Plan of Investigation
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place July 7th, 1937. Japanese and Chinese scholars hold diametrically opposing views of what actually occurred throughout the course of the incident; the one fact most agree on is that it became the cassus belli of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. From the Mukden Incident of 1931, tensions between Japan and China escalated and this latest Incident served as “the trigger for the Sino-Japanese War.” Analysis of contemporary Japanese, Chinese and Western historians’ books, study of the memoirs and statements made by actual combatants and participants on both sides, and a personal interview with a very knowledgeable Chinese scholar is hoped to disclose Marco Polo Bridge Incident’s course of the event, focusing on its causes, the mysteries around the “first shot” and the so called “lost soldier”, and the subsequent events following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
155 Words
Summary of Evidence
To determine the extent to which the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a deliberate act of Japanese aggression or an unfortunate series of misunderstandings, one must understand both the preceding events and the course of the events itself.
Preceding Events:
China in the 1930s was tumultuous due to the Civil War between Nationalists and Communists. During the Central Plains War, Japan fabricated the Mukden Incident and set up Manchukuo in Manchuria. Between February and May of 1933, the Kwantung Army began its offensive in Rehe Province and signing the Tanggu Truce on May 31st, recognising Rehe Province as part of Manchukuo. In June of 1935, the He-Umezu Agreement was signed, forcing the Nationalist government to leave Hebei Province, allowing Japanese troops to control areas around Beiping, (situated in Hebei Province). In June that same year, 6000 additional soldiers were stationed in the Hebei area adding to a total of 8400 soldiers.
The Course of Marco Polo Bridge Incident
From May 1937, Japanese troops in Fengtai conducted daily and nightly military exercises at a wasteland 1 kilometre north of Wanping Town. Foreign powers were allowed to hold military manoeuvres without informing the authorities provided they used blank ammunition. However, on July 7th Chinese troops reported to their brigade commander that Japanese troops were armed with live ammunition and their manoeuvres were different from usual; Japanese troops from the 7th and 8th Companies had stopped manoeuvres around 10:30 PM. At 10:40, Private 2nd Class Shimura was reported to be missing. A Japanese agent telephoned Jicha authorities to claim that while the 1st company was manoeuvring, shots were fired at them from the Chinese garrison in Wanping creating chaos, and they needed to enter Wanping Town to search for this lost soldier. If prevented, Japanese armed troops would enter. Chinese troops subsequently reported Japanese troops approaching Wanping Town but the Chinese officers in Wanping allowed Japanese commanders to enter the town to search unmolested. Either during or immediately after negotiations, Japanese troops began to shoot at Chinese troops situated at Marco Polo Bridge.
Negotiations resumed after fighting came to a halt at 9 AM on the 8th, but broke down shortly afterwards. A stalemate continued until Japanese infantry reinforcement arrived around 3:00 PM and captured the bridge. Negotiations offered by the Japanese with the demand that Chinese troops retreat from the Left Shore were rejected. . Fighting ensued, and the Chinese re-captured the bridge at 9AM on the 9th.
By the 10th, Japanese troops severed all routes connecting Wanping to Beiping and Japanese reinforcements, including heavy artillery, planes, and tanks, were transported to the area. On that day, the Japanese chief of staff listed 4 requirements for Chinese troops to prevent further fighting:
Apologise to the Japanese Armies and punish those responsible.
Take action against those who initiated the incident.
Chinese troops around Marco Polo Bridge should be removed.
Ban all Communist and anti-Japanese Organizations.
On July 11th, General Zhang signed the agreement with Colonel Matsui. That same day, the Konoe Cabinet sent three divisions to Northern China. The Nationalist government still attempted to negotiate through 3rd parties. Chiang made a speech on the 17th providing 4 solutions to the problem and decided not to declare war. On the 19th, General Zhang agreed to a similar agreement. After taking over Marco Polo Bridge after a fierce battle erupted on the 21st, Japan launched an attack on Beijing, capturing it on July 27th. Chiang realized that war was unavoidable and resistance officially began. Within a month the Chinese General Headquarters declared a general mobilization.
596 Words
Evaluation of Sources:
Interview on December 25th, 2007 with Luo Cunkang, Manager of Research Department at Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression,
Luo Cunkang is one of the spokesman for the only official comprehensive memorial for the “Resistance against Japanese Aggression” in China” , and his role for the interview, as I was referred to him by other museum directors, is to promote the core ethos of the Hall and to provide a general Chinese scholar’s standpoint on this incident, a topic he specializes. His exhaustive knowledge of the incident is due both to his studies and to his numerous encounters with soldiers or relatives of soldiers present at the incident and with other Chinese scholars. He had numerous meetings with Japanese scholars and was very respectful towards Japanese views. He spoke about the incident itself and also discussed its significance in the context of 20th Century Asia. It must be said that he, being a manager in the museum, is a representative for the memorial so it could be suggested he is limited in expressing his own opinions, and doubts regarding the event, and has to be careful with usage of words since it needs to follow the purpose of the museum.
Sankichi Yasui, Marco Polo Bridge Incident (Hong Kong, Kehua Publisher, 1999)
Professor Yasui Sankichi of Kobe University wrote this book for a Japanese audience to present the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as objectively and factually as possible. He was the head of the Japanese China Modern History Research Centre. Published in Hong Kong, the book was translated and directly published without deletion of content. Some errors present in the Japanese edition, published in 1993, were amended for this translation edition, published in 1999, due to newly available information and research. It is dedicated to describing the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and his opinions are based on the numerous quotes from Japanese soldiers and officers present at the Incident , not found in most Chinese books. Thus many valuable insights describing minutia of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident are offered, leading the author to state how “some of my perspectives differ from orthodox Chinese perspectives that may make Chinese readers feel uneasy.” Nevertheless it has been criticized stating that whilst the Sino-Japanese War was a war resulting from Japanese invasion, the cause of the Incident itself was an accident.
393 Words
Analysis:
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident has been regarded as the catalyst for the 8 year Sino-Japanese War and can possibly even be considered the opening of World War II.
Furthermore it was significant in uniting the Chinese people because it was the start of China’s resistance. Chiang Kai-Shek attempted to preserve peace but ultimately recognized the inevitability of war. This incident instigated Chinese citizens to fight against the Japanese invasion.
Although it occurred half a century ago, scholars around the world still have not agreed upon who initiated the incident. Some scholars like Professor Nakumura Akita, Historian Masanori Ito , and Higashinakano Shudo blame Communists for purposely instigating the incident to create chaos between the Nationalists and the Japanese. On the other hand, Orthodox historians like Surugadai University professor Inoue Hisashi, Taiwanese scholar Yunhan Li , and Chinese scholar Sibai Sun claim Japan initiated the incident as a pretext for a full-scale invasion. They state that the Japanese army already fabricated a series of events to reach the surroundings of Beiping, and the Incident was merely a continuation of Japan’s expansion and so the incident of the “lost soldier” was fictitious. Other scholars and historians like Yasui Sankichi and Hattori Takushiro say the initial cause of the incident was completely accidental.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” have been the primary sources of controversy. The Chinese claimed that the Japanese fired the first shot when both sides were negotiating after Colonel Matsui demanded to enter Wanping. Japanese troops claimed that the Chinese fired the first shot around 10:40 when they were manoeuvring west of Marco Polo Bridge. The significance of the “first shot” is that it resulted in a soldier getting lost. The key instigator of the incident rests in the “lost soldier.”
The matter of the lost soldier (2nd Class Private Shimura) is a different story. The Chinese, by all accounts, stated that the Japanese demanded to enter Wanping town to find the lost soldier.
Most Chinese scholars and some Japanese scholars believe that this soldier was discovered to be “lost” at around 10:40 and was reported to the Captain. It can be concluded that Shimura was discovered long before Japanese officials informed Jicha authorities to discuss the issue of the lost soldier. Some Japanese writers question whether Colonel Matsui used the lost soldier as a reason to enter Wanping Town. Scholars like Professor Hata and Professor Nakamura Akira stated that General Jin’s allegation that Colonel Matsui demanded to enter the town due to the lost soldier is false. However, despite the fact that soldiers’ memoirs omitted this event, this incident was announced in 1938’s official symposium, and telegrams sent between Chinese officials show that his disappearance was indeed a reason for Japanese officials to enter the town.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” were occasional incidents in themselves and they were not orchestrated, but Company Commander Shimizu Setsuro’s demand of Chinese troops to retreat from Marco Polo Bridge or otherwise be attacked was a very provocative move that lead to conflict. Author Iris Chang stated this move was provoking a full-scale war with China. He, along with Japanese troops, exploited these accidents and Konoe cabinet’s decision to send another 3 divisions within days also demonstrates Japan’s ambitions to expand since it also follows, as argued by as Dexin Cai. However, scholars like Shougang Zhang and Shengze Zhang argue that both governments attempted to avoid war to some levels but due their national policies, they had no choice to fight or else be considered a weakling so it ultimately resulted in an all-out war.
597 Words
Conclusion
The first shot starting the Marco Polo Bridge Incident continues to be debated amongst scholars. To this day the war is a major point of contention between China and Japan and remains a major roadblock for Sino-Japanese relations. Wading through the nationalism and ideology that pervades such discussion both sides of the sea of Japan is a minefield and, based on past Japanese actions in Manchuria and the available evidence, it appears that the Japanese troops purposely used the excuse of the lost soldier to attack and occupy Wanping. It can be concluded the Konoe Cabinet, through the deployment of more troops in the days after the Incident, used the opportunity to expand their Manchukuo territories and exploited the originally small event to achieve their aims. The Chinese government, after impassively responding to Japanese interests for the past 8 years, decided finally to defend rather than submit. Both resulted in this minor incident quickly escalating into full-scale war. It can be assumed that even if the Incident did not take place, another minor event would have instigated the war. Tensions were stored already due to series of similar incidents and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident became the trigger.
198 Words
List of Sources
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Dong, Linyi, “Why is it that the LuGou Bridge Incident became the beginning of the wars all over the country? Shandong Normal University Newspaper, 4th Edition, 1987.
“From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor, Who was responsible?” ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2007.
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Akira, Nakamura. The road to the Greater East Asian War. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1990.
Benson, John, and Takao Matsumura. Japan 1865-1945: From isolation to occupation. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
Brower, Daniel R. The World in the 20th Century-The Age of Global War and Revolution. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1992.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
CPC Central Committee Party School Communist Party Historical Archives Center, The LuGou Bridge Incident and Beijing and Tianjing Anti-Japanese War. Beijing: CPC Central Committee Party School Research, Office 1986.
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the Worlds. London: Penguin Books, 2007.
Harries, Meirion, and Susan Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House, 1991.
Hattori, Takushiro. The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War (1). Yuxiang Zhang, Trans, Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1984.
Hunter, Alan. Peace Studies in the Chinese Century. Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006.
Li, Yunhan. Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Taiwan Dongdatushu Company, 1987.
Liu, Dejun. Research works about Anti-Japanese war, Jinan: Jilu Book Publisher. 2005.
Liu, Yifei. The records of Incident of LuGou Bridge blooded War ---7.7 Incident. Beijing: Tuan Jie Publishers, 1994
McClain, James L. A Modern History, Japan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
New History Textbook 2005 version. Fushosha, 49
Qu, Jiayuan, and Zhaoqin Bai, History about LuGou Bridge Incident, Beijing: Beijing Publishers, 1997.
Rhoads, Murphey, A History of Asia. Lin Huang, trans, Beijing, Hainian Publisher, 2005.
Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Group, 1999.
Sankichi, Yasui. Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Guifang Shi and Xutian Wang, trans. Hong Kong: Kehua Chuban Corporation, 1999.
Shudo, Higashinakano. The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction: A Historian's Quest for the Truth, Sekai Shuppan, Inc, 2005.
Takushiro, Hattori. Great East Asia War History (1). Shangwu Yinshua Guan.
Wu, Yuexing, Zhibo Lin, Hua Lin, and Youyu Liu. Stories of LuGou Bridge Incident. Beijing: Beijing People’s University Publisher, 1987.
Yang, Qing, and Yang Wang. Articles about the Anti-Japanese War during recent 10 years. Beijing: Zhong Gong Dang Shi Chu, 2005.
Zhang, Chunxiang. The Incident of LuGou Bridge and eight-year Anti-Japanese War, Beijing: Beijing Chu Ban She, 1990.
CD-Rom
Encarta 2005 Reference Library. CD-ROM. Microsoft, 2004
Interview
Luo, Cunkang, personal interview, December 25th, 2007.
Magazine
Tucker-Jones, Anthony. “Clash of the Titans.” Military Illustrated Feb 2008: 9.
Pamphlet
Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression Pamphlet, English Edition.
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The records of Anti-Japanese War, Dir Xiaochun You, VCD, Tianjin Taida Audio&Video Distribution Co, 25 July 2007.
Anti-Japanese War, Dir. Ermao Huang, VCD, Guangdong Youlin Audio& Video Distribution Co, 2002.
Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series, Dir. Frank Capra, DVD, Good Times Video, 1943.
Website
“International Sino-Japanese Conference”, 12 February 2008, http://chinajapan.org/articles/10.2/10.2news2-7.pdf
People’s Republic of China Japanese History Editorial Board, 15 Feb, 2008. http://www.chinarshgb.cn/htm/xxjg.html
Qi, Xiaojing, “Japanese Historian stated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident is an inevitable outcome of Japanese’s policy of expansionism and invasion”, October 2007, February 10th, 2008, http://2006.chinataiwan.org/web/webportal/W5272501/Uqxjing/A514011.html,
(http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kyokasho/net21/e_yukou_seimei20001205.htm#++++) 8 February, 2008.
To what extent was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 a result of the AVO’S violent regime in Hungary?
This investigation aims to cover the events leading up to and after the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and to see whether or not the AVO (Hungarian Secret Police) were responsible for the swift break out of protesting that occurred among Hungarian workers, students and normal citizens. The main body of the essay describes and gives evidence of the AVO’S actions towards the Hungarian people and why they were such an influential force in pushing the people towards revolution. The essay will also show direct accounts of normal Hungarian people and important national figures that were victims of the AVO (Hungarian Secret Police). A brief history of the AVO will be presented, so as the reader can see for themselves why the Hungarian people revolted and lived in constant fear of the AVO. The two main sources, George Paloczi-Horvath’s account of his arrest by the Hungarian Secret police, published in the Daily Herald (11th December 1956) and Peter Fryer, Hungarian Tragedy (1956) will be both assessed in terms of their value, origins and purpose.
When Hungary was among the defeated countries after the Second World War (1945), the USSR in their words liberated the country and introduced their form of Stalinism to Hungary and other Eastern European countries. Unfortunately this so-called liberation was the complete opposite of freedom. Now Hungary was a puppet regime of the strong Soviet Union and the people were then subjected to no rights, no freedom of speech and constant food shortages. The oppression, which had been supervised by the communist Soviet Union-in the defeated and occupied Hungary-was one of the most cruel and dreadful 50 years of coercion in Hungarian History. The communist regime had trampled underfoot all the human and constitutional rights of the once democratic Hungary. Russia and its communist ideology were feared by most of the European nations, but not all the countries enjoyed distinctive attention. To realize the attention towards Hungary, The Russians started to emerge into Hungary’s life and political system from several sides; one side was of the development of the AVO (Allamvedelmi Osztaly).
The AVO, later named the AVH was founded in 1945. The AVO was organized in accordance with Soviet principles back home. Each satellite country must have a secret police in order to maintain the works of Soviet Communism. From the very beginning of power the AVO succeeded in turning the once democratic Hungary into a strict Communist regime controlled between the Government’s of Moscow and Hungary. As Endre Martin an honest witness of all these events said, “The AVH was organized in accordance with the Soviet Pattern”. To ensure complete power within Hungary, The communist party along with the Hungarian Secret Police prepared it’s plan in detail: “ The essential tasks of the new political system became the eradication of dissent and the mobilization of mass support. To promote these goals they developed an exceedingly high regulative capability which rested in the first instance on the secret police”(Vali 180). The AVO had their own cause completely supported and had detailed records of every citizen and highly effective ways of interrogating and torturing victims and prisoners. All of these aspects caused deep fear and resentment towards the AVO.
Under Stalin, Hungary became a Soviet Satellite against the will of the majority. Those who openly objected were either jailed or subjected to torture under the AVO. In many cases the families of those brave enough to voice their own opinions were also dragged into this mess of Soviet Solutions. It is in this way that the AVO ruled over the people with an iron fist and the people had no choice but to surrender to Soviet Rule.
Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty who had bravely opposed the German Nazi’s and the Hungarian Fascist’s in World War II was arrested by the AVO in December 1948 and was falsely accused of treason. After 5 weeks of brutal torture by the AVO he confessed to the charges put against him and was condemned to life imprisonment. The protest churches were also purged and their leaders were replaced by those remaining to stay loyal to Rakosi’s government.
Most people who entered the AVO were social outcasts or rejects of society. They had few friends and often-felt hate towards the rest of the population. The communist officials would know who these certain people were, seek them out; force them to be candidates to the AVO and them train them to be members of the AVO. After the training, these people eventually became the most brutal of interrogators and torturers.
Often, if you were taken as a prisoner by the AVO, you would be brought into a room with several other prisoners and made to stand in front of a line of AVO guards. The guards then proceeded asking each prisoner which metal pole they would like to be beaten with today. The guards would beat them until completely exhausted and then through the bodies in a bath of acid. In some cases the prisoners would still be conscious upon being thrown into the bath of an acid.
With 30,000 members forming the AVO organization, it is not hard to see why the Hungarian people lived in constant fear of these people. If anyone were even suspected of saying anything against the government they would be tortured until they confessed and then killed.
SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE
The Hungarian revolution of 1956 in retrospect was published in 1977 and was written by Bela K. Kiraly and Paul Jonas, who both lived and worked in Hungary for quite a few years. They’re knowledge of Hungarian history is very extensive and the fact that this book was written nearly 20 years after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 makes this quite a reliable source. The fact that since 1956 new findings about the Hungarian revolution have come out so therefore they’re knowledge of this event would be more extensive than a book that was written say the year or the year after this event took place. The purpose of this book is to give a detailed account of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 in retrospect. The book covers certain areas of the Hungarian people’s struggle for freedom and outlines areas such as intellectual aspects of the Hungarian revolution, economic aspects of the Hungarian revolution, political aspects of the Hungarian Revolution, international aspects of the Hungarian revolution and military aspects of the Hungarian revolution. These aspects show how the Hungarian people were deprived of their freedom in many areas and the AVO are specifically talked about in connection with most of these aspects. Bela K. Kiraly, P.H.d, is professor of history, Brooklyn College and Graduate school, City university of New York. In 1956 with the rank of major general, he was commander in chief, national Guard of Hungary; commandant of Budapest; and chairman revolutionary Council of national defense. Paul Jonas, PhD, is professor of economics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The two joint authors positions make them a very valuable source because of their experience with Hungarian affairs and the actual time they worked in Hungary is very influential as the time coincides with the beginning of the Hungarian Revolution.
The Hungarian Secret Police arrested George Paloczi-Horvath in 1949. He wrote about his experiences in the daily herald on 11th of December 1956. His source is very valuable because it gives an eyewitness account into the atrocities committed by the AVO and reading it from someone who was arrested and tortured by the AVO gives the source no limitations what so ever. The fact that this account was published in 1956 directly after the revolution gives the observer a clearer idea as to why the AVO were the ones most responsible for making the Hungarian people’s life a living hell. He gives eyewitness accounts of how he was tortured by the AVO and forced to own up to a crime that he never committed. Like thousands of innocent Hungarian’s, he was a helpless victim of the AVO and their torture chambers.
The Hungarian Tragedy by Peter Fryer was published in December of 1956 and gives a detailed account of the events that happened throughout the Hungarian Revolution. This source is very reliable as it was written by a noted expert on Hungarian affairs and was also published only a short while after the revolution took place. The book is very detailed and has eyewitness accounts of events that the author had witnessed while in Hungary. The fact that the author was in Hungary make the events more clear to the reader because they have not been filtered over and over and had the actual events inaccurately published.
ANALYSIS
One of the difficulties about analyzing the events of the Hungarian revolution, or in this case the
AVO’S role in instigating the speed of which the revolution broke out is that there are many sources available, but difficulty in finding which one is reliable or not to the reader. Some sources have been published by Hungarian writers who give their accounts of what happened and some by western writers who witnessed all these events on a television screen in the comfort of their own home. There is a chance that some works published by Hungarians could contain bias nature because of the Hungarian people’s loathing for the Soviet Government and the AVO (Hungarian secret police). Sources published in Hungary may also be subject to censorship or falsification as the government keep a watchful eye on what is being published in a hard line communist country such as Hungary.
There is definite evidence to support the argument that the AVO was most responsible for the Hungarian’s revolting when they did. Had they’re been no Secret Police the people would still have been living under a communist government but what not have to fear opening their mouths or getting falsely convicted of a crime they did not commit. George Paloczi-Horvath states in his article about the AVO published in the Daily Herald that “ Like many others, I was arrested by the AVO in 1949” “ I believed that we would be able to assert our innocence. But I soon found out that our fate was worse than if we had been found guilty, because we had nothing to give away in the torture chambers. I was thrown into an icy cell cubicle 3 yards by four. There was a wooden plank for a bed, and a bright naked light glared in my face day and night. Later, it was a great relief to return to this bleak place” This is evidence of the Hungarians hatred towards the AVO. They would show up unexpectedly at people’s houses and take who ever they thought may be guilty. The person/person’s captured would be tortured both physically and mentally until they confessed to crimes they never committed. The reason the Hungarian people needed to revolt against the government was that they were living each day petrified of what might happen to them or their family and this aspect I believe, left them no choice but to revolt in 1956.
CONCLUSION
The Hungarian revolution of 1956 was to a very large extent a direct result of the AVO’S actions towards their own citizens. If a person wakes up every day wondering when their time will come for arrest and torture it will destroy the human mind more so than having little food or no proper shelter to live in. A person’s greatest fear is that of death and more so of a painful death, which the AVO were most notorious for. This organization killed people every day and no trouble with it, so in this case the Hungarians were victims of their tyranny upon a nation. It is this compelling fear of the AVO that I believe so swiftly instigated the revolt against the Hungarian Government and the AVO.
The West was responsible for the deaths in Hungary in 1956
When Hungary was among the defeated countries after the Second World War (1945), the USSR in their words liberated the country and introduced their form of Stalinism to Hungary and other Eastern European countries. Unfortunately this so-called liberation was the complete opposite of freedom. Now Hungary was a puppet regime of the strong Soviet Union and the people were then subjected to no rights, no freedom of speech and constant food shortages. The oppression, which had been supervised by the communist Soviet Union-in the defeated and occupied Hungary-was one of the most cruel and dreadful 50 years of coercion in Hungarian History. The communist regime had trampled underfoot all the human and constitutional rights of the once democratic Hungary. Russia and its communist ideology were feared by most of the European nations, but not all the countries enjoyed distinctive attention. To realize the attention towards Hungary, The Russians started to emerge into Hungary’s life and political system from several sides; one side was of the development of the AVO (Allamvedelmi Osztaly).
The AVO, later named the AVH was founded in 1945. The AVO was organized in accordance with Soviet principles back home. Each satellite country must have a secret police in order to maintain the works of Soviet Communism. From the very beginning of power the AVO succeeded in turning the once democratic Hungary into a strict Communist regime controlled between the Government’s of Moscow and Hungary. As Endre Martin an honest witness of all these events said, “The AVH was organized in accordance with the Soviet Pattern”. To ensure complete power within Hungary, The communist party along with the Hungarian Secret Police prepared it’s plan in detail: “ The essential tasks of the new political system became the eradication of dissent and the mobilization of mass support. To promote these goals they developed an exceedingly high regulative capability which rested in the first instance on the secret police”(Vali 180). The AVO had their own cause completely supported and had detailed records of every citizen and highly effective ways of interrogating and torturing victims and prisoners. All of these aspects caused deep fear and resentment towards the AVO.
Under Stalin, Hungary became a Soviet Satellite against the will of the majority. Those who openly objected were either jailed or subjected to torture under the AVO. In many cases the families of those brave enough to voice their own opinions were also dragged into this mess of Soviet Solutions. It is in this way that the AVO ruled over the people with an iron fist and the people had no choice but to surrender to Soviet Rule.
Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty who had bravely opposed the German Nazi’s and the Hungarian Fascist’s in World War II was arrested by the AVO in December 1948 and was falsely accused of treason. After 5 weeks of brutal torture by the AVO he confessed to the charges put against him and was condemned to life imprisonment. The protest churches were also purged and their leaders were replaced by those remaining to stay loyal to Rakosi’s government.
Most people who entered the AVO were social outcasts or rejects of society. They had few friends and often-felt hate towards the rest of the population. The communist officials would know who these certain people were, seek them out; force them to be candidates to the AVO and them train them to be members of the AVO. After the training, these people eventually became the most brutal of interrogators and torturers.
Often, if you were taken as a prisoner by the AVO, you would be brought into a room with several other prisoners and made to stand in front of a line of AVO guards. The guards then proceeded asking each prisoner which metal pole they would like to be beaten with today. The guards would beat them until completely exhausted and then through the bodies in a bath of acid. In some cases the prisoners would still be conscious upon being thrown into the bath of an acid.
With 30,000 members forming the AVO organization, it is not hard to see why the Hungarian people lived in constant fear of these people. If anyone were even suspected of saying anything against the government they would be tortured until they confessed and then killed.
SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE
The Hungarian revolution of 1956 in retrospect was published in 1977 and was written by Bela K. Kiraly and Paul Jonas, who both lived and worked in Hungary for quite a few years. They’re knowledge of Hungarian history is very extensive and the fact that this book was written nearly 20 years after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 makes this quite a reliable source. The fact that since 1956 new findings about the Hungarian revolution have come out so therefore they’re knowledge of this event would be more extensive than a book that was written say the year or the year after this event took place. The purpose of this book is to give a detailed account of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 in retrospect. The book covers certain areas of the Hungarian people’s struggle for freedom and outlines areas such as intellectual aspects of the Hungarian revolution, economic aspects of the Hungarian revolution, political aspects of the Hungarian Revolution, international aspects of the Hungarian revolution and military aspects of the Hungarian revolution. These aspects show how the Hungarian people were deprived of their freedom in many areas and the AVO are specifically talked about in connection with most of these aspects. Bela K. Kiraly, P.H.d, is professor of history, Brooklyn College and Graduate school, City university of New York. In 1956 with the rank of major general, he was commander in chief, national Guard of Hungary; commandant of Budapest; and chairman revolutionary Council of national defense. Paul Jonas, PhD, is professor of economics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The two joint authors positions make them a very valuable source because of their experience with Hungarian affairs and the actual time they worked in Hungary is very influential as the time coincides with the beginning of the Hungarian Revolution.
The Hungarian Secret Police arrested George Paloczi-Horvath in 1949. He wrote about his experiences in the daily herald on 11th of December 1956. His source is very valuable because it gives an eyewitness account into the atrocities committed by the AVO and reading it from someone who was arrested and tortured by the AVO gives the source no limitations what so ever. The fact that this account was published in 1956 directly after the revolution gives the observer a clearer idea as to why the AVO were the ones most responsible for making the Hungarian people’s life a living hell. He gives eyewitness accounts of how he was tortured by the AVO and forced to own up to a crime that he never committed. Like thousands of innocent Hungarian’s, he was a helpless victim of the AVO and their torture chambers.
The Hungarian Tragedy by Peter Fryer was published in December of 1956 and gives a detailed account of the events that happened throughout the Hungarian Revolution. This source is very reliable as it was written by a noted expert on Hungarian affairs and was also published only a short while after the revolution took place. The book is very detailed and has eyewitness accounts of events that the author had witnessed while in Hungary. The fact that the author was in Hungary make the events more clear to the reader because they have not been filtered over and over and had the actual events inaccurately published.
ANALYSIS
One of the difficulties about analyzing the events of the Hungarian revolution, or in this case the
AVO’S role in instigating the speed of which the revolution broke out is that there are many sources available, but difficulty in finding which one is reliable or not to the reader. Some sources have been published by Hungarian writers who give their accounts of what happened and some by western writers who witnessed all these events on a television screen in the comfort of their own home. There is a chance that some works published by Hungarians could contain bias nature because of the Hungarian people’s loathing for the Soviet Government and the AVO (Hungarian secret police). Sources published in Hungary may also be subject to censorship or falsification as the government keep a watchful eye on what is being published in a hard line communist country such as Hungary.
There is definite evidence to support the argument that the AVO was most responsible for the Hungarian’s revolting when they did. Had they’re been no Secret Police the people would still have been living under a communist government but what not have to fear opening their mouths or getting falsely convicted of a crime they did not commit. George Paloczi-Horvath states in his article about the AVO published in the Daily Herald that “ Like many others, I was arrested by the AVO in 1949” “ I believed that we would be able to assert our innocence. But I soon found out that our fate was worse than if we had been found guilty, because we had nothing to give away in the torture chambers. I was thrown into an icy cell cubicle 3 yards by four. There was a wooden plank for a bed, and a bright naked light glared in my face day and night. Later, it was a great relief to return to this bleak place” This is evidence of the Hungarians hatred towards the AVO. They would show up unexpectedly at people’s houses and take who ever they thought may be guilty. The person/person’s captured would be tortured both physically and mentally until they confessed to crimes they never committed. The reason the Hungarian people needed to revolt against the government was that they were living each day petrified of what might happen to them or their family and this aspect I believe, left them no choice but to revolt in 1956.
CONCLUSION
The Hungarian revolution of 1956 was to a very large extent a direct result of the AVO’S actions towards their own citizens. If a person wakes up every day wondering when their time will come for arrest and torture it will destroy the human mind more so than having little food or no proper shelter to live in. A person’s greatest fear is that of death and more so of a painful death, which the AVO were most notorious for. This organization killed people every day and no trouble with it, so in this case the Hungarians were victims of their tyranny upon a nation. It is this compelling fear of the AVO that I believe so swiftly instigated the revolt against the Hungarian Government and the AVO.
The West was responsible for the deaths in Hungary in 1956
When the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe during the 1940s, many countries, including Hungary, were plundered for resources and their economies geared toward the benefit of the USSR. Because of this, the people of Hungary had long been dissatisfied with Russian despotism. An attempted revolution occurred in 1956 with a loss of around 27,000 lives. Although the role of the USSR is was significant in initiating the events in Hungary, and thus causing the consequential deaths and destruction, it can be argued that the West was actually responsible for what took place in Hungary. Through negligence, broken promises, and refusal of assistance, the situation in Hungary worsened and revolution was unsuccessful. Hungary could only be freed from the tyranny of the USSR over thirty years later.
At the Yalta Conference in 1945, the West gave power over Hungary to the USSR, the first instance where the West predetermined Hungary¡¯'s fate. During the 1940s and 1950s, US foreign policy had hardened, introducing policies of containment and later rollback to control the stop spread of communism. The year that Hungary had fallen to Soviet control, 1947, was the same year that the Truman Doctrine was announced. US president Harry Truman said, ¡°"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."¡± Yet the US had done nothing to stop the USSR's takeover of Eastern Europe. It seemed that the Truman Doctrine, containment, and Iron Fist approach were all meaningless terms. The US said they would bear the responsibility of keeping free nations from turning communist, but they did not keep to their word.
In Hungary, a number of reasons contributed to the uprising in 1956. One reason was the Hungarians thought the West or UN would be able to assist them in the revolution. Such a presumption is not unjustified, for the Truman Doctrine had stated that it was the duty of the US to help countries against attack of communism. Hungary had been incorporating capitalist ideas - in 1956 the new government had introduced democracy and freedoms (freedom of speech and freedom of religion). It is understandable that they would expect assistance from the largest, wealthiest capitalist country in the world, the US. Yet the US again ignored the Truman Doctrine and did not go in to help Hungary when revolution broke out. Without support the West had promised, Hungary seemed to stand alone to face the USSR.
When the Soviet Red Army entered Hungary, Imre Nagy appealed to the West for help - but the West again refused. Eisenhower didn¡¯'t think Hungary was worth starting a possible world war. In addition, Great Britain and France were preoccupied with the Suez Crisis. A website remarks: "The world was too busy with the Suez Canal Crisis to care much. Oil was apparently regarded as much more valuable than the blood of thousands of Hungarian youths. What is the price of a young life compared to the market value of gasoline?" Hungary's only other hope, the United Nations, was rendered useless since both China and the USSR vetoed any suggestion for action.
The factors above prove that the West played a significant role in determining the fate of Hungary. Hungary was given to the USSR at Yalta; nothing was done when the USSR took over the country by using salami tactics from 1945-1947; and the West refused to aid Hungary in revolution against Soviet domination in 1947. Thus, it can be argued that the West was more responsible for the events that occurred in Hungary, leading to death and suffering and marking Hungary's fate for years to come.
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