DISSIDENT POLISH YOUTHS GIVEN HEAVY SENTENCES
Con May 26, the Paris daily Le Monde reported the arrests of some youths in Poland on political charges, -Among -the accusations _was the charge that they had advanced a program based in part on “the criticisms levelled by Trotsky against the Stalinist system," This was reported in the May 28 World Outlook. Since then, we have received inquiries about further developments. Inasmuch as we have no inside channels of information in this instance, we are compelled to rely on such items in the world press as are called to our attention. The July 30 New York Times (international edition) ran areport on the case by its special correspondent David Halberstam, datelined Warsaw, July 29. The following is the full text.] —
The arrest and sentencing of a prominent young instructor at Warsaw University has underlined one of the dilemmas the Communist party of Poland faces with contemporary youth,
The instructor, Karol Modzelewski, and a graduate student were sentenced to three and one-half and three years, respectively, for disseminating papers that the state judged false and prejudicial, Mr. Modzelewski is the son of the late Zygmunt Modzelewski, Foreign Minister from 1947 to 1951.
Young Mr. Modzelewski, an assistant in philosophy at the university, was a party member .
His case is significant because it comes at a time when the party is concerned by the lack of political enthusiasm among young people. But the case also illustrates the party's sensitivity to anything that challenges the present doctrines -- indeed, sensitivity to the kind of discussion and debate that tends to excite and lure young people into politics,
Mr. Modzelewski was reportedly the leader of a small group of party members, primarily instructors and graduate students, at the university. Several others involved in the case have been — arrested and may be tried later.
Sources said that Mr. Modzelewski was an eager young party member. He was in Italy in 1963 and apparently became interested in some of the ideas being debated within the Italian Communist party and the way in which they were debated,
This kind of debate, he decided, was what was needed among the youth in the Communist party in Poland.
Upon his return, he and several party colleagues began to talk and write on a broad range of political, social and economic
questions facing Poland. Implicit in their talks was the belief that there should be more debate within the party.
Reportedly, there was no main theme to these views -- they ranged from revisionism in some areas to calls for more collectivization in agriculture,
These views were circulated entirely within the party student group. Nonetheless, Mr. Modzelewski and his group were disciplined by the party last fall. They lost their party membership and they were at least threatened with suspension from their university positions.
Mr. Modzelewsk1 and his friends, however, continued to discuss and formulate their ideas in the late winter, this time outside the framework of the party.
This .spring, Mr. Modzelewski and several others were arrested, and last week the Government announced that he had been sentenced to three and one~half years, and a colleague, Jacek Huron, to three, The sentences were considered stiff,
Implicit in the case was a warning to university students and graduate instructors to watch their dissent. But a part of it, too, according to sources, was a warning to sons and daughters of high officials that the Government did not intend to confer political privilege by birth any more than it intended to confer economic privilege by birth.
SWISS GROUP BREAKS WITH PEKING
The Swiss Communist party, which split from the pro-Moscow Labor party and declared itself strongly in favor of Maoism, recently took a new step of considerable interest. It has declared its independence from Peking and has called on "all the revolutionary Marxists" to organize a new "revolutionary International" to bring to-~ gether all the parties and groups desirous of struggling against imperialism,
As reported by Agence France Press in a July 20 dispatch from Geneva, the appeal was strongly directed against the "superiority complexes of Moscow as well as Peking" and rejected the idea of a “pro=Chinese" International.
In fact," the central secretariat of the party declared, "4t is not right for Moscow or Peking to show superiority complexes and under different guises, more or less interested or egocentric, to seize the position of dominators of the Communist world. The two. brother enemies are too anxious to maintain and to deepen their dif-
ferences to have the right. to dominate anyone and to ‘give advice! and orders which they do not follow themselves."
With regard to Moscow, the declaration said, "We think that a .revolution cannot be made along the peaceful road and that peaceful coexistence is a betrayal and a demobilization of the peoples, a slackening of vigilance, as well as a very grave error,"
: As for Peking, the call said that "imperialism is not a-paper tiger and to spread this belief is a very grave error,"
Without directly mentioning the Chinese Communist party. leaders, the document criticized those who issue warnings to aggressors, and held that it would be better ‘*to demonstrate what they are capable of doing."
Concerning Vietnam, the Swiss Communists said: “Hanoi has not hastened to ask for volunteers, Chinese or otherwise. The reasons are known and they are correct. Would Vietnam excite such greed if it were only an improductive desert?"
The Paris daily Le Monde (July 21) devoted a half column to the declaration of the Swiss Communist party, noting that this was the first time that a European Communist party had "so violently attacked both Moscow and Peking" and that it was notable that it proposed "the creation of a new International on a still harder basis than that advocated by Peking."
Eliane Perrin, a sociology student in Geneva, wrote to the editor of Le Monde expressing astonishment that a newspaper "as serious as Le Monde would grant so much space" to the Swiss Commun= ist party which has "at the maximum thirty members and has no weight either in domestic Swiss politics or in international politics.
To this the Swiss Communist party replied in a letter (quoted in Le Monde July 30) that as of July 15, 1965, it had issued 511 membership cards, with a still higher number of sympathizers cards, "after all, we have never pretended to be numbered in the thousands, It is true that when our party was defending only the theses of the Chinese comrades, recruitment was difficult. Now that we have opted for a Communist road adapted to Swiss realities and possibilities, it is much less difficult for us to find new adherents,"
This "Communist road," according to Le Monde, was defined further on in the letter as a "clear and independent line," the signers not desiring "to be either slaves or robots of anyone," The letter also said that in the first part of August a conference was scheduled to be held "somewhere in Europe" at which a new "revolutionary International" would be launched,
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