The Breakup of the Soviet Camp

...True Believers, messianic and chiliastic prophets, will no doubt continue to peddle their wares, but the bulk of the Western working class has lost its appetite for the Second Coming, even as its appetite for worldly goods has increased...

...This is not to say that the Chinese are necessarily at all times bent on aggression or that they are incapable of compromise when the constellation of forces seems to demand it...

...They increasingly perceive the Russians as a have nation...

...The Force of Naflonatlsm Two major reasons for the inadequacy of the static model of world communism can be suggested: an underestimation of the forces of nationalism in the contemporary world, and neglect of problems of effective control which increasing size brings to the fore...

...It seems likely that the Western Communist parties, slowly shedding their dependence on Moscow directives, will not attempt to reintegrate themselves into the constellation of political forces within their own nation-states...

...Total devotions to the state, unquestioned loyalty to the primacy of collective purpose over individual gratification, are functional necessities of totalitarian policies in the early stages of development...

...Once the Russians stressed abundance and affluence as the proximate, and perhaps ultimate, goals of a good society, it became even more difficult to ignore the insistent query of the satellite populations: "Why isn't what's good for the goose just as good for the gander...

...The "span of sympathy" is even narrower than the "span of control...

...Such, however, is emphatically not the case in any of the Communist countries...

...A reversion to the earlier pattern of total Kremlin domination over the satellites seems highly unlikely...

...Control, and Sympathy A major clue to the Sino-Soviet rift can be found in the twin notions of "relative size" and "span of control...

...He suggested that ideological dominance by the Church Fathers of the Kremlin had been used as a cloak to cover realistic power aims of the Russian state...

...Much as it had been assumed that totalitarianism once in power would put an effective stop to the play of antagonistic social forces within a society, so was it assumed that extension of the Soviet sway over previously independent nationstates would put a stop to the play of antagonistic national forces...

...Historians are familiar with the problems of the ancient empires of the East which, be it in China or the Middle East, had always to contend with centrifugal forces undoing the work of the central power...

...And it is probably true that to the Easterner a disaster in California is less `visible" and less "felt" than would be a similar disaster in New York...

...They are all Caesaro-Papist regimes in which priestly (ideological) power is subordinated to worldly (political) power, but where secular authority needs the buttressing of faith in order to maintain legitimacy...

...This view has now turned out to be shortsighted...

...Specific historical and sociological factors account for the different speeds with which nationalist demands developed in most of them...

...The French party is more rigid, but one notices the gradual emergence of parallel tendencies within its ranks...

...The Chinese-oriented movement is likely to have considerable appeal among the underdeveloped nations, though the Russians will not surrender, without a struggle, ideological and political influence within these countries...

...A fanatical purism and "puritanism" corresponds to the needs of the regime...

...As the promised World Empire has fallen heir to the clash and contentions among warring kingdoms, the forces of radical democracy and socialism have won a breathing spell —it will depend on them whether they make use of it...

...But it would seem that Marx, in tune with Manchesterian liberal thought, felt that nationalism as an operative force in the world was bound to decline and in the long run to wither away...

...This turned out to be an egregious error...

...What seems involved here is the notion of the "span of control...

...Yet it would still seem likely that in the long run the Western Communist parties will abandon the Bolshevik organizational structure...

...But when tested in practice it was soon found to be wanting...

...The hopes for a new Russian centralized empire bestriding Eastern, and eventually Western, Europe has turned out to be a pipedream...

...it was in fact a hub of centralizing power which attempted to subjugate all areas it dominated to its designs...

...Who would benefit from a new war...

...Western commentators have in recent years been engaged in what would seem a rather Byzantine dispute on whether the Sino-Soviet rift ought to be explained by ideological factors or by claims of national interests...

...By a curious paradox both proponents and opponents of World Communism have in the past often shared a similar view of the extension of Communism on the world scene...

...This general tendency could only be reinforced at a moment in time when Khrushchev had whetted the appetite of Soviet citizens for consumer goods, when visions of affluence began to dance before their eyes...

...Mao made "exaggerated" claims to scarce and valued Soviet resources and at the same time suggested policies which endangered the precarious peace...

...But in the face of the Soviet phenomenon, radicals, it must be admitted, have been prone till very recently to accept the static assumptions of the academic and diplomatic Establishment...

...The belligerent stance of the Maoists must be deeply unsettling for Russian policy-makers and population alike...

...They saw it spreading, like a huge inkblot, from the Russian heartland into wider and wider areas, and while they naturally disagreed on whether or how further expansion could be checked, neither seems to have been much concerned with locating the sources for internal contradictions and conflicts among the component elements of the Soviet bloc...

...The fact is, however, that it is neither...

...He urged instead that the Communist movement be reconstituted as an alliance of parties that were in principle recognized as independent equals, even though they must accept the ideological authority of Moscow...

...The Russian policy-makers had proclaimed this new "goulash" vision of Communism precisely because they felt an increasing pressure from their "constituents...

...This is not the place for detail about the differences in the evolution of satellite politics in the fifties and early sixties...

...The Chinese model can have little appeal among the working class in the industrialized nations of the West...

...The Sino-Soviet Rift—The Chinese Case The European satellites strive for greater independence from Russia...

...They are likely to be relatively unsuccessful, however, in the industrialized and developed areas of the Western world...

...Its insistence on fanatical devotion to the Party and the state, its puritanical bent, has little to offer to Western workers who participate or are about to participate in the benefits the affluent society has to offer...

...The centralistic and totalitarian form of organization which marked these parties in the past was originally justified by the need to forge an instrument for the revolutionary road to power, and to ensure disciplined obedience to the Kremlin's orders...

...Just as in the case of the earlier Wallace-Willkie vision of One World, it confused technological with political and sociological possibilities...

...All these countries were, of course, run by highly authoritarian regimes in which the mass of the population was deprived of political participation...

...It is probably true that Rus sia's refusal to allocate as large sums of money for the industrialization of China as the Chinese seem to have initially anticipated and desired, started the divergence in the early 1950s...

...The Russians might now develop more understanding for the businesslike matter-of-factness of the "capitalist" world than they have for the fanatical egalitarianism and the puritanical crusading spirit of the Chinese...

...Distance, both geographical and cultural, affects the sense of sympathy and identification...

...An "ecumenical" co-existence of variant ideological orientations is only possible in regimes in which ideology is not directly tied to the exercise of political power...

...Fear of war, is the other...

...The major differences between Communism according to Mao and the "goulash Communism" of Khrushchev and his successors can be accounted for by the different stages in the development of Communism in China and Russia respectively...

...Leon Blum was quite correct when he asserted before the War that the Communists were not oriented toward the Left but toward the East, but this characterization is not likely to be applicable fully in the future...

...Monolithic ideological unity, as well as centrally directed economic development throughout the bloc, has turned out to be a chimera...

...It is also true that the Russians' refusal to share the secrets of the atom bomb with the Chinese came to be seen by them as a symbol of the Kremlin's desire to keep them in subjection...

...Once a measure of stability, and even of well-being, had been reached in these countries, once absolute misery and deprivation had given place to a condition of relative deprivation (i.e., to a situation in which the population learned to compare its lot with that of others within or beyond the Soviet bloc), it became much more difficult for the rulers to ignore the demands of the ruled...

...It would seem futile and selfdefeating for the non-Communist Left to then refuse such a dialogue with them...

...In the other satellites where the Communist leadership had initially been mere satraps imposed on the population by Russian force, the process of disaffection took much longer...

...The bulk of the working class, however, being by now not only within but also, though to different degrees, of society, will not provide fertile ground for them...

...But the Chinese do not have much to lose insofar as industry is concerned, and even with immense numbers of dead and wounded, there would still be enough to inundate the world...

...Milked for resources in the first stages of reconstruction of Soviet society, they would in later stages benefit from Russia's rebuilt industrial might and gradually be brought up to the Russian level...

...The degree of industrialization attained, as well as the presence or formation of an indigenous stratum of intellectuals capable of articulating and formulating popular discontents, were key variables in this respect...

...This has been so with respect to internal developments within the Soviet bloc and it has been even more pronounced in regard to the relations among the nationstates of World Communism...

...As regards the first, many, perhaps most, radical commentators were influenced by the static models of totalitarianism which had been proposed by such thinkers as Hannah Arendt...

...Tito, while clinging to the major orthodoxies of the faith, rejected the temporal reign of the Kremlin...

...Since the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's revelations, since the Hungarian events and the Sino-Soviet split, the Western Communist parties have become orphans in an alien world...

...it is also in tune with the ideological needs of many members of the intelligentsia in the underdeveloped countries...

...Yet the crisis of Soviet authority which followed almost at once in both Poland and Hungary led the Kremlin to make further concessions...

...But matters are very different in the miserable circumstances in which Asian or African opposition leaders, or would-be leaders, find their countrymen eking out a meagre living...

...In the West, moreover, the Communist parties, are definitely caught by the drift toward a desacralization of politics...

...12, 1963...

...Here they will find support only among marginal groups of disaffected students and intellectuals or among especially alienated sectors of uprooted working class or middle class groups still susceptible to messianic appeals...

...It can hence serve the Chinese penetration of the World Communist movement, especially in the underdeveloped nations...

...The events since the death of Stalin both within Russia and within the satellites have shattered this static model and have shown its inability to do justice to the dynamics within Soviet society...

...Hence, one is more likely to make sacrifices for an afflicted neighbor than for a faceless victim in far off lands...

...The Russian Side—Size...

...It is absurd to suppose that organisms, be they social or biological, can just grow indefinitely...

...The Kremlin is now forced to let a great variety of flowers bloom within its sphere of influence...

...And as it now turns out, the Soviet bloc is by no means exempt from this drift...

...Structure and size are interrelated...

...The process is likely to be painful and long drawn out...

...The first error, the underestimation of nationalism, is ultimately rooted within the very foundations of Marxism...

...I take this process to be operative in the relations between the Chinese and the Soviets...

...the underlying rift can no longer be bridged...

...We can expect in the years to come efforts on the part of the Communist parties of Italy, France and of other Western nations to adopt a more flexible policy...

...And this, the Russians refused to do...

...Aspirations toward a better life seems to me one of the two pillars of the political conscience of the New Soviet Man...

...In the developed nations, on the other hand, Peking's chances of attracting more than relatively unimportant strata of alienated intellectuals and marginal elements are slim...

...They not only wish a greater degree of autonomy, they now openly challenge the Soviets for leadership of the Communist camp...

...Temporary accommodations are possible, even probable...

...This seems to me a rather fruitless way of attacking the issue...

...By 1958 the Chinese realized that they would not continue to have a major influence on the formation of international Communist policy and they also realized that their place on the Russian list of priorities was fairly low...

...The days when many on the Left might harbor apocalyptic visions of the Coming Victory of World Communism are definitely gone...

...If the differences between the Chinese and the Kremlin prove ineradicable, as I assume and as the respective historical actors also seem now to assume, then it stands to reason that both sides will accelerate their drive toward gaining allies within the Communist parties of the Third World and the West...

...Hence it must foster a mentality that corresponds to the conditions within a beleaguered fortress...

...To the new generation of Communist leaders of the West, Peking has little appeal but Moscow can no longer be the Third Rome either...

...This meant that much vaster resources had to be mobilized by Russia were China to be brought up to the Russian level within a relatively short span of time, as the Chinese of course desired...

...Clearly national and ideological motives are intertwined in reality, even though they can be separated analytically...

...Yet one must not forget that the Chinese at times favored a relatively "liberal" line—they supported Gomulka's heresy in 1956 and veered leftward only after the Hungarian fiasco...

...This calls for some comment...

...Modern means of communication and transportation, it was held, provided the means of control denied the rulers of ancient empires...

...Nor will the Western Communist parties continue to be passive instruments of the Kremlin...

...The Chinese claims on their scarce resources thus came at the worst possible moment...

...But it seems to hold, even though there were marked discrepancies of pace between the various satellite nations, that in all of them polycentric and autonomist tendencies have now asserted themselves in a manner wholly unforeseen but a few years ago by Kremlin planners and Western commentators alike...

...Not only will they have to reject publicly their previous unconditional subordination to Soviet authority, not only will they have to convince their adherents and potential partners alike that their goals are from now on to be carried out within the framework of democratic rules, but they will also have to change the very structure of their organizations...

...The ground for messianic and chiliastic visions or for reliance on a Third Rome no longer exists in the West...

...It was somehow believed that Moscow's domination over Hungary or Rumania or China would not pose problems qualitatively different from those encountered by the Kremlin within the confines of Russia proper...

...The time might come, though it will not be tomorrow, when the orphans of Western Communism might have to be welcomed back to the house of Western democratic socialism...

...Not that Marx, and even more so Lenin, was not aware of the force of nationalism in the "transitional period" between the era of bourgeois domination and the advent of world socialism...

...But when he stated in his report to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU that each Communist Party must find its own road to power according to national conditions, this was not meant to apply to the Eastern European satellites...

...the aims of the leaders of the Chinese Communist party are different...

...Will it be able to take advantage of this second chance...

...The Chinese could only be seen as threats in regard to both...

...The Maoist ideology is not only peculiarly adapted to the needs of a totalitarian regime in the stage of primitive accumulation...

...The New Nations in their effort to force a minimal unity out of a welter of regional, tribal or ethnic components have seized upon nationalism as the only notion which might weld together these otherwise divergent forces within their borders...

...Fraternal aid to weaker and less developed brother nations, was, of course, a fundamental tenet of Communist philosophy...

...National varieties will become pronouncedly dissimilar as they adapt themselves to local climate and environment...

...The whole history of these empires is marked by revolts, breakoffs, and "feudal" tendencies at the periphery...

...As the nations of the world became more securely tied to the world market, and as industrialization, even though at the price of immense sacrifices and dislocations, would create an essentially similar type of modern civilization all over the world, the forces of nationalism would gradually spend themselves...

...But, somewhat like the Soviets in their early stages of development, they combine a measure of flexibility in tactical questions with rigidly held total conceptions of the world...

...And when Khrushchev himself began to define the goals of Communism as plentiful "goulash" for the masses rather than in loftier terms, such demands for the good things of life assumed political salience...

...To these puritans of the Eastern world the dichotomy between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness is as vivid a reality as it ever was to Western puritans...

...Protestations of pan-human sympathies notwithstanding, I take it to be a common phenomenon that Americans are less affected by news of a flood in India than they are by similar news from Ohio...

...Radicals seem in general to have been just as little prepared for this event as the official analysts of the Establishment...

...No irreparable harm would have come from an outright defection of Tito to the Western camp...

...In the Russian population at large, but also among the policy-makers, Chinese problems necessarily rated lower than problems nearer home...

...The partial emancipation of the Eastern European satellites has had an impact on the West European Communist leaders...

...Among them, the appeals of Maoism are bound to be considerable...

...There is now a chance for the Socialist left, about to be relieved from the Communist incubus which fatally hampered its movements for two generations, to embark anew on its effort to build a more democratic and fraternal society upon the foundations the welfare state has provided...

...Outside the Soviet bloc, more particularly in Asia and Africa, nationalism, rather than class struggle, has assumed a central place both as an ideology and as a secular religion...

...Tito could mount his assault upon the Kremlin much earlier than any of the other satellites because he had come to power independently of Moscow, on the crest of a genuine national movement...

...This vision, it now turns out, was utterly false...

...They now began to develop a clearly distinct ideological line and to assert their claims to preponderant influence over the World Communist movement...

...Any contamination spells disaster...

...It might not be too fanciful to expect that the drift will increasingly be toward a series of federated national states huddled together for protection under the nuclear umbrella of Russia and loosely held together by the common fear of popular revolts from within, yet otherwise following increasingly divergent paths of development...

...Yet in all of them a similar process became operative over time...

...To the degree that the Western Communist Parties reenter the political dialogue within their nation-states they will be pushed further from dependency on Moscow or Peking...

...In addition, they were, when Mao won power, in a stage of economic development much lower than that attained by nearly all East European satellites...

...If men, for example, were to attain the size of elephants major anatomical modifications would be required to allow them to function...

...Russia was indeed willing to contribute economic and technical help to Mao, but it was not willing to tighten the belt at home in order to assist the Chinese who were geographically and culturally very far away...

...Radicals tend in their analysis to focus attention upon dynamic factors, upon the change and flux of history, while the defenders of the status quo tend to think in terms of equilibria and static models...

...Even though, or perhaps because, modern means of transportation and communication have shrunk the globe and released tendencies which push toward global uniformities in a worldwide post-capitalist civilization, nationalism has become all over the non-Soviet world as virulent a force as it ever was in 19th-century Europe...

...As the executives of major American corporations know very well, once a certain size has been attained, total control from the center becomes an impossibility, and a measure of decentralization is functionally necessary...

...Once the Communist parties give up these goals they will have to restructure their organizational means...

...Her preoccupations with attaining Western standards of living, with enjoying the fruits which almost fifty years of deprivation has made them long for, are far removed from their own hopes and desires...

...The problem of size could be overcome, so it seemed, in an age in which an order from the Kremlin's nerve center could be almost instantaneously transmitted to its Far Eastern dependencies...

...Russia's current problems are of no relevance to them...

...I would suggest that it is now high time that the similarly static model of the relations between the various national components of World Communism be likewise consigned to the dust bin of history...

...It is essentially correct to explain the current "left" orientation of Mao and his clash with the "right" course advocated by the Soviets in terms of differing circumstances in their respective national polities and economies...

...This would have meant gigantic Russian investments in China and a corresponding slowing down in the Russian growth rate...

...I have already stated that the Chinese are likely to be relatively successful in mobilizing allies in the underdeveloped nations...

...World Communism is now irredeemably split into two antagonistic camps...

...Here, not only the vested interests of the party machines are at stake, but ultimately the distinctive character of the Communist parties itself—their 'being' as distinct from their 'consciousness.'" This is why it would be foolish to expect them to change in toto at once...

...What was said earlier about nationalism in Eastern Europe and its opposition to Russian domination applies a fortiori, to the Chinese...

...The clash of national interests between Russia and China is now so intertwined with the clash of creeds that coexistence within a common political or ideological framework seems practically unattainable...

...Certain intellectuals of the underdeveloped nations have come to perceive China as a have-not nation, bent, like themselves, upon industrialization in a hurry...

...As a semblance of normalcy began to return to these countries, as they gradually developed their economy and their polity, as new strata of native leaders began to replace the old Moscow-trained personnel in Party and state, they gradually began, even though timidly at first, to develop autonomist tendencies...

...Here a notion related to that of "span of control" would seem to be applicable...

...The breakup of the Communist camp in the 1960s is an event of world historic importance which may well rank with such crucial turning points as the break between the Western and the Eastern Church, the Reformation, or the halting of the Islamic onslaught on Western Europe in the 8th century...

...It is, of course, obvious that for something like this to happen, these Communist parties will have to undergo a fundamental self-transformation...

...China is still in the stage of primitive accumulation...

...The fact that you can now circle the globe in a day or two does not necessarily bring an Indonesian "nearer" to an American...

...The Chinese model suggests to many of them that through an almost superhuman act of will it may be possible to jump over a number of stages of industrial development...

...In the Maoist canon, this world is conceived as the source of evil, sin and corruption...

...This image was shattered with Tito's revolt...

...When they had liquidated Stalin's terroristic means of control and replaced them with more "liberal" versions, it became essential for them to deliver the goods—at least some of the goods...

...They too now feel that they must adjust if they are not to lose their "constituency" to the new forces operating in the "post-capitalist" modernized welfare states of the West...

...They have in fact shown a number of times that they are quite realistic in this respect...

...Its totalitarian rulers must squeeze from the population the last ounce of energy in order to attain the take-off stage in industrial growth as fast as possible...

...Once socialism was victorious within a number of nation-states, these states, so it was assumed, would build close fraternal bonds among themselves...

...Radicals tended to think of Russia and its satellites as societies in which all major internal social forces, be they classes, associations or communal institutions, had been eroded and undermined so that the immense tutelary power of State and Party would stand unchallenged and unchallengable over a prostrate and atomized society...

...There always comes a point where a reorganization of the relationships of the component parts is necessary if the unit is to remain viable...

...They are a major nation, not a relatively minor satellite, and, moreover, they came to power on their own, not by the force of Russian bayonets, as did all East European satellites except Yugoslavia...

...But it is also true that Sino-Soviet relations began to deteriorate rapidly when the Kremlin, after having accepted a measure of Maoist guidance in international and inter-bloc affairs during the years of upheaval of 1956-58, reverted to a policy of strict emphasis on Kremlin superiority in these matters...

...Nationalism has turned out to be an irresistible force...

...Yet even authoritarian rulers are not insensitive, it turned out, to the needs and desires of their "constituency...

...It is a familiar fact that even persons of liberal and humanitarian sentiment tend to be less affected by catastrophic events occurring far away than by those nearer home...

...Though unable to gain real independence," says Richard Lowenthal, "the Polish Communists won a higher degree of domestic autonomy than Khrushchev had originally been willing to grant them, and similar autonomy henceforth had to be conceded to the other satellites as well...

...The common ties wrought in the effort to build socialism would reduce national divergencies and cleavages to insignificance...

...They are now engaged in the painful process of mapping the new territory into which they have suddenly been propelled by forces they only imperfectly understand...

...Just when Russian society is discarding the messianic features which marked earlier Soviet history, just when the average Russian citizen—but also the apparatchik —sees a chance to relax a bit in a new-found Victorian comfort, the Chinese seem to be saying that atomic war is but a paper tiger...

...Not that they did not now have more resources than at earlier stages in their development, but that the claims upon these resources made by the Russian population at large had become so much more insistent...

...They would bathe in the sun of their all-powerful and benevolent Moscow leaders...

...similarly the fact that the Kremlin can now reach any party functionary in the bloc on the long distance phone does not make for greater "nearness" between Mao's party and the Soviets...

...Tito suggested that one could be a perfectly good Communist without taking orders from Moscow...

...Leninist strategy has always been flexible enough to allow for temporary setbacks...

...No wonder that the Sino-Soviet rift has reached a stage where basic agreements, if not temporary accommodations, are no longer probable or even possible...

...While Stalin had openly asserted the primacy of Soviet interests, Khrushchev soon after his accession aban doned the principle that all Communist parties be subject to the organizational discipline of the Kremlin...

...Two parallel Communist movements will from now on exist in the world...

...We must expect resistance against organizational change to be tougher than on any other issue," writes Richard Lowenthal...

...Our cities and our new towns would be destroyed, America and Europe would be devastated...

...He thereby shattered the sacrosanct linkage between Communist ideology and Moscow power...

...There remains only the hope to play a more significant role within the national polity...

...Like other underdeveloped regions, they would be grateful for the benefits received and willing to accept the direction of the Russian Big Brother...

...It is hard to know...

...It stands to reason that Russia has much less to offer to these men than has China...

...Just when the Russians are predisposed to arrive at a number of accommodations with the West, the Chinese appeal for a new crusade...

...In the Russian case, while the span of control might still be stretched to include the whole of the Soviet Empire proper, it cannot be lengthened also to include a gigantic new territory such as China, which, moreover, faces problems totally different from those of Russia at the present...

...One thing seems certain: as the heavy mortgage of Communism is about to be lifted, new failures can no longer be attributed to the impact of World Communism...

...Belgian trends are similar...

...When even as corrupt and unpopular a regime as that of Rumania dares to raise its voice in opposition to inter-bloc planning goals on the ground that they are contrary to the national interests of Rumania, a qualitative change in the relations between Moscow and the satellites has taken place...

...They are "out of phase" insofar as Russia is concerned...

...Daily Telegraph, Oct...

...It must again and again attempt to whip up enthusiasm and the spirit of total dedication among the party cadres and the population at large...

...This increasing "national" development of the various Western Communist parties will in the long run force other leftists to assess anew their relation to them...

...Here the previously Moscow-oriented parties will maintain themselves against their Chinese competitor, but it is likely that they will succeed in doing so only at the price of further emancipation from Moscow directives and of basic ideological and organizational changes...

...Yet the lesson learned in these cases seemed, until recently, not applicable to modern empires such as that of the Soviets...

...As the revolutionary potential in the West will further diminish, as the leaders of the Communist parties in the West come to feel that continued reliance on Moscow, continued acceptance of Kremlin tutelage, must fatally decrease their effectiveness at home, it is likely that they will try to become part of the legitimized and institutionalized political dialogue at home...

...Moreover the Russian attempt to come to a modus vivendi with the West raised Chinese fears of being left holding the bag...

...Here Khrushchev was prepared to loosen and modernize the forms of control but not to renounce its substance...

...Khrushchev tried several times to come to terms with these increasingly polycentric tendencies...

...They have come to believe that the tantalizing slow pace of modernization which they witness in their own countries might be replaced by an immense effort in which all collective energies will be harnessed to one overriding goal: the overcoming of the sloth and backwardness of the present and the reaching of the Jerusalem of modernization and industrialization, not in an indefinite future, but on the morrow...

...Chiliastic dreams do not appeal to a working class youth bent on hedonistic pleasures, but neither do the old slogans with which Stalin's Kremlin nourished the imagination of earlier generations of European Communists...

...Heads of states, and top Party personnel, while nominally independent, so as not openly to depart from previous traditions on the "national question," would in fact be Gauleiters ultimately dependent upon and responsible to the Kremlin...

...And nothing can serve better to sustain total commitment to the state and unquestioned obedience to the leadership than an ideology which feeds on frenzied hatred of the surrounding capitalist world...

...a Russian recently asked a foreign correspondent...

...The Kremlin was not a Third Rome, a spiritual center unifying all believers...

...Even at the present time, the Italian Communist party is groping toward an autonomist course, relatively free from Moscow guidance, and with its ears cocked to the internal developments of Italy rather than to the winds of doctrine blowing from Moscow...

...Prospects—The World Communist Movement Were World Communism a purely ideological movement, or were it solely an association of nation-states having political and economic interests in common, one might envisage its perpetuation, though with some major modification, into an indefinite future...

...And it is only when they have done so that they can be acceptable as partners by other political forces on the left...

...When Stalin fell heir to political power over a series of previously independent states around the rim of the Russian heartland, he evidently thought that, once Russian domination was consolidated these countries would be run from the Kremlin in a manner not qualitatively different from the way outlying provinces of Russia proper were administered...

...I propose to call it "span of sympathy...

...They will then come to resemble militant left socialist parties having organizational forms adapted to a non-revolutionary situation in which their only hope can be to win a share of power as partners of other left forces within the framework of national democratic politics...

...A defection to the capitalist camp by a renegade would have been comparatively easy to digest, but a heresy obstinately clinging to the major goals of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy created permanent damage to the monolithic unity of the Soviet bloc...