WHAT CHANGE IN RUSSIA?
Willen, Paul
- What Manner of Change in Russia? - C O M M U N I C A T I O N S Paul Willen The intense interest which Isaac Deutscher’s recent writings on the Soviet Union have aroused reflects the...
...He declares, for example, that there is no absolutely reliable proof that the entire bureaucracy will, as a single unit, fight all reforms “tooth and nail...
...Now while it is true that Stalin always stopped short of global war in conducting his affairs, one can hardly term Soviet foreign policy between 1945 and 1953 a “pacific” one, as Deutscher has donel The second is the equation of Stalin’s successors with Napoleon’s predecessors...
...All efforts to understand the basic causes of administrative maladies and economic inefficiencies have been severely censored...
...He tries to show that if the Malenkov coalition government were to fall before a Bonapartist military dictatorship the world would immediately be plunged into the Third World War...
...the inability of the system to make this shift becomes every day more apparent, no matter how concerted the effort...
...No one who is familiar with the constant series of crises which erupt in the Soviet economy could agree, for example, with Deutscher’s bold claim that the Soviet economy is “immune from that extreme economic and moral instability which in bourgeois society tends to produce fascist mass neuroses...
...Lenin’s 1917 train was not intercepted in Germany...
...let the ruling class he represents determine which historical moment is best suited to its own voluntary relinquishment of caste privileges...
...Last fall and winter Ehrenburg, Shostakovich and others penned a series of scathing attacks on the Stalinist cultural straitjacket...
...Our novels are contrived,” wrote another critic, Pomerantsev, “we need more sincerity...
...The niggardly reforms made by the postSta.lin government in the last year and a half indicate that certain “quasi-liberal reforms from above” can be expected: but if these minor reforms have convinced Deutscher that “Stalinism” will be abolished from above, one can set: the superficial significance which he attaches to the term “Stalinism,” and the distance separating his conception of “democratization” from that of a true democrat...
...but do not attempt to hasten it or the grand schema I’ve described will be upset...
...The changes continue to this day...
...It is true, as Deutscher points out, that “quasi-liberal political action from below or create the conditions under which such action 73 Winter 1955 DISSENT may become possible...
...then, Soviet society is basically healthy, and its leadership basically sound...
...Increased literacy has provided the Kremlin with additional means of control...
...But ft will be the “revival of spontaneous political action from below” that will be the primary engine of change, not the “quasiliberal reform from above” upon which Deutscher has pinned so many hopes...
...But it may still be said that it is one of the preconditions for functioning democracy...
...Of course, there are divisions within the Soviet ruling class, sharp and critical ones...
...This purging can be carried out, he Winter 1955 72 DISSENT is convinced, without tampering with the present Soviet social structure, and without, in fact, needlessly stirring up the mass of the people...
...One need only be reminded of the barbaric festival held last May in Kiev and Moscow to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the “reunion of the fraternal Russian and Ukrainian peoples” to realize this...
...The time has come, it seems to me, to look beyond these early political manifestos...
...Obviously not...
...They are distinct from it...
...These changes reflect the long-range trends which Deutscher-notwithstanding Coser’s criticism-so astutely analyzed...
...Industrialization does not automatically produce democracy...
...Therefore he justifies the suppression of efforts to alter the Soviet system from below, efforts such as the East Germans made in June 1953...
...To see in these vast and complex historical developments nothing but an irrational conspiracy against human liberty is to isolate oneself from one of the key historical experiences of our era...
...doubtedly true, and it is one 19th Century myth which any child can destroy...
...Malenkov’s departure from the Kremlin is only the last in a series of startling moves of genuine importance...
...111 Deutscher‘s political bias (as distinct from his historical vision) is most irritatingly revealed in his insistence upon labelng all critics of his analysis as “cold-war propagandists” (that is, warmongers...
...Therefore, following Deutscher’s own logic, we are at present in a post-Bonapartist period, not a pre-Bonapartist one, as he wishes us to think...
...Thus in the final analysis, Deutscher’s primary allegiance is to the new class of educated Soviet bureaucrats, a class of men who are, in Deutscher’s view, in no danger of losing anything from the abolition of “Stalinism...
...In his concluding paragraph Deutscher begs that we show “patience” before history’s inexorable ways...
...Since the only alternative to the “Bonapartist solution” is the “democratic evolution of Communism” it turns out that the only hope of world peace lies in the continued rule of the Malenkov clique...
...To say this is not to ascribe (as Deutscher would have us do) a “progressive role” to Stalinism, any more than it would be to ascribe a “progressive role” to Czarism of the 19th century...
...But if these reforms are the best the bureaucracy can do in a year and a half, then surely in time the masses will find a more direct means of expressing their needs, of giving vent to their long-accumulated hatred...
...The novelist Zorin subversively suggested that the corrupt Soviet bureaucrat was a product of indigenous conditions in Soviet life...
...75 Winter 1955 DISSENT...
...Both aspects of Leninism are irrelevant in the modern Soviet setting...
...I t is simply to state an indisputable historical fact...
...This effort to link a 74 DISSENT * Winter 1955 type of analysis with a given political viewpoint casts doubt upon his OWB objectivity and makes it possible for his opponents to treat his better argw ments as if they were merely Soviet apologetics...
...Let Malenkov & Co...
...it does give people the tools with which, under given conditions, they This article by Paul Willen is the last of the commenm we solicited on the article by Isaac Deutscher which appeared in the Summer 1954 issue of DISSENT...
...This is not to deny that changes have occurred in the past year and a half...
...Lenin’s vanguard of revolutionaries was one thing...
...It is in these trends-terrible and brutal-that we must search for the roots of future democratic Russia-if it is to be located at all-and not in Lenin’s debate with Plekhanov in 1902 or in definitions of the inner and unchangeable laws of totalitarianism...
...Books cannot be manufactured like shoes,” said Ehrenburg...
...Deutscher points out that it is absurd to insist that Lenin’s “authoritarianism” constitutes an obstacle to internal Soviet democratization today...
...II So far-so good...
...Also surprising is the expression of contempt which greeted Deutscher’s theory that the Stalinist system has unwittingly created many of the forces and conditions essential to its eventual destruction...
...Change is inevitable, he says, inexorable...
...Such complacency is understandable here in America, or in England or France, but it takes the utmost callousness to ask it of those 800 million people who suffer under this “historical necessity” to whose defense Deutscher is lending so many of his superb talents, Among our new contributors: Sid Lens, the author of “Left, Right and Center” (1949) and “The Counterfeit Revolution” (1952), as well as numerous articles in some two-dozen publications, recently returned from a one-year trip around the world . . . Ned Polsky was formerly on the editorial staff of “The Chicago Review...
...and a whole new historical epoch was born...
...I t is a curious argument...
...but that is not the sum and substance of Russian history since 1917...
...What Russia needs is a purging of the “irrational” and “primitive” elements...
...A keen historian, he treats the Soviet Union as a changing social system, subject to significant alterations resulting from the forces which it has set in motion...
...To refute this argument Deutscher summons all his rhetorical skills, for it is this argument-which he says comes from a “certain type of ‘left-wing’ cold war propagandist”- which constitutes the most serious threat to his larger thesis...
...Let Deutscher have his hard-won point: The entire bureaucracy is not unalterably opposed to reform...
...C O M M U N I C A T I O N S Paul Willen The intense interest which Isaac Deutscher’s recent writings on the Soviet Union have aroused reflects the fact that, adequately or inadequately, he has, almost alone, posed the critical questions which confront serious students of contemporary Soviet power...
...The economy is planned...
...This has been demonstrated with great lucidity during the past year of feverish efforts to reorient part of the economy in the direction of efficient consumer goods’ production...
...The very fact that the Soviet State must use totalitarian controls indicates that increased literacy has not dulled men’s minds nor their urge for freedom...
...The future social forms of Russia must be sought in the “womb” of modern Russia-industrialized, urbanized, Stalinized, totalitarian-as different from the Russia of 1917 as the Russia of 1917 was from the Russia of the Decembrists...
...The weakness of most of his critics is that they have attempted to repudiate his dynamic thesis with schematic and rigid definitions of a static social quantity known as “Stalinism” or “totalitarianism...
...of course, some factions will take the lead in formulating concessions while other sections will hold fast to the traditional policies...
...The leader-cult is gone, but a thousand other primitive and reactionary cults remain, clogging every vein of Russian life and culture...
...Winter 1955 71 DISSENT can struggle for their lives and their fortunes...
...decide when the political system he presides over has outlived its economic base...
...Lewis Coser’s reply to Deutscher, printed in the Summer 1954 issue of DISSENT, falls into this category of repeating the time-worn platitudes which grew out of earlier struggles to demonstrate the reactionary and class character of the Soviet system...
...This is un...
...There is no doubt that everywhere in the Stalinist Empire the atmosphere has been relaxed...
...I quite understand, too, Deutscher’s impatience with those who, because it seems to throw a temporary wrench into the machinery of the cold war, refuse to acknowledge the important changes which Stalin’s death brought to the Soviet Empire...
...These labored historical analogies leave one exhausted, and only someone who has something to sell will pursue them further...
...Stalin’s march to power after 1922 was not halted by flaming oratory...
...The “irrationality” and “primitivism” which Deutscher identifies with Stalinism are not merely reflected in the crude state ceremonies and cultural vendettas so well popularized in the West, but are part of the authoritarian economic system itself...
...But subsequent events have made a mockery of these hopes...
...Edouard Roditi, a wellknown poet, is the author of a study of Oscar Wilde . . . Paul Willen, who was invited to participate in our discussion on Russia, has appeared in Commentay,, The Reporter and other periodicals...
...And indeed, there is no other way to treat Deutscher’s elaborate expose on the subject of Bonapartism...
...The oddity of this equation is that Deutscher himself is perhaps more responsible than anyone else for the great historical analogy between Stalin and the greatest “Bonapartist” of them all, Napoleon...
...Deutscher’s confidence in the wisdom and essential benevolence of the Soviet ruling class stems from the same type of historical error of which he correctly accuses his critic Raymond Aron and others...
...I t is possible too that various lower organs of control-trade unions, local councils-will be transformed by gradual pressure into genuine organs of complaint, mass pressure, and even outright revolt...
...his argument proceeds more from logic than from fact...
...Stalin’s engineers who worked night and day to build Magnitogorsk over the bodies of starved peasants were something else: and Malenkov’s privilege-conscious, paper-entangled bureaucrat is still another breed...
...But equally unhistoric is Deutscher’s contention that a “resurgence” of Lenin’s “proletarian democratic” spirit may be considered one of the ingredients in the expected democratization today...
...The first is that Stalin’s foreign policy was an essentially peaceful one...
...Coser’s contention that the industrialization of backward countries has not brought any “corresponding increase in self-awareness of the masses” is refuted by the entire history of the Far East since the end of World War 11...
...Pomerantsev has been sharply rebuked...
...Zorin was told that while it was legitimate to attack individual bureaucrats, it was subversive to attack the bureaucracy itself...
...Can we jump from this conclusion to the assertion that the bureaucracy will take the initiative in the democratization of reform from above . . . may most effectively spur on a revival of spontaneous Russia...
...But there are two especially dubious assumptions in this case...
...Here lies Deutscher‘s fundamental illusion...
...I t is, however, at this very point that one must part company with him, for here he shifts from the role of a long-range historian to the partisiin of one of history’s special interests, from a distant spectator to a zealous participant...
...As in Russia, What Next...
...but for what, by whom, for whom...
...Human liberty was extinguished in the process, horribly and miserably...
...It is difficult, for example, to understand the widespread reluctance to accept Deutscher’s contention that the Stalinist social system, like any other, is subject to change, even within the framework of the existing dictatorship, and that many changes are taking place today which are only faintly reflected in the visible monolithic exterior...
...No one who is familiar with the thousand cries of corruption, waste, bungling, neglect, nepotism, servility, and callousness which constantly appear in the Soviet press can possibly accept Deutscher’s view that Stalinist “irrationality” is confined to the surface phenomena of Soviet society...
...If events move rapidly enough, it is even possible that individual members of the ruling bureaucracy-motivated either by selfinterest or idealism-will pass over to the masses and give them the type of leadership which the Soviet regime has so consistently and ruthlessly denied them...
...Having, at great effort, proven this he moves rapidly to the most extraordinary conclusions...
...they will not mourn its passing...
...but there is every reason to believe that it has also provided the people with tremendous mechanisms for change and expanded many horizons...
...and everyone imagined that serious changes were in the offing...
...Deutschel‘ has set the stage for a fruitful discussion of the major developments within the Stalinist Regime...
...Deutscher’s product is the “democratic evolution of Communism from above,” and by this curious argument he wishes to prove it not only desirable but necessary to world peace...
...Who can doubt this for a minute...
...Without denying for a moment the permanence of the technological advances achieved in the last decades, it is possible to question the basic rationality of the Soviet industrial system...
...In his view...
...In the last 37 years of Bolshevik rule classes have gone under, boundaries have been thrown back hundreds of miles, peoples have been extinguished, enormous new‘ industries have been created in once-barren lands, and an entirely new proletariat and managerial class have come into existence...
...Hopes were high...
...This “certain type” argues that the Soviet bureaucracy is constitutionally incapable of reforming itself, and Deutscher must step lively to cope with it...
...Stalinism thrives today only on a type of inertia...
Vol. 2 • January 1955 • No. 1
