The New Turn in Russia

...The reinI26 troduction of certain hitherto forbidden texts (e.g., Dostoevsky) may have significant repercussions among the university youth...

...Yet the recent Russian events, for all that it is much too early to attempt any definitive or detailed analysis, are clearly of the highest significance and they must be taken seriously in their own right as portents of possible major changes in Russian society...

...to encourage a type of "self-criticism" that went beyond sheer ritualistic ceremony without verging upon the dangerous ground of genuine democracy...

...The divergent forces of Russian society, long pent up by the terror of the regime and the pressures of the war, were threatening to burst the frame that had thus far held them together...

...But surely all such repercussions cannot be expected to be heard in the period immediately ahead...

...Don't repudiate us now...

...The Kaiser has gone but the generals remain—and they show not the slightest indication or intention of relinquishing their absolute dominion over the masses...

...partly, a skilled response by the party leadership to these very desires...

...but they cannot exercise their power without rejecting some of the methods by which he won and kept it...

...The stresses and strains of Russian society which until now operated subterraneously are becoming more visible, the antagonistic forces within Russian society may begin to be allowed as certain "play"—which means that the model of a totalitarian society as a totally static world, never a very useful model, will have to be abandoned...

...Without him none of them would today sit in the seat of power...

...to introduce a semblance of modesty at the top ("you don't have to clap hands every time we appear on the rostrum," was Khrushchev's directive to the delegates who had listened to him for seven hours) . But the new leaders did more: they eliminated, or at least severely restricted, the jurisdiction of the secret police in political matters...

...to allow local commissars leeway for maneuver within prescribed and reasonable limits...

...Whether one or another domestic force in Russian society will be able to utilize these cracks to its advantage is still an open question...

...Even if one allows for possible guile, it would seem that the Congress speeches and resolutions gave expression to similar feelings among the widest strata of Russian society, and that they were, in turn, deliberably designed to elicit precisely such responses...

...Government will apparently be, from now on, a more calculable power—but there is not the faintest shred of evidence that it will he any more controllable by the great mass of citizens than it was in the days of Stalin...

...But whether this will happen, or how soon it will happen, no one can say with any certainty...

...Far more than Stalin himself, the new post-Stalin leadership regards ideology as a practical convenience...

...to discard idiosyncracies of the dead dictator concerning modern art and music...

...or when the inimitable John Foster Dulles declares that the Twentieth Congress signifies a defeat for previous Communist strategies (presumably as the result of his superior diplomatic moves) , one is inclined to feel that we are dealing here with projections of the political illiteracy that characterizes both the "progressives" and reactionaries of our time—and let it go at that...

...they agreed among themselves that decisions were to be made in committee...

...This may partly be true, but it is also a maneuver to dissociate themselves from their past and to stress their solidarity with the rank and file...

...some of the thousands who have spent long years in Siberian camps may be allowed to return home (though there is no indication thus far that the institution of the camps has been called into question) ; the families of certain Old Bolsheviks may feel a wry satisfaction in their posthumous rehabilitation, for as part of the new stabilization the evils previously assigned to a variety of scapegoats have been assigned to Stalin and Beria...

...111 With regard to the changes in international policy that were announced at the Congress, one is reminded of an old Chinese proverb: "Front door out tiger, hack door in wolf...

...Thus, when Aneurin Bevan writes that the Communist parties of the West are henceforth going to accept the parliamentary game and strive for limited objectives within the framework of Western democracy...

...II Yet it would be a profound error to assume that the stabilization which the Twentieth Congress seems both to reflect and to harbinger must necessarily also mean a liberalization of the regime—as so many commentators have wishfully assumed...

...similarly the Russian elite now relies primarily on its "terror in being...

...Meanwhile, let us guard against confusing potentialities for the future with realities of the present...

...The measures of the Twentieth Congress have led to a certain thaw of the frozen surfaces of Russian society, they have allowed us to see or surmise certain fissures in the totalitarian ice...

...Partly they were a calculated attempt to bring about a stabilization, normalization and "regularization" of the regime...

...The depreciation of Stalin, the revision of his views on history, the restitution to honor of a number of Old Bolsheviks whom Stalin and his successors had murdered, the condemnation of his economic theory—all this had one essential purpose...

...The new line may make it considerably more difficult to maintain the monolithic character of the mass parties in the West: it opens the way to further questions...

...now they are being dragged out of the memory-hole, again by the decree of the party leadership...

...Politically speaking, the present Ieaders are the legitimate children of Stalin, yet they must now try to erase the memory of the father...

...In international affairs the weight of a naval power may be assessed not so much by the number of battleships that are actually in service as by its "fleet in being...

...Yet all this in no way indicates that the fundamental mechanisms of power which hold Russian society together have been relaxed significantly...

...The basic procedure has not changed, only the machine which made persons into un-persons is for the moment engaged in making the non-memory of un-persons into a declared memory of persons...

...And similar problems may be anticipated everywhere else, as the national Communist parties try again to become entangled in the disputes of domestic power politics...

...But it is at least open to question whether such an explicit abandonment of ideological ballast will not have serious consequences among the core of hardened party militants in France or India for whom this ideology, even if it didn't deceive anyone else, served as an important means of self-deception and self-justification...

...to grant a selected inner circle of leaders some freedom of discussion concerning the techniques if not the nature of the regime...

...Years ago they were made into un-persons by decree of the Stalin dictatorship...

...but at the same time it may weaken the ideological hold that the Communist parties have on the inner core of militants...

...It was a means of dissociating the new regime from the heavy mortgage of the heritage of the old...

...And in Russia "who controls whom" is, after all, the decisive question...

...and those elements in the population to which the Khrushchev regime may be assumed to be particularly sensitive—the new strata of ambitious managers, bureaucrats, state and party functionaries who had grown up during the post-revolutionary and terrorist decades, who care little about ideology and want most of all the opportunity to exercise their positions of power without having to fear that they will wake up in Siberia the next morning—these must have been particularly eager for some sort of stabilization...

...There is no discussion, no questioning by the "delegates" as to the significance of this change, no serious deliberation, no criticism of the present leadership for its part in the murders and defamations...

...The whole population, for obvious reasons, must have felt both terror-weary and war-weary...

...The Russians have served notice that they will do business with anyone who is not directly in the tow of the United States—from Nehru to Nasser, from Tito to the European Social Democrats, and while this turn gives them tremendous maneuverability vis a vis the rigid American foreign policy, it also creates tremendous new problems for the Communist parties in the West...

...The reduction in the average work week, with the greater amount of leisure it will allow the ordinary worker, may in the long run increase his capacity for political and cultural dissent...

...It took these hardened and cynical men two years to reckon their opportunity—to realize, now that the master terrorist was dead, that they had the chance to restore a certain rationality in the party regime...

...Whether this maneuver will succeed it is too early to say...

...iv The Soviet Union remains a totalitarian society...

...The ordinary Russian citizen, it is true, can now probably feel a certain relaxation...

...they had proven themselves "fittest" to survive in this society and to climb the hierarchy of terrorism...

...There is only a simple affirmation by fiat —an announcement— that Antonov-Ovsenko or Bela Kun or Kossior were not agents of the Gestapo but true and valorous ancestors after all...

...The survivors and successors of Stalin were his own men...

...The news during the last week, especially the fantastic reports of demonstrations in Tiflis apparently in defense of the Stalinist past, seems to indicate the transition might not be accomplished with the ease that had been calculated upon by the new men of the Kremlin...

...Reading recent interpretations of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, one is inclined to feel that they reveal far less about the character of the changes in Russian politics and society than about the moods and desires of those who do the interpreting...

...We do not pretend to know What Next in Russia, but we can say with confidence that once again Russia is in Flux...

...they restored some self-confidence in the party...

...Unfortunately, it is likely to have a considerable appeal to various socialist and nationalist elements in both the West and the East, to strengthen tendencies toward a Popular Front and to be a powerful means for influencing the decisive strata of uncommitted and neutralist nations...

...We all suffered," they seem to be saying, "hence we all belong together...

...It is possible, however, that the measures of stabilization announced at the Congress will ultimately have serious consequences not foreseen by the party leadership—that is, that precisely the measures intended to stabilize the regime will lead to an increased instability...

...To keep himself in power, it now begins to appear, another wave of terror might well have been necessary...

...Khrushchev's name, to mention only the most conspicuous one, had first been heard of in connection with the execution of thousands upon thousands of innocent people in the Ukraine...

...Stalin died, perhaps of natural causes, at just the moment when he had outlived his usefulness to the totalitarian regime he had been instrumental in creating...

...Speaking through analogy, the Twentieth Party Congress might he seen as a ritual of exorcism of the spirit of the father who haunts the son, as it haunts the rest of Russian society...

...The attempt at some measure of decentralization in the economy may increase the self-confidence of local managers...

...But what is important is that new possibilities are opening up and new choices coming into sight...

...Khrushchev's cavalier rejection of fundamental tenets of "LeninismStalinism" and his declaration that it is now conceivable that some Communist parties can take power by parliamentary means have of course given the CP leaders a very handy argument for claiming that they are just well-intentioned "progressives in a hurry"—but it is also likely to disorient some of the faithful followers outside Russia...

...they attempted to establish regular procedures in government...

...But the methods of terror which heretofore were the open and visible weapons of the regime have now been relegated to the status of an ultimo' ratio regis: the might of the men who control Russia's destiny is no longer flaunted quite so openly, it is held in reserve...

...What is that going to mean for CP influence in North Africa...

...In this respect the greatest importance is to be attached not so much to the fact that a good many of the Old Bolsheviks are being rehabilitated but to the manner in which this is being done...

...The French CP deputies have just voted to give Premier Mollet full powers for a new repression in Algeria...

...MARCH 15, 1956 P.S.: The present rulers now claim that they, Stalin's closest associates and heirs, were just as terrorized as the mass of the Russian people...

...But the ritual itself was an inheritance of the father, and one can imagine that if Stalin had been able to watch the Congress from some distant point he would have wryly appreciated how well his fol lowers had learned from him the lessons of political duplicity...

...I "Oh, thank God that the old days are past," exclaimed one high Communist leader to former President Auriol of France when the latter asked his Russian hosts about the meaning of the Party Congress...

...The nonchalance with which the Russian leadership has now abandoned its guiding ideas as to the character of the world in which it functions is added evidence of the supreme contempt with which it views all matters of ideology...