Soviet Politics After the 22Nd Congress

...The Party —that means thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of young Communists who grew up after the war and cannot possibly be connected with Stalin's crimes...

...We have no reason to doubt that the 20th, 21st, and 22nd Congresses of the CPSU were all solidly behind Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence and de-Stalinization...

...and he also was mistaken about the dialectics of the process of liquidation: the party can be liquidated only by its leader...

...In the program which the 22nd Congress adopted, an additional reason was claimed: the Soviet Union is closest to the final state of Communism...

...or that Albania of all the major powers threatening to launch us into a nuclear holocaust is eager to declare war on the United States...

...It would be common sense, of course, not to negotiate now if the Soviet leaders really were at each others' throats, or it would be common sense to dispatch an Ambassador to China if the Mao government had really fallen out with Khrushchev...

...It will be remembered that the quarrel with Tito in 1948 also turned on this point: what rights should the Soviet Ambassador enjoy in the Yugoslav Party...

...The Chinese who had every reason to curse the late tyrant, now are the ones who nostalgically recall his days when the unanimity of world Communism was held sacred...

...Already we hear that it was Khrushchev who won the battle of Stalingrad...

...This no longer is "multi-centered Communism" but the acknowledgment of national Communisms...

...It is only logical that the more "collective" the leadership is, the less it finds it necessary to speak with several voices...

...and it certainly means the tradition of infallibility which alone can give such a ruling Order its sacred character...

...He has successfully identified his potential rivals with all the stink of the Stalin era and with the war scare...

...Stalin's system, it will be remembered, was to play the factions of the Party against each other and then to destroy them together...

...We hear that certain figures are "anti-party," but all we know is that they are leaders capable of offering alternatives to Khrushchev...

...What coexistence...

...His Program promised the Party a life longer than the State, though it also threatened its functionaries with Lenin's rotation formula: no one is secure in his post, the program announced...

...To depose the "anti-party group" he had to get the support of the army...

...It was never true that Khrushchev was "softer" than the Chinese, but the Chinese are aggressive in an area where the Soviet Union has nothing to gain and where success of a common enterprise only would put an end to possible Russian claims...

...But here another paradox arises: To debunk Stalin, Khrushchev may have to rehabilitate the old opposition...

...Just as in domestic policies Khrushchev had to abandon the show of "liberalization," so he had to reintroduce the ideological police into Soviet relations with the various People's Democracies...

...The personality cult again is invading the history books...

...The plain fact, it seems to me, is that Khrushchev has achieved ascendancy over all his rivals, that he has populated the ruling bodies of the Party, the Union and the individual Republics with his retainers, that his opponents either have no platform or have been prevented from publishing any, and that there is no focus or person around which an opposition could rally...

...more importantly, they have a genuine stake in the belief that all this is true and that they can look at themselves with respect again...

...The newspaper writers also have a stake in believing the story of big political decisions, because explaining them is their bread and steak...

...Perhaps that is true, but next year's story may be different, and it is not this story which matters most...

...He lets it be known that he favors poets who are not in good standing with the Party, he calls on the people to watch the Party's performance...

...to play Party, military and police against each other and then to destroy them together...

...Even then a naive observer outside the Party's inner circle might experience some surprises, with left oppositions adopting rightist platforms, Stalin carrying out the program of his opponents and the latter forming "unprincipled blocs...

...Not only are they deprived of independent sources of information...

...The Western press has rejoiced at the news that Soviet farming is backward and inefficient, that the harvest is bad and the virgin lands don't produce...

...Khrushchev who has robbed the Party of its theology and iconography, will not hesitate to loosen its organizational cohesion...

...At the point where ideology was reintroduced to strengthen the Soviet Empire, it tended to embitter a difference which was already leading to revolt...

...In the days when the Marxist phraseology had not yet worn thin, these zigzags of Soviet policy were discussed in ideological terms, with factions presenting "platforms" and advocating distinct "lines...

...We are supposed to believe that Molotov of all people—the same Molotov who was not afraid to deal with Hitler and was the engineer of Stalin's coexistence policy after the war—is opposed to Khrushchev's policy of coexistence...

...It was not Molotov who threatened a dozen countries with extinction and spoke of states within reach of his medium range ballistic missiles as "hostages...

...Their new independence, of course, soars Gagarin-like in the more-thanunanimous votes they gave Khrushchev and in the star role he has played as speaker on every important question...

...It is a typical Soviet zigzag, for only last year, at the 22nd Congress, Khrushchev had tendered his hand to the Party...

...later he succeeded in depriving it of its political head and of all political influence...

...it has failed in the most important task to which it had been assigned, the task closest to Khrushchev's heart, the improvement of farm output...

...With the exception of a few old-timers, dyedinthe-wool Stalinists and "anti-Party" diehards, there was 100% unanimity...

...but he cannot re-create the old Party tradition without either giving the Party democracy, or himself occupying the place of the opposition...

...Even more significant is the withdrawal of a respected Party functionary from the Embassy in Peking and his replacement by a career policeman...

...The relationship of the dictator to his Party is similar...

...It was not Molotov who allowed the disarmament talks to fail and who interrupted negotiations about the test moratorium with a bigger blast than ever...

...they have no other rallying point unless they go back to Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin...

...Excellent politician that he is, he has managed to exploit the deeply felt yearning for peace and the fermenting discontent with bureaucratic rule...

...He has monopolized every issue which might make a meaningful platform for an opponent, and he has prepared his own canonization as the intrepid slayer of the Stalinist dragon...

...The picture becomes even more confused when we look at the people who are behind these supposed policies...

...By exhuming Stalin, Khrushchev deprived the Party of its aura and conviction of righteousness, as also of its ability to serve as the monolithic pillar of the Soviet State...

...By trying to impose his dictatorship over the Empire, as he had done inside the Soviet Union proper, Khrushchev created for himself problems of discipline and ideology he could not handle, while simultaneously destroying the sacerdotal and even the theological foundations of his power inside Russia...

...People are vilified, accused and shamed for crimes which no one knows...

...Though such a policy may defeat his strategic aim of dividing the main enemies, he already is giving signs (such as the hasty recognition of the Algerian government and the obstruction of the disarmament conference) that he would rather allow the tension to increase if in so doing he can reap cheap successes with the smaller nations...

...and secondly—a thing that must have hurt the true believers even more—he had to substitute state-tostate relations for the preferred form of party-to-party relations...

...But meanwhile it has been necessary to remove more than half of the Central Committee members and to replace them by new members who presumably are more than 100% for this same policy and express the spirit of the new Soviet bourgeoisie even more adequately...

...With the places of honor in Party history, therefore, the role of the opposition, too, will soon be pre-empted by a new tyrant who again will try to destroy the Party and like Stalin must fail...

...Now the Party is being told that the time may have come to recall some...

...By liberating himself from the ideological rigidity of the Party, Khrushchev also deprived it of its ability to control him...

...the people" always can "recall" him...

...the brutal, naked fact of one man's drive for pre-eminence is frankly avowed, and its methods are exhibited for all to see...

...There must be a dozen other ways to draw the Soviet farmers' attention to their unfilled quotas and to the need for better results...

...let us be thankful that the negotiations are going on for no matter what good or bad reasons...

...He can claim eminence not by virtue of charismatic or ideological leadership, but only as leader of the biggest, oldest and most advanced of the Communist countries...

...and we have heard profound sociological analyses of this new spirit as an expression of the mood of the new Soviet bourgeoisie...

...In the days of Stalin an opposition was at least allowed to publish the platform to be denounced...

...On the other hand, it is only common sense to negotiate with the man who so obviously is the one power in the Kremlin which counts and who so obviously has crowded out, vilified, ridiculed, and reburied all his rivals...

...Again we are supposed to believe that the Chinese are spoiling for the kind of nuclear showdown which would flatten their country...

...Khrushchev is on his way to personal dictatorship, reaching out to the people across the barriers of Party ideology and organization...

...The old Caesarian formula is being revived for Khrushchev: tribunus plebis, the dictator and the people against the Soviet bourgeoisie, the Soviet State and Party...

...on the other hand this implies that the invasion of Laos was controlled by the Russians in the first place...

...but it also means their older leaders who tremble that they might be reminded of their previous errors...

...And obviously this formula also implies a tougher line on foreign policy...

...Hegel remarked that no person in the world is as unfree as the Emperor of China, then the acme of absolutism, who nevertheless was bound by the mandarins who ruled for him...

...Looking back upon the history of the twenties and thirties, we now see that much of it was a struggle for power rather than a fight for a policy...

...today we read the condemnation but have no way of knowing what is being condemned...

...Malenkov had the right instinct when he chose the post of Premier instead of Party secretary, but he was premature...

...But then we hear conflicting reports, saying that, on the one hand, we are lucky to have the Russians instead of the Chinese as adversaries in Laos because the former are eager to make a deal with us such as the Chinese (those who remember Korea will understand) are never able to close...

...The Western statesmen are interested in having the public believe it because differentiating among various Soviet factions is one way of justifying negotiations which otherwise only would seem reasonable to common sense—and plain common sense is excluded from the motivations of Western statesmen...

...The pressure of the forces working in Russia, and in the Communist orbit on the policy maker, forces him to run after such small-time victories even where they lead away away from the major objectives of Soviet strategy...

...Unfortunately he fears dissent more than he needs democratic concurrence, or more accurately: The power structure of the Communist regime is endangered every time an opposition finds a focus for discussion...

...Khrushchev always reminds me of Prussia's Sergeant-King, Frederick William, who used to exclaim "but ye ought to love me" while caning his subjects...

...All we know is that Molotov, while in power, was a rather cagey man who for all his knottiness somehow managed to find a modus vivendi with the Chinese as well as the Western powers...

...his myth was the succession by Lenin's choice...

...On the other hand, Soviet diplomacy is con cerned with undermining Western positions which a direct attack only would rigidify...

...A modern industrial state cannot be ruled by a military order...

...Khrushchev, however, does not pose as Stalin's elect but as a selfmade man: which certainly honors him...

...The attempt at "multi-centered Communism," hailed by many Soviet experts in the West as a great step away from doctrinal rigidity, has failed doubly: just as Stalin preferred to expel Tito rather than admit varieties within Communism, so Khrushchev had to expel Hoxha to forestall open insubordination...

...Khrushchev likewise has liquidated the factions, using each of them and appropriating their various platforms...

...an unending merry-go-round because whatever numbers he liquidated, he always had to find some organization to rule the country with...

...The professional Kremlinologists also have a stake in these theories, or rather a duty: the public expects of them a certain profundity, which demand in turn cannot be satisfied unless every flea which is hopping from one Soviet citizen to the other is endowed with sociological significance...

...Now, apparently, it is the Party's turn to be devaluated, though not yet to be depoliticized...

...Now it is understandable that the Soviet people should accept this bunk...

...By now even the ideological trimmings have been discarded...

...The regime must therefore alternate between relaxation and tightening, democratization and vicious attacks on the opposition, decentralization and recentralization...

...But let us not quibble over the paradoxical rationale that has been provided for the negotiations...

...A colossal failure and worse, a colossal loss of face...

...No doubt, he would rather be loved than feared and prefers voluntary to forced assent...

...His successor, Khrushchev, rekindled the threat of war over Berlin which Molotov had put to rest, and for all his coexistence talk cannot get along with the Chinese...

...In recent Western comment, attention has often been drawn to the paradox of Stalin's memory...

...But this was not a meeting of farm delegations, it was a Party Conference, where not the farm population but the Soviet people and all the world were told that the Party had failed...

...If I am not mistaken, Khrushchev made the first move in that direction at the recent Moscow Party Conference...

...The subtle tactics of rapprochement or detente was possible so long as the flexible instrument of obedient Communist parties followed every quirk of Kremlin policy without losing ideological coherence and doctrinal fanaticism...

...As that instrument is coming apart, externally by the emergence of multi-national Communism and internally by the erosion of the Party regime, Khrushchev's claim to international leadership comes to rest on the naked power of the Soviet state and on the continued dynamism of its policy...

...But why should we in the West believe it...

...he rules it but it also rules him, and in order to win some freedom of maneuver he would rather communicate directly with "the people...

...But the paradox goes deeper: inside the Soviet Union, too, the old-timers must try to rally in the name of the man who did everything to destroy the Party...

...The Party has been told to perform or else, but maybe the signs are already pointing both ways: the Party must perform but perform or not, it will be taken down a peg...

...This has, however, one drawback...

...The break of diplomatic relations with Albania meant first of all the withdrawal of an Ambassador whose high party rank no longer gave him power to rule the Albanian apparatus...

...the iron cohort not only is useless, it is obnoxious from the point of view of the state and the man who heads it...

...All of which is rather bewildering for anyone who tries to understand the present troubles of the "peace camp" in terms of ideology or policies...

...They are told it was all Stalin's fault, and they are ready to believe it with the same fervor the German people show in believing that Eichmann expiates for all of them...

...Inevitably he must be led toward policies which stress the basic conflict rather than the cooperation between the big powers...

...We are made aware of a great difference between him and Stalin in determining the succession: Stalin never claimed to have made it by his own devices...

...It places Khrushchev in the same category as Mao, Tito, Castro and Nkrumah who all won by their own devices...