Bolshevism and Nationalism
DALLIN, DAVID J.
Bolshevism and Nationalism Can the Ideologies of Communism and Russian Nationalism Be Reconciled? By David J. Dallin Associate editor, The New Ltrnder, and author ef "The Bit Them," "The Meed...
...The Bolshevik takes this book as a pretext to attack Tarle and the nationalist trend in general...
...The American press in general has been discussing possible leadership shifts in Russia, anticipating an early retirement of Stalin from political affairs...
...A new book by Tarle on the Crimean War has now appeared in Moscow...
...This means, of course, the ABC of Stalin's Communism...
...Or was it the Soviet system that was victorious...
...And outside the plants, where-ever the supervision of the workers ia not strict, work is done rather carelessly...
...We cannot exist half slave and half free...
...As to political refugees, the military and the civilian alike took a more than friendly attitude...
...He talked with them about politics, refugees, etc...
...What is true and most important, however, is the beginning of an ideological struggle of the Communist Party against the nationalist sentiments which are essentially non-Communist, though professed by a multitude ef loyal members of the Communist Party...
...At the suggestion of his officer friends, he even made trips to the big centers of Western Ukraine...
...These people, Gladkov says, "are of the opinion that literature guided by Party principles even becomes biased and utilitarian...
...Though iron discipline reigns in the plants, people who had been abroad told him that even Stakhanovite* did not reach the working standard of the European worker...
...If the nationalist trend prevails it will mean doomsday for the secret police...
...In the army, as well as among civilians, the impression grows that a new era is dawning...
...We must Invsst our future in them...
...He was taken to Russia and after three months was returned to France...
...They were needed in time of war, they were tools to achieve certain results...
...These successes did not reach very far, but they were a beginning, and a threat to the totalitarian Soviet system of government...
...ThIS struggle, a natural aftermath of the war, may assume grest proportions and lead to significant results...
...And where are the toiling people, the oppressed and enslaved T (iladkov asks...
...In the kolhozes he observed empty courtyards, cheerless homes and a generally gloomy atmosphere...
...Who* h the Issue...
...The Russian nationalist trends are still nebulous and do not constitute closely-knit ideology...
...There is too much ssaell ef incense, of holiness...
...It'a a sad sack world they're giving us as a mustering-out gift It will become progressively sadder if we do not lend our strength to organizing it into the One World which Wendell Willkie sought...
...they expect that the new nationalist slogans, ideas and concepts will not be abolished after the war, but will form the basis of a new policy...
...Gladkov attacks unnamed writers who dsre to affirm that "literature must be entirely tree from any directive on the part of the Party, that it must be absolutely independent and objective and that only under these conditions it can be truthful and expressive...
...The official Bolshevik, a magazine •published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, launches an attack on Professor Eugene Tarle, the famous Russian historian, member of the Academy of Sciences (Tarle's Napoleen'e Invasion of Russia appeared in America in 1942...
...With such an approach to the question, the main factor of our victories, the Soviet regime, is being-ignored...
...The party's present campaign against nationalist ideology is the first attempt to stem the new tide, and to restore the prewar system: the monopoly of power by the Communist Party and the NKVD endangered by the Implications of the new nationalism...
...In the widely read magazine Novy Mir (MoaceW, No...
...The ideological training of officers is a most important task in the army...
...In this concrete form, the discussion is at least premature...
...Nor is any change in foreign policy consciously conceived: Essentially the demand is for the curtailment of the powers of the hated NKVD and this is general among the people of the USSR...
...with complete frankness, and even referred to Stalin in a most abusive way without arousing any protest on their part Among the officers as well as among the population he observed a strong opposition to and dissatisfaction with the regime and the common conviction that "this cannot continue" and that "everything must be changed soon...
...He strongly attacks this "tendency towards bourgeois-democratic illusions...
...In modern Russia formulss, slogans, theories have an intrinsic meaning which is not always obvious...
...Is the Party not right in opposing the revival of old-style ideologies...
...Red Army officers were often hindered by, and were in opposition to, the great apparatus of the NKVI), the all embracing Soviet secret police...
...But while the officers manifested a desire for a peaceful and bloodless transformation, bitter resentment prevailed among the soldiers...
...THIS SAD SACK WORLD (From an editorial by Ralph Toledano in the Sentry Box, the GI paper of Fort Brooke, Puerto Rico...
...The article ends with a warning that officers should not expect promotion, if this directive is not followed...
...too many epaulets, too many Metropolitans and Tsars...
...Animosity toward the kolhozes is a general feature among the peasants, and their opposition to the regime is growing...
...During the war, political study hes been neglected, for obvious reasons, in the educational plans for ' officers...
...The number of such statements in the Soviet press has rapidly grown since the end of the war...
...The real meaning of the campaign which is beginning is, however, quite different During the war years, the army and its leadership have won eminence and prestige...
...Firmness and moderation have become vital commodities...
...He often gave the historical background and political concepts for certain territorial demands of Russia, as for instance in Eastern Poland...
...He noticed that in the villages churches were always crowded, but lacked clergymen...
...There are no indications as yet concerning a real struggle for leadership ef Russia behind the scenes, and whether Marshal Zhukov is really, the man to lead an opposition to the traditional Party course, is very doubtful...
...certain reforms of the kolhoz system and alleviation of the hardships of the peasantry would result...
...What surprised him most during hit conversations with these officers wsi their lack of fear of the party and NKVD...
...It strives gradually td return to the former concepts of Stalinism...
...Today we are witnessing the beginnings of developments in Soviet Russia which will assume great significance whatever happens...
...A certain limited degree of independence has been won by the Army from the old Party machinery...
...Through hit slip of the tongue the officers among whom he lived soon learned about his past Not only did they not report him to the police as "an enemy of the Soviet Government," but showed him much sympathy and got on a very friendly footing with him...
...Gladkev'a protest against the general trend of Russian literature could never have appeared were it not mi11ported, and probably inspired, by the highest circles: he is indignant about the prominent part played in the modern Russian literature by old Tsars, generals and the Orthodox church...
...In both cities and villages he observed strong anti-Semitism, particularly in the army...
...But the war hat ended and now the Central Committee of the Communist Party starts a campaign, against nationalist deviations, against the glorification of Russian Tsars and former generals...
...If you adhere to the first conception, you are a nationalist, an anti-Stalinist and, by implication, maybe a Fascist...
...This is the major problem of our time...
...From Inside Russia A RUSSIAN political refugee who has lived in France for many years (his nsme cannot be divulged, but he Is reliable) was captured by the Red Army in Germany where he had been sent as slave laborer with a group of Frenchmen...
...Now the time has come to All this gap...
...Was it simply old Russia, its vast population, its great spaces...
...Ignoring it or glossing it over with easy optimism is as dangerous as yelling blue murder at onr leaders...
...For Stalin, his party, his press, his radio and general propaganda, the purely nationalist line, the exaltation of generals like- Kutusov and Suvorov, the depicting of the greatness of former Tsar's, like Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible—the unending stream of an old-style pateriotic, even racist, propaganda, was mere strategy and tactics...
...There are historians," the Bolshevik says, "who even arrived at the conclusion that the main factors in the victory over Germany were the great spaces of onr fatherland, spaces conquered by former regimes...
...Is it net progressive la its emphasia on popular movements in history, against the exaltation of Tsariam and the Empire...
...There he saw common misery, people dressed in worn-out clothes, miserable and often very dirty homes and the majority of people in a state of exhaustion...
...What Lincoln said about the American nation applies today to the entire globe...
...Tarle says, for instance, that the same Russian people which had ahown its military valor ia the Crimean War has now won the war with Germany...
...By David J. Dallin Associate editor, The New Ltrnder, and author ef "The Bit Them," "The Meed Soeist Rmteie," etc...
...During his stay in the Ukraine he lived in complete freedom—he visited neighboring villages and kolhozes and talked to workers...
...M0LOT0V or Zhukov...
...4, June, 1945) an article by the well-known writer Feo-dor Gladkov takes issue with his eel-leagues, the writers of the Soviet Union...
...And finally, the internal changes would gradually radiate into the sphere of international affairs...
...The ideals of democracy are not among the various emotions embraced in this new nationalism...
...It would be a mistake to accept the two clashing Ideologies, Stalinism and ultra-rationalism, at their fsca value...
...Marshal Zhukov, not a member of the Politboreau, is presented as a candidate of "the military party," in contrast to the CP man Molotov...
...Another crisis in the internal affairs of Russia Is imminent...
...was the 1^1 title of a recent editorial in XT A tiM New Y«rk Daily New...
...His report published in the Russian Socialist Courier throws an interesting light on the Red Army's life and on the general trends now prevailing hi Russia...
...Its main question is the following: After all, who has won this war...
...The Bolshevik contends "the Soviet people today is not the same people as in former, times, it is educated by the great party of Lenin and Stalin and animated by Bolshevik idealism...
...There is not a trace of "enthusiasm" among the workers...
...Nationalist Deviations Attacked The Red Star, tor instance, says In an important leading article that army officers are now obliged to renew the study of "Marxism-Leninism...
...Either peacefully or by bloody end catastrophic teat, it will be solved...
...In the daytime the churches are never closed and are> oft n visited by believers...
...But in the theatres he was amazed at the elegance of the audience: ladies in swanky evening dresses and with fashionable coifures and men in elegant suits...
...When there is no service, the peasants bring the ikons out of the church to the fence, and all day long prayers are offered in front of them without priests...
...For a great many Russian intellectuals, non-Communists as well as Party members, the emphasia on nationalism meant a retreat from Communism...
...It may become a purge, it may cost lives, but the Party and the secret police will not be satisfied with less than one hundred percent restoration of the prewar system...
...A man of over seventy years of age, a Russian nationalist, though not a Communist, Tarle has played a not-unimportant part as spokesman of the Soviet Government during these war years...
...It is too bad that "the authors of novels and tales of our recent past are exalting the Tsar's officers, thus distorting history...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 47
