Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Russia from Lenin To Khrushchev Whoever may be on top in the merry-go-round of Soviet politics doubtless found much to celebrate on the 40th...
...What is the fulfilment record of these ideals in the Soviet Union four decades later...
...but Stalin's bloody counterrevolution of 1929-1932 took the land away from them and established a new kind of serfdom in the collective farms...
...Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania...
...Indeed, although Communism from its inception was a threat to the values of Western civilization, the nature of this threat has changed between the time of Lenin and that of Khrushchev...
...speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly: land Io the peasants: self-determination for all peoples...
...Against the list of independent countries which have been freed from foreign rule—India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos...
...an end of exploitation of man by man...
...As for peace, the Soviet Union maintains the largest armed forces in the world, rejects every arms-limitation proposal that involves inspection safeguards, crushes with tanks and artillery the freedom movements in its satellite empire, rattles rockets and threatens annihilation of independent nations which refuse to submit to Kremlin demands...
...Yet, for thoughtful Soviet citizens who have studied what actually happened in 1917, there must have been a hollow note about the celebration...
...down with imperialism: all power to the Soviets...
...All power to the Soviets has meant all power to the ruling Communist party, and this in turn has realized a prediction voiced by Trotsky long before the Revolution: "The Party organization would then substitute itself for the Party as a whole: then the Central Committee would substitute itself for the organization: and finally a single dictator would substitute himself for the Central Committee...
...The area under Communist control has expanded to include more than a third of the world's population...
...Azerbaijan...
...Some of the slogans which recurred constantly in Bolshevik speeches and writings in 1917 were: peace...
...Now you are the party of the murderers...
...The Soviet Empire still quivers from the shocks it received last year in Poland and in Hungary...
...For every professed ideal of Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders has become tattered, if not torn to shreds...
...might be emotionally induced to follow Lenin over the precipice of class war and dictatorship...
...WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Russia from Lenin To Khrushchev Whoever may be on top in the merry-go-round of Soviet politics doubtless found much to celebrate on the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution...
...Bulgaria, Albania, Poland (the last with some reservations...
...workers' control of industry...
...The freed countries are former colonies of Western "imperialists...
...The principle of self-determination was ruthlessly violated by the Soviet subjugation of the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, Georgia...
...As Jean-Paul Sartre bitterly apostrophized the French Communist party after Hungary: "Once you Were considered the party of the murdered...
...This is in eclipse everywhere except in the Soviet sphere...
...The danger in 1917 was that European peoples, shattered and embittered by war...
...It is a mockery today to speak in Moscow of such things as "dictatorship of the proletariat" or of workers' control or the end of exploitation...
...Out of the general chaos and dissolution which furnished the background for the coup of November 7, 1917 has emerged a powerful state and a disciplined society...
...The Constituent Assembly, the only parliament in Russian history freely elected on a basis of universal suffrage...
...It is ominous to hear Khrushchev telling whopping lies with every appearance of believing them...
...If exploitation is the exaction of hard work for meager pay, the Soviet regime is the greatest exploiter in history...
...Imperialism...
...Syria, Lebanon—there is a list of newly enslaved countries: Latvia...
...was dissolved when it revealed a moderate socialist majority...
...The enslaved countries are ruled or dominated by Moscow...
...The launching of the first earth satellite was a triumph of Soviet science and propaganda...
...But outwardly its framework still stands and its rulers feel strong enough to engage in warlike threats in the Middle East, a region Stalin left alone...
...Cambodia, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana...
...I am reminded of the prominent Labor MP who remarked, after Khrushchev's visit to England: "He is very like Hitler in his ability to work himself into a genuine frenzy over quite imaginary wrongs and grievances...
...The first Soviet government did ratify the seizure of the big estates by the peasants...
...The workers have no more influence than any other group on Soviet Government decisions...
...Now the danger is that the awesome weapons made possible by modern science, in the hands of a paranoid dictator, may wreck civilization...
...No one behind the Iron Curtain and only a diminishing minority outside it now regard the Soviet regime as a champion of the underdog...
Vol. 40 • November 1957 • No. 45
