Russia 5 Years After Stalin·12

...Terror itself became a system of power and the secret police flourished and multiplied...

...Thus far the Party leadership has shown an impressive capacity to manage and direct the new social currents which are flowing on the Soviet scene...

...In making limited concessions in the form of more food, consumer goods, housing and social security, they have tried as far as possible to make sure that these concessions will not seriously interfere with the program of heavy industry expansion or military development...

...The basic task which they have posed for their people was summed up long ago by Stalin as that of overtaking and surpassing the most developed capitalist countries in a historically brief period —in other words, becoming the most powerful industrial nation in the world as soon as possible...

...Can they create a basis of popular support for the dictatorship which will make resort to extreme repressive measures unnecessary...

...These aspirations, however, did not necessarily involve an overt challenge to the Soviet leadership...

...While they have been prepared to improve the system of incentives for collective farmers, they show no disposition to abandon the collective farm system itself, and indeed their forward thrust is in the direction of further socialization of the agricultural sector...

...The great mass of collective farmers and workers were confronted with a chronic shortage of food, consumer goods and housing...

...But they also left a legacy of suppressed aspirations with which the new rulers have had to reckon...

...Like Stalin, they operate on the premise that the monolithic unity of the Party has to be preserved, that no deviations can be tolerated inside the Party, and no challenges to its authority from the outside...

...Technical dynamism was built into the system, not only by the emphasis on technical education but also by surrounding the career of the engineer and manager with special privileges, perquisites and status in order to attract talent...

...The fear which its agents inspired provided the foundation of Stalin's own security...

...Except in the area of natural science and technology, and with some qualifications even there, a dry rot settled over Soviet official intellectual life...

...Is it asking too much to believe that the future belongs to them...

...In this fundamental sense, they remain true to their organizational heritage...

...indeed, many of those who harbored thoughts of greater independence and authority operated within a framework of overall identification with the Soviet system and envisaged such developments as strengthening a regime of which, after all, they were an integral part...

...The new course on which the regime embarked in the period immediately after Stalin's passing, with its promises of a rapid improvement in popular welfare, was succeeded by a rededication to the heavy industry drive and a curtailment of plans for the expansion of consumer goods output...

...At the same time, much of the fundamental structure of what we have come to identify as totalitarianism has remained intact...

...Despite the persistence of many Stalinist residues, the new leadership has experimented with methods of rule which mark a definite departure from the pattern of latter-day Stalinism...

...All these developments add up to a modification of the Stalinist system in some important respects...

...And yet there remain grounds for optimism about the long-term future...

...But there is danger in being excessively sanguine on this score, at least over the short run...

...Can the present rulers relax controls and permit an area of limited freedom without unleashing pressures for still greater freedom...

...Suppressed though these asprations were during the Stalinist era, they were nevertheless fermenting behind the fagade of Stalinist ideological conformity...

...Will they permit forces to gather which threaten to undermine their own power, or will they, like Stalin before them, reverse course and supply ruthless repression at the first sign that their authority is imperiled...

...What will be the long-term effects of increasing industrialization and mass education on Soviet social and political development...

...The requirements of industrialization impose their own patterns of rationalized management in any society which sets maximum productivity as a primary goal, but they do not dictate the abdication of political power by those whose specialty has been preserving it intact...

...At the same time, the new rulers have also adopted a number of measures which are calculated to placate popular dissatisfaction...

...The Party regime has not been modified...

...Understandably, these aspirations found their sharpest focus in the new Soviet intelligentsia and managerial groups who were coming into positions of responsibility and influence during the latter part of Stalin's reign...

...Stalinism also left its impress on social and intellectual life...

...In the cultural sphere, they have shown some disposition to shed Stalinist rigidities, but they insist on maintaining the authority of the Party leadership to serve as the ultimate custodian of orthodox doctrine...

...And it is not hard to imagine how they yearned for firm ground under their feet, and in yearning mirrored the fears and hopes of every bureaucrat in the hierarchy...

...At the same time, industrialization unleashed its own imperatives...

...A strange brew labeled "Soviet patriotism" was concocted to demonstrate that the Soviet regime was the legitimate custodian of historical traditions and national interests...

...In the economic sphere the driving thrust was forced-draft industrialization...

...In the view of the present leadership, the security organs still have an indispensable role to play, but as an instrument of the ruling group, rather than as a Damoclean sword hanging over it...

...Like Stalin before him, Khrushchev has made clear that deviations from the Party line will not be tolerated, that the new leadership is determined to preserve the system of Party dictatorship, that it remains committed to a program of rapid industrial expansion, and that it proposes to continue pressing for the expansion of Communist influence and power in the world...

...As this summary perhaps implies, the major assumptions on which Stalin's successors are proceeding are well within the traditions and doctrines on which they have been nurtured...

...Stalin's successors have, of course, been quick to clamp down restrictions wherever elements in the population probed the limits or overstepped the bounds of the "new freedom...

...In the political sphere, Stalinism spelled the development of a fullblown totalitarian regime in which all the lines of control ultimately converged in the hands of the supreme dictator...

...Like Stalin, they remain dedicated to the notion that they are engaged in a desperate race with the West for industrial supremacy, and that the race must be won to promote "the irresistible advance of all mankind toward Communism...

...This article was also prepared for the Christian Science Monitor...

...Genuinely shocked and outraged by the unintended consequences of de-Stalinization—the challenge of events in Hungary and Poland, the ferment among students and intellectuals in the Soviet Union itself—they replied in a not unfamiliar pattern: with force and terror in Hungary, with suspicion and wary, reluctant acquiescence in Poland, and with a renewed war on "unhealthy" ideological manifestations in the Soviet Union itself...

...The course of events since Stalin's passing makes clear that his successors were aware of these aspirations and that they found it advisable to go at least part way to meet them...

...Inside the Soviet Union there has been less emphasis on police surveillance and terror and more reliance on incentives, the encouragement of initiative and the assurance of at least a measure of security for the Soviet citizenry...

...through them he guarded , the loyalty of the Party, the armed forces, the bureaucracy, the intellectuals and the mass of the Soviet population generally...

...Merle Fainsod is professor of government at Harvard University and Director of Political Studies at Harvard's Russian Research Center...

...As Nikita Khrushchev made clear in his closing speech to the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, insecurity communicated itself even to Stalin's closest collaborators...

...It has sought to experiment with alternating phases of relaxation and pressure...

...He is the author of How Russia is Ruled, which many consider the best one-volume study of Soviet society...

...The Stalinist impact on Soviet society was many-sided...

...the result was a lopsided economic development in which the consumption sector of the economy was starved to accumulate the capital for industrial expansion and the building of military might...

...Control of the Party apparatus remains the key to supreme power in the Soviet system...

...it has been consolidated...

...The reaffirmation of Party hegemony under Khrushchev represents the triumph of the Party apparatus in its purest and most unadulterated form...

...Soviet educational progress has produced striking technological and scientific achievements, but we must not forget that it is associated with a system of political indoctrination which instills subservience to Party commands...

...The swing of the pendulum at the moment is in a neo-Stalinist direction, but the question remains whether there are not secular forces at work which will utlimately erode the totalitarian edifice...

...To do so the assumptions which underlie the course the new rulers have sought to steer in the years since Stalin's passing must be understood...

...Their devotion to Communism as the wave of the future remains a leading article of faith...

...The steps which have been taken in the direction of administrative decentralization and greater operational autonomy for the bureaucracy and economic managers, the abandonment of drastic penal sanctions in the enforcement of labor discipline, the turn away from forced labor on a mass scale—measures such as these appear to represent a recognition on the part of the new rulers that the excessive centralization of the Stalinist era had reached a point of diminishing returns, that efficiency can be more effectively fostered by liberating management from detailed operating controls, and that material incentives are more potent than coercion in stimulating increases in labor productivity...

...They have been proceeding on the assumption that, in their own self-interest as well as for broader public reasons, the terror had to be ameliorated and brought under control...

...So far as long-range goals are concerned, the objectives which Stalin's successors profess are virtually indistinguishable from those of their erstwhile master...

...they must be recognized as a potential of change that is not easily halted...

...The new leaders have sought ways of rationalizing the administrative structure and rendering it more efficient...

...This carried as its consequence the subordination of the police to the Party...

...The small but symbolically important year-to-year improvement in living standards, the lifting of the minimum wage to 300 rubles (roughly $30) a month in the cities and 270 rubles in the countryside, the new pension law, the two-hour reduction in the work week, the promise that a 40-hour week will be instituted by 1960, the new program of housing construction, the increases in procurement prices for agricultural products, the abolition of fees in all educational institutions, the slight loosening of the bonds on scholarly and artistic expression, the opening of a cultural window to the West—these and other measures indicate that the new leadership is not insensitive to the grievances of its constituency and that willingly or unwillingly, it has responded to aspirations which were greatly suppressed during the Stalinist era...

...But surely it is heartening to observe that, after more than 40 years of conditioning the new "Soviet man," there are still those in the USSR who probe limits and dare overstep bounds...

...The first "thaw'' in literature soon encountered its limits as the guardians of ideological purity pounced on such unorthodox works as Zorin's Guests, Panova's The Seasons and even The Thaw itself, and followed with a not altogether successful effort to harness the craftsmen of the pen at the Second Soviet Writers' Congress...

...The most disadvantaged groups were the unskilled and semi-skilled workers and the collective farmers, but the pressure for improvement extended well beyond these groups into the middle and even relatively privileged strata of Soviet society...

...To be sure, they declare that war between the camps of capitalism and Communism is no longer "fatalistically inevitable," though such hopes of peace as they hold out are posited on the assumption that the capitalistic enemy will cooperate in his destruction by peacefully fading from the scene...

...the new state elite and middle class which emerged under Stalin largely monopolized the rewards of Soviet society...

...Heavy industry and the armed forces enjoyed a prior claim on all economic resources...

...As one reads their pronouncements, particularly those of Khrushchev, one senses a desire to turn the clock back to the early 1930s, an almost wistful search to recapture something of the elan of the stirring years of the First Five Year Plan before the blight of the purges blackened the face of Russia...

...One of the features of the post-Stalinist period has been a loosening of the bonds in many areas of Soviet life as compared with the tight rein which Stalin held...

...Egalitarianism was repudiated as "petty-bourgeois nonsense...

...These developments left their impress on Soviet society...

...The crying need for engineers and technicians to man the new industrial plant led to an overhauling of the educational system, an emphasis on technical training, and the growth of a new Soviet-trained technical intelligentsia which played an essential role in managing an increasingly complex economy...

...At the same time, they insist that the managers must continue to operate within a framework of planned goals and Party supervision and control...

...It may turn out that the consolidation of the Party apparatus under Khrushchev has only served to arrest long-term trends which will eventually operate to undermine Party controls...

...Here, too, the new leadership has reverted to a familiar formula...

...The 20th Party Congress offered a new set of economic reforms and spurred a fresh probing of the boundaries of the new freedom...

...This time, there is reason to believe, the Soviet leadership miscalculated...

...Stalin's pronouncements became infallible law, and ideological discussion reduced itself to parroting his latest word...

...The family was visualized as a species of human machine-tool which could be stimulated to Stakhanovite productivity by outlawing divorces, imposing restrictions on abortions, and holding out special premiums for over-quota child bearing...

...One lesson of the last five years would appear by now to be undeniable...

...They appear agreed that the top-heavy overcentralization of the Stalinist period has to be abandoned and that economic management can only be reinvigorated by freeing it from petty restrictions and encouraging it to exercise more initiative...

...The Communist party became a creature of Stalin's will and lost such policy-determining functions as it once possessed...

...The result has been to disclose inquisitive minds opening up lines of inquiry which the regime would prefer to see closed forever...

...The schools were transformed into an authoritarian instrument to instill devotion to the regime and to prepare youth for its appointed place in the Soviet hierarchical structure...

...To understand the changes which have taken place in the Soviet Union since the passing of Stalin, they must be seen against the background of the Stalinist system from which they emerged...

...They are willing to experiment with a somewhat wider area of freedom than prevailed under latter-day Stalinism, but not at the expense of loss of control over the intellectual and artistic life of the country...

...The church, too, was enlisted in state service through an uneasy de facto "concordat" in which the political loyalty of the clergy was exchanged for a precarious toleration of religious practices...

...Then Boris I. Nicolaevsky discussed the Communist party, Gleb Struve literature, Richard Pipes nationalities, Simon Wolin the secret police, Vladimir Gsovski law, Myron Rush the economic managers, Lazar Volin agriculture, Oleg Hoeffding industry, Leon Goure the Army, and George Kline education...

...Reassuring as it has been to note signs of ferment and criticism among Soviet students and intellectuals in recent years, these remain somewhat marginal phenomena, and it may be a long time before they build up into the insistent and organized demand for political liberty which would represent a real danger to the regime...

...They have recognized that intensive efforts must be made to overcome the lag in agricultural output...

...How can these apparently contradictory trends be reconciled...

...In their understandable determination to hold onto power, they tend to view the Party as the primary vehicle for consolidating their hegemony...

...Second, there was the desire for greater security, for a life of stable expectations, for liberation from the threat of the concentration camp and the numbing uncertainties of constant surveillance and denunciation...

...First, there was the widespread desire for a higher standard of living— ior more food and consumer goods, for better housing, for more leisure, for more adequate provision for old age and other disabilities...

...And when he sits with Stalin, he does not know where he will be sent next—home or to jail...

...To read Khrushchev's speech is to sense the terror which the lieutenants felt as they lived from day to day at the mercy of a fickle and suspicious despot...

...The series began March 24 with an article on foreign policy by David J. Dallin...

...But time has worn its grooves, and the new leadership must maneuver with the forces which history has placed at its disposal...

...Stalin's successors have been prepared to concede that some economic reforms are necessary in order to placate discontent and consolidate support...

...Such fragments of freedom as persisted from an earlier period were almost wholly obliterated...

...It has happened sometimes," Nikolai Bulganin is quoted as saying, "that a man goes to Stalin on his invitation as a friend...

...Third, there was the desire for greater freedom—not necessarily freedom in the Western political sense, but freedom to use one's talents and capacities, freedom to perform one's function without fearing the consequences, freedom to transcend the Stalinist doctrinal rigidities in thinking and writing about Soviet realites...