Guesses on Russia
Sharp, Samuel L.
Guesses on Russia Russia, What Next? by Isaac Deutscher. Oxford University Press. 230 pp. $3. Malenkov, Stalin's Successor, by Martin Ebon. McGraw-Hill, 284 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Samuel L....
...G. M. Malenkov naturally receives the author's special attention...
...correctness of Stalin's policy but who faithfully did his dirty little chores, determined to outlive the master and then undo much of his work as rapidly as possible...
...But there the only point they have in common ends and substantial differences begin...
...In Marxist terms, the author claims that the contradiction between the socio-economic base and the political superstructure of the Soviet Union has "matured" to the point that a change has become a dialectical necessity...
...The first author is at the mercy of a somewhat abstract logic, while the other tries to paint a portrait without much of a canvas, with little paint and with a rather thin brush...
...Of the 284 pages of Ebon's book, only 154 are devoted to an analysis of the personality of Stalin's successor to the premiership of the Soviet Union...
...Stalin's death may merely have served to hasten, and call attention to, an essentially inevitable long-range development...
...elsewhere Deutscher calls it "a mongrel offspring of Marxism and primitive magic," the peculiar result of the incongruous marriage of an essen-itally Western and modern doctrine with the backwardness of Russia...
...Deutsch-er's Malenkov is "possibly" the spokesman of the uppermost stratum of the Soviet bureaucracy, who for quite some time may have had serious mental reservations about the THE REVIEWERS JERRY VOORHIS is executive secretary of the Cooperative League of the U.S.A...
...However, if the Soviet people are to make "proper use" of the achievements of the Stalin era, they have to—and, according to Deutscher, will—sooner or later "transcend" Stalinism as a method of governing...
...but it may also, possibly under the pressure of determined Stalinists or of military Bonapartist elements, be replaced by a return to the worst features of the Stalin regime or by a national hero in uniform playing the savior...
...The core of Deutscher's argument is that under Stalin's regime the Soviet Union has developed into a country essentially different from the Russia of the czars and even from the early post-revolutionary Russia under Lenin...
...Yet Deutscher, who relies on Titoist sources to stress Stalin's conservatism, omits the fact that Stalin once told Tito to bring the king back to Yugoslavia only in order later to "stick a knife in his back" (as V. Dedijer tells us in his Tito...
...but, of course, the accumulation of tactically dictated attitudes over a period of years goes down in history as the work of the man...
...even, to some extent, in the world's first industrial nation...
...The Russian people, whom Deutscher pictures as having "come of age politically and culturally," have outgrown Stalinism and its use of "magic" and other symbols appropriate for a backward society...
...After defining the essence of Stalinism, Deutscher ventures—rather carefully and leaving escape hatches open—into the unexplored world of post-Stalinist Russia...
...Needless to say, where Deutscher more or less pleads for a cautiously sympathetic attitude toward what, he hopes, might be a democratic revolution from above in Russia, Ebon suggests extreme caution because "the outstretched hand of the new man is only a magician's clever gesture, seeking to detract attention from the danger of a poised bayonet...
...Deutscher analyzes what he believes to be the underlying forces which shape the attitude of leaders...
...Another possibility is that Malenkov, the most faithful of Stalin's lieutenants, is merely bowing to Russia's "objective" urge to shake off the worst of Stalinism...
...Since Russia "needs" no magic, therefore there will be none...
...The remaining pages are padded with Malenkov's own utterances, especially his mammoth speech at the XIX Congress of the CPSU, in October 1952...
...At one point Stalinism is defined as a blend of "Marxism, autocracy, Greek Orthodoxy, and primitive magic...
...In his interpretation of Stalinism in international affairs Deutscher remains faithful to the image of Stalin the overcautious conservative, whom the revolutionary tides of the time have dislodged, much against his inclination, from the relative comfort, of "self-containment...
...Far from plotting revolutions all over the world, Stalin was either contemptuous or afraid of all genuine revolutionary movements...
...This interpretation is admittedly based only on what Malenkov said in a number of speeches between 1941 and early 1953...
...Why then make them the basis of a spiritual portrait of Malenkov...
...The authors live up to their respective reputations...
...WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE is a professor of American history at the University of Wisconsin...
...Deutscher is the author of an extremely readable biography of Stalin, frequently referred to as controversial, at least in part because it fails to confirm the superman (or super-devil) image of Stalin so close to the hearts of Communists and their extreme opponents...
...This trend may lead, in Deutscher's opinion, to a gradual" evolution of the regime toward a genuine socialist democracy...
...Thus the element of drive for power, so conspicuously underplayed by Deutscher, becomes the central theme in Ebon's book...
...Between the lines, one reads a plea to the Western world to give the Malenkov regime a chance, because external pressure at this time may discourage the "reform" regime and nullify the delicate switching-over operation now under way...
...Ebon's contribution consists in piecing together scraps of information and gossip on Malenkov (there is really little to go by), and in telling us, "as far as one can tell," what Malenkov believes in...
...This Deutscher explains in two chapters devoted to the legacy of Stalinism in domestic and international affairs...
...How about the co-existence of "magic" and industrial civilization in Japan, in Hitler's Germany...
...He is a former Congressman from California and the author of "Out of Debt, Out of Danger" and "Confessions of a Congressman...
...In Ebon's presentation, Malenkov is merely a shadow of the old master, only more ruthless, impatient, and dangerously ignorant, who is—only temporarily?—restrained by rivals at the top from converting the directorate presently ruling Russia into a one-man dictatorship...
...In this respect the Stalin era has left a legacy "that posterity can neither scrap . . . nor get away from...
...Consequently all rumors that were ever deemed fit to print in daily newspapers have found their way into Ebon's volume...
...The weakness of Deutscher's analysis is an undue reliance on logic...
...There is simply no "need" for Stalinism, and, therefore, according to Deutscher, it will be discarded...
...Ebon has produced a volume called World Communism Today, full of diligently collected fragmentary references to the Communist parties of various countries, useful to some extent but neither complete nor overly significant...
...At any rate, in this interpretation Malenkov emerges as the leader of a "reform" trend in the Soviet Union...
...This combination, Deutscher argues, has fulfilled its historical mission but by now has ceased to serve what he calls "the vital needs of Russia's development...
...But, does the record of history necessarily indicate that "magic" is not practiced in industrial societies...
...It cannot be overlooked that he was against Tito's radical moves and that he advised the Chinese Communists to make a deal with Chiang Kai-shek...
...SAMUEL L. SHARP is an associate professor of international relations at American University...
...It is difficult to quarrel with this prediction before we make sure what Isaac Deutscher means by Stalinism...
...Taken together, they symbolize the extent to which the experts on Russia really grope in the dark...
...It is not surprising that the views expressed in these speeches "do not differ greatly from the basic ideas expressed by Joseph Stalin...
...Ebon concentrates on the personalities in the show...
...The change has been particularly striking in the field of industrialization...
...In the present, rather quickly put together books, the authors continue a line of approach discernible in their earlier works...
...The first acts of the new regime, Deutscher argues, revealed a tendency toward liberalization...
...The difference would then appear to have been one of tactics only...
...Reviewed by Samuel L. Sharp THESE TWO volumes attempt, each in its own way, a prediction of things to come in the Soviet Union...
Vol. 17 • August 1953 • No. 8
