Universities & Left Review Spring 1957 Vol.1 No 1 Russia in transition ISAAC DEUTSCHER

Who would still maintain nowa- crat or under that of a "collective A fresh gust of wind days that Soviet society has emerged leadership". The essence of collect- from the Stalin era in a state of The mind of the nation has stirred ive leadership is dispersal, diffusion, to new activity. Gone are the days petrified immobility, decayed and and therefore limitation of power. incapable of inner movement and when the whole of the Soviet Union When government passes from one was on its knees before the Leader change? Yet only a short time ago hand into many hands it can no and had to intone the same magic this was the opinion commonly longer be exercised in the same incantations, to believe in the same accepted; and a writer who defied it ruthless and unscrupulous manner bizarre myths, and to keep its and claimed that, despite all appear- in which it was exercised before. It thoughts tightly closed to any im- ances to the contrary, the Soviet pulse of doubt and criticism. To be universe did move seemed to argue becomes subject to checks and balances. sure, it is only slowly and painfully from mere faith or wishfulness. Yes, that people recover in their minds the Soviet universe does move. At It is not only Caesar's head that from monolithic uniformity and re- times it even looks as if it were still has vanished. What used to be his learn to think for themselves and a nebula unsteadily revolving around strong arm, the power of the pol- express their thoughts. Yet, a diver- a shifting axis—a world in the itical police, is broken. The people sity of opinion, unknown since making, rumbling with the tremor are no longer paralysed by fear of it. decades, has begun to show itself of inner dislocation and searching The stupendous machine of terror unmistakably and in many fields. A for balance and shape. which overwhelmed so many people fresh gust of wind is blowing through It is the twilight of totalitarianism with so many false accusations and the lecture halls and seminars of that the U.S.S.R. is living through. extorted so many false confessions of universities. Teachers and students Again, how many times have not guilt, the machine which looked like are at last discussing their problems "political scientists" told us that a an infernal perpetuum mobile at last in relative freedom from inquisition- society which has succumbed to invented by Stalin, has been brought al control and dogmatic inhibition. totalitarian rule cannot disenthrall to a standstill. Stalin's successors The Stalinist tutelage over science itself by its own efforts, and that themselves have stopped it, afraid was so barbarous and wasteful, even such is "the structure of Soviet total- that even they would be caught by from the State's viewpoint, that it itarian power" (the like of which, it it; and they can hardly bring it back could no longer be maintained; and was said, history has never seen into motion, even if they wished to so it is perhaps not surprising that before!) that it can be overthrown do so—the rust of moral opprobrium scientists should have regained free- only from the outside by mighty has eaten too deep into its cogs and dom. What is more startling and blows delivered in war. Yet it is as wheels. politically important is the freedom a result of developments within the Nearly dissolved is also the Stalin- for people to delve into the Soviet Soviet society that Stalinism is ist univers concentrationnaire, that Union's recent history—a freedom breaking down and dissolving; and grim world of slave labour camps still limited yet real. In Stalin's days it is the Stalinists themselves who which in the course of several de- this was the most closely guarded are the subverters of their own cades sucked in, absorbed, and taboo, because the Stalin legend orthodoxy. could only survive as long as destroyed Russia's rebellious spirits the annals of the Revolution and of It is nearly four years now since and minds, leaving the nation intel- the Bolshevik Party remained sealed the U.S.S.R. has ceased to be ruled lectually impoverished and morally and hidden away, especially from by an autocrat. None of Stalin's benumbed. Rehabilitated survivors the young, who could find in their successors has "stepped into Stalin's of the Great Purges of the 1930's own memories no antidote to it. shoes". Government by committee have returned from places of exile. has taken the place of government There are, unfortunately, few, all Even now the annals have not by a single dictator. A French writer, too few, of them; and some may be been thrown open indiscriminately. still somewhat incredulous of the broken and exhausted men. Yet, few They are being unsealed guardedly, change, recalls that in Rome, when as they are and such as they are, one by one. The historians reveal a Caesar died or was assassinated, they are a leaven in the mind of their contents only gradually and in his head was struck off the public post-Stalinist society—a reproach small doses. (The history of the monument, but "Caesar's body" was and a challenge to its disturbed October Revolution is still told in left intact until another head was conscience. Multitudes of other such a way that the giant figure of put on it. Yet, in Moscow not one deportees have been allowed to Trotsky is kept out of it—only his but many heads have been put on leave concentration camps and to shadow is allowed to be shown Caesar's body; and perhaps even the settle as "free workers*" in the re- casually, on the fringe of the revolu- "body" is no longer the same. It is mote provinces of the north and the tionary scene. But if Hamlet is still pointless to argue that it makes no east. Temporarily or finally, the acted without the Prince of Den- difference for a nation whether it nightmare of mass deportations has mark, the text of the play is becom- lives under the tyranny of an auto- ceased to haunt Russia. ing more and more authentic, while 4 Russia in transition in Stalin's day, the whole play, a political power of a magnitude small working class which had made with the Prince cast as the villain, hitherto unknown in Russian history. the revolution had shrunk to nearly was apocryphal). Every tiny particle There are now in the U.S.S.R. four half its size. (Not more than 1,500,000 of historical truth, wrested from the to five times as many industrial —2,000,000 men remained then in archives, is political dynamite, des- workers as there were before the industrial employment). Of the rest tructive not only of the Stalin myth revolution and even in the late many had perished in the civil wars; proper, but also of those elements 1920's. Large scale industry em- others had become Commissars or of orthodoxy which Stalin's epi- ployed then not much more than Civil Servants; and still others had gones are anxious to conserve. The three million wage labourers. It now been driven by famine from town to old-Bolshevik heresies, of which employs at least fifteen million (not country and never returned. Most even the middle-aged Russian of our counting transport workers, state factories were idle. Their workers, days has known next to nothing, farm labourers, the medium and unable to earn a living by productive and the authors of those heresies, higher technical personnel, etc.). The work, traded in black markets, stole the ghostly apostates and traitors* of working class has not only grown goods from the factories, and be- the Stalin era, are suddenly revealed in size; its structure and outlook, came declasses. As the old landlord in a new light, the heresies can be too, have changed. These are not class and the bourgeoisie had been seen as currents of legitimate Bol- the old Russian workers who com- crushed, as the peasantry was shevik thought and as part and bined exceptional political elan inherently incapable of assuming parcel of Russia's revolutionary with technological backwardness and national leadership, and as the heritage; and the traitors—as great, semi-illiteracy. This in its main industrial working class was half perhaps tragic, figures of the revolu- sections is a highly advanced work- dispersed and half demoralised, a tion. ing class which avidly assimilates social vacuum arose in which the The rehabilitation, even partial, skills and absorbs general know- new bureaucracy was the only active, of past heresy militates against the ledge. Among the young who now organized and organizing element. wholesale condemnation of present enter industry many have gone It filled the political vacuum and and future heresy. It corrodes the through secondary education. The established its own preponderance. very core of orthodoxy to such an change may be illustrated by the extent that the ruling group shrinks following comparison: about a from the consequences. But the quarter of a century ago as many as ruling group is no longer in a posi- 75 per cent of the workers employed tion to stop the process of Russia's in engineering were classed as un- A Leviathan State historical education which forms skilled and only 25 as skilled. In Then, in the course of the 1920's, now the quintessence of her polit- 1955 the proportion was exactly the working class was re-assembled ical education.1 reversed: 75 per cent were skilled and reconstituted; and in the 1930's» This is not the place to discuss men and only 25 remained un- the years of forced industrialization, further the intellectual ferment of skilled. The relation is certainly its numbers grew rapidly. By now, the post-Stalin era. Suffice it to say, not the same in other industries: however, the workers were power- that in its initial phases de-Stalin- engineering represents the most pro- less against the new Leviathan state. ization has been or was primarily gressive sector of the economy. But The bureaucracy was firmly en- the work of the intelligentsia. Writers, the situation in this sector is highly trenched in its positions. It accumu- artists, scientists and historians have significant, if only because engineer- lated power and privileges and held been its pioneers. Their demands ing employs about one-third of the the nation by the throat. The work- have coincided, at least in part, with industrial manpower and accounts ing class could not at first derive the needs and wishes of the man- for about one half of the total gross strength from its own growth in agerial groups, and of influential industrial output of the U.S.S.R. numbers. That growth became, on circles in the party leadership. This The power of the Soviet bureau- the contrary, a new source of weak- accounts for the peculiarly limited, cracy was originally rooted in the ness. Most of the new workers were administrative-ideological character weakness of the working class. The peasants, forcibly uprooted from the of the reforms carried out. Yet, as Russian proletariat was strong country, bewildered, lacking habits at the turn of the century, the intel- enough to carry out a social revolu- of industrial life, capacity for organ- ligentsia has acted as the bwevegtinik, tion in 1917, to overthrow the bour- ization, political tradition, and self- the storm-finch. Its restlessness geois regime, to lift the Bolsheviks confidence. In the turmoil of the augurs the approach of an upheaval to power, and to fight the civil wars second world war and of its after- in which much wider social forces to a victorious conclusion. But it math, society was once again thrown are likely to come into play. was not strong enough to exercise out of balance. It is only in this the actual proletarian dictatorship, decade, in the 1950's, that the vastly to control those whom it had lifted expanded working class has been to power, and to defend its own taking shape and consolidating as a The new working class freedom against them. Here is in- modern social force, acquiring an The new working class which has deed the key to the subsequent urban industrial tradition, becoming emerged from the melting-pot of evolution or "degeneration" of the aware of itself, and gaining confid- forced industrialization is potentially Soviet regime. By 1920-1921 the ence.

lIt is difficult to find an analogy in any nation at any other time for so close an interdependence of history and politics as that which exists in the USSR at the present. The controversies of Soviet historians which preeceded the XX Congress foreshadowed Krushchev's and Mikoyan's revelations at the Congress; and it was no matter of chance that even before Krushchev, at the Congress itself, Professor Pankratova, an historian, made one of the most startling pronouncements. Since then the historians' disputes have gone on uninterruptedly. 5 Isaac Deutscher Workers and Bureaucracy expose the contrast in their real implies in the first instance a break This new working class has so far positions. De-Stalinization was, at with the inequalities fostered by first, an act of the bureaucracy's Stalinism. lagged behind the intelligentsia in self-determination. The civil servant the political drive against Stalinism, and the manager were its first bene- although it has certainly had every ficiaries: freed from the Leader's sympathy with the intelligensia's despotic tutelage they began to demand for freedom. However, the breathe freely. This made the work- Renascent egalitarianism workers cannot possibly remain ers acutely conscious of their own It should not be imagined that content with the administrative- inferiority. However, the bureaucracy the renascent egalitarianism of the ideological limitations of the post- could not for any length of time re- masses is politically articulate. It has Stalin reform. They are certain to go serve the benefits of de-Stalinization not yet found any clear and definite eventually beyond the intelligentsia's exclusively for itself. Having eman- expression on the national scale. We demands and to give a distinctive cipated itself from the old terror, it know of no resolutions adopted by proletarian meaning and content to willy-nilly relieved of it society as a trade unions or by workers' meet- the current ideas and slogans of whole. The workers too ceased to ings protesting against privilege and democratization. Their thoughts and be haunted by the fear of the slave calling for equality. The workers political passions are concentrating labour camp. Since that fear had have not yet been free enough to increasingly on the contradiction be- been an essential ingredient of the voice such demands or to make tween their nominal and their actual Stalinist labour discipline, its dis- their voices heard. They may not position in society. Nominally, the appearance entailed the end of that even have been capable of formu- workers are the ruling power in the discipline. Malenkov's government lating them as people accustomed nation. In the course of forty years proclaimed the obsolescence of the to autonomous trade union and this idea has been ceaselessly and Stalinist labour code. That draconic political activity would do.* It is persistently instilled into their minds. code had played its part in breaking more than thirty years since they They could not help feeling edified, the masses of the proletarianized had ceased to form and formulate elevated, and even flattered by it. peasantry to regular habits of indus- opinions, to put them forward at They cannot help feeling that they rial work; and only to those masses, meetings, to stand up for them, to should, that they ought, and that bewildered and helpless, could it be oppose the views of others, to vote, they must be the ruling power. Yet, applied. Vis-a-vis the new working to carry the day, or to find them- every day experience tells them that class it was becoming increasingly selves outvoted. It is more than the ruling power is the bureaucracy, useless and ineffective. A freer thirty years since as a class they not they. The bureaucracy's strong climate at the factory bench had ceased to have any real political arm has imposed on them the indeed become the prerequisite for life of their own. They could hardly Stalinist labour discipline. The a steady rise in labour productivity recreate it overnight, even if those bureaucracy alone has determined and higher industrial efficiency. in power had put no obstacles in the trend of economic policy, the Nor could the worker remain con- their way. Consequently, the new targets for the Five Year Plans, the tent merely with the relaxation of egalitarianism expresses itself only balance between producer and con- factory discipline. He began to use locally, fitfully, and incoherently. It sumer goods, and the distribution his freshly-won freedom to protest is only semi-articulate. It works of the national income. The bureau- against the pre-eminence of the man- through exercising pressure at the cracy alone has fixed the differential agerial groups and of the bureau- factory level. Its manifestations are wage scales and wage rates creating cracy. By far the most important fragmentary and scattered. Yet it a gulf between the upper and the phenomenon of the post-Stalin era makes itself felt as the social under- lower strata. The bureaucracy has is the evident revival of the long tone to de-Stalinisation, an under- pulled the wires behind the Stak- suppressed egalitarian aspirations of tone growing in volume and power. hanovite campaigns and, under the the working class. Many recent acts of official policy pretext of socialist emulation, set From this point the workers' have clearly reflected the egalitarian worker against worker and destroyed approach to de-Stalinization begins pressure from below. For the first their solidarity. And, under Stalin's to diverge from that of the intelli- time since 1931 the government has orders, it was the bureaucracy, gentsia. The men of the intelligentsia tackled a basic reform of wages, and aided by the labour aristocracy, that have been intensely interested in the although the reform has not yet taken conducted a frenzied and relentless political "liberalisation", but socially final shape, the reversal of the anti- crusade against the instinctive egal- they are conservative. It is they who egalitarian trend is already clearly itarianism of the masses. have benefited from the inequalities discernible. Hitherto the piece rate Until recently the bureaucracy of the Stalin era. Apart from in- has formed the basis of the whole itself was subject to Stalin's whim- dividuals and small groups, who wages system: at least 75 per cent sical terror and suffered from it may rise intellectually above their of all industrial wages were until even more than the working class own privileged position and section- quite recently made up of piece did. This veiled, up to a point, the al viewpoint, they can hardly wish to rates, because these lend themselves contrast between the theoretical put an end to those inequalities and much more easily than time rates to notion of the proletarian dictator- to upset the existing relationship extreme differentiation. Within this ship and the practice of bureaucratic between various groups and classes system the so-called progressive rule. In their prostration before the of Soviet society. They are inclined piece rate was favoured most of all, Leader, worker and bureaucrat seem- to preserve the social status quo. a method of payment under which ed to be equals. All the stronger For the mass of the workers, on the the Stakhanovite producing 20, 30 did the beginning of de-Stalinization other hand, the break with Stalinism and 40 per cent above the norm of 6 Russia in transition output earned not just 20, 30 and fee extended to the ranks of the just outside the Kremlin wall. This 40 per cent more than the basic pay, young generation the social differ- used to be the most heavily guarded but 30, 50, 80 per cent or even ences which Stalin's labour policy spot in the whole of the Soviet more. This method of payment, fostered among their parents. It Union—it swarmed with police glorified in Stalin's days, as the tended to perpetuate and deepen the agents and was usually shunned by supreme achievement of socialism, new stratification of society. On this the ordinary citizen who had no has now been declared as harmful ground Stalin's communist critics, business to be there. But the work- to the interests of industry and especially Trotsky, charged him with er's new daring still has its well- workers alike. The grossly over- paving the way for a new bour- defined limits. Having chided the advertised Stakhanovite "movement" geoisie. All the more significant is dignitary, he prefers to keep his has been given a quiet burial. The the present abolition of all fees. This anonymity, to withdraw, and to time wage has again become the renewed pledge of universal free plunge into the crowd. Times have basic form of payment. It would be education, given by Stalin's succes- changed, but not enough for a preposterous to see in this the sors, is of far greater practical value worker to believe that he may vent triumph of socialism. Both the piece than was Lenin's pledge, because it with impunity his feelings at "their" wage and the time wage—but the is backed up by a tremendously fine clothes and "their" privileges. former much more than the latter— expanded and still expanding school That many of "them" had risen are essentially capitalist forms of system. Even so, Soviet society has from the working class is true, of payment; and it is only a measure still a long way to go before it course; but this does not make the of the retrogade character of some achieves genuine equality in educa- underdog feel less of an underdog. aspects of Stalin's labour policy that tion. Only in the towns are there The peculiar form of protest he the return to the time wage should enough secondary schools to take chose may have flavoured of "hooli- be regarded as progress. Yet progress in all children—in the country there ganism". But, as a rule, men express it marks. It shows that workers no will not be enough of them before their feelings in this way when they longer respond to the crude Stalinist 1960 at the earliest. Universal aca- cannot easily express them in more appeal to their individual acquisit- demic education is Zukunftsmusik. legitimate forms. Yet, how much iveness which disrupted their class All the same, the abolition of school resentment at inequality must have solidarity and that the government fees is the rulers' tribute to the new been pent up in the man, and how has been obliged to take note of egalitarianism. bitter must it have been, to explode this. in this way! The year 1956 brought two further Among his workmates the protest- significant acts of labour policy: a er certainly feels on much safer rise by about one third in the lower ground than at the Red Square; and categories of salaries and wages; A significant episode there, at the factory bench or at the and a new pension scheme with Odd episodes from every-day life canteen, the privileges of the bureau- rates of pensions drastically revised and street scenes described in the cracy and of the labour aristocracy in favour of workers and employees Soviet press allow sometimes even have become the recurrent theme of with low earnings. While in the the outsider to watch this new mood daily conversation. It is the oldest Stalin era the purpose of almost as it surges in unexpected ways to of themes; yet how novel it is after every government decree in this field the surface. the long and sullen silence of the was to increase and widen the dis- Recently, for instance, Trud related Stalin era. There, among themselves, crepancies between lower and higher an incident which occurred at the the workers are pondering anew earnings, the purpose of the recent Red Square in Moscow. A worker their position forty years after the decrees has been to reduce such accosted a member of the Supreme revolution and groping for new discrepancies. Soviet and rudely chided him for collective action. The day may not The re-awakening egalitarianism "wearing such fine clothes" as no be far off when the anonymous man has likewise affected the govern- worker could afford. "I can see at returns to the Red Square, but not ment's educational policy. Beginning once", the worker said, "that never to accost a bigwig and vent resent- with the school year 1956-1957, all in your life have you done a day's ment furtively. He will come back, tuition fees have been abolished. It work at the factory bench". Trud, head uplifted, and surrounded by should be recalled that these had indignant at this example of "hooli- multitudes, to utter anew the old first been abolished early in the ganism", tells its readers that the and great cry for equality. revolution, when Lenin's govern- member of the Supreme Soviet had ment pledged itself to secure free in fact been a factory worker most education for all. Poverty, cultural of his life; and that the man who backwardness, and extreme scarcity accosted him behaved cowardly for of educational facilities made uni- he withdrew and disappeared in the The scapegoat versal free education unattainable. crowd before his identity could be Of Stalin it has been said that like The pledge remained nevertheless established. Peter the Great he used barbarous an important declaration of purpose. There is hardly a detail in this means to drive barbarism out of Stalin then re-introduced fees for seemingly irrelevant episode which Russia. Of Stalin's successors it may secondary and academic education. does not have almost symbolic be said that they drive Stalinism out Only the bureaucracy and the labour eloquence. It was unthinkable in of Russia by Stalinist methods. aristocracy could afford paying; and Stalin's days that a worker should The procedures of de-Stalinization so education was almost defiantly dare accost a member of the Sup- are characterised by ambiguity, tor- reserved as a privilege for the child- reme Soviet; and that he should do tuousness and prevarication. At first ren of the privileged. The tuition so at the Red Square of all places, it was allegedly only a matter of 7 Isaac Deutscher doing away with the "cult of the at least in part, in order to exonerate best Stalinist custom. No open con- individual", the grotesque adulation themselves. troversy or direct clash of opinion of the Leader. When the issue was disturbed the smooth flow of its first posed, in the spring of 1953, monolithic "debates". Not one in a even the name of the "individual" hundred or so speakers dared to who had been the object of the cult "Honest thieves" criticize Khrushchev or any other was not mentioned; and up to the Such attempts at|"tricking history" leader on any single point. Not a XX Congress, up to February 1956, and playing blind man's buff with single major issue of national or the Press still extolled the great it are all in good Stalinist style. In international policy was in fact apostolic succession of "Marx- effect, Stalin's successors avoid tell- placed undei" discussion. Engels-Lenin-Stalin". The cult was ing the truth even when, on the face The change in the inner party abandoned, yet it was kept up. But of it, truth should reflect credit on regime has so far consisted in this; having made this first step, Stalin's them. Their first move on their major decisions of policy are taken successors could not help making assumption of power was to repud- not by Khrushchev alone and not the next one as well. They had to iate the "doctors' plot". Yet to this even by the eleven members of the denounce the Leader's "abuses of day they have not told the real story Praesidium but by the Central Com- power". They denounced them piece- of that last great scandal of the mittee which consists of 125 mem- meal and shrunk from saying frankly Stalin era. What was hidden behind bers (or 225 if alternate members that these were Stalin's abuses. They it? Who, apart from Stalin, staged are included). Inside that body free found a scapegoat for him. As Beria it? And for what purpose? Khrush- debate has apparently been restored; had for fourteen years been Stalin's chev's "secret" speech has not yet and differences of opinion have been police chief, the responsibility for been published in the Soviet Union, resolved by majority vote. Only to many of Stalin's misdeeds could a year after it was made; and this this extent have "Leninist norms" conveniently be placed on him. despite of the fact that its contents been re-established. But under Lenin For a time this particular scape- had in the meantime been shouted the differences in the Central Com- goat was constantly held before the from the housetops outside the mittee were, as a rule, not kept eyes of Russia and the world—until Soviet Union. Special commissions secret from the party or even from it refused to do service. For one have been at work to review the the nation at large; and the rank thing, Stalin could not be dissociated many purges and trials and to re- and file freely expressed their own from the man who had for so long habilitate and set free innocent views on them. The post-Stalinist been his police chief. For another, victims. But their work has remained Central Committee has never yet many of the worst "abuses" to a secret. Not even a summary aired its differences in the hearing of mention only the Great Purges of account of it has been published to the whole party. Thus only the 1936-1938, had occurred before explain officially the background, upper hierarchy appears to be man- Beria took office in Moscow. The the motives, the dimensions, and the aged more or less in the Leninist denunciation of Beria implied the consequences of the purges. Masses way. The lower ranks are still ruled denunciation of Stalin himself; and of slave labourers have been released in the Stalinist manner, although far it led directly to it. It was as if the from concentration camps; and many less harshly. In the long run the scapegoat had returned from the prisoners have regained freedom party cannot remain half free and wilderness to drag the real and the under a series of amnesties. Yet, half slave. Eventually the higher chief sinner down the steep slope. not a single announcement has been ranks either will share their newly- It; threatened to drag others as well. made to say how many convicts won freedom with the lower ranks, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, have benefited from the amnesties or else they themselves must lose it. Molotov, Voroshilov, had all been and how many have left the concen- Beria's close colleagues and associa- tration camps. The present rulers ates. The more they revealed of the are so afraid of revealing the real horror of the past, the stronger grew magnitude of the wrongs of the Reform from above their urge to exonerate themselves Stalin era, that they dare not even Within the Soviet Union de- and find a new scapegoat—this time claim credit for righting the wrongs. Stalinization has so far been carried for themselves. That new scapegoat They must behave like that "honest out as a reform from above, a was none other than Stalin. "It was thief" who cannot return stolen limited change initiated and conr all his fault, not ours" was the leit- goods to their owner otherwise than trolled at every stage by those in motif of Khrushchev's secret speech stealthily and under the cover of power. This state of affairs has not at the XX Congress. "It was all his night. been accidental. It has reflected the fault", Pravda then repeated a hun- How many of the "stolen goods" condition of Soviet society both dred times, "but nothing has ever have in fact been returned? above and below, in the first years been wrong with our leading cadres The break with Stalinism was after Stalin. and with the working of our political initiated under the slogan of a return Above—powerful interests have institutions". to "Leninist norms of inner party obstructed preform, striving to {restrict It was a most hazardous venture democracy". The XX Congress was it to the narrowest possible limits, for Stalin's associates to try and supposed to have brought about the and insisting that the ruling group acquit themselves at his expense. practical restitution of those norms. should in all circumstances hold the This scapegoat too—and what a Yet to anyone familiar with Bolshe- initiative firmly and not allow its giant of a scapegoat it is!—is re- vik history it is obvious that this was hands to be forced by popular turning from the wilderness to drag far from being true. The Congress pressure. The attitude of the bureau- them down. And so they are adopted all its resolutions by unani- cracy is by its very nature contra- driven to try to re-exonerate Stalin, mous vote, in accordance with the dictory. The need to rationalize the 8 Russia in transition working of the state machine and submerged fringe of the national arrested reflexes and has opened for to free relations from anachronistic life; but whoever has any sense of them some channels of communica- encumbrances have induced the Russian history must have felt that tion. This does not alter the fact bureaucracy to favour reform. Yet, when political prisoners were in a that the people entered the new era at the same time the bureaucracy position to resume, after so long an in a state of political disability, con- has been increasingly afraid that interval, the struggle for their rights, fusion and inaction; and that any that may imperil its social and Russia was on the move. Then immediate change in the regime, or political preponderance. The labour the year 1956 brought much agitation even in the political climate, could aristocracy has been troubled by a to the universities of Leningrad, only come through reform from similar dilemma: has it been not Moscow and other cities. However, above. less than the rest of the workers these and similar stirrings, sympto- Reform from above could be the interested in doing away with the matic though they were, did not work of Stalinists only. Had any old terroristic labour discipline; but as yet add up to any real revival of the old-Bolshevik oppositions— it cannot help viewing with appre- of the political energies in the depth Trotskyist, Zinovievist and Buk- hension the growing force of the of society. harinist—survived till this day, egalitarian mood, and it resents the It is not only that the working Khrushchev, Bulganin, Voroshilov changes in labour policy which & Co. would surely have long since benefit the lower paid workers with- class had lost the habits of indepen- dent organization and spontaneous been removed from power and in- out bringing compensatory advant- fluence; and anti-Stalinists would ages to the higher paid. The various action. Stalinism had left a gap in the nation's political consciousness. have carried out de-Stalinization managerial groups and the military wholeheartedly and consistently. But officers' corps are guided by ana- It takes time to fill such a gap. It should be added that the gap is the old oppositions had been exter- lagous considerations; and they are, minated; and new ones could not above all, anxious to maintain their only relative. It is not by any means a vacuum. By spreading education, form themselves and grow under authority. The attitude of all these Stalinist rule. Yet the break with groups may be summed up thus: by arousing the people's intellectual curiosity, and by keeping alive the Stalinism had become a social and Reform from above? Yes, by all political necessity for the Soviet means. A revival of spontaneous socialist tradition of the revolution, be it in a distorted and ecclesiast- Union; and necessity works through movement from below? No, a such human material it finds avail- thousand times no! ically dogmatic version, Stalinism has in fact accumulated many of able. Thus the job which it should the elements that should eventually have been the historic right and go into the making of an extra- privilege of authentic anti-Stalinists ordinarily high political conscious- to tackle has fallen to the Stalinists Pressure from below ness. But Stalinism also forcibly themselves, who cannot tackle it Below—everything has so far also prevented those elements from co- otherwise than half-heartedly and favoured reform from above. To- alescing and cohering into an active hypocritically. They have to undo wards the end of the Stalin era the social awareness and positive polit- much of their life's work in such a mass of the people craved for a ical thought. It increases enormously way as not to bring about their own change but could do nothing to the potential capacities of the people undoing. Paradoxically, circumstan- achieve it. They were not merely and systematically prevented the ces forced Malenkov and Khrush- paralysed by terror. Their political potential from becoming actual. chev to act, up to a point, as the energy was hamstrung. No nation- Stalinist orthodoxy surrounded the executors of Trotsky's political test- wide, spontaneous yet articulate nation's enriched and invigorated ament. Their de-Stalinization is like movements rose from below to mind with the barbed wire of its the "dog's walking on his hinder legs". It is not done well: but the confront the rulers with demands, canons. It inhibited people from 2 to wrest concessions, to throw up observing realities, comparing them, wonder is that it is done at all! new programmes and new leaders, and drawing conclusions. It inter- Leon Trotsky once made the and to alter the balance of political cepted inside their brains, as it were, prediction that Stalinism in extremis forces. In 1953-1955 political pris- every reflex of critical thought. It" would place Russia before the oners and deportees struck in the made impossible the communication danger of a "Thermidorian counter- remoteness of sub-Polar concentra- of ideas and genuine political inter- revolution". It will be remembered tion camps, and these strikes led course between individuals and that in France the coup d'etat of 9 to the eventual dissolution of the groups. De-Stalinizatioo has given Thermidor (27th July, 1794) brought camps. This was a struggle on the scope to these constrained and about the downfall of Robsepierre,

2History knows quite a few instances in which necessity worked through the most unsuitable human material when none other was available. Of course, whenever conservative rulers had to carry out progressive reforms, their work was self- contradictory and patchy; and it accumulated difficulties of the future. In my Russia: What Next? (1953), analysing the social circumstances which would drive Stalin's successors to break with Stalinism, I compared their position with that of Tsar Alexander II, the First Landlord of All The Russians, who, in conflict with the feudal landlord class and with himself, emancipated Russia's peasants from serfdom. One might go much further back into the past and com- pare de-Stalinization to the early sixteenth century reforms in the Church of Rome. The Church had been left by the Borgia Popes in a state of utter corruption and discredit; and it was by Cardinals who had themselves been the Borgia's servants that it was reformed and raised up. The reformer first of all restricted the "cult of the individual" in the Vatican and limited the Pope's powers. When they revealed to the faithful the crimes the Borgias had committed, some Prelates objected to the 'de-Borgiazation', fearing that discredit thrown on the memory of the deceased Pontiff would rebound upon the Church and sap its authority. Cardinal Contarini met their objections with this argument: "How? Shall we trouble ourselves so much about the reputation of two or three Popes and not rather try to restore what has been de- faced, and to secure a good name for ourselves?" 9 Isaac Deutscher the collapse of the Jacobin Party, would seem as ancient as the phan- Stalinists and anti-Stalinists; and the transfer of government from the toms of the Wars of the Roses were everywhere social and political Convention to the Directory, and to the England of the machine age. forces have been present, ready to the final ascendancy of the wealthy Any new political movements which intervene in the internecine com- bourgeoisie over the revolutionary may spring into being can hardly be munist struggle and turn it into a plebs. Although the coup looked at of a "Thermidorian" character. Thermidor, a Thermidor which in first like an episode in the internal They are sure to seek to achieve appearance is also, or even prim- struggles of the Jacobin party, it their aims within the framework of arily, a war of national liberation. did not, as its imitators had the institutions created by the Octo- In the aftermath of the second hoped, replace in government ber Revolution and falsified by world war Stalin exported revolution one set of Jacobins by another; it Stalinism. to Eastern Europe on the point of entailed a fundamental change in bayonets. He then used the hidden the balance of social forces and but all-pervading police terror to spelt the doom of Jacobinism. Trot- Eastern Europe keep that revolution in being. Now when his police terror has gone or sky was convinced that Stalinism However, if the Soviet Union need would lead towards a similar crisis ceased to terrorise, the great quest- no longer be afraid of the spectre ion has arisen whether a revolution in consequence of which a struggle which once haunted Trotsky, in begotten by foreign conquest can beginning inside the Bolshevik Party Eastern Europe the chances of a ever acquire an independent exist- might transcend its initial limits, "Thermidorian counter-revolution" ence of its own and redeem itself? and, after the bourgeoisie and the are very real indeed. The communist Can it ever be accepted by the kulaks had intervened in it, end in regime there is not even ten years people on the spot and gain their the restoration of the bourgeois old. Its foundations are not even wholehearted support and devotion? order. consolidated. The kulaks and even Or must such a revolution collapse The notion of the "Soviet Ther- the urban bourgeoisie are still there. the moment the conquerer has with- midor" was not one of Trotsky's The peasantry as a whole has pre- drawn his bayonets? most lucid ideas—he himself was served private property and clings to aware of this and repeatedly revised it tooth and nail. The traditions of and modified it. However, in the the old anti-communist parties are Poland and Hungary 1920's, when he first expounded the still alive and potent. Some of the idea, the N.E.P. bourgeoisie and old cadres of those parties are still There is perhaps no single answer the kulaks still existed in Russia; there and have not by any means to these questions. At any rate, the and they had to be reckoned with lost contact with the masses. The October upheavals in Poland and as inherently counter-revolutionary masses have not lost their capacity Hungary gave two different answers, forces capable of arousing the mass for spontaneous political action. perhaps none of them final. Poland Moreover, in most of these countries rebelled against Russia but remain- of the small-holding peasantry ed communist. She retained the against Bolshevism and the weak communist rule has been associated with Russian conquest and domina- revolution and rejected the bayonets. "socialist sector" of the economy. Moreover, something like a prole- Thirty years later, the possibility of tion; and outraged national dignity and the longing for independence tarian revolution from below devel- a Soviet Thermidor, as Trotsky first oped there, which adopted the com- visualised it, appears to be very turn automatically against commu- nism as well as Russia. munist regime in order to free it remote or altogether unreal. The from the Stalinist stigma, to trans- N.E.P. bourgeoisie has disappeared; Consequently, the break with form it, and to shape it in its own and it is difficult to see how the Stalinism has had a very different political image. It was this proletar- collectivised peasantry can ever gain impact on Eastern Europe than on ian movement from below which ascendancy over the urban proletar- the Soviet Union. A momentous kept the Polish Thermidorian forces iat and restore the bourgeois order. conflict has, in fact arisen between at bay in October. In Hungary the Not only have the old possessing the logic of de-Stalinization in the position was different. There too the classes vanished. The political par- U.S.S.R. and its logic in Poland, insurrection was at first communist ties of the old Russia are also dead Hungary and Eastern Germany. In inspired in its anti-Stalinism and and beyond resurrection. It is nearly the latter countries de-Stalinization sought to regenerate the revolution, forty years—and what years!—since is no longer the carefully calculated not to overthrow it. Then Hungarian they had been driven from the reform from above controlled at Stalinist provocation and Soviet political stage. They have since been every stage by those in power. armed intervention infuriated the uprooted from the nation's memory. There, on the contrary, the explo- insurgents, drove them to despair, What is even more important, their sive anti-Stalinism of the masses has and enabled anti-communist forces programmes and ideas have lost all tended to control those in power. to gain the initiative. Thus a Ther- the relevance to the new structure Reform from above has led to the midorian situation arose: what had and problems of Soviet society. The revival of movements from below. No begun as an internecine communist few emigre Mohicans—Monarchists, sooner had Moscow begun to move conflict and looked at first only like Cadets, Social Revolutionaries, and away from the Stalin cult, in the a shift from one communist faction Mensheviks—if they returned to spring of 1953, than Berlin rose in to another, from Gero to Nagy, Russia, would appear incomparably revolt. After the XX Congress, developed into a fully fledged more archaic to the present genera- Poznan and Warsaw rose, and struggle between communism and tion than the returning Bourbons Budapest took to arms. All over anti-communism.3 Hungary in effect appeared to the French or the res- Eastern Europe the Communist rejected Russian bayonets together tored Stuarts to the English; they Parties have been torn between with the revolution which was origin- 10 Russia in transition ally brought to that country on those at the time of Beria's fall; and then and to inject into it their own ideas bayonets. This was not a counter- at the beginning of 1955 when —just as sixty years earlier Social revolution carried out by a hated Malenkov was dismissed from the Democratic intellectuals had carried and isolated possessing class defend- post of Prime Minister. Both at- the notions of political socialism ing its dominant position against tempts failed and only served to "from the outside" into the spon- the masses. It was, on the contrary, stimulate the reformist trend. A new taneous movements of the workers. the ardent work of a whole insur- attempt could have no other result At any rate the first stirrings made gent people. It may be said that in —it could only intensify the disinte- themselves felt of a movement from October-November, the people of gration of Stalinism. The desecration below; and this may bring to a close Hungary in a heroic frenzy tried of the old orthodoxy had made too that chapter of history in which de- unwittingly to put the clock back, deep an impression on the mind of Stalinization was exclusively of re- while Moscow sought once again to the people to be effaced. It was too form from above. wind up with the bayonet, or rather late to put the broken idols together At present, at the beginning of the with the tank, the broken clock of again. year 1957, two distinct yet inter- the Hungarian communist revolu- More important than the effect of connected processes seem to be tion. It is difficult to say who acted the crisis on the ruling group was developing; the formation of a new the more tragic, and the more futile its impact on the Soviet masses. The political consciousness; and the in- or hopeless role. predicament in which Soviet policy ception or regeneration of a spon- It may not be out of place to found itself could not be concealed taneous mass movement. It is a recall here that thirty-five years from them. The voice of communist question fateful for Russia's and the before these events Trotsky warned critics abroad could not be silenced. world's future at what pace these the Russian Communist Party The Soviet press had to reproduce two processes will evolve and how against the monstrosity of a com- wholly or in parts the arguments of they will react upon one another. munist role imposed upon a foreign Tito, Kardelji, Togliatti, Gomulka It is possible for a spontaneous people by force of arms. "He who and others. The Polish Press, which mass movement to acquire suddenly wants to carry a revolution abroad was now in the vanguard of anti- a very stormy momentum and to on the pint of bayonets", Trotsky Staliniam, was avidly read in outstrip the growth of political con- then said, "it were better for him Russia; and it played its part in sciousness. Such a movement may that a millstone were hanged about stimulating "ideological" revision. well upset the nation's political his neck, and he cast into the sea". The ferment reached a new pitch of balance before it has itself acquired Stalin did not heed the warning, intensity; and this time it spread a clear awareness of aims, a posi- and he bequeathed the millstone to from the intelligensia to the working tive political programme, and a firm his successors. Ever since his death, class. The rulers unwittingly helped and confident leadership. Such a the millstone has been "hanging to spread it. Khrushchev publicly movement may be guided only by about their necks". threatened to expel from Univer- its own impetus and express only sities the most vocal of the "heret- the pent-up resentments of the ical" students and to send them, as workers (and/or the peasants). It Die-hards and reformers a punishment, to! work ;at (the factory may, in particular, raise the cry for De-Stalinization in Russia had bench. The expelled students could equality in an extreme, uncompro- provided the decisive impulse for only carry the germs of the heresies mising and Utopian manner while the upheavals, in Poland and Hun- to the factories and infect the work- the nation's economic resources are gary, and now these upheavals in- ers. (It is strange that this should insufficient for the extreme egalitar- evitably sent their tremors into not have occurred to Khrushchev: ian demands to be met even half- Russia. At once all the dilemmas the Tsars used similarly to punish way, especially after a long period inherent in de-Stalinization were rebellious students: they drafted during which consumer industries aggravated to the utmost. The threat them into the army as privates, with are underdeveloped. Should such a to Russia's strategic interests and the result that the regiments where disproportion arise between consci- her international position were ob- the students served became the ousness and spontaneity, and should vious. The die-hards of Stalinism centres of revolt). it become very acute, then the could not but blame the reformers revived mass movement may well for provoking it by the encourage- suffer shipwreck. Instead of achiev- ment they had given to "titoism" A new phase ing genuine and lasting democratic- and every variety of anti-Stalinism. The Polish-Hungarian drama has ization it may become a factor of The reformers replied that it was thus opened a new phase in the in- social disruption and chaos. The precisely the sluggish tempo of de- ternal development of the U.S.S.R. present rulers would probably try to Stalinization that had driven Poland If until now the pressure which the deal with the situation by means of and Hungary to revolt. However, workers exercised, on the factory a combination of concessions and the first reaction of the Soviet ruling level, against the bureaucracy was repression. But they would hardly group in face of the peril was to "economist" in character, and if go far enough in meeting popular close its ranks and to call a halt to they were not animated by any clear demands. Nor would they be in a de-Stlainization. Yet they could not political idea, the development now position to use the Stalinist organs make any serious attempt to re- reached a point at which the intel- of suppression against the bursting resuscitate the old orthodoxy. Twice ligentsia, or rather its ideologues and energy of the masses. They could such atempts had been made, first theorists, began to politicise the hardly bring back to the scene the after the Berlin rising in June, 1953, consciousness of the working class political police in the full panoply

3Nagy and his faction played the role which Trotsky at one time assumed Bukharin and Rykov would play in Russia. 11 Isaac Deutscher of Stalinist "efficiency". Their last lary deities of society—was it milk of the wild beast"—to trans- resort would be to appeal for help not inevitable that it should form ideas into deeds. to the army, as they did in Berlin eventually occur to barrack and No-one, however, can foresee the in June, 1953 and in Budapest in bivouac, sword and musket, actual rhythm of historic develop- October-November, 1956. moustache and tunic, to save ments. In moments of great crises society once for all on their spontaneous mass movements do Despair and hope own initiative, by declaring run ahead of political groups, even The assumption by the Soviet their own rule supreme and by the most radical ones, and of their Marshals and generals of the role saving . . . society the trouble programmes and methods of action. of the guardians of order not only of self-government?... Barrack So it was in Russia in February, in satellite countries but within the and bivouac, sword and musket, 1917. The workers then found in Soviet Union itself would create a moustache and tunic would be the Soviets, the Councils of their new situation. It should be remarked only more apt to hit upon this deputies, the institutions within that Stalin never had the need to idea, seeing that they might which they learned to harmonize use his Marshals and generals in then expect higher pay for more impulse and thought, to test con- this way—he never sent his arm- exalted service". flicting programmes, and to choose oured divisions to crush popular leaders. Of those institutions Stalin- uprisings—because he could rely on Fortunately, "military moustache ist Russia preserved no more than his infallible, invisible, and all- and tunic" have not yet been period- the name and the dead shells. Yet pervading police terror. This enabled ically acclaimed as the tutelary in the memory of the working class him to keep the army leaders in a deities of the Soviet Union—although the Soviets have survived as the politically subordinate position. But they may still gain that acclaim. instruments of socialist government should the latter, under Stalin's Nor is it inevitable or even probable and self-government, the organs of successors, come to act regularly as that the formation of a new political a "workers' state". Even in Hun- the guardians of order, an import- consciousness should lag so danger- gary, amid all the confusion of ant shift of power would necessarily ously behind the revival of mass revolution and counter-revolution, follow. Sooner or later, the army movements. The gap in conscious- the insurgent workers hastily formed leaders would say to themselves that ness created by Stalinism, it should their Councils. Any political revival instead of guarding order on account be repeated, is relative only. Most in the working class of the U.S.S.R. and for the benefit of the party of the elements needed to fill it are is almost certain to lead to a revival leaders, they could as well do it on there. Under the shocks of the XX of the Soviets which will once their own account and for their Congress and of the events in again become the testing ground of own benefit. In other words, the Poland and Hungary, and amidst political programmes, groups, and strains and stresses caused by a an intense moral-political ferment, leaders, and the meeting place of stormy revival of mass movements it may be filled much more rapidly spontaneous movements and polit- lacking leaderhip and clear political than it would be otherwise. The ical consciousnesses. purpose, may lead to the establish- great heartsearching and transposi- Whatever the future holds in ment of a military dictatorship of tion of values, of which the Soviet store, a whole epoch is coming to the Bonapartist type. All the more press offers only minute and purely a close—the epoch in the course of so as the military could hardly view negative reflections, is going on. The which the stupendous industrial and with indifference a situation in Soviet peoples take the measure of educational advance of the U.S.S.R. which they must see a threat to their problems, view critically them- was accompanied by deep political Russia's positions of power and to selves and the world around them, lethargy and torpor in the masses. all the strategic gains she won in and are getting ready for another Stalinism did not and could not the last world war. world-shaking historic experience. create that state of torpor, it What Karl Marx wrote The 18th A society which has gone through spawned on it and sought to per- Brumaire about how the various as much as Soviet society has gone petuate it, but was essentially its factions of the French bourgeoisie through, which has achieved so product. Basically, the apathy of the by calling repeatedly on the army to much and suffered so much, which masses resulted from the extra- "save society" set the stage for has seen, within the lifetime of one ordinary expenditure of all their military dictatorship is well worth generation, its whole existence re- energies in the great battles of the quoting here, for despite all the peatedly shattered, remade and revolution. The aftermath of the differences of time and place (and transformed to its very foundations, French revolution was likewise one despite Marx's somewhat old- and which has again and again of a deadening lassitude in which fashioned imagery), his words still ascended the highest peaks of hope the people "unlearned freedom", as apply: and heroism and descended to the Babeuf, who was so close to the When barrack and bivouac were lowest depths of misery and despair masses, put it. Christian Rakovsky, periodically thrown upon the —such a society cannot fail drawing recalling in his exile at Astrakhan head of French society to op- from its rich and uniquely great in 1928, Babeuf's remark, added press its brain and keep it experience equally great generalising that it took the French forty years quiescent; when sword and ideas and practical conclusions and to relearn freedom. It has taken the musket periodically functioned embodying these in a programme Soviet people not less time—but as judge, administrator, guard- of action worthy of itself. Nor can there is no doubt that they are at ian and censor, gendarme and it fail to produce sooner or later last relearning freedom. nightwatchman; when military the men and women strong enough moustache and tunic were per- in mind and character—a new London, 1st January, 1957. iodically acclaimed as the tute- "phalanx of heroes reared on the World Copyright Reserved. 12