by Riazanovsky
territory. Observers noted that international crises such as the war in Vietnam only intensified the hostility between the two great communist states. Although China remained far behind the U.S.S.R. in industrial and technological development and although it was fully preoccupied with a "cultural revolution," its aftermath, and other internal problems, it could pose a major threat to the Soviet Union in the future, if not in the immediate present.
Problems in eastern Europe proved to be more pressing. The twelve years which followed the suppression of the Hungarian revolution witnessed Soviet attempts to adjust to changing times, to allow for a communist pluralism with a considerable measure of institutional and eventually even ideological diversity. In Brzezinski's phrase, satellites were to become junior allies. Even Tito usually received a kind of fraternal recognition, and he spoke with authority. Yet tensions persisted and indeed increased, both between the different east European countries and the Soviet Union and within those countries as most of them proceeded with de-Stalinization, economic liberalization, and other important changes. The break with China led in 1961 to the unexpected departure of Albania into "the Chinese camp." Rumania under its new leader, Nicholas Ceausescu, showed a remarkable, even stunning, independence from the Soviet Union, although it remained barely within the communist bloc and continued a hard-line policy at home. Poland, belying the promise of 1956, had its progress toward freedom arrested, and concentrated its energy on trying to contain, by petty and persistent persecution, the Catholic church, liberal intellectuals and students, and other forces favoring change.
The developments in Czechoslovakia led to a catastrophe. That highly Western country with a democratic tradition remained long under a form of Stalinism practiced by Antonin Novotny and his clique. But when in the early months of 1968 Novotny was finally deposed, the new Party leadership, of Alexander Dubcek and others, championed an extremely liberal course which included the abolition of censorship. The sweeping liberal victory in Czechoslovakia which was to be confirmed and extended at a forthcoming Party congress led to consternation in the governing circles of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, and possibly Hungary. Exchanges of opinion and an unprecedented face-to-face discussion between the members of the Politburos of the Soviet Union and of Czechoslovakia seemed momentarily to resolve the conflict. Then on the twentieth of August, Soviet troops, assisted by the troops of the four allies, invaded Czechoslovakia and quickly occupied the country. There was very little bloodshed, because the Czechoslovak armed forces had been instructed not to resist. Soviet intervention was probably caused, in no certain order of priority, by fear for the Warsaw Pact which the Czechs wanted to modify although not abandon, by the hatred of Czech liberalization with its critique of the U.S.S.R., by the concern lest liberalism at home be too much en-
couraged, and by the need to respond to the pleas of the Soviet allies, especially East Germany, who saw the developments in Czechoslovakia as an immediate threat to their own regimes. The repercussions of the intervention lasted long after the summer of 1968.
In Poland, the 1970 replacement of Gomulka by Gierek as Party secretary was followed by the introduction of an ambitious scheme to modernize and expand Polish industry and trade with the aid of Western capital and technology. By 1976, it was evident that Gierek's loudly hailed economic "acceleration" had begun to fail. Continuing world economic crisis and mismanagement and corruption at all levels of Party and government apparatus, as well as the ever-increasing cost of participating in the Soviet-directed Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and the Warsaw Pact, all contributed to Poland's difficulties. In 1976, workers' protests and strikes over drastic increases in food prices were followed by the rapid formation and activation of dissident organizations and clandestine printing establishments. The Catholic Church, its traditional prestige fortified by the election of the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, to the papal throne (Pope John Paul II), also spoke out strongly against many of the Communist government's policies. The Gierek regime was unable to suppress the opposition effectively, in part at least, it would seem, because of its heavy dependence on continuing Western loans, required to keep the economy solvent, and the consequent need to avoid drastic action which could lead to the cutting off of Western funds.
The summer of 1980, with continuing labor unrest and economic near-collapse, led to the change of Party leadership and to a formal agreement between the Polish government and the great majority of Polish workers, now mostly represented by independent "Solidarity" trade unions and led by a charismatic veteran of the struggle for workers' rights in Poland, electrician Lech Walesa. The agreement, accepted by the workers as a foundation for a dialogue with the government, appears to have been a tactical maneuver of the Communist authorities. No regular contacts with the Solidarity leadership and the Catholic hierarchy aimed at creating a constructive and meaningful national consensus were initiated by the government. By exploiting its monopoly over the mass media and over the distribution of increasingly scarce food supplies and consumer goods, the government attempted to undermine the position of the opposition while at the same time strongly seconding Moscow's accusations that Solidarity was attempting to subvert the political structure and international position of People's Poland. The rise to prominence of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who progressively combined the posts of Minister of Defense, Premier, and First Secretary of the Party, coincided with a gradual militarization of the administration of important branches of government and industry.
All this was done in preparation for the military coup which was executed in close cooperation with the Soviet authorities on December 13, 1981. Active resistance against the overwhelming forces of the regime was quite limited, and, from a military standpoint, the operation was carried out rather effectively. Nevertheless, the "success" of General Jaruzelski's junta was very dubious. Although thousands of Solidarity activists, including Lech Walesa, and other dissidents were arrested and placed in internment camps, some leaders of the movement escaped arrest and an underground opposition began to form. Western economic sanctions and continuing passive resistance to the regime in the factories, offices, schools, and universities were making the task of running the country extremely difficult for the Jaruzelski regime. By the end of 1982, there appeared to be two clear choices before the military government of Poland: either to continue with the martial law administration, further alienating the population and risking a total economic collapse of the country, or to end martial law and attempt to open the few remaining channels of contact with the great majority of the Polish population in an effort to reduce tensions and improve the performance of the economy. The choice was not an easy one for the Polish Communist authorities - and their Soviet sponsors.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979 produced a strong impression in the world. The impression was exacerbated by the fact that, although the so-called Afghan rebels could not match the Red Army in open fighting, they could not be entirely destroyed either. More than five years after the original invasion, when Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet Union was still employing perhaps 100,000 of its troops in the Moslem country, and it was not clear how much of that country, outside the main cities, was under Soviet control. Critics pointed out that the Afghan invasion represented the first direct Soviet use of military force outside "its own" east European empire since the Second World War. The massive intervention was also interpreted as the first step in a bid for the oil of the Middle East and a general takeover of that region. It can well be argued, on the other hand, that the decisive Soviet move was essentially defensive: communism had actually come to Afghanistan some two years earlier in a peculiar internal struggle which pitted two communist factions against each other as well as against other groups; the Soviet choice in late 1979 was that between intervention and witnessing a neighboring communist state, which it had already welcomed and supported as part of the communist world, go down to popular opposition. But, defe
nsive or not, the Soviet step was certainly a grave and disturbing one.
As of 1985, tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, the East and the West, was not confined to the crucial problems of Afghanistan and Poland. Rather, the two sides opposed each other all over the
world, from Central America to southern Africa, Lebanon, and Cambodia. To be sure, western European countries, in spite of strong United States objections and even sanctions against particular companies, continued to support the building of a natural-gas pipeline from western Siberia to western Europe. But they were also apparently prepared to proceed with the installation of United States middle-range missiles to counteract the already established Soviet ones, an installation most especially opposed for years by Brezhnev. The virtually all-important Soviet-American disarmament negotiations remained deadlocked. S.A.L.T. II was not ratified by the United States Senate, and its future chances appeared slim, especially after the departure of Carter from the Presidency. In fact, numerous critics accused the tougher anti-Soviet tone of the Reagan administration as largely precluding adjustment and agreement. Yet the administration itself and others claimed that it was precisely this firmer approach, and especially the concurrent building up of the United States nuclear and military might, that would force the U.S.S.R. to negotiate effectively for disarmament.
XLI
SOVIET SOCIETY AND CULTURE
The Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism, in which: (a) the productive forces are still far from adequate to give the state property a socialist character; (b) the tendency toward primitive accumulation created by want breaks out through innumerable pores of the planned economy; (c) norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois character lie at the basis of a new differentiation of society; (d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a swift formation of privileged strata; (e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureaucracy has converted itself into an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism; (f) the social revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists in property relations and in the consciousness of the toiling masses; (g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the road to capitalism the counterrevolution would have to break the resistance of the workers; (i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last analysis, the question will be decided by a struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world arena.
TROTSKY
The party leadership of literature must be thoroughly purged of all philis-tine influences. Party members active in literature must not only be the teachers of ideas which will muster the energy of the proletariat in all countries for the last battle for its freedom; the party leadership must, in all its conduct, show a morally authoritative force. This force must imbue literary workers first and foremost with a consciousness of their collective responsibility for all that happens in their midst. Soviet literature, with all its diversity of talents, and the steadily growing number of new and gifted writers, should be organized as an integral collective body, as a potent instrument of socialist culture.
GORKY
The Bolsheviks' seizure of power in Russia in November 1917 meant a social as well as a political revolution. The decades that followed "Great October" witnessed a transformation of Russian society into Soviet society. They also saw the emergence and development of an unmistakably Soviet style of culture. In spite of its enormous size, huge population, and tremendous variety of ethnic and cultural strains, the U.S.S.R. became a remarkably homogeneous land, for it reflected throughout its length and breadth - "from Kronstadt and to Vladivostok," to quote a Soviet song - some seventy-five years of Communist engineering, social and cultural as well as political and economic.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist party played in fact, as well as in theory, the leading role in Soviet society. Its membership, estimated at the surprisingly low figure of less than twenty-five thousand in 1917, passed the half million mark in 1921 and the million mark in the late twenties. The number of Soviet Communists continued to rise, in spite of repeated purges which included the frightful great purge of the thirties, and reached the total of almost four million full members and candidates when Germany invaded the U.S.S.R. While many Communists perished in the war, numerous new members were admitted into the Party, especially from frontline units. Postwar recruitment drives further augmented Party membership to seven to nine million in the immediate postwar years, as much as thirteen million in 1967, 16,380,000 in 1978, and almost 20 million in the 1980s.
These figures, of course, by no means tell the entire story of Communist penetration into Soviet life. As already emphasized, the party, in the Leninist view which served to differentiate the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks, comprised a fully conscious and dedicated elite, exclusive by definition, but also educating and guiding other organizations and, indeed, the broad masses. In addition to the Party proper, there existed huge youth organizations: Little Octobrists for young children, Pioneers for those aged from nine to fifteen, and the Union of Communist Youth, or Komsomol, with members in the fourteen to twenty-six age range. The first two organizations, and eventually even the Komsomol, acted as Party agencies for the general education of the younger Soviet generations, opening their doors wide to members. The Party also worked with and directed uncounted institutions and groups: professional, social, cultural, athletic, and others. In fact, from the official standpoint, Soviet society had only one ideology and only one outlook, the Communist; citizens and groups of citizens differed solely in the degree to which they incarnated it. That sweeping assumption, it might be added, expresses especially well the monolithic and totalitarian nature of the Soviet system.
The Party demanded the entire man or woman. Lenin's example illustrated the ideal of absolute and constant dedication to Party purposes. The word partiinost, translated sometimes as "Party-mindedness," summarized the essential quality of a Communist's life and work. While the early emphasis on austerity was greatly relaxed after the thirties, especially in the upper circles, the requirements of implicit obedience and hard work generally remained. In particular, Party members were expected throughout their lives both to continue their own education in Marxism-Leninism and to utilize their knowledge in all their activities, carrying out Party directives to the letter and influencing those with whom they come in contact. While exacting, the "Party ticket" opened many doors. It constituted in effect the greatest single mark of status, importance, and, above all, of being an "insider" in the Soviet Union. Although, to be sure, many Soviet Communists were people of no special significance, virtually all prominent figures in the country were members of the Party. After the Second World War spe-
cial efforts were made to assure that such fields as university teaching and scientific research were largely in the hands of Communists. Conversely, it became much easier for outstanding people to join the Party.
The social composition of the Communist party of the Soviet Union indicated fluctuation. Ostensibly the true party of the proletariat, prior to 1917 it had a largely bourgeois leadership and no mass following of any kind. The workers as a group, however, did support it in November 1917 and during the hard years that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power. The Party naturally welcomed them, while at the same time displaying extreme suspiciousness toward those of "hostile" class origin. With the stabilization of the Soviet system and the inauguration of the five-year plans, "Soviet intellectuals," in particular technical and administrative personnel of all sorts, became prominent. On the eve of the Second World War the Party was described as composed 50 per cent of workers, 20 per cent of peasants, and 30 per cent of Soviet intellectuals, with the last group on the increase. That increase continued after the war, as social origin became less significant with time and the authorities tried to bring all prominent people into the Party. It might b
e noted that, in relation to their numbers, peasants were poorly represented, indicating the difficulty the Communists experienced in permeating the countryside. The proportion of women increased up to about one-quarter of the membership of the Party.
The Communist party of the Soviet Union was very thoroughly organized. Starting with primary units, or cells, which were established where three or more Communists could be found, that is, in factories, collective farms, schools, military units, and so forth, the structure rose from level to level to culminate in periodic Party congresses, which constituted important events in Soviet history, and in the permanently active Central Committee, Secretariat, and Politburo. At every step, from an individual factory or collective farm to the ministries and other superior governing agencies, Communists were supposed to provide supervision and inspiration, making it their business to see that no undesirable trends developed and that production goals were overfulfilled. At higher government levels, as already indicated, the entire personnel consisted of Communists, a fact which nevertheless did not eliminate Party vigilance and control. In general, rotation between full-time government positions and Party administrative positions was common. It should be noted that the guiding role of the Party has asserted itself with increased force after Stalin's death, for - as L. Schapiro and other close students of Soviet communism have indicated - the late general secretary's dictatorial power had grown to such enormous proportions that it had put even the Party into the shade.