In what we may suppose to have been Stalin's vision of the years 1965-70 the picture was reversed. He saw a self-sufficient bloc of 800 million people, toiling within the framework of an integrated planned economy, which should in time be able to produce such wealth and attain such high standards of living that communism could rely on its economic preponderance rather than on political or military coercion; while a stagnant or decaying bourgeois West would be losing its power of attraction and would come to rely more and more on the use of force.
Stalin apparently held that to attain this goal it was, on balance, worthwhile for communism to adopt in the meantime a broad policy of self-containment within its third of the globe, especially as the rulers of the other two-thirds were bent on containing it.
These ideas emerge from between the lines of Stalin's last published writings (‘The Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.’). In these he came down heavily on the ultra-leftists, the Utopians and the adventurers, as he called them, who were ‘dizzy’ with Soviet economic power. Against their views, he insisted that the solution of the main economic problems confronting the Soviet Union was a long-term task. Time, time, and once again time was required. The unspoken yet inescapable conclusion of his argument was that in her foreign policy Russia must bargain for a long, a very long breathing space.
It may be assumed that he argued out these ideas in detail and handed them down to his Russian successors, to Mao Tse-tung, and to a few chosen communist leaders of Eastern Europe.
In his last writings one can almost hear the echoes of the debates which Stalin's views provoked among his entourage. ‘But will the West give us such a breathing space?’ was one obvious objection. Another seems to have run as follows: ‘Would it not be more realistic to assume that war in the near future is inevitable? That Russia would not, as in the Second World War, have bourgeois allies to whom she would need to make political concessions? Would she therefore not be better advised, in the interest of self-preservation, to press on with world revolution and to encourage further communist expansion?’
To such arguments and objections Stalin replied with an explicit and emphatic ‘No’. He argued publicly and at great length that the capitalist countries would cut each other's throats rather than attack Russia. War between the capitalist countries was still ‘inevitable’, he said; but their joint crusade against the communist bloc was not. In itself the argument was incongruous and scholastic, as Stalin's argumentation usually was. But in this particular context it had a definite meaning and it pursued a practical aim. It was an argument in favour of buying breathing space from the West, in favour of communist self-containment.
Thus Stalin's last writings might be described as his political testament. He said in effect to his heirs: Your estate is one-third of the world. Keep it, preserve it, and build it up into a power which will eventually daunt all your enemies. In the meantime beware of hotheads and adventurers. Do not take risks. Do not rush into revolutionary enterprises in which you may dissipate what you possess.
In this shrewd caution Stalin remained true to himself to the end. During his life-time history sometimes proved him right; but more than once it mocked his caution and made of him the strangest of adventurers. Is history perhaps for the last time going to mock his caution post-humously? Will Stalin's successors be willing or able to carry out his political testament?
PART TWO
RUSSIAIN TRANSITION
CHAPTER SIX
THE MORAL CLIMATE
The crisis which Stalin's death accelerated and brought into the open was caused by a fundamental change in the relation between rulers and ruled. Before the Stalin era Bolshevism, in its aspirations and outlook, towered above its native Russian environment. Then it levelled itself with that environment and transformed it, with the paradoxical result that towards the end of the Stalin era the nation was culturally superior to the method of government and the moral climate of Stalinism. At first Bolshevism debased itself into Stalinism in order to be in harmony with Russia. Then Russia had to suffer permanent self-abasement to keep in line with Stalinism.
The fact that the nation had outgrown Stalinist tutelage was at the root of the acute malaise of the last years and months of the Stalin era. This malaise, which even the outsider could sense, did not express itself in clear political terms. There was no articulate opposition to the Stalinist system of government. After decades of terror all potential centres of opposition had been destroyed. No group existed capable of formulating any independent political programme and acting on it. Society as a whole had lost the capacity and the habit of forming its own opinion. As society's guardian Stalin exercised control so tyrannically that he deprived his ward of any intrinsic political identity. In time Soviet society grew tired of the harness of Stalinism and was anxious to throw it off; but it had also grown so accustomed to the harness that it could take no step without it. This ambivalent attitude towards Stalinism characterizes the period of transition to a new era.
We cannot say how long the period of transition may last. It may take Russia a few years to overcome her political numbness and to grow articulate again. If one were to judge Russia's state of mind by the cacophony of meaningless slogans put out by various groups of Soviet refugees to the West, the outlook would be unpromising indeed. But such a judgment would be absurd. Hardly any of those refugees belonged to the political or intellectual elite of their nation and in this respect they can in no way be compared to the emigres of the pre-revolutionary era. Sooner or later, the Russian people will learn to form and express its own opinions; and once it begins to do so, it will progress at a breathtaking pace and astonish the world once again by the extraordinary fertility of its political mind.
In the meantime, however, the initiative lies entirely with the men of the ruling group. Only reform decreed from above can force a way out of the impasse into which Stalinism finally landed itself. Moreover, reform from above forestalls upheaval from below. The first moves of Malenkov's government have shown an awareness of this fact.
The Stalinist method of government cannot be continued now. Some of its features had been accepted in apathy by a primitive, uneducated people; but they cannot be imposed on a people about to come of age politically and culturally. Other features may have been justified once by the needs of Russia's economic and social development; but now they have become impediments to further progress.
Stalinism has exhausted its historical function. Like every other great revolution, the Russian revolution has made ruthless use of force and violence to bring into being a new social order and to ensure its survival. An old-established regime relies for its continuance on the force of social custom. A revolutionary order creates new custom by force. Only when its material framework has been firmly set and consolidated can it rely on its own inherent vitality; then it frees itself from the terror that formerly safeguarded it.
When the force of economic circumstances guarantees the survival of the new order, the use of physical force tends to become an anachronism. The cruel dictatorship which has abolished with blood and iron any possibility of a return to pre-revolutionary conditions must then end. If it struggles to perpetuate itself, its defeat is certain. This was the course of the English revolution in the seventeenth and of the French in the eighteenth century; and this has also been the course of the Russian revolution. The deeper the social upheaval it has brought about and the wider its scope, the longer is the period during which a revolution clings to terror. This period has lasted tragically long in Russia, much longer than it did in France.
We have analysed in detail one aspect of this development. We have seen how Stalinism abolished the rural smallholding and set up the collective farm by sheer force. For many years the new structure was very shaky and might have collapsed had it not been buttressed by violence and held together by iron bands. But while Stalinism was waging an implacable war against all opponents of collectivization it also produced the new economic conditions, the machinery
, the agronomic services, and the economic habits, which were sure eventually to enable collective farming to carry on under its own steam. Now, even extreme opponents of collectivization begin to realize that for Russia there is no way back to the privately owned smallholding, except at the price of national suicide.
The same is more or less true of the whole structure of Soviet society, in particular of its enormous publicly owned and planned economy. One need not accept the
Stalinist myth that socialism has been established in Russia. Still less need one take at its face value the ludicrous claim that the Soviet Union is in ‘transition from socialism to communism’. But it is true that the framework for a socialist society, which was altogether lacking in the Leninist era, now exists; and it has been consolidated.
Precisely because of this, the methods used to bring about the present state of affairs have now become both useless and harmful; and the awareness that this is so must have grown and spread among the Soviet people.
One of the most difficult and explosive issues of the Stalin era was the great economic inequality prevalent in Soviet society; and this is likely to remain the most difficult problem in the post-Stalin period also.
The message of the October Revolution was implicitly egalitarian. Whatever the Stalinist arguments or even the original Marxist texts may say against ‘levelling’, the Russian workers and peasants backed the revolution and rallied to its defence because they took it for granted that the new regime would satisfy their longing for equality. This has been the attitude of the proletarian or plebeian masses in every revolution.
The Bolshevik regime could not help but frustrate the instinctive egalitarianism of the masses. There were not enough of the material necessities of life to go round. To take only one example: before the Five Year Plans were initiated the Russian footwear industry did not manufacture more than about 30 million pairs of shoes and boots per year. Small artisans produced perhaps another 30 million pairs. This was just sufficient to supply one pair to every third Soviet Citizen. The other two had to go barefoot, or to make their own bast shoes as the muzhiks usually did. This is a typical example because the same or a similar relation between social need and effective supply prevailed in many other essential consumer industries.
‘A pair of boots for only one out of every three citizens’ this was the formula which expressed the inevitability of Stalinist anti-egalitarianism. The barefooted and the owner of a pair of shoes are not equal; and not even a government consisting of communist angels could make them so. The government had to set out to build the factories which would produce enough footwear, clothing, dwellings, etc., for all. If the machines, the buildings, the raw materials, the power stations, and the labour force needed were not available, as they were not in Russia, the government had to start building the factories that would one day produce the machines and the power plants. It had to develop the sources of raw materials and to train industrial labour. In the meantime it had to distribute the available footwear, either directly, or indirectly, by means of a differential wage scale, among the people whose services were essential to the State and the economy. Moreover, it had to defend the man with the shoes against the natural jealousy and hostility of the barefooted.
It was in the national interest that the government should foster a privileged minority consisting of administrators, planners, engineers, and skilled workers. The development of the country's resources depended on them; and they would not have worked without incentive.
Inequality, once encouraged, takes care of itself; the privileged minority seeks to enlarge its privileges. The Soviet bureaucrat, technician, or skilled worker was not satisfied with one pair of shoes — he wanted to have two or three. The same applied to clothing, housing, medical facilities, and so on.
As long as the government was bent on expanding coal-mines and steel mills, producer industries and armament plants, the building up of consumer industries was deferred. Inequality grew and assumed shocking proportions. The greater the scarcity of goods and the more primitive the level of civilization, the more brutal was the scramble for privileges. We know that Russia's urban population grew by about 45 million during the Stalin era. Relatively few houses were built; and during the war many cities and towns were razed by the enemy. The overwhelming majority of the people therefore was, and still is, condemned to live in the most appalling conditions. The few tolerable, good, or luxurious dwellings were allotted to skilled workers, technicians, and bureaucrats.
A more humane government than Stalin's might have tried to promote consumer industries even at the cost of a somewhat slower rate of expansion in basic materials and producer goods. But when the history of these decades, with their armaments fever and war-time destruction, is viewed in retrospect, it seems doubtful that any government would have been able to improve the situation radically, unless it abandoned industrialization altogether or slowed it down to the point of endangering national interest; and this would have resulted in an even lower standard of living for the vast majority than the present.
Stalinism took upon itself the daring and dramatic task of imposing inequality on a people which had just carried out the greatest of all revolutions in the name of equality. This imposition was naturally received with indignation. The old Bolsheviks who had been accustomed to identify themselves with the egalitarian aspirations of the masses branded it as a betrayal of the revolution. Since they spoke with the authority of great revolutionaries their criticism was doubly dangerous to Stalin's policy. Reacting against the clamour for equality Stalinism established a cult of inequality. It was not satisfied with pointing out that egalitarianism would lead to economic stagnation. It declared categorically that the privileges of the minority were of the essence of socialism and it branded the defenders of egalitarianism as agents of counter-revolution. In this way Stalinism freed its hands to provide material incentives in plenty and in excess to administrators, managers, technicians, and skilled workers.
With the passing of time, however, inequality, carried to extreme, tended to change from a progressive into a reactionary factor. It began to hamper Russia's economic development instead of furthering it. It kept the vast majority in a state of apathy and sullenness. Moreover, it rapidly lost its initial justification. The relation between social need and effective supply is now no longer a pair of shoes for only one out of every three Soviet citizens. (The output of the footwear industry has in recent years been sufficient to supply every citizen with at least one pair per year.) Enough essential consumer goods are now being produced to satisfy a very wide range of needs; and far more can be produced in the immediate future.
It is a point of only academic interest whether or when equality may become materially possible. Incentive wages and salaries will remain indispensable for a long time to come. But there is certainly room for eliminating the glaring inequalities of the Stalin era.
In the initial phases of ‘socialist accumulation’ it was possible for the government to teil the people that they must tighten their belts and even starve while they were building the new factories. Stalin's successors cannot continue to demand such heavy sacrifices. The factories are there already; the capacity to produce is there; and the will to produce is also there. Most of Russia's basic and heavy industries are at a level comparable to that of American industry fifteen or twenty years ago; but her consumer industries are far below it. This disproportion is bound to produce a national crisis, unless it is reduced in the next few years.
The protracted Stalinist campaign against the egalitarian heresy has tended to defeat itself. A great cry for equality is about to go up. Audible in whispers even in the last two or three years, it interjected itself into the discussions on the ‘transition from socialism to communism’, to which there was much more than mere propaganda or dogmatic hair-splitting. The new Soviet generation has been taught to regard its present way of life as socialism and it has been led to believe that inequality will be eliminated under communism, the next p
hase of development. During recent years, discussion in academic institutions, workers' clubs, and party cells has centred on the seemingly unreal question: How rapidly can the transition from socialism to communism be effected? This was only another way, indeed the only permissible way, of asking when and how the present inequalities would be reduced and eliminated.
Stalin's Politbureau at first put out this slogan about transition to communism in a spirit of self-congratulation and self-advertisement. ‘Look how far forward we have brought you!’ it said to the people. At most it wished to provide the intelligentsia and the workers with a theme for harmless dogmatic debate. But once the debate began it was anything but ‘harmless’. The theme attracted and absorbed the unspoken hopes and suppressed egalitarian yearnings. The intelligentsia and the workers had been officially encouraged to indulge in a vision of the future; and they projected into that vision all their grievances against the present. They began to voice the old egalitarian heresy and other ‘unorthodox ideas’ for the professing of which, whether real or suspected, innumerable men and women had paid with their lives in the late 1930's.
Analysing a great debate on communism which took place at the Economics Institute of Moscow's Academy of Science, the present author wrote in the summer of 1951:[18]
‘Visions of the future have a capricious logic of their own. This is true even in a country whose most eminent liberal historian, Miliukov, once said that its social classes and even its thoughts and ideas had always been the product of official decrees or official inspiration. A government may find it easy and expedient to encourage its subjects to indulge in a certain sort of dream as an escape from ugly realities. It may even prescribe, as the Kremlin now does, what the subject ought to dream. But it finds it much harder to intervene in the actual course of the dream and to make it wholly conform to order. Its subjects may begin to see images long banished and to murmur the most terrible heresies in their sleep…. As speaker after speaker tried to produce an answer [to the question about the transition to communism], the ghosts of banished heresies crowded into the conference hall… at that seat of Stalinist learning, the Economics Institute.’ Incidentally, this debate and the heresies voiced in it came under severe attack in the last months of Stalin's life.
Russia After Stalin Page 9