Soviet Reality

[p004] Soviet Reality ‘Some people had come across young Russians who freely imparted the information that they had been meet- ing in private discussion groups to discuss the past and the future of the Soviet Union, in terms that would be scarcely approved of by the party and Government lead- ership... ' ‘During the meetings organized in factories and other places by the party to explain to the people the meaning cf the recent party and Government dismissals, the official version of what had happened behind the closed doors of the Central Committee was not always readily accepted. On a number of occasions speakers from the floor demanded that the defeated leaders should be given an opportunity to explain publicly—on radio and television—the policies which they had advocated... ‘There was great interest, among the students as weil as among the young industrial workers, in the develop- ment of Marxist ideas and socialist practices in the West, and an eagerness to try to relate these to Soviet experience of the past and to possible future developments in Rus- sia... ‘Some visitors found evidence of increasing ferment among the workers on such issues as rates of pay and production norms, which are closely linked. There have been demands for pay increases and for the reduction of production norms, and although this may have little to do HE CRISIS of the Soviet leadership has not les- T sened in the two months since Molotov, Kagano- vich and Malenkov were disgraced. Khrushchev’s discovery that Malenkov had become ‘Beria’s shadow’, that he ‘made use of Stalin’s weaknesses in his last years’ and prompted Stalin to ‘acts worthy of stern denuncia- tion’ is a sign that the crisis has in fact deepened. In our last issue we suggested that the ultimate driving force of the changes, convulsions, fitful revelations and inter- necine strife among the rulers of Russia was the awaken- ing of the Russian working class. One after another the theories of learned commentators and not-so-learned journalists are found inadequate to explain events and the exceedingly complex contradictions within Soviet society which lie behind them. Only Marxism can ex- plain these events, unravel the tangled skein of contra- dictions and show what forces will shape the future course of Soviet society. Those who have mastered such an analysis as Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed, which has just made a most welcome reappearance, are pos- 129 with what is generally understood by ideological or poli- tical ferment, some of the more knowledgeable visitors re- gard it as, ultimately, more important. They discern the awakening of a working class conscious of its socialist, revolutionary traditions.’ Manchester Guardian, August 16, 1957, re- porting the impressions of British visitors to the World Youth Festival in Moscow. ‘Two students, separately and cautiously, asked in- numerable questions about party history, about Menshe- viks and SR’s; they were astounded to hear of the memoirs published by all the great revolutionary figures, and hun- gry for details. Trotsky was of special interest; details of his political role, both before and after exile, were in de- mand, but of far the greatest interest was his biography of Stalin. Twice I was asked to go through it, chapter by chapter; most surprising, apparently, was that he continued: to be a revolutionary and did not become a “mad dog of imperialism”; most pleasing, as one student remarked, “it seems he tried to write history, not just polemics”... ‘Marx and Lenin, it should be pointed out, are re- spected even by those who deride Soviet “Marxism™.’ Kathryn Feuer, ‘Russia’s Young Intellectuals’, Encounter, no. 41, February 1957. sessed, not of a ready reckoner or slide rule which will save them the trouble of a detailed, concrete analysis of Soviet reality, but of a guide, still remarkably fresh and. powerful after twenty years, to how such a Marxist ana- lysis should be undertaken today. Those who prefer to rely on their impressions are groping in the dark. Big surprises lie in store for them. But for Marxists the way to truth, and therefore to effective action, lies through an analysis of the movement and interrelationship of social forces. In the Soviet Union the dominating social group at present is the bureaucracy. There are some socialists. who do not care for this word; they think it is a label. They are mistaken. The capitalist class does not recog- nize itself as it is described in scientific literature; social Scientists are nevertheless compelled to use precise terms. Similarly the word bureaucracy is a precise, scientific term for a specific sccial stratum. The Soviet bureau- cracy is a caste of privileged officials, which safeguards its position and seeks to defend the nationalized pro-

[p005] erty relations that give it life by a series of accommoda- tions to imperialism. If some anti-Stalinists shrink from recognizing the existence of a bureaucracy, the Soviet workers do not. They call them the ‘boss men’. Little by little they are finding ways of expressing their resent- ment at the bureaucracy’s privileges and arbitrary rule. Little by little an understanding of the bureaucracy’s betrayal of the revolution and readiness to do a deal with imperialism is growing, first and foremost among the Soviet students, as that section of the people which has the best opportunity to piece together the truth about the past. This double pressure, industrial and in- tellectual, economic and ideological, is the decisive main- spring of all recent developments inside the Soviet Union. Awareness of this new combativeness and of this new thirst for knowledge and truth runs just below the surface of every one of Khrushchev’s many pronounce- ments. The oscillation between concessions and threats, between ‘deep regret’ about past crimes and the shooting of a few party leaders in Azerbaijan or Albania; between a partial literary thaw and the frosty treatment of writ- ers and historians who take the thaw seriously, is the hallmark of men who are forced to adopt rule-of-thumb methods to safeguard their power. They dig canals for the flood waters, but the waters obstinately refuse to be channelled; they plug the dikes with their fingers, or with Molotov’s sacrificial ‘stone bottom’, but new foun- tains spurt forth at a hundred points. They build a wall labelled ‘Beria-Malenkov’—needless to say without pub- lishing a single syllable of the central committee records that would demonstrate Khrushchev’s own dependence on the ‘boss’ in innumerable deeds of bloody and ter- rible revenge. They succeed only in dragging socialism through the mud and revealing themselves as implacable enemies of Marxism and of the Russian workers whom they try to deceive. These are the weaknesses of the bureaucracy. But we must not overlook its strength. It controls the State power, the army, the secret police. It has jails and guns and spies. It has a vast army of officials. It has staunch supporters in the privileged: the army officers who speak to their subordinates only by microphone from another room, the local party bosses whose occasional publicized peculations or other abuses, whose contempt for the ordinary people, are merely the logical extension of this network of parasitism. It would be idle to suppose that the degenerate ex- crescence which is the bureaucracy can be removed ‘without a surgical operation. Those who write in terms of a self-liberalization of the bureaucracy, of the possi- bility of this caste or part of it beginning to act in the interests of the Russian workers, coming to terms with them, fulfilling their demands, are not merely the vic- tims of illusions; they are guilty of vulgar and super- ficial thinking and of a crude revision of the Marxist conception of bureaucracy. The logic of their view is the disarming of the Russian workers just at a time when, with painful slowness, they are taking the first hesitant steps for over three decades towards organization and independent action. It is no accident that the more percipient travellers returning from Russia speak of a new interest in Marx- ism and in its application to Soviet history and Soviet problems. We can only guess at the number of young people who, frustrated by the intellectual and profes- sional limitations imposed on them by the bureaucracy, or eager to know the truth about the heroic past of the USSR and its proletariat, are turning, as well as sealed libraries and practically inaccessible archives will al- low, to a study of questions which Stalinism veiled be- neath layer after layer of lies. Is it too soon to say that the construction of a genuine Marxist movement in the Soviet Union is beginning? No, the little circles of friends, often within the Communist Party and Young Communist League, discussing and studying and learn- ing, are there already; can it be long before the impera- tive need to exchange ideas with like-minded peopie overcomes fear of imprisonment, exile and death and leads to tentative feelers stretching out between the groups? The solution of the objective contradiction be- tween the bureaucracy and the workers demands the formation of a Marxist leadership. That Marxist leader- ship will inevitably come into being, just as it did in the days of Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky. Much has changed since those days. Once the ini- tial impetus is given, the tasks of education, organization and leadership will be fulfilled under far more favour- able circumstances, and at an incomparably higher level, than was the case sixty years ago. Inertia, illiteracy, ignorance, backwardness, isolation, are no longer ob- stacles. An educated and cultured youth, largely drawn from the working class, is crying out for the new ‘spark’ that ‘shall burst in burning flame’. For socialists in the West the awakening of the Russian workers and the building of a new Marxist leadership, and not the gyrations of the bureaucracy, is the real hope. International solidarity imposes on us a number of elementary but urgent tasks if we are to fulfil our duty to the Russian workers who have suffered and sacrificed so much. We must defend the Soviet Union and its planned economy and the very real economic, scientific and technological achievements of the Soviet people against imperialism. We must redouble our efforts to arouse the workers of our own countries in the battle—economic, political and ideological—against capitalism and the various kinds of bureaucracy in the Labour movement which hinder the fight against capi- talism. By fighting imperialism, showing the workers the way forward, building the Marxist vanguard without which the socialist revolution cannot be carried through, we will give real help to the Russian workers, we will act as true friends, class brothers and allies. No national barriers, no ‘iron curtains’, no witch-hunts or repression can prevent the spread of the liberating ideas of Marxism. 130