The Kremlin since Stalin, by Wolfgang Leonhard

[p046] _ The Kremlin Since Stalin. By Wolf- gang Leonhard. Oxford 1962, 42/-. Wolfgang Leonhard was originally a’. member ‘of :the ~ international

[p047] 208 apparat. He accompanied Walter Ulbricht to Berlin in 1945 where he worked to establish a regime that ' would be subservient to the Russian bureaucracy. The story of his experiences and his ultimate defec- tion to Titoism can be found in his earlier book ‘Child of the Revolu- tion’, reviewed in an earlier issue of Labour Review. Actually Leonhard was not so much a child of the Revolution as of its ‘bureaucratic posterior’ who was thoroughly versed in the theoretical methods of Stalin- ism. This method somewhat limits the value of his latest book. Briefly Leonhard identifies ‘inter- nationalism’ with the domination of the Russian bureaucracy. His revolt from this domination took the form of an espousal of ‘National Com- munism’, a reaction not uncommon in Eastern Europe where it has often taken the form of an alliance of sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy with remnants of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, particularly those connected with the small-holding peasantry. This alliance can often gain the support of the working class in their struggle for the democratic control of the economy. The trouble with the theory of National Communism is that it substitutes a national approach to socialism for a true internationalism based upon the international force of the working class in opposition to world imperialism. The effects of such an approach can be seen in ‘The Kremlin Since Stalin’ where the author identifies the Statement of the 81 Parties with a supposed swing of the Russian bureaucracy towards internationalism, Subsequent events including the Sino-Soviet dispute have shown the inadequacy of such a view. ; As a chronicle of events this book is useful, for it is well documented from Soviet sources; and his training in the Comintern school has given the author a sharp eve for the finer miances of official Soviet publica- tions. One thing that emerees from this chronicle is the empirical nature of bureaucratic thinking. scrapned and new plans initiated in a very hand-to-mouth manner, measyres on agriculture and indus- trial decentralisation being examples of this. Empiricism is also implicit in the Ideas are LABOUR REVIEW—Summer 1963 author’s method when he tends to split the bureaucracy up into sections: Army, Secret Police, Party Apparat, etc., and then speculate upon the more ‘liberal’ tendencies of this or that section. This is a favourite trick of professional sovietologists in whose hands it becomes an endless parlour-game in which rumour and speculation take the place of political analysis. Using this method the investigator tends to lose sight of the bureaucracy as a whole; as a social caste parasitic upon the nationalized property relations established by the Revolution, and increasingly coming into conflict with the need to develop and extend those relations beyond the borders of the national state. This is the main failure of Leonhard, but an understanding of this failure can be of service to Marxists in the struggle in their own movement against those who, using the same empiricist method, talk glibly about sections of the bureaucracy ‘pro- jecting a revolutionary orientation’ as a cover for their compromise with Stalinist and petty-bourgeois policies. DP. Disarming the working class