THE TWENTY-THIRD CONGRESS
A Conservative Party• Conference
From DEV MURARKA
MOSCOW
THE twenty-third party congress will be an interregnum rather than a landmark on its own. It will be a pointer to the future rather than a trendsetter. For this reason it will be a congress on a low key, deriving its authority mostly from the twentieth and the twenty-second party congresses.
This seems to be a tame conclusion after all the expectations and rumours of revaluation and revelation which have been built up since Octo- ber 1964. Yet, looked at purely from the Soviet viewpoint and the existing situation within the Communist movement, this deliberate dullness makes sense. If the Soviet leaders can manage it, they intend to keep it that way.
The reasons are not easy to find and, indeed, there is almost nothing being said about the topics which the congress will discuss. There is no lack of issues, either at home or abroad, which simply cry out for clarification. Yet the prevailing view is that the time is not ripe yet for this kind of conclusive discussion.
The fact is that the Communist party is still gripped by the past and no one knows how to come to terms with it. Often enough there have been vague implications that a serious debate is taking place in the upper echelons of the party here. But, by consent, this debate has not been allowed to be turned into a whirlwind of rank-and-file polemics.
To take the obvious first. Despite the frequent speculation about the rehabilitation of Stalin, it can be said with certainty that it is not going to take place. At one stage he came very near rehabilitation and even some of his works were ready for public sale. But, largely due to pressure from the East Europeans, this had to be post- poned indefinitely. The East Europeans con- tended that to rehabilitate Stalin at this stage would create far more problems than it would solve, and that the Soviet leaders would be wiser not to press it too far. Their views are not some- thing which can be easily ignored.
Even in the case of Khrushchev the party leaders have resisted considerable pressure to use the congress for denouncing him and to provide Khrushchev-style revelations of the various sins of omission and commission. Indeed, the depth of anti-Khrushchev feeling is so enor- mous in a certain section of Soviet society that the outside world may find it difficult to believe. Nevertheless, the leaders have successfully per- suaded those who demand such a denunciation that it will not be in the interests of the party and would only unleash a new wave of bitter- ness and cynicism.
Some advance, however, has to be made to assuage the thirst for knowledge of the murky past, a thirst which has been increased only by the partial revelations under Khrushchev. If the rehabilitation of Stalin is ruled out and the Khrushchev period is too near to be touched on, something has to be done to rescue the Soviet Union from non-history. To be sure, all this debate is not for the sake of history alone. It has a practical bearing on the position and even the ultimate authority of the Soviet Communist party itself. The likely compromise which is evolving may lead to the publication of some vital documents connected with the seventeenth and the nineteenth congresses of the party, held ' in 1934 and 1952. Whether such publication will coincide with the congress or will take place after is not known. Moreover, it is likely that all these issues will merely hover in the back- ground and the actual names of Stalin, Khrush- chev or anybody else will never be mentioned at all at the congress.
This trend towards the conservative sentiment can be better understood if it is realised that the upheavals of the last decade have left the Soviet party leaders somewhat breathless and a little apprehensive. Besides, that most powerful body of people below the top leadership, the secretaries of districts and regional party or- ganisations, tend to be mostly veterans. Of the total 136 of these secretaries, ninety-nine reached high positions in the party before the death of Stalin, thirty-six reached similar positions between 1953 and 1964 and only one has come up since; 131 of them are between the ages of forty-four and sixty-four. This analysis of the secretarial structure, rudimentary as it is, makes it clear that at present there is a built-in ten- dency to avoid risky political and ideological changes and to prefer consolidation. Consider- ing that the secretaries comprise the majority of the central committee members, the unmistak- able impression of bias against change is further strengthened.
Of the external issues, two are likely to provide strong meat for an ideological clash. It is now certain that the Chinese are coming and there is a great deal of apprehension about this. More than likely, they will launch a wide-ranging attack on the whole of Soviet policies, economic and political, internal and external. What will be the Russians' response to it? Clearly they will defend themselves vigorously, but the latest available information is that they will avoid doing anything which will result in a final split. The Soviet side seems to have reached the conclusion that it is unnecessary to drive the Chinese out. They are now sufficiently isolated as to be ineffective and the more irresponsibly they attack the Soviet position, the more support they will lose. For this reason, all thought of a separate conference of the Communist parties to deal with China—or even with a concrete issue which affects the Chinese, such as the war in Vietnam—has been put aside. If the Chinese raise these issues from the congress floor, they will be answered in a cool, reasoned manner and it is hoped that it may be left at that.
A much more interesting issue which is likely to come up is the attitude of the Communist movement towards social democracy, and par- ticularly towards the social democratic party. This has become an urgent issue for the Com- munist movement as a whole and a series of meetings have been held to thrash it out. For instance, it is not widely realised that the meeting of a number of Communist parties held in Prague last October was preceded and followed by similar meetings in East Berlin and Moscow. The purpose of these meetings was not to evolve a new policy towards China, but to find a new approach towards non-Communist but Socialistic elements. Evidently the results of their labour may be embodied in some policy document at the congress.
Soviet party congresses, of course, have often surprised us in the past and it may be that some such issue may crop up this time. But it seems highly unlikely. A much more important date in the context of the political evolution of the Communist movement is the fiftieth anniversary of the October revolution. For this reason the period between the congress and the anniversary celebrations is likely to be one of greater political significance for the past as well as the future. The congress itself will only mark time.
'What shall we do then—stay East of Suez, or defend sterling?'
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