LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
SOVIET RESHUFFLE
SIR,—I hope your contributor,' Mr. Richard Chancellor, will forgive me, but after reading his article Soviet Reshuffle in the Spectator of March 11th, I am forced to admit that I am left with a distinct and uncomfort-
able suspicion that he has not been playing fair. Mr. Chancellor addresses himself to an extraordinary difficult task, and it is not really to be supposed that, on the basis of a 60-word Tass announcement, he or anyone else is able to provide a thoroughly satisfactory answer to the question: " What do the changes inside the Kremlin mean ? " Quite rightly he approaches his subject obliquely and uses the inferential
method, of which he spoke in his interesting article of January 7th last, but he uses it in so cavalier a way that he must have set many readers, besides myself, against him. All, I suppose, were anxious to hear what
• Mr. Chancellor had to say on the reshuffle, the more so now that Voznesensky has also been withdrawn to the seclusion of the Politburo, but how many of us must have soon lost heart, baffled by the speculation, conscious only that your contributor was raising too many contentious issues and settling none. In a word, Mr. Chancellor does not convince. Why ?
First, there is his astonishing opening illustration of the Rugby football side where, by pursuing an unhappy analogy too quickly and too far, Mr. Chancellor, in effect, begins by begging the question. It is, I am afraid, too much to ask a reader simply to accept on trust the view that the " captain of the Russian fifteen " has relegated himself to the touch- line and that his place on the field has been taken by Molotov, supported, so Mr. Chancellor avers, by the " steady " Mikoyan. The point is too important to be treated thus, and Mr. Chancellor would have done far better had he kept his nose closer to the ground and provided some hint of a suggestion of the evidence upon which this belief of his is founded. One gathers from subsequent paragraphs that Mr. Chancellor holds the opinion that the " personal authority of another great Russian leader is waning "; that Stalin's strength is ebbing. But still we are not confronted with evidence: instead, Mr. Chancellor fobs his readers off with a curious and, I consider, wholly misleading parallel. The situation today, he contends, is in several respects similar to that existing at the time of Lenin's death. In fairness he ought to have said that the climate within and without the Party is notably different now and that the relationship today of the Central Committee to Stalin, the Vozhd, has markedly changed from that existing at the close of Lenin's tempestuous life. And he might have added that where Lenin fell victim to two crippling strokes between 1922 and 1923, before dying of a third at the beginning of 1924, there is no firm evidence to support the view that Stalin is an invalid, a puppet in power ; on the contrary, he appears still to be a remarkably fit man for all his 70 years, in full possession of his faculties and still the undisputed master of his household. It is, I think, note- worthy that he has not, as far as I can ascertain, wintered in Sochi this year.
Secondly, Mr. Chancellor seems to have convinced himself that the 19th Congress will be an international, rather than an all-Russian affair. I am far from convinced by the evident ease with which he accepts this thesis. In the first place the conception of the " new democracy," as Mr. Chancellor must be aware, has certain obvious limitations to it, and of these one of the most important is that whereas the satellites are States en route to Marxian Socialism, the Soviet Union, as its apologists do not tire of telling us, is now en route to full Communism. This is not only a theoretical difference ; it shows itself in outward forms. Thus it is that the Soviet Union has taken care to set up special agencies for co- ordinating its junior parmers' activities and integrating their systems into its own in the shape of the Cominform and the Council for Mutual Economic Aid. In the second place, notwithstanding the tremendous strides which the orbit States have made in the past year towards complete Sovietisation, it is undeniable that there are still far too many weaknesses and unevennesses in party, Governmental and economic structures to recommend any one of the orbit leaders to a place on the new Central Committee. It is, I think, much more likely that a formal application from individual satellites for inclusion within the Soviet Union under Article 14(c) of the Stalin Constitution would come first, with elections to the Central Committee to follow.
Thirdly, there are those many points of detail which Mr. Chancellor chooses rather to slip lightly over than dwell upon. The mysterious Marshal Vasilievsky is appointed to command the ill-assorted and feeble armies of the orbit States ; Mikoyan is linked with the afJaire Varga ; Molotov is regarded as a star of the same magnitude as Stalin in the Red firmament ; monarchical Stalinism must, Mr. Chancellor asserts, be reconciled with " all that is left of pure Marxism," etc. But why, one is bound to ask, why must all these things be ? And why, one feels, as one reaches Mr. Chancellor's " comparatively simple " conclusion, does the reshuffled team inspire so little " confidence " ? Is it not just possible, one asks, that the " great captain " also realises what scope his departure will leave to " that streak of selfish and irresponsible indi- vidualism . . . inherent in the Russian nature " ?—and has he not had 21 years of power in which to solve a problem which Lenin left unsolved in three ?
Perhaps Mr. Chancellor, in a sequel, would be good enough to advance some of the evidence upon which he bases himself, because in its absence his present article must remain a purely speculative account and, as such, of very little value to the serious student of Soviet affairs.—
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