Letters to the 9 Editor
A POLICY FOR THE WEST
SIR,—Now that East-West talks are a pos.si- bility, a common policy must be decided Upon. And this is not easy, between the Scylla of appeasement and the Charybdis of "toughness." Any action is bound to affect the evolution which is taking place inside Russia: So the first requirement is to find out which way things are moving. Observers concentrate on the antics in the Kremlin snake-pit. But it is not the one, two or three men at the top who actually run the vast empire. There is a great managerial class of technocrats who make the wheels go round to whom the regime must pander. What do these people want today ?
All of them are party members. But none are old revolutionaries. Stalin disposed of the lot. To the technocrat of today, the regime was the established order when he became conscious. He joined the party simply because it was the path to success. He goes to the meetings and uses the Phraseology like, alas, many Westerners who go to church on Sunday—because it is the thing to do. Factory sub-manager Popoff from Stalingrad has as burning an interest in world revolution as accountant Jones from Birmingham in missions to darkest Africa. Let us call it a pious thought. Quite like Jones, he is mostly interested in things that make life agreeable: housing, washing machines, cars and gadgets which his new industry is beginning to produce for him. The unsung emergence of the felt hat as the correct headgear of the successful Soviet citizen is far more significant than the liquida- tion of half-a-dozen marshals. Its brim covers ambitions of bourgeois comfort and safety from police terror, and not of world revolution.
The other great fact to be always remem- bered is the patriotism of the Russians. Five or six million prisoners were made by Hitler in 1941 because the Kremlin was putting the accent only on the Communist v. fascist aspect. Hundreds of thousands of them volunteered into the German army with General Vlassov "to free Russia from the Party.' But Hitler made it clear that he was going to colonise Russia and treated Russians as an inferior race. With a stroke of genius, Stalin threw , the ace card of patriotism on the table, re-established tradi- tional ranks and uniforms in the army, replaced the word " red " by " soviet " in its name, called Alexander Nevsky, Peter the Great, Souvoroff, Koutouzoff and all the saints of Russia to his assistance and turned
• the tide.
This is why any aggressively tough policy today would be a fatal error. The regime is Changing by itself.
But absence of toughness does not imply softness. Weakness would be fatal, as it would obviously tempt a desperate despot to con- solidate his trembling throne on the laurels of an easy victory. So there must be no Slowing of rearmament. But strength and preparedness can combine with tact and absence of any move that could rally the bourgeoisie to the cause of patriotism.
Then we can hope that disintegration will proceed until a state of balance is reached by such men as find the support of broad Masses of the population. And it is d:fficult to imagine that such a regime would risk its stability by seeking warlike .adventure for the sole purpose of spreading the bible of Marx and Engels, of which Russia itself only admits progressively expurgated versions.— Yours faithfully,
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