The Broken Shell
THE Petrovs' book would be very interesting for its information alone—on the inner working of the MVD, the Australian spy operations, Burgess and Maclean, and many other points. But it is more than interesting, it is deeply significant, in the picture it gives of two junior members of a powerful section of the Soviet ruling class. The Petrovs' decision to defect was, on the face of it, simply a logical one, based on fear of disgrace or death. But this is looking at it very superficially. Mrs. Petrov, quite as tough and operative as her husband, was very nearly induced to go back and sacrifice herself in the vain hope of saving her relatives. (In fact it was only the admirably forthright action of the Australian Government, which one can be regrettably sure would have been bungled by our own, which gave her a chance to reconsider when it was almost too late.) It is precisely because the Petrovs had the biggest ideological and financial stake in the regime, and the least overt scruples, that their background is such a reassuring answer to those who maintain that this class is solid and safe for the Russian rulers. Two main factors rendered them potentially unsafe : firstly, they had seen in their own relatives the sufferings of the purges and the collectivisation, and, secondly, while bene- fiting from the rat-race of Soviet official life, they were basically sickened by it, like many other Soviet officials, and even in them the almost mystic Russian sense of ethics had a foothold. But once the apparatchik shell was broken something more basic could emerge: look at the horrifying yet heartening photograph of Mrs. Petrov's face as she was hustled to the plane by Embassy toughs. In such unpromising material the motivation for the complete abandonment of Soviet Communism had to be very strong. Everything goes to show that the Soviet intelligentsia as a whole, while increasingly alienated from crudities of Party thought and practice, has also never lost, even as much as the Petrovs, aspira- tions towards a juster life. In the long run the Stalinist- Khrushchevist indoctrinations have failed and here is one among many reasons why the regime must evolve or perish.
J. E. M. ARDEN
Previous page
