A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WHAT has happened, or is happening, to the great mass of sincere emotions, shared by millions of people, on which the cult of Stalin was based and which were partly satisfied by the opportunities for hero-worship whi8h it gave them ? However cynical or opportunist may have been the attitude of the top men in Russia towards their late leader, there can be no doubt that to the great mass of his subjects, and especially to the young, Stalin was the object of the sort of adoration that Hitler won from most of the Germans for most of the time. The Russians, like all nations who live in communities separated by wide, empty spaces and sealed by a long winter, feel a strong need for religious faith. Religion, though tolerated, is still not encouraged in the USSR, and many focussed on the man who had saved their beloved country from destruction in war impulses which should have found a worthier outlet., Unremitting propaganda, flowing over them from the Press, the radio, the cinema and the state schools, did everything possible to stimulate this tendency; and though the odes tet Stalin written by lickspittle Moscow poets may have been somewhat mechanical productions, similar compositions—not greatly inferior in quality—from the pens of school-children and students all over the USSR were genuine expressions of a fervent loyalty. Now that the benign, badger-like figure no longer towers over them on posters or shambles towards them on the news-reel screens, what do they do with all the love they bore him ? " Collective responsibility " may be an admirable principle on which to navigate the ship of state; but a committee of helmsmen is not, in the eyes of the lower deck, an acceptable substitute for a captain. It is true that an opportunity•now exists for the Russians to transmute some of their adoration of Stalin into detestation for Beria; but this isn't quite the same thing and in any case the opportunity, from what one knows of Soviet justice, will be fleeting. It will be interesting to see how the Kremlin tries to solve the problem of the empty pedestal.
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