BACK TO STALIN
KHRUSHCHEV, unable to lay his hands on Tito, has killed Imre Nagy. In doing so, he has shown that the Communist world is still sub- jugated by the system of terror and bad faith which optimists hoped had perished with Stalin. Nagy was arrested while in possession of a safe conduct. His treason consisted in putting his own country's interests first : it is a crime for which the lives of all outside the Soviet empire, from heads of government like Tito, Nasser and Nehru down to the rank-and-file citizen, stand forfeit.
We can be sure that in the interests' of Soviet triumph Khrushchev would foreclose on them if he could. The face of the Soviet regime shows most clearly in episodes like this : it is that of a deceiver and killer. World peace requires that we negotiate with it. But once more it is shown how right it is to use a very long spoon.
From the Communist point of view Nagy's crime was that he had demanded the one thing of the party which Khrushchev and his like are not prepared to concede—that it should practise what it preaches : respect for truth and humanity, for the interests of the population and for the independence of nations.
Although the attempt ended in defeat and bloodshed, Nagy's effort to break from the Stalinist impasse remains encouraging. It shows that even among old and senior Communists the will to peace and decency survives. His captors paid him one last compliment when they did not grant him a public trial. They knew that sympathy and support for their victim is widespread in the Soviet bloc. That movement of thought is sup- pressed, but it is not annihilated and it will be heard from again.
Meanwhile Khrushchev has commented, rather ambiguously (and not for home consumption), on the rumours at present raging in Moscow about the imminence of a new Stalinist purge on home ground. He did not even mention Malenkov's old ally, Saburov, now said to have been purged with a number of his supporters. (He was not among those elected to the new Supreme Soviet.) The recent plenum of the Central Committee, at which the decision to break with Yugoslavia was evi- dently taken, seemed to have produced further trouble. Bulganin's name had not appeared among Przesidium members listed as attending recent conferences and ceremonies. It was rumoured that he had already been removed from that body and sent to a minor job in the Caucasus. Khrush- chev has said simply that he has been ill, which is hardly relevant. Suslov had also not appeared for some weeks and there were reports that he, too, had been removed. It is certainly odd that; though he has had party responsibility for foreign affairs for nearly the last ten years, he was not among those representing the Russians at the recent conference of the Warsaw Pact.
In spite of his reputation as an old-line Stalinist, Suslov supported Khrushchev in the crisis last year—though he seems to have wobbled slightly at one point. He has certainly been a proponent of the tougher line with Yugoslavia throughout. But it would be typical Khrushchev tactics to rid himself of the man whose policies he is appro- priating. He may well be on holiday at Sochi, as Khrushchev says, and still have lost his posts.
At the same time persistent rumours of Malen kov's death had been circulating. These at least Khrushchev has flatly denied, and they may not be true—yet. The most recent attack on him has been for cultural sabotage—in a resolution of the Central Committee to the effect that earlier pronouncements about operas were mistaken, owing to 'J. V. Stalin's subjective attitude' which, in turn, was 'known to have been very negatively influenced by Molotov, Malenkov and Beria. This hardly carries the death sentence, even in Russia. Yet it is an interesting 'coincidence that the three prominent Soviet figures who have died in the last year or so—Malyshev, Zavenyagin and Tevosyan—were all associates of Malenkov's. Of course, natural death is not unknown in the USSR; still, of the fifteen deaths among the top leadership in the last twenty-five years it is only of two that it has never officially been stated that they were murdered—in four cases after a natural death complete with doctors' certificates had been the official story for some time. On the other hand, Khrushchev's last execution of a Praesidium member, in 1956, was kept quiet for a month or so and then only announced briefly in a provin- cial paper. We had better watch the obituary columns of the Ust-Kamenogorsk Gazette and East Kazakhstan Advertiser.
These are not the only worried speculations about the leader's plans. Khrushchev's political tactics have always been characterised by ex- tremely adventurous schemes. The attack on Stalin, the Virgin Lands campaign, the dissolu- tion of the economic ministries and so on were exercises in almost all the fields open to such changes. The latest initiative, which got the full publicity treatment in Russia as though it was on a par with the others, was—the reorganisation. of the chemical industry. This is pretty clearly scrap. ing the barrel. It showed both that Khrushchev wanted to carry on in his usual style and that he was finding it difficult to think of anything new. 'But there is a field which he has not yet touched: the boundaries and the constitutional structure of the USSR. In particular, it is rumoured, he may be thinking in terms of annexing one or more of the satellite States to the Soviet Union or to a newly created Federation or Con- federation based on the present USSR. On this view, the recently announced withdrawal of Soviet troops from Roumania would be a propa- ganda move designed to show that Roumanian accession to Russia was voluntary. The next step would be the unification of the Roumanian- speaking territories already in the USSR—the so- called Moldavian Republic—with Roumania proper (just as Stalin ceded' Vilna to Lithuania as a preliminary to annexing the whole country). Serdyuk, the party boss in Moldavia, is already beginning to play a part in Balkan affairs in general. He acted as Khrushchev's second-in- command on the recent visit of the Soviet leader to the Bulgarian Party Congress. Claims have re- cently been made, incidentally, that Bulgaria is the first fully 'socialised' country in Eastern Europe ripe for closer union with Moscow, and the political committee of the Warsaw Pact is already a Greater Russian Government in embryo. Khrushchev's latest notes suggest that he is no longer anxious for a summit meeting, and the formal expansion of Soviet territory could be the first major political step following the murder of Nagy in Khrushchev's new intransigence : open cold war abroad and at home instead of a summit meeting and internal relaxation.
Rumour and speculation may or may not amount to anything substantial. But they are some indication of the frenetic atmosphere which prevails in Soviet ruling circles. The restless and irresponsible ruler who is now restoring Stalinism is trusted as little by his own people as by the rest of the world.
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