Moscow: Interim Report
By ROBERT CONQUEST THE 22nd Party Congress in Moscow has already produced its sensations. It will not be until it ends, with the elections of the new Central Committee and then of the new Praesidium, that we can be reasonably sure of the significance of all the various harangues and denunciations. Meanwhile, it is clear enough that Soviet political life goes on as ever, like a fight between sharks— that is, in conditions of bitter struggle the precise trend of which can only be deduced by occasional thrashings around on the surface. The Congress itself is being conducted with some decorum, if we ignore the epithets used about venerable elder thugs. But what is coming out about the speech and behaviour of the Communist leaders at their confidential meeting makes one no longer sur- prised at Khrushchev banging the table with his shoe at the UN. When he was howling down the coarse abuse of the Albanians, or of Molotov, he doubtless got into the habit of taking them both off and hurling them at the last speaker.
The inclusion of the eighty-year-old Voroshilov in the Anti-Party Group is a sign that the new attacks are not simply a settlement with the oppositionists of 1957. They seem to be intended as something more—as a demonstration of a ruthless determination to destroy all rivals. What everyone has been asking is, 'A demonstration to whom?' The presumed answer is: to a powerful group of opponents still existing in the Central Committee. The burden of Khrushchev's new attack being on 'Stalinism,' the implication is that in the obscure dispute which seems to have gone on in the last few months about heavy industry he must have faced an orthodox opposition in- sisting on full emphasis on its basic economic importance.
The other theme that has been raised a good deal is that of Stalinism in foreign policy. Mokr tov is accused of having been too aggressive. yet recent Soviet moves have been at least as aggre sive as Molotov's. While Khrushchev naturally cannot venture to provoke any charges of weak' ness (and that is perhaps where the 50-megaton bomb comes in) he may nevertheless have been hampered by, and be resisting, those in the Praesidium who want to press Soviet luck too far on the Berlin and other issues.
The trouble about the policy aspect of Soviet politics is that it is not unknown for a combatant to steal an opponent's policy once the opponent has been disposed of for advancing it. In this way Stalin appropriated an industrialisation policy for which he had condemned Trotsky, and Khrushchev the consumer goods policy which he i had branded in Malenkov as a 'belching forth 01 the Right deviation: The Anti-Party Group is particularly convenient whipping-boy when there is any political debate going on. For it can be attacked either for extreme left-wing dogmatists (with Molotov as its incarnation) or for right' wing capitulation (featuring Malenkov). So it significant that Molotov has now been promoted to the number one spot in the Anti-Party Group which Malenkov had occupied since 1957. For once it has been decided to attack the Group int its aggressiveness in foreign policy and its addle' tion to Stalinist industrial programmes, Malenkov does not satisfactorily fill the bill. Even Scone' readers can remember that he was removed froth the premiership under charges of pursuing tne, peaceable a foreign policy and too un-Stalinist an industrial programme. (It is true enough that on the criminal rather than the policy charg1e against the Group Malenkov is particularly 0' nerable. So is Khrushchev, if the matter was one
'Don't fire until you see their Nobel prizes.' of abstract justice allotting the responsibility for various massacres.) At the 21st Congress it was noticeable that the speakers about the Anti-Party Group took two different lines. Some demanded action against them. Others, headed by Mikoyan, sPoke of them as a dead issue. Among the speeches of the present Congress a similar division can be seen, with Mikoyan again emphasising that the struggle with Molotov and Co. has been an 'ideological' and not an 'administrative' one. Khrushchev's double object, to defeat current, and destroy former, opponents, may yet not reach complete fulfilment.
For, up to a point, the dispute is more nearly doctrinal and verbal than might at first appear. It would be, as it has been in the past, perfectly Possible for the Soviet Government to pursue virtually any industrial policy while still paying 1'P-service to priority for heavy industry. Nor Will it be maintained that there is really all that much difference between the Stalin-Molotov foreign policy of the 1948 Berlin blockade, and khrushchev's present actions.
The quarrel with China is, of course, of long standing, and enough had been said already to show its intensity. What is new is Khrushchev's shock tactics in bringing it into the open. Many of the attacks on the Anti-Party Group's foreign Policies and internal terrorism are equally applicable to the Chinese leadership, and some of them seem to have been phrased as provocatively ' as Possible with them in mind. In any case, the attack on Stalinism in Albania has been Universally recognised as being directed quite as much at Peking.
As • far • as Albania is concerned, it is Perhaps more a matter of European Com- ' ruunist discipline than of genuine doctrinal grievances. After all, Ulbricht's policies are con- Isiderably more Stalinist than Enver Hoxha's. The 'thing is not so much to be anti-Stalinist, but to saY you are. , he survival of the Albanian regime, disavowed oY the Russians, faced with hostility from all its neighbours, detested by its population and even °Y a large section of the party, is a great tribute t° the strength of the totalitarian apparatus. Even so, these apparatuses have often found themselves Linable to stand without foreign troops—as in oUuneary in 1956 and in East Germany in 1953 kor, if it comes to that, now). It seems unlikely that the regime can last for long, but the chance °f its being replaced by a non-Communist gov- ernment must be high, and that Khrushchev faces this with equanimity is a measure of the strength elf his animus. Of course, it is not simply that the Albanians are the weakest and least reputable of the great coalition of 'dogmatists' which he seems to see around him, they are also those who have spoken their minds most openly, One can understand a certain resentment on the part of the First Secretary when he is told that Stalin's biggest mistake was not knocking him off.
On the economic side Khrushchev has pro- duced very definite improvements in the past Year both in industry and in consumer goods. Soviet many of the old faults and distortions of ,nviet economy remain untouched, and, in par- ticular, his agricultural policies underline the "°°1e fallacy of the collectivisation system. So, on the whole, he may be thought of as someone who is dragging the Communist Party, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century, but not into the second half of it. And the fact that even this makes him, in general, more progres- sive than many of his colleagues, is partly out- weighed by his erratic ways. It is not much good being more peaceful than your preiecessor for 364 days of the year if you start an H-bomb war on the 365th.
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