Stalin's fiasco in China had its repercussions inside the Soviet
Union as well, but in an oddly perverse way: it strengthened Stalin rather than his critic Trotsky. This was partly because the ultra-left tactics which Trotsky advocated were even less realistic than those put into practice by Stalin. But it also owed something to the peculiar logic of totalitarian politics, whereby victory goes to the factional leader who com- mands the apparatus, whatever the merits of his actions. Trotsky's ideas had long since become anachronistic, and their author served as a useful scapegoat for Stalin's own errors.
The last phases of this conflict take place in 1927, and thus lie outside the scope of this volume. This means that the epic story of `Socialism in one country' is unfortunately not brought to final completion; indeed, so far as Great Britain is concerned it stops in the early months of 1926, before the denouement of the general strike. It is a pity that the narrative should have been held up by a superfluity of detail, not all of it relevant. The awkward arrangement of the material also makes things unnecessarily difficult for the reader. It is hard to follow the main lines of Soviet policy and to see how its successes and failures were affected by its inner contradictions. This is be- cause Mr. Carr is reluctant to generalise— perhaps because he is uncertain how so great a theme should be evaluated. After all, we now know what lay at the end of the road.
A Soviet critic recently put Mr. Carr among 'those reactionary historians who seek to show that force is the decisive factor in international relations.' This was unfair; but his approach can with justice be termed conservative. He under- estimates the immense power, for good or ill, unleashed by revolutionary ideas, and by messi- anic movements based upon them. This leads to an unfortunate neglect of the ideological element in Stalin's foreign policy, which (contrary to popular belief) was far from insignificant. Stalin may have been a Russian nationalist, but this was not inconsistent with his being a Leninist. He genuinely believed in the 'contradictions of imperialism' and deliberately set out to exploit them. It is only when due account is taken of these ideological underpinnings that the various pieces of the jigsaw can be made to fall into place.
This is not a definitive history of the period, but it marks a notable step forward. The next volumes in the History, which will treat the period when 'Socialism in one country' ceased to be a slogan and became a grim reality, will be eagerly awaited. Perhaps Mr. Carr will then interpret less narrowly the historian's obligation to avoid judgments based on hindsight, and will give us his summing-up on the Bolsheviks' 'Great Experiment.'
Previous page
