WHAT...RUSSIA IS AFRAID OF
Snt,—In your issue of August 23rd Sir Angus Watson discusses the cause of Russian fear, and, after ruling out her possible external enemies, con- cludes by a process of elimination that she must be afraid of herself. Admittedly a fear-complex may be due to auto-suggestion, and there is no better example of this than the anti-Bolshevik bogey which has deflected policy and embittered relations these last thirty years. But Sir Angus offers a more rational explanation, and at the same time undermines his own case, when he goes on to speak of a possible Anglo- American-Chinese combination which Russia would be powerless to resist.
It is true that all forms of government are " impermanent " in the sense that they must adapt themselves to the changing conditions of the new world, and few would assert that capitalist society can survive the loft war without appreciable change. Sir Angus says that "Russia has built up a terrorist State." Was it this terror which caused her people to fight better than they have ever done, and enabled them in the darkest days to maintain a heroic resistance which contributed mightily to thz salvation of mankind? The Soviet system was. in fact weighed in the greatest of all balances, and not found wanting. Sir Angus is forgetful or unaware -of the changes which have already occurred in Russia sin:: the Revolution. The doctrine that Communism must spread by violence,
advocated by Trotsky, was rejected and defeated by Stalin, yet Sir Angus now assures us that Trotsky was right. A revival of the Marxist postulate
of inevitable conflict between the two systems would lead straight in the long run to 'another wbrld explosion, and this is the nascent danger of which we, no less than 'the. Russians, have good reason to be afraid.-4
am, Sir, yours, etc., SYDNEY HAVELOCK. Barmoor, Corbridge, Northumberland.
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