violinist David Oistrakh and the pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, were allowed to tour the world. The ballet, while in a sense stagnant - the clock having stopped for most purposes in 1917 - continued to do its dances beautifully, and was apparently backed by more funds and a better system of schools and selection than in any other country. The Moscow Art Theater is still one of the most remarkable centers of acting anywhere, although unfortunately its school of acting had for a long time a monopoly in the Soviet Union, all other approaches to acting and the theater having been proscribed. Good acting has also characterized many Soviet films. In fact the Soviet cinema continued to be creative longer than other Soviet arts - in part probably because it had no nineteenth- century tradition in the image of which it could be conveniently frozen. Soviet film directors included at least one great figure, Serge Eisenstein, 1898-1948, as well as other men of outstanding ability.
In the arts as in literature, the years of glasnost brought great promise as well as dislocation and worry.
Religion in the Soviet Union constituted an anomaly, a threat, and a challenge from the Communist point of view. Marxist theory considers it an 'opiate of the masses' and finds its
the people obedient and docile. Russian practice seemed to add weight to the theory, for the Orthodox Church in Russia was closely linked to the imperial regime, and it naturally sided with the Whites in the Civil War. Clearly, its social basis gone, religion would cease to exist in a socialist society. But this did not occur. Therefore, the Soviet leadership had to compromise and allow religion a highly restricted position in the U.S.S.R., while looking forward to its eventual, much delayed, disappearance. Religion, it might be added, also proved to be one of the main obstacles to the Communist transformation of man and society in other eastern European countries.
Outright persecution lasted well into the thirties. In addition to executing and exiling many clerics, monks, and Orthodox laymen, confiscating church implements 'for victims of famine,' and closing churches and converting them into antireligious museums, the authorities tried to break up the Church from the inside by assisting a modernist 'Living Church' group within it - fruitlessly, for the people would not follow that group. After the death in 1925 of Patriarch Tikhon - elected by a Church council in 1918 to resume the patriarchal form of ecclesiastical organization which had been discontinued by Peter the Great - the government prevented any patriarch being elected in his stead, and Church leadership fell to provisional appointees. Yet, according to an official report based on the never-published census of 1936, 55 per cent of Soviet citizens still identified themselves as religious - while many others presumably concealed their belief.
That stubborn fact in conjunction with the general social stabilization of the thirties made Stalin and the Politburo assume a more tolerant attitude toward religion. The war and the patriotic behavior of the Church in the war added to its acceptance and standing. In 1943 the Church was permitted to elect a patriarch, the statesmanlike Metropolitan Sergius obtaining that position. After his death in 1945, Sergius was succeeded by Alexis, who continued as 'Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia' for a quarter of a century. In 1971, following Alexis's death, Pimen was elected patriarch to head the Church, followed in 1990 by Alexis II. The ecclesiastical authorities were also allowed to establish a few theological schools, required to prepare students for the priesthood, and to open a limited number of new churches. The activities of the Union of the Godless and anti-religious propaganda in general were curtailed. In return the patriarchal Church declared complete loyalty to the regime, and supported, for example, its international peace campaigns and its attempts to influence the Balkan Orthodox. More unfortunately, the two co-operated in bringing the two or three million Uniates of former eastern Poland into Orthodoxy. The Church in the U.S.S.R., however, remained restricted to strictly religious, rather than more general social and educational, functions - even the constitution proclaimed merely the freedom of religious confession, as against the freedom of anti-religious propaganda - and, while temporarily tolerated within limits, it remained a designated enemy of Marxist ideology and Communist society. In fact, Khrushchev especially, as well
as his successors, increased the pressures against religion even when 'liberalizing' other aspects of Soviet life. A remarkably tenacious relic of the past, the Church has no future in the Communist view.
It should be added that other Soviet Christians, such as Baptists, and other religious groups, such as the numerous Moslems, shared their histories with the Orthodox. They, too, led a constricted and precarious existence within a fundamentally hostile system, profiting from relaxations when they occurred and entering a new life as a result of the policy of glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
XLII
THE GORBACHEV YEARS, 1985-91, AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
The river of time in its flow Carries away all the works of human beings…
At present the peoples of the Soviet Union, and to some extent even peoples outside its borders, are in the midst of the Gorbachev-initiated maelstrom, which makes an objective judgment of the situation exceptionally difficult. To be sure, the Soviet leader was not in control of his country and its citizens, and, indeed, he had been repeatedly obtaining results opposite to those intended - after all, Nicholas II also made important contributions to the revolutions of 1917. And as many of our best specialists tell us, it is dangerous to personalize major historical issues, and another Gorbachev or still other lines of development would have produced similar results. But as long as history is an account of what happened and is happening rather than of the logical alternatives, the period of glasnost and perestroika will remain linked to its extraordinary protagonist, whose main assets appear to have been optimism, glibness, and marvelous political agility and adroitness, which enabled him to dance on top of and around historical developments, if not to preside over their course - an obvious transitory figure who long refused to transit.
There is no doubt that Gorbachev started the ball rolling. Exactly what he and his original associates, such as Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev, had in mind when they began reforming the Soviet Union may never become clear, even to them. Suppositions and explanations of their intent abound, but the overwhelming factors in what transpired appear to be the absence of correspondence between plans and reality and the dizzying power of contradictory forces unchained by even slight reform. Recent events in the U.S.S.R. and eastern Europe stunned everyone, especially those who had any regard for the communist system, and that includes by definition the entire Soviet leadership. There may well be, however, one quite major exception to this almost total disjunction between purpose and accomplishment. Gorbachev, Shevardnadze especially, and other prominent Soviet figures insisted that one of the pillars of their new thinking was the absolute realization of the inadmissibility of nuclear war in human
affairs and, therefore, of the necessity for at least a minimum of international cooperation, in particular between the Soviet Union and the United States. With all qualifications, it can be argued that Soviet foreign policy came to reflect that realization. If so, the gain to the world was incalculable, although the realization itself is elementary and its roots even in the Soviet Union largely preceded Gorbachev. Otherwise, it hardly needs reminding that in his book
At the foundation of Gorbachev's reforming lay the need to escape the economic cul-de-sac, which had become increasingly and unmistakably apparent by the end of the Brezhnev regime. Although some specialists claim that the Soviet state and society had already lost their forward motion with the fall of Khrushchev or shortly after,
