social classes which are history's real moving forces. The peoples of the Soviet Union, we are told, have already found their new representative, mouthpiece, and leader, who will speak with Stalin's voice as Stalin had spoken with the voice of Lenin.
In this argument the Stalin cult achieves its own self-exposure: what it implies is that the Stalin cult was merely a propaganda stunt and a hoax. In truth, the Stalin legend has been something more than this. But no matter how low a view one may take of it, the assurances that Stalin's death will entail no change in the Soviet Union are quite unconvincing, as we shall see later. Here it need only be observed in passing how foolishly the alleged adherents of dialectical materialism place the Soviet Union beyond and above all ‘law of history’.
The whole world is supposed to be subject to dialectical change. Nothing in it is static. Everywhere rages the struggle of antagonistic elements which forms the essence of change. Everything is growth and decay. Only at the frontiers of the Stalinist realm is Dialectics refused an entry visa, apparently as a visitor suspect of un-Soviet activity. In Stalinist Russia there are and there can be no antagonistic elements, no contradictions, no processes of real change and transformation — only the harmonious evolution and perfection of society.
The Soviet realm is, of course, not immune from the laws of change to which the rest of this troubled world is subject. Moreover, despite some appearances to the contrary, these laws have been operating in Soviet Russia more intensively and on a vaster scale than elsewhere. By itself the death of even the most powerful ruler may not alter the fortunes of a country. But it may act as a catalyst in latent processes of change which have been in operation for some time. What is the real nature of these processes? And is Stalin's death likely to act on them as a catalyst? This is the chief subject of our inquiry.
The anti-Communist, who has been under the hypnosis of the Stalin legend in a negative way, also assures us that there will be no change in Russia. He points to the immutable facade of the Stalin regime and concludes that behind it everything has been frozen into immutability. He sees nothing but the simple picture of a will-less, helpless, cowed people of 200 millions (or even of 800 millions, if all Communist countries are considered), ruled by the tyrant's iron rod.
To those who adhere to this oversimplified view it never occurs to ask how it could happen that nations which have in our century given so many striking proofs of their revolutionary frame of mind and temperament have become so meek and numb. How could it happen that the Russians who for a whole century threw bombs at their governors and ministers, chased their Tsars with revolvers, made three revolutions in the first two decades of this Century, fought so many civil wars, and filled the world with the clangour of their arms — how these same Russians have become clay in the hands of a few men in the Kremlin? Or how could it happen that the Chinese, who also had shaken off dynasties, warlords, and republican regimes and appeared incapable of settling down politically, have apparently come to accept Mao Tse-tung and have submitted to the rigorous discipline he has been imposing on them?
On a more sophisticated level the argument is advanced that our age has brought with it new techniques of government, which enable a totalitarian ruler to transform the most turbulent and rebellious nation into his plaything. Modern mass media of propaganda, all-pervading networks of spies, the power of the State as an employer, and the terror of concentration camps, so the argument runs, assure the stability of any totalitarian government. Such a government, it follows, can be overthrown only from outside, through defeat in war, as the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini have been overthrown. If so, then Stalin's death is an insignificant incident — the massive totalitarian machine will go on working in the background after it as before. A whole Soviet generation has already lived in Orwell’s nightmare of
It is difficult to deny the validity of this argument. Contemporary experience has, unfortunately, provided all too much evidence which appears to support it. But the argument also has its important flaws. Those who expound it tend to think of the primitive Russian society of the 1920's and early 1930's and of present-day China in terms applicable only to a highly industrialized and organized Western nation.
In the Russia of the 1920's and early 1930's — these were the formative years of the Stalinist regime and the years of its consolidation — the State was not yet the all-powerful employer. Nor is it in China today. The reference to the ‘mass media’ of totalitarian propaganda is even more irrelevant. In most Russian towns and villages of the early and middle Stalin era radio sets did not blare forth ‘all-pervading’ propaganda, simply because they were not available in sufficient numbers. Nor are they as yet available in China. In a primitive and largely illiterate nation, the influence of that other potent ‘mass medium’ of propaganda, the newspaper, is largely ineffective. Three-quarters of the Russian nation read no newspapers at the time when Stalin was setting up his totalitarian regime. Nor does the vast majority of the Chinese people read newspapers today.
All that may be said about the ‘mass media’ is that in a literate nation they are of the utmost importance to any aspirant to power; and that in an established totalitarian regime they are used to prevent or to slow down the formation of independent opinion. Even then their role is secondary — the success or failure of mass propaganda depends on a large variety of factors, not solely on the means of propaganda. The same is true of the instruments of political terror. These do not work in a vacuum. The effectiveness of their work depends largely on the nature of the material they work upon, and on the political morale of a country which can facilitate, obstruct or, in an extreme case, even bring to a standstill the machinery of terror.
Those who speak of the omnipotence of the totalitarian machine take a singularly unrealistic and superficial view of society, a curiously mechanical view which hardly befits writers who for the most part are so contemptuous of the materialist sociology of Marxism. They see only a single aspect of society — the mechanics of political power. As a rule, they ignore the economic, social, cultural, psychological, and moral trends in a nation's life. Yet it is on these trends that the effectiveness of the mechanics of government largely depends. It is to them that we ought to turn our attention in order to find how they may affect the fortunes of Stalinism after Stalin. It will then be seen that it was the peculiar paradox of Stalinism that with one hand it fought ruthlessly and desperately to perpetuate its domination over the mind and the body of the Russian people and with the other it was, with equal ruthlessness and persistence, destroying the very prerequisites of self-perpetuation. In other words, Stalin has done much, both negatively and positively, to ensure that Stalinism should not be able to survive him for very long.
In the weeks before and after Stalin's death, the newspapers were full of speculation about the secret rivalries in the Kremlin, the many-sided plots in which now Beria was supposed to be trying to oust Malenkov and Molotov, now Malenkov and Beria were supposed to oust Molotov, while in still other versions Bulganin and Beria were preparing a coup against all the others.
There were probably a few sparks behind this tremendous output of journalistic smoke. Not everything went smoothly within the walls of the Kremlin in the last weeks of Stalin's life, as the stories about the doctors' plot to assassinate some of the eminent personalities of the regime vaguely indicated.
Since Stalin's death it has often been suggested that the real government of the U.S.S.R. is exercised by a triumvirate or by another collegiate body similar to the triumvirate of Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev which assumed power after Lenin's departure.
Is it probable that history should repeat itself in such detail and that the pattern of events which followed Lenin's death should reproduce itself now?
The Russia of 1953 is very different from the Russia of 1924. The realities of power, the social structure, the political habits, the moral climate — all have changed almost beyond recognition, even though the phantoms of 1924 continue to hover over the Red Square. Yet there are some indications that before long Stalin's successor may try to chase away even those phantoms. He seems indeed to have begun the chase already.
Who is Malenkov? What does he represent? What does his ascendancy promise to Russia and the world?
In these pages an attempt will be made to sketch his career and character. This will not be easy. Until quite recently Malenkov's career ran its course behind the closed doors and the drawn curtains of Stalin's offices. But enough is known to provide some clues to Malenkov's personality and to the policies he is likely to pursue; and since his assumption of power he has given a few more clues, some of which are perhaps of greater significance than it appeared at first.
In what way Malenkov will act his part depends, however, less on himself than on the scene on which he has to act, on the forces in the background, and on the stage in the development of the plot at the moment of his entry. Once again then we have to take a broad view of the whole scene in order to approach the chief character and to see where he stands in relation to the heritage Stalin has left him.
