Soviet Russia: Anatomy of a Social History

Part VII: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Chapter XXIV: The Last Three Years

The Second Five-Year Plan was fulfilled, or at any rate concluded, at the end of 1937, and in March 1939 the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU, after a report by Molotov, adopted the Third Five-Year Plan. This Plan is again much more modest in the sphere of consumption goods industries than its predecessor, but this does not mean that it will be easy, or possible, to fulfil it as a whole. This time it looks, however, as if wishful thinking was reserved for the field of capital goods industries, whereas the Plan for Group B industries is so modest that even its fulfilment would not liquidate the goods famine in the country. The planned increase in the output of Group A industries amounting to 103 per cent [1] will almost certainly either not be reached at all or only reached in one or two branches of industry at the expense of the rest.

Even for the Second Plan period many inconsistencies and improbabilities could be explained only by the assumption that armament output grew by leaps and bounds. This need not induce to rash conclusions about the military strength of the Soviet Union because much depends on the prices used by Soviet statistics. It is easy to gauge the importance of British armament expenditure to the tune of £500 000 000; it is already much more difficult to ascertain the meaning of German armaments to the value of RM 5 000 000 000—but it is quite impossible to estimate the physical volume of Soviet armament expenditure to the amount of roubles 50 000 000 000. Although there is no simple mathematical relation between the output of armament industry (prices 1926-27) and the budget expenditure for military purposes (current prices) it is almost certain that the share of armaments in the total of industrial production must grow with the increase in military credits. Armament expenditure in 1933 was only 3.6 per cent of industrial gross production, in 1936 it had already risen to 18.3 per cent, and in 1938 it was not less than 34 per cent. Military expenses rose to 40 900 million roubles in 1939 and 57 000 million roubles in 1940, that is, more than 40 per cent of the value of industrial gross production, and the budget estimate for 1941 contains a provision of not less than 70 900 million roubles for the same purpose. The simple fact that armament looms terribly in the foreground of Soviet industry can hardly be denied.

Since the beginning of 1938 a special People’s Commissariat of Defence Industry has been created, and this change permits a slightly better view of the growth of armaments production in comparison with other machinery. According to provisional figures for 1938 and 1939—which are rather less favourable than could be expected from Stalin’s and Molotov’s figures for 1937—the value of defence machinery produced in 1938 was 11 600 million roubles as compared to 10 500 million roubles for all other machinery, that is, 52.3 per cent of the total value of machinery produced during that year. [2] In 1939 the increase in the output of industry as a whole is said to have been 14.9 per cent (according to later figures 16 per cent), or more than prescribed by the Plan. This increase is divided as between armament production and all other branches of industry in such a manner that armament output jumped by 46.5 per cent, whereas the rest of industry increased its production by 9.7 per cent. The share of machinery of destruction in the total output of machine construction rose to 58.3 per cent. Even the modest increase in other industries includes substantial amounts of iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, oil, etc, for the use of the growing defence industry. It was not by chance that the production of non-ferrous metals and chemicals made progress among the best branches of Soviet industry. At the same time an enormous increase in the effectives of the Russian armed forces was making heavy inroads on the products of the textile, shoe and food industry for uniforms, army boots and rations. Thus it is certain that by far the largest share in the increase of industrial output was directly or indirectly devoted to armaments. If this was true for 1939, it is even more true for 1940, when the Soviet government claimed, in spite of a considerable increase in territory, only a growth of 11 per cent (from 123 900 to 137 500 million roubles) in the value of industrial gross production. While it was officially announced at the Eighteenth Conference of the Communist Party (February 1941) that in 1940 some industries fell behind their 1939 production schedules—not to mention their plan for 1940—G Malenkov, the secretary to the Communist Central Committee, claimed great successes in the production of armaments:

Success in the acquisition of new techniques and growth of the defence industry permitted a considerable increase in the mechanisation of the Red Army and Navy with the newest models and types of armaments.

Whether this tendency is inevitable or not is a political question, and it would be folly to deny that military strength is essential for a country in the position of the Soviet Union. In any case this development has very serious economic consequences. If more than one-half of the total output of machinery consists of armaments in the strict sense of the word (planes, munitions, warships, etc), the improvement in the technical equipment of the other branches of industry will be severely handicapped. This will be reflected in the gradual slackening of the rising tendency of production in those branches which are still dependent on new capital equipment for increasing their output. Preliminary figures do not leave the slightest doubt that this is not a remote possibility but unfortunately already an established fact. From published material the following production figures for some of the most important basic commodities can be worked out which are compared with the planned production for 1939 under the assumption that production during the Third Five-Year Plan was to rise at a constant rate of increase: [3]

As far as the results for iron and steel, engineering as a whole, motor-car production, etc, are known, they, too, show that the rate of increase has dangerously slackened in all these branches, and that there is not the slightest chance for them to fulfil their plans unless a complete change of regime takes place—a possibility which is very slight indeed at the present moment. [4]

The planned increases in consumption goods industries were very modest, and in some cases the Third Five-Year Plan actually reduced the unfulfilled demands of the Second Plan, for example, in the production of cotton and woollen goods and canned foods. Nevertheless it seems that, with only one exception, the results of 1938 and 1939 are still considerably below the planned figures if calculated at a constant rate of increase:

It is clear that for the first time the provisions of the Plan in this field are something more than purely imaginative efforts. But it will be seen later on that the Plan envisaged only a comparatively modest increase in the standard of living of the working class, and its non-fulfilment makes even this impossible. At present, the extraordinary expenses of the Finnish war and the necessity of creating or increasing reserves in view of the further deterioration of the international situation have created a situation where further material progress for the masses of the urban population is definitely improbable. Although there is not enough reliable evidence available to permit final conclusions, it is almost certain that last year the living conditions of the workers actually deteriorated again.

As far as agriculture is concerned, the first two years of the Third Five-Year Plan were not favoured by particularly good conditions, and the same must be said of 1940. On the other hand it is true that comparisons, particularly in the case of grain cultivation, are influenced by the fact that 1937 was a record year:

Later reports suggest that the quoted figure for the grain crop of 1939 was far too optimistic, and estimates as low as 75 million tons have been made. Last year the general level of agricultural production was again not unsatisfactory. The grain harvest was probably better than in the first two years of the Plan, and cotton and sugar-beet crops seem to have been quite favourable, although there are as yet no reliable figures available.

The fundamental success of the whole policy of agrarian reorganisation is incontestable. The grain problem has been completely solved, and in spite of the backward state of some technical crops and livestock breeding the problem is now mainly how to improve yields and qualities which have been completely disregarded in the drive to increase production. The complaints of the ‘backwardness’ of agriculture which were never quite relevant are now completely unfounded, and it seems, on the contrary, that the greatest obstacle to rapid agrarian progress is the ‘backwardness’ of industry.

The inability of the Soviet government to supply the peasants with sufficient manufactured goods in exchange for the delivery of agricultural produce is clearly the crux of the matter. It compels the Soviet power to increase its administrative pressure on the peasants by changing the basis and increasing the rate of taxation as well as by reducing the individual plots of the collective farmers and their ‘individual’ share in the output of their farms. Although frequently excessive plots had been granted in the culminating years of the new social policy, they became a danger to the working of the collective farms only owing to the lack of industrial goods for the village which artificially reduced the productive efforts of the peasants.

A grotesque result of the present international policy of the Soviet government is the situation caused by the delivery of agricultural produce to Germany. It is only owing to the success of Soviet agrarian policy that the government is able at all to send considerable quantities of grain, cotton, etc, out of the country. But as far as Russia receives anything in exchange for these deliveries, it is certainly not what she needs for her peasants, that is, manufactured consumption goods. Although Russian industry can probably make use of German deliveries of machine tools and machinery, this new burden is bound to increase the existing friction between the Soviet power and the peasantry, and may in the course of time endanger the internal balance of the country.

Chapter XXV: Soviet Union, 1941

The survey of the economic state of the country during the immediate past has led to the surprising result that agriculture seems to be in a better position than industry which has been fostered with so many exertions, and which has now, to a certain extent, even become the basis of agriculture. If this is due to the temporary need for armaments at any price more than to anything else, a survey of Russia’s social state, while confirming the impression of a great success in the countryside as compared to a great change in the towns, is bound to end on a gloomier note.

The greatest, and from the point of view of social progress, probably the most important success has been achieved in agriculture. Collectivisation and mechanisation have up to now only partly resulted in such an improvement in agricultural production as was expected by the Communists. The productivity of rural labour is still very low, and this is particularly true when the advantages of large-scale farming and mechanisation are taken into consideration. It may, therefore, be assumed that after the fundamental success of collectivisation which was bought at so high a price further successes will be achieved without great sacrifices, when the new methods and the new machinery have been thoroughly mastered by the peasants—if trade between town and village improves.

There is, however, one danger point which particularly at present cannot be overlooked. Collectivisation and mechanisation made Russian agriculture less primitive, but for this very reason also less independent. The modern agricultural system of the Soviet Union is still very young and not firmly rooted. It still needs extraordinary investments and normal industrial supplies of oil, tractors and mechanics in order to carry on and grow. If the Soviet power should be unable to maintain the supplies of tractors, oil, fertilisers and many foodstuffs in manufactured form, a dangerous agricultural crisis would be the consequence which would have much graver effects on the economic system of the country than world war and revolution had in their time. Soviet agriculture has become very sensitive to developments in other spheres of Soviet life, particularly the state of industry.

The peasants are already reaping some of the advantages inherent in the new collective farm system. The disintegration of the primitive agrarian organisation of earlier times has been overcome and living conditions in the village have improved, although the danger of war and the consequences of the pact with Nazi Germany for the time being exclude the possibility of further advance. On the other hand, there are still considerable difficulties to surmount if the needs of large-scale farming are to be reconciled to the individualistic instincts of the peasants which have been even further strengthened by the agrarian policy of the Soviet power since the beginning of the Second Five-Year Plan. Complaints about so-called collective farmers who work only a few labour days for the collective farms and get the bulk of their income out of the plot of land and the livestock which they possess individually have become quite frequent during the last few years. The government has been reacting to this unfavourable tendency by administrative measures, and, in the spring of 1940, by important changes in the system of agricultural taxation. This was followed up by an energetic campaign in favour of higher ‘voluntary’ deliveries of agricultural products to the state, and, in February 1941, by a radical increase in the scale of the agricultural tax.

Apart from these important and perhaps dangerous tendencies of development, the very success of agrarian reorganisation has interesting reactions on the state of industry. One of the most significant social results of collectivisation is the abolition of the flight from the land and the stabilisation of the village. In the past, the difficulties in the social and economic relations between town and countryside were simply problems of commodity exchange, while the disintegration of the village automatically produced an unlimited supply of unskilled labour for the needs of industry, mining and building. At the present time the stabilisation of the village creates a new and important labour problem for industry:

Today it is no more a question of finding somehow work in industry for unemployed peasants, who have no roof over their heads, who have left the village and are threatened by hunger. Peasants of this kind have ceased to exist in our country long ago… Today it can be only a question of asking the collective farms to fulfil our request and to give us for our growing industries annually at least half a million young collective farmers. [5]

It is noteworthy to remember, however, that this achievement, of which Stalin is justly proud, has its dark reverse; the abolition of the flight from the land was achieved not only by making the peasants prosperous but also by destroying four to six million peasant households altogether.

The problem of labour supply in industry, apart from the shortage of skilled labour, was repeatedly discussed in the last Congress of the Communist Party, and its importance is certainly very great. It proves that the success of collectivisation really put an end to the flight from the land. It proves, however, at the same time that the most important motive responsible for the flight from the land has disappeared as well, that is, the difference between the standard of living of the poorer peasants and the common labourers. It is a piece of evidence not only for the improvement in rural conditions, but also for the comparatively unfavourable development of the position of the unskilled urban worker. It is clear that pious wishes alone will be insufficient to attract large numbers of workers; on the other hand, the slow increase in the production of consumption goods—a large part of which will have to go to the countryside—makes it very improbable that the material position of the industrial worker in general will be greatly improved during the next few years. Thus the government is intensifying the drive for increasing the productivity of labour by fair means or foul. The tightening up of social insurance control by specially selected ‘social insurance councils’ within the framework of the factory committees, the extension of ‘chain’ labour, the great New Year drive in the beginning of 1939 to clean the factories of ‘loafers’ are part and parcel of the constant endeavour to induce the workers to higher and higher efforts. If the provisional figures given by Zverev [6] are correct it would seem that the number of industrial workers in industry during 1939 declined by 1.7 per cent, because a rise in the productivity of industrial labour of 16.7 per cent was accompanied by an increase in industrial production of only 14.7 per cent. However that may be, it seems as if the government would find it very difficult, if at all possible, to find one million new workers every year, partly from the towns and partly from the land.

This fundamental difficulty, together with the development of the international situation, has been responsible for the boldest step backward yet undertaken by the government in its relations to the workers—the reintroduction of the eight-hour day and the seven-day week (26 June 1940), which was made ‘at the wish of the trade unions’. The seven-hour day had been given to the workers as an earnest of the better future which was to follow the stress and privation of the reconstruction period. Stress and privation there was enough and to spare—but the better future did not come.

Less than six weeks after this staggering blow the law against petty theft at work and absenteeism was tightened up, and its provisions were used to threaten with imprisonment every engineer, technician, skilled worker or office employee refusing to accept a job in any part of the Soviet Union. An even more drastic measure was the establishment of compulsory labour service for almost a million of youths who are to receive technical training followed by four years’ service on public works. The reactionary character of this measure was accentuated by the imposition of comparatively high university fees and the reduction in scholarships. However futile these brutal attempts to overcome natural and artificial obstacles by bureaucratic decrees may be in the end, they are proof of the unlimited power wielded by the Soviet government over the Russian working class.

There is nothing in the Third Five-Year Plan to warrant the conclusion that the position of the industrial workers will improve relatively to that of the peasants; on the contrary, it seems that the insufficient increase in the available quantity of consumption goods is mostly destined to go to the collective farmers. During the five years 1938-42 the number of industrial workers is to rise by 20 per cent and the total wage fund by 60 per cent, permitting an average increase in wages of 33 per cent. Agricultural production, on the other hand, is planned to grow by only 52 per cent, but the receipts of the collective farmers are to increase by fully 70 per cent. [7]

It is certainly true that the living conditions of all sections of the working class greatly improved during the years of the Second Five-Year Plan—but they simply could not remain on the starvation level of the years 1931-33, and for the masses of the workers they have certainly not yet reached the level of the last NEP years. On the other hand, a working-class aristocracy has been created whose social, political and economic position has improved out of all proportion with that of the rest. The living standard of this section of the working class has nothing in common with that of the proletarian masses, however little it may have of what is probably the most abused word in the Soviet Union of today, a ‘cultured life’.

After the purge had been completed, the ruling bureaucracy as such established its rule over the country without feeling anything of the qualms of bad conscience which had been the undoing of the ‘old Bolsheviks’. It broke with the formal traditions of the revolutionary period and the Soviet idea by establishing a parliamentary democracy modelled on the German constitution after its rape by the Nazis and recognised as compass for its actions only the polar star of its own advantage, the maintenance of its own position. This rule of the bureaucracy pure and simple was particularly well expressed by Stalin in an illuminating speech during the campaign against Trotskyist and other criminals, on 3 March 1937:

The fact of the matter is that in their excitement over the economic successes they [the leading party officials] began to see in the latter the beginning and the end of everything, while to such matters as the international position of the Soviet Union, the capitalist encirclement, the strengthening of the political work of the Party, the struggle against wrecking, and so on, they simply stopped paying attention, assuming that all these questions were of second-rate or third-rate importance. [8]

Later on Stalin described this type of leading Soviet official with a knowledge of the subject which is certainly unparalleled:

… some of our Party leaders suffer from a lack of attention to people, to members of the Party, the workers…, such leaders generally strive to think in terms of tens of thousands, disregarding the ‘units’, the members of the Party, their fate. They regard the expulsion of thousands or tens of thousands of people from the Party as a trifling matter. [9]

The remedy recommended by Stalin for these defects is almost pathetic, and reflects the complete decay of the Communists as a political party in the space of less than twenty years:

It is necessary to supplement the old slogan of mastering technique… by a new slogan—the political education of the cadres , the mastering of Bolshevism, and the abolition of our political credulity. [10]

Here, just as in the attempt to introduce democracy into the bureaucratic dictatorship from below, Stalin tries to square the circle. After thousands and thousands had been excluded from the Communist Party, imprisoned or shot, because they were suspect of having ‘mastered Bolshevism’ in a manner detrimental to the interests of the ruling bureaucracy, Stalin demands from the creatures of a new era, of new aims and new qualities, to ‘master Bolshevism’—and for this purpose he recommends the establishment of party classes for higher Communist officials where ‘masters of Bolshevism’ are to be turned out by the hundred in conformity to government decrees and certified by diplomas and testimonials.

There are a few figures available concerning the structure of the Soviet state, the economic bureaucracy, and the Communist Party. Among the 2016 delegates of the last Congress of Soviets (December 1936), 937 (or 47 per cent) were members of the Central Executive Committee, directors of enterprises and specialists, responsible officials of the party and the trade unions, and higher army officers, 589 delegates (or 29 per cent) were presidents of local soviets, of collective and state farms, etc, 430 delegates (or 21 per cent) were Stakhanovists, and 60 (or 3.0 per cent) were simple workers and peasants. [11]

According to the latest census (on 17 January 1939), the share of the ruling bureaucracy, the administrative and executive personnel of national economy, and the intelligentsia in the population of just under 170 million people was as follows: [12]

Here it is again necessary to stress the growing importance of the armed forces within the dictatorship. By extending the duration of service in the army, navy and air force they have a growing part of Russian youth directly under their control. They use a formidable proportion of the economic resources of the country and monopolise the increase in industrial production. More and more of the highest bureaucratic positions are filled with officers who have also a large share in the membership of the Supreme Soviet and the ruling layers of the Communist Party.

At the same time the armed forces have succeeded in freeing themselves from the brakes on their authority which had been found necessary during the revolutionary stage of the Soviet regime. The political commissaries which were the backbone of political control over the officer corps have been abolished. Generals, admirals and marshals have made their appearance in the Soviet vocabulary, and—much more important—the hierarchy of non-commissioned officers which is the surest bulwark of the power of the officers over their men has been re-established. The armed forces form not only a state within the state, they are fairly on the way to conquer the government and the Communist Party itself.

The Communist Party itself evolved new principles for the appointment of its most important officials. In March 1939 Andreyev, one of its inner circle of leaders, announced with pride that 28.6 per cent of the regional and central secretaries could boast of university training, and 30 per cent of secondary school education; according to this test many of the leaders during the revolutionary period, when the Bolsheviks were still largely a party of intellectuals, would have had to be satisfied with the humble position of cell secretaries. The radical change in the personal structure of the Communist Party is expressed in the following words from the same report:

After having replaced that part of the cadres which has become bankrupt politically and materially, and after the appointment of new people to leading positions, our party has made much progress and strengthened itself… The house of our party has become clearer and cleaner. Connections with the masses and with the local centres have become stronger… the elements of moral decomposition disappeared to a considerable extent, for they were caused in the past by people with a decayed political conscience which explained their moral decay as well. [13]

Under these circumstances it is clear that Socialism, as understood by the international labour movement and as a genuine alternative to capitalism, has not been realised in the Soviet Union. The bureaucratic self-conceit of the Soviet rulers themselves is going a long way to prove this fundamental fact even to the dullest brain.

The growth of economic privileges for the bureaucracy, the creation of a privileged group within the working class and the bureaucratic faux frais of Soviet economy must be paid for by somebody. In view of the fact that the peasants have succeeded in resisting excessive demands by the state, the working masses have to bear the brunt of these costs. The common workman is at present neither politically nor economically able to protect his interests, and the government effectively prevents him from all attempts to do so; the Soviet state protects a system where the relative comfort of a small minority is bought at the price of continued exploitation of the majority of common workers. It is practically certain that this state of things, unsatisfactory though it may be, is far more advantageous for the working class than the maintenance of capitalism would have been—but this is not the real point. The ‘contradictions’ of capitalism have not been replaced by a harmonious Socialist order of society but by the ‘contradictions’ of a bureaucratic State Socialism (or State Capitalism).

Is there any truth in the Trotskyist idea that the Russian workers have remained essentially as revolutionary as they were twenty or twenty-three years ago, and that they will rise against their new rulers as soon as conditions allow it? Practical symptoms and general considerations alike suggest that this is nothing but an illusion. In the Soviet Union the workers are more completely organised than anywhere else, including even Nazi Germany, and the leaders of these working-class organisations are part and parcel of the bureaucratic leadership of the country. There is not the slightest hope to be derived for the future of Russia from the memories of 1917. Neither the form and nature of Soviet working-class discontent nor the practical possibilities of expressing it permit the prediction that Socialism will be realised in the near future in Soviet Russia.

It may be safely assumed that a breakdown of the present regime in Fascist countries, whether it is a practical proposition or not, would lead to the resurrection of a broad working-class movement with directly Socialist aims. Not even such a modest forecast can be made for the Soviet Union. Even during the process of bureaucratic degeneration the present regime has been making good progress in many directions, and many of its institutions would be maintained by a truly Socialist regime. The bureaucratic rulers of the country have taken great pains to persuade the workers that all their measures are simply dictated by the interests of the working class, and this claim, though never completely justified, was rarely completely without foundation. It is probably a safe estimate that the workers of Soviet Russia are at present further removed from reaching a Socialist order of society than the workers of Fascist countries would be immediately after the breakdown of the Fascist regime.

In its power of resistance to internal enemies, the bureaucratic dictatorship of the Soviet Union has reached a high measure of stability. After the purge of the years 1936-38, the Soviet bureaucracy is deprived of many of its outstanding talents, particularly in the Red Army, but it is probably more united in its outlook, its aims and its methods. The repressive machinery is over-developed and firmly in the hands of the government. The success of collectivisation has removed the social storm centre of former years, and there is at present no indication that conflicts with the peasants will assume as great a degree of importance and violence as they did in the past. The working-class aristocracy is well satisfied with its material and, even more, with its social condition, and owing to its key position in national economy it has a strong influence on the mass of the common workers. This mass has got some reasons for discontent, but there seems to be still a fair amount of instinctive and unquestioning loyalty to the regime which is the outcome of the greatest workers’ revolution in human history. As long as the living conditions of the people do not radically deteriorate, there is no probability that the workers would be even inclined to try and bring about a change of the existing regime—and there is not the slightest chance that such an attempt, should it be made, would succeed during peacetime.

However non-Communists regard the Soviet Union, it would be simply a delusion to deny that the present internal situation of the bureaucratic dictatorship is very stable indeed. Its breakdown in the near future could be the consequence only of suicidal mistakes on the part of the rulers; they have proved that they understand their own interests very well as far as their relations to the Russian workers and peasants are concerned. But at present this is not enough; the international situation during the last few years and at the present day reacts strongly on the internal conditions of all countries, including Soviet Russia. And it remains to be seen whether the bureaucratic rulers of the Soviet Union are as consistent and as successful in their international policy as they were undoubtedly at home.

Chapter XXVI: The Soviet Union and the World

In two important moments of Russia’s postwar development the international position of the country was the decisive factor for the course of its internal life. In 1918, when intervention by the Great Powers was responsible for the transition to War Communism and all it implied, and in 1928, when the existence of a hostile capitalist world outside the frontiers of the Soviet Union was responsible for the desperate attempt of capital reconstruction out of revenue at the expense of the life and happiness of the Russian people. After 1918 the ‘vanguard’ of the working class was transformed into a despotic bureaucracy; after 1928 the despotic bureaucracy became an economically privileged and therefore, in the last resort, an exploiting group.

Once the bureaucratic dictatorship had established itself firmly in the saddle, it was disinclined to follow the revolutionary policy of the first period of the Communist International under Lenin’s guidance. This would have been not necessarily bad, for the policy of the Communist International may have been revolutionary in intention, but it certainly was wrong in its methods and in its appraisal of realities. But the international policy of the bureaucracy did not differ from that of Lenin–Zinoviev by its better grasp of international realities, but exclusively by its lack of belief and resolution.

A proper coordination of the international activities of the Soviet government, which were divided between the Soviet Foreign Office and the Communist International, was only found to be necessary after the rise of Nazism to power in Germany (1933). Soviet international policy now aimed at collective security instead of bilateral non-aggression pacts, and Communist international policy discarded the policy of ‘Social Fascism’ (struggle against the labour movement of the Second International) in favour of the ‘Popular Front’ (collaboration with all progressive forces in all countries in order to prevent the further success of Fascist tendencies in every country individually and in the international sphere). The Soviet Union joined the anti-revisionist bloc which ruled the League of Nations and tried to reduce the danger threatening from the actively-imperialist powers (Germany, Japan, Italy) by an alliance with the saturated capitalist Powers (France, Britain)—without being, however, accepted as an equal partner by Great Britain.

This policy was clearly dictated by the interests of self-preservation—and in international affairs the interests of the Russian people coincided with those of its rulers. It cannot be denied that the special interests of the Soviet Union were adequately protected by such a policy, if it could be pursued with success.

This success was, however, very small indeed—and it is only fair to say that the Soviet power does not bear the slightest responsibility for the failure of this policy. The surprising events of 1938, the successes of German Nazism which were made possible only by the involuntary support of British capitalism, clearly indicated that for the time being the saturated democracies preferred the sacrifice of their national interests to the social risks of war and the danger of a breakdown of the capitalist system in the Fascist countries. Under these circumstances, the Soviet government was clearly justified in revising its foreign policy. This process may have been suspended by the reorientation of British policy in March 1939, but it was accentuated by the dismissal of Litvinov when it became clear that the British government was not ready to form a complete and watertight alliance with the Soviets. On the other hand, this international failure of the democracies did not change the interests of the Soviet Union itself which demanded the repulsion of the aggressive Fascist states and the support of every serious resistance to further Fascist attacks.

Thus it would have been clearly in the interests of the Soviet government to keep its hands free in order to see whether or not the democracies really meant business when the next ‘crisis’ broke out. This policy may have had its dangers—the principal one in the eyes of the Soviets was the danger of an attack by Nazi Germany with the connivance of the Western democracies. This danger was, however, completely unreal. In spite of the vacillations of British and French policy it could not be disregarded even at that time that March 1939 was a definite watershed in the relations between the democracies and the Fascist Powers. Not out of moral reasons, but simply owing to the growing danger of imperialist attacks by the Nazis, Great Britain and France were bound to prepare for the now inevitable conflict, and were therefore unable to permit the Nazis to blunt their most important weapon, the blockade, by winning the hegemony over Russia, and thereby over the Continent. These considerations were simple common sense, and they ought to have been particularly familiar to a government whose policy was alleged to be the result of Marxist analysis.

The policy actually chosen by the Soviet government differed from this line of action. The non-aggression pact with Hitler Germany was under the prevailing conditions clearly a charter for Fascism for an unpunished attack on Poland. The exact moment of the conclusion of this pact may have been an instance of ‘sweet revenge’ for the repeated slights suffered by the Soviet government at the hands of Great Britain. The pact itself, however, cannot be explained by psychological considerations. It may have been the consequence of imperialist ambitions on the part of the Soviet government, necessitating a temporary division of hunting grounds with Nazi Fascism with the silent proviso of a struggle for predominance at a later stage, or of the desire to avoid a major war at all costs.

Whereas German imperialism must expand or explode, Soviet economy disposes of practically everything it needs, and wants peace more than anything else to exploit its material and technical resources at leisure. None of the weaknesses still existing in the economic system of the Soviet Union could be remedied by annexations and the exploitation of other peoples. A policy of imperialist expansion would bring the Soviet bureaucracy into definite conflict with the interests of the Russian workers and peasants. It would be completely indefensible from a rational viewpoint, and it could be explained only by the extreme degeneration of the Soviet bureaucracy which in this case would be more and more influenced by the enormous role of the armaments industry in the economic life of the country and by the influence of the army officers within the ruling caucus.

Is it probable that the Russo-German pact, the following annexation of Eastern Poland as well as the taking over of the Baltic states, the attack on Finland and the annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were expressions of imperialist ambition? Ambitions of this kind were certainly not completely absent. But in view of the slight economic value of the territories concerned (in comparison with the resources of the Soviet Union) it seems almost certain that the main reasons for all these actions were strategical ‘necessities’ from the point of view of the Red Army, Navy and Air Force staffs. The orientation of Soviet policy according to the alleged necessities of the military situation is itself a fateful sign. The decisive factor in the determination of military policy ought to be political; the subordination of policy to military considerations is itself the symptom of a lack of political leadership—and particularly in the case of Finland, it is clear that the phantom of an Allied war of revenge on Russia was the misguided starting-point for the whole inglorious adventure.

Imperialist ambition on the part of the Soviet government was and is a very secondary motive force of its foreign policy, although the ruling bureaucracy is clearly unable to withstand the attractions of a profitable and perfectly safe adventure in this direction should it offer itself by chance. The paramount motive of the Soviet power in concluding the non-aggression pact with Hitler must have been the desire to avoid war with its most dangerous potential enemy at any price. This plausible assumption, while incompatible with the hypothesis that the bureaucracy is already in acute conflict with the interests of the Russian people, leads to the conclusion that the Soviet bureaucracy has lost the ability to act rationally in the interests of its own self-preservation.

The Hitler–Stalin pact does not make any sense under the assumption that the Nazis are going to lose in the struggle against the Western democracies. In this case Soviet Russia would have been only provoking some of the most powerful military and naval powers in the world for the very shabby price of Eastern Poland, the Baltic States, and parts of Finland and Rumania. The basis of the pact with Nazi Germany can only have been the belief that the Nazis will conquer their imperialist rivals, whether in open warfare or owing to their cowardice and degeneration. If this assumption is thought out to its conclusion it appears that Stalin has—at least as far as it was in his power—presented Hitler with the rule over Europe. But according to political and economic, legal and diplomatic considerations, victorious Nazism is bound to be the mortal enemy of the Soviet Union, and would not be deterred by a scrap of paper from improving its position at the expense of the Bolsheviks. This elementary truth has not been doubted up to now by anybody—least of all by the rulers of the Soviet State. There is no other way out but the melancholy conclusion that the Hitler–Stalin pact was a consequence of the desire of the Soviet bureaucracy to stay out of the beginning conflict at any price, even at the price of aiding and abetting Fascism in its policy of aggression, which, if not stopped at an earlier moment, is bound to end with aggression against the Soviet Union.

It must not be overlooked that this action of the Soviet government has done not a little to justify after the event its assumption that the then impending and now raging struggle between the Nazis and the democracies will end with the victory of Hitler. Even if the Soviet government was right under the circumstances to decline obligations towards the governments of the democracies—which were still those of Munich—its fundamental interests ought to have induced it to fight against Hitler once it had become clear that the democracies were really going to fight it out. Whereas such a policy of the Soviets would have made Hitler’s victory completely impossible, the benevolent neutrality of the Soviet government towards German Nazism greatly increased its chances of success. In other words: the Soviet government has done all in its power to help Hitler to become strong enough for a successful attack on the Soviet Union. This action of the Soviet bureaucracy is its first important political action with clearly suicidal tendencies, the first handwriting on the wall.

This meaning of the latest stage of Soviet international policy is hidden from the superficial observer beneath the apparent successes of the Soviets since the outbreak of the present war. Poland, Finland, Bessarabia and the Baltic States—a gain of 20 000 000 people at the cost of only one serious campaign lasting not much more than three months—form an impressive array of ‘victories’. But apart from the fundamental objection that victories of this kind are by no means a gain for a country with the professed principles and the social structure of Soviet Russia, and furnish her enemies in case of need with the strongest Fifth Column encountered anywhere, their value is completely depreciated by the fact that these victories were nothing but insufficient compensations for incomparably more valuable—and potentially more dangerous—acquisitions by German Fascism. Eastern Poland and the Baltic states as compared to Western Poland, Vyborg as compared to Norway, Bessarabia as compared to Rumania and Bulgaria, must be regarded as thoroughly bad bargains by the coldest realists.

Nor is this the whole story. The safety of Soviet Russia depends not only on the state of its frontiers, which have been immeasurably weakened by the disappearance of all buffer states, and even by their partial absorption by Russia, but mainly on the distribution of military and political power throughout Europe and the world. In Europe it was the balancing of a militarist and aggressive German imperialism by France, in Asia the balancing of Japanese militarism by Great Britain and the United States, which was the justly conceived object of Russian policy before August 1939. Since then Russia actively contributed to the destruction of France by permitting the Nazis to concentrate their military machine on this task, and even more by abusing her influence on the French working classes not only to the detriment of France but of Russia herself. Whether voluntarily or under compulsion the Soviets are helping the Nazis to blunt the greatest weapon of British sea power, the blockade, and by their ambiguous attitude they have sabotaged the formation of a defensive front against Nazi imperialism in the Balkans. On the other side, they have been unable to prevent the military alliance between Germany and Japan which may be used against Great Britain and the United States, but which must be used against Russia should her new friends survive the present struggle.

The reason for this fatal change of policy cannot be found in the vacillating attitude of Great Britain and France, although this may have precipitated it. The Soviet rulers never wanted to collaborate with the ‘peace-loving nations’ for the sake of peace, or for the sake of other ideals; their justly dominating motive was always the protection of the Soviet Union, including their own position. The non-aggression and friendship pacts with the Nazis are fundamentally an expression of deep mistrust by the Soviet bureaucracy in the willingness of the Russian workers and peasants to wage a life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of the existing regime. It seems that this mistrust is justified—but it is more than doubtful whether this struggle will be spared the Russian people after all. In this case the policy of the Soviet power would cause it to be waged in almost hopeless conditions.

After acting as an instrument for the fulfilment of a great historical necessity in the years of the Great Russian Revolution, after combining a progressive historical role with the care for its own particular interests in the years of the First Five-Year Plan, the Soviet dictatorship has established itself as an independent power above the classes of Russian society. It has solved some of the difficulties and overcome some of the conflicts inherent in Russia’s peculiar historical development which threatened the maintenance of its own position. But its policy has been increasingly dominated by a narrow self-interest which was responsible for the growth of privilege at home and an utter lack of principles in international affairs. In little more than two decades the Soviet system and the Communist Party have almost completed one of the most tragic careers in history.

Is there anything in the record of Russia’s rulers to suggest the possibility of a reversal of the fateful present trends? The two great conflicts of the ruling Soviet power were the period of War Communism and the ‘second agrarian revolution’. The cautious and short-sighted ‘realists’ in the Kremlin are clearly incapable of the flaming belief in their ideals and the glorification of sacrifice which made the Communists of 1920 survive victoriously the years of civil war and intervention. But they are the very men who blundered at first into a grave crisis by their lack of imagination and their unwillingness to look unpleasant facts squarely into the face and then solved it, though brutally and at unnecessarily high expense.

The facts do not warrant the prophecy that Stalin and Molotov are under all circumstances unable to reverse their foreign policy in 1941 as they reversed their internal policy in 1928, but they permit even less any serious hope that they will do so. The first and most obvious reason for this pessimistic assumption must be found in the balance of power. Owing mainly to the results of Soviet policy, Nazi Fascism is today incomparably stronger on land than any combination of its enemies. Although this state of things may not last for ever and everywhere, it is bound to remain in the East longer than anywhere else. Perhaps even more important is the fact that the Soviet dictatorship is today not backed by the whole urban population, and particularly the masses of the workers, to the same extent as it was in 1928. By obtaining economic privilege for the bureaucracy and creating or protecting privilege among the working-class aristocracy it has destroyed that social harmony which was the basis of its strength in times of crisis.

Born out of the convulsions following the Great War of 1914-18, the Soviet dictatorship is in acute danger of being swallowed up by the present war or its inevitable aftermath. If this war crisis ends with the overthrow of the Nazis and revolution in Central and Eastern Europe, the position of the Soviet bureaucracy would be greatly endangered, if not destroyed, by the revolutionary wave coming from the West. If the war ends with the stabilisation of German imperialism, whether by a victory of the Nazis or otherwise, the existing bureaucratic regime and the cause of the October Revolution would be faced with an ordeal the dangers of which cannot be exaggerated.

Postscript

This forecast has been outdistanced by the course of events. In spite of all endeavours to preserve peace at any price, Soviet Russia has been attacked by German Fascism. The peoples of the Soviet Union and their government are fighting for their lives and for the preservation of achievements which are, in spite of all, worth fighting and dying for.

To predict the outcome of this war would be folly. The Red Army may not be able to avoid bitter defeats and loss of valuable territories, but this struggle can be only won by German imperialism with the complete destruction of the Soviet power—and this result is by no means necessary or even probable.

The preceding analysis has traced the formation and gradual ossification of a ruling bureaucracy within Soviet society and stressed the dangers of this development. The events of the last few days efface all expressions of opinion, however well founded. but they must not make us forget the facts. It may be doubted whether the Soviet government is capable of that foresight and tenacity, that will to survive and that resolution to use all means, however desperate, which the struggle demands. Such doubts are to a certain extent natural, if the past record of the Soviet government since August 1939 is taken into consideration, but fortunately they are unlikely to be justified.

Nazi German does not attack Soviet Russia for her shortcomings but for her achievements. The Soviet government has attempted to safeguard itself by a policy of supporting Fascism which was essentially opposed to the interests of the Russian people; this attempt has failed, and today it is in the interests of government and people alike to fight to the bitter end. No conflict of interests divides the Russian workers and peasants and their government in this war. What is more, all barriers between the people and its rulers will be an obstacle to its successful prosecution.

Many of the great economic achievements of Soviet rule will be destroyed, poverty will increase and famine may threaten, Germany may plunder the richest provinces of Russia and exploit their natural and social resources—but the Soviet power can survive. Such a survival would necessitate a radical change in its relations to the people, but this is possible and it has been, indeed, made possible only by this war.

It is only the stubborn resistance of Great Britain, with the help of the United States, which has made the Nazi attack against Russia necessary at this stage and which justifies the hope that Soviet Russia may survive this ordeal. This connection is by no means fortuitous; by isolating Soviet Russia and cutting the connecting links to the outside world, the period of civil war and intervention drove the Soviet regime into a wrong direction—today its chance of survival lies in the strengthening of its international connections. Besides Great Britain and the United States, whose interest in the fate of Soviet Russia is based on immediate strategic necessities, the Soviet Union is the natural ally of the oppressed masses of Europe, although the Nazi–Soviet pact must have considerably confused and bewildered them. By mobilising the powerful latent energies of the domestic enemies of Fascism, particularly in Germany, the Soviet government may hope not only to wage war against Nazi Germany in the most efficient manner but also to free Soviet Russia from that international isolation which is the most important reason for the degeneration of the Soviet system.

Notes

1. Molotov, in Pravda , 16 March 1939.

2. Anglo-Russian News Bulletin , issued by WP Coates, 3 February 1930.

3. International Labour Review , February 1940, p 191.

4. It is worth mentioning that those branches of industry at present particularly blamed for their failure to fulfil the Plan—locomotive and car building, electricity, timber, paper, fish and building materials—are mainly those whose difficulties have been reviewed in the analysis of the Second Five-Year Plan (Chapter 21).

5. Stalin, in Pravda , 11 March 1939.

6. Pravda , 1 April 1940.

7. Molotov, in Pravda , 16 March 1939.

8. J Stalin, Wrecking, Espionage and Terrorism in the USSR (London, 1937), pp 2ff.

9. Ibid, p 34.

10. Ibid, p 15.

11. Yvon, L’URSS telle quelle est (Paris, 1938), p 272.

12. International Labour Review, February 1940, pp 18ff.

13. Andreyev, in Pravda , 14 March 1939.

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