But the system of government remained autocratic, and presently Alexander found that the leaders of opinion demanded more freedom than he was prepared to grant. He began to hesitate and to retrace his steps. And as he attempted to reimpose despotism he aroused poignant disillusionment. Chernyshevsky was convicted to hard labour and deported. Even before that Herzen had become doubtful. On the evening in 1861 when he invited friends to his London home to celebrate the emancipation of the Russian peasants, he learned about the bloody suppression of Polish demonstrations. He raised his glass to drink the Tsar's health, but interrupted himself to say: ‘Friends, our day of rejoicing is darkened by unexpected news: blood is flowing in Warsaw.’
How far is Malenkov prepared to go on the road of reform?
The members of the ruling group can hardly see eye to eye on this issue. There are among them the men of Stalin's Old Guard who were prominently associated with the terror of previous years; and there are also the representatives of the younger generation who are freer to promote reform. But to carry out a complete revision of the Stalin era men may be needed even younger than those for whom Malenkov speaks, men with no stake at all in Stalinist orthodoxy.
CHAPTER NINE
FUTURE PROSPECTS:
FOREIGN POLICY
IN his first Statement as Prime Minister, Malenkov said:
‘The most correct, indispensable, and just foreign policy is a policy of peace between all peoples, a policy of mutual confidence, business-like, based on facts, and confirmed by facts.’
Malenkov's words were an implicit criticism of Stalin's conduct of foreign affairs, although the criticism applied to the manner rather than the matter of Stalinist diplomacy.
Stalin's foreign policy was bogged down in the irrationalism of the cult and the magic. His diplomacy did not lack a peculiar realism and shrewdness; but it was incapable of facing facts. It was obsessed with prestige. Nothing could be allowed to detract from the greatness and infallibility of the Father of the Peoples. Every Soviet success had to be fantastically exaggerated; every reverse had to be dressed up as a success. Not only propagandists, but also ambassadors and diplomatic spokesmen had to conform to this style. Consequently the hypocrisy which permeated domestic policy affected foreign policy also; and this hypocrisy accounted for the bizarre unreality and rigidity in Stalinist diplomacy.
To be sure, in critical situations Stalin carried out sharp reversals of policy which gave the impression of great flexibility. But the need for these sudden and sharp reversals sprang also from rigidity. Quick perception of shifts in international alignments, the subtle nuance and manoeuvre, the gradual transition from one policy to another — all these were beyond Stalin's diplomacy. Instructed to pursue a certain line of conduct, Soviet Foreign Ministers followed their instructions to the point of absurdity, until Stalin himself suddenly stopped them and ordered them to turn in the opposite direction.
At home a quotation from Stalin was supposed to resolve any doubt on any subject. Therefore the final and decisive argument produced by Vyshinsky, Malik, and Gromyko before hostile or indifferent foreign audiences was also the sacred quotation from Stalin. Even when they had a strong case to make they most often wrecked it through unbusiness-like presentation. They had to repeat ad nauseam the same abuses or protestations of friendship, regardless of the situation.
Stalinist propaganda usually vaunted the agility of Soviet diplomacy in exploiting ‘the contradictions in the enemy camp’; and anti-Stalinists believed in this and feared it. In fact, Stalin's diplomacy frequently acted as if it were desperately anxious to eliminate all those ‘contradictions in the bourgeois camp’: it semed bent on uniting adversaries and on turning neutrals into adversaries. If it, nevertheless, benefited from divisions in the anti-communist world, this was due to the inherent force of those divisions.
Malenkov's first preoccupation was to free Soviet foreign policy from its irrational Byzantinism and to make it more worldly and subtle. A peace policy ‘based on facts’ required that Soviet diplomacy relax its inflexible attitudes and postures. Such a policy could not be pursued by means of constant repetition of cliches dictated by requirements of domestic orthodoxy but utterly ineffective or even incomprehensible when produced at an international forum.
Almost immediately after Stalin's funeral, the style of Soviet diplomacy became more civilized and sober. Less obsessed with prestige than its predecessor, Malenkov's
government proceeded to free itself from some of the rigid commitments it had inherited. It dealt in a conciliatory spirit with incidents in the ‘air corridor’ from Western Germany to Berlin. It offered its services in repatriating British and French civilian prisoners from Korea. It ceased to obstruct the election of a new General Secretary of the United Nations. In these gestures of conciliation there was no surrender of any vital Soviet interest. But even if only gestures, they contrasted refreshingly with the ceaseless mutual mud-slinging of the cold war.
Soon afterwards, on March 28th, the Chinese and North Koreans — under Soviet inspiration — made new proposals for armistice negotiations in Korea. The previous protracted negotiations had reached a deadlock over one point: the repatriation of prisoners of war. With Soviet support, the North Koreans and Chinese had insisted on the unconditional repatriation of all their prisoners. Now they announced that they were willing to abandon that demand.
The new Soviet attitude over the Korean war was no mere change in diplomatic style — it foreshadowed a new policy.
It is evident that during Stalin's last years the ruling circles were divided over foreign policy at least as much as over domestic affairs. This division was not very different from that familiar in other countries. One faction was anxious to seek conciliation with the West, another refused to countenance ‘appeasement’. There is no need to have recourse to guesswork in order to reconstruct the broad outlines of the disagreement — Stalin himself provided the clue in his much discussed Bolshevik article on the eve of the Nineteenth Party Congress.
The disagreement was logically premissed on two opposite views about the prospects of war and peace.
One group held that war between a united capitalist world and the communist bloc was ‘inevitable’; and that it was probably inevitable in the near future. The other group took the view that accommodation between the two camps was still possible and even probable, despite mounting tension.
This controversy directly affected the Soviet attitude over Germany and Korea, the two main storm centres of world politics.
The opponents of ‘appeasement’ refused to consider any compromise with the West over Germany and Austria. They refused, in the first instance, to contemplate the prospect of a Soviet military withdrawal from Central Europe. If, as they held, a new world war was inevitable and near, then it was obviously in the Soviet interest to hold on to all advanced strategic outposts on the Elbe and the Danube. These outposts were equally vital in offensive and defensive operational plans. They could be used as jumping-off grounds for an advance into Western Europe; and they could serve as shock absorbers in case of a Western attack. From this viewpoint, Moscow was interested in preserving the status quo, in keeping Germany divided until the outbreak of war, and in completely integrating Eastern Germany in the Soviet bloc. All talk about Germany's unification was empty propaganda.