Real Soviet Russia

332 Pages·1947·104.288 MB·English

by  David J. Dallin

THER EAL
SOVIERTU SSIA
BY
DAVIJD.D ALLIN
TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH SHAPLEN
REVISED
AND
ENLARGEEDDI TION
NEW HAVEN
YALUEN IVERSPIRTEYS S
1947
CoPYRIGHT, 1944, 1947, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. This book may not be
reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form
(except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
THE AMASA STONE MATHER
MEMORIAL PUBLICATION FUND
The present volume is the twenty-second work published by
the Yale University Press on the Amasa Stone Mather Me­
morial Publication Fund. This Foundation was established
August 25, 1922, by a gift to Yale University from Samuel
Mather, Esq., of Cleveland, Ohio, in pursuance of a pledge
made in June, 1922, on the fifteenth anniversary of the gradua­
tion of his son, Amasa Stone Mather, who was born in
Cleveland on August 20, 1884, and was graduated from Yale
College in the Class of 1907. Subsequently, after traveling
abroad, he returned to Cleveland, where he soon won a recog­
nized position in the business life of the city and where he
actively interested himself also in the work of many organiza­
tions devoted to the betterment of the community and to the
welfare of the natiol). His death from pneumonia on February
9, was undoubtedly hastened by his characteristic unwill­
1920,
ingness ever to spare himself, even when ill, in the discharge
of his duties or in his efforts to protect and further the interests
committed to his care by his associates.
PREAFC ET OT HEN EWE DITION
A
REAL and durable resolution of the increasing inter­
national tensions can come only from Russia, in the
shape of an internal transformation. No other solu­
tion would be stable. Unless the political system in Russia
undergoes fundamental changes, the ups and downs in the
relationship of. the powers will continue and the trend to­
ward a new war will become stronger. Some conflicts will
be resolved but new ones will arise. Some problems will be
worked out, but new ones will take their place. The state of
armed peace or, rather, armed armistice, with all its inherent
dangers and the inevitable bloody ending, will continue.
Either an internal transformation of Russia's political sys­
tem will prevent a war, or a war will lead to an upheaval in
Russia. Another war would certainly mean a gigantic de­
feat for her; in the course of such a war much more would
be buried than Sovietism and Stalinism. From such a war
Russia would emerge divided into several states, surrounded
by hating nations, pushed far back into the East, im­
poverished and drained of blood. It would be a terrible and
tragic ending of a great and glorious revolution.
This is the dilemma. To the world the solution of it
means peace or war. To Russia it means peace or defeat and
degradation. It is up to the people of Russia to choose the
road-the people, but not the official leadership. The leader­
ship is committed to a political line which for decades has
not varied essentially, despite zi ags and compromises.
gz
This leadership, with all its realism and cynicism, is walk­
ing blindfold toward a deep abyss, because it is committed
to follow a prescribed course. It is unable to travel a road of
peaceful evolution and it cannot change its nature.
A fresh proof that it cannot and will not change was
supplied during the last war years when hopes had risen
high, in Russia as well as abroad, that the Moscow goverrt­
of
ment had entered the road a gradual transmutation, that
Vl THE REAL SovIET RussIA
the old ideas had been discarded and that, with victory won,
the rigid internal system would be liberalized. In Russia
.
the conviction was widespread that everythmg would
change after the war, that there would be no going back to
the old oppression, and that the .first days of peace would
mean the dawn of a new freedom.
This was only an illusion, a bitter self-delusion. The
ideological retreat made by the Soviet regime during the
war proved to be a well-calculated maneuver, and democ­
racy merely a convenient slogan. A new purge, or rather a
combination of several purges, begun in the summer of 1946
is intended again to streamline everything and everyone
into a new "Socialist offensive" to compensate for the tem­
porary wartime retreat. The mechanism is again being
tightened.
An icy wind blows anew from the East. It extinguishes
the .first ray of hope that has been cherished by intellectuals
and peasants, by workers and prisoners, and last but not
least, by many a Soviet Army leader. "Socialist offensive" on
the march inside Russia always means an irritation of
Russian relationships with the world abroad. Soviet internal
policies and foreign policies are insolubly tied together, as
they were during the last period of prerevolutionary Russia.
The cement that bound Russia with the West was called
Adolf Hitler. With his disappearance and with his empire
smashed, hatred above everything else animates the Soviet
leadership's attitude today toward the democratic world.
In order to understand and foresee the foreign policies of
the Soviet Government one must understand Soviet domes­
tic policy. The two are opposite sides of the same medal.
Only by studying the general concepts dominating Soviet
activity at home, the established social relationships, and the
direction of internal political development, is it possible to
comprehend Soviet foreign policy and avoid the na'ive and
dangerous mistakes which have occurred so frequently dur­
ing the last years.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION vu
Appreciation is expressed to George Denicke and Vladimir
Zenzinov, authorities in the field of international literature on
Russia, for their substantial help in the preparation of this
book. To Dr. N. M. Jasny I am indebted for advice and
factual material on Russian economy; to Professor Alfred
V agts for valuable help on the difficult problem of war
casualties. Much labor was devoted by Mrs. Tillie Klorman
and the late Joseph Shaplen in helping to shape the literary
form of this book. The staff of the Slavonic Division of the
New York Public Library gave me invaluable aid. The charts
were prepared by Alexander Dallin and drawn by W. C.
Kirkwood.
D.J.D.
CONTENTS
I. "KL YUKVA" I
II. THE So-CALLED EvoLUTION OF COMMUNISM 15
The Revolution Is Not Yet Ended
20
The State Does Not Die
31
Stalin and His Party in the War
37
Marxism-Leninism in the War
43
After the War 50
III. THE DEvrL's NAME Is TROTSKY
53
IV. THE NEW RELIGIOUS POLICY 68
V. THE SovrET CONCEPT OF FoREIGN Poucy 91
"Suspicion" and "Mistrust"
95
Wars Will Be Inevitable IOI
Peaceful But Aggressive
104
VI. THE NEw SocIAL STRUCTURE 108
More Inequality! 109
"Socialism Is Inequality"
Il5
The Melting Pot and the New Social Classes
II8
Industrial Expansion on Communist Lines
123
The Population Problem
129
I.
VII. THE NEw UPPER CLASSES, THEIR RrsE 137
Communism and the Intelligentsia
139
Fluctuations in Policy
142
A Strange Amalgam
148
Rapid Increase 154
The Leviathan
158
VIII. THE NEW UPPER CLASSES, II. THEIR FUTURE 163
Rigid Hierarchy
163
Vague Programs
166
The Communist Party and the Intelligentsia
170
THE REAL SOVIET RUSSIA
X
Standards of Living 17 3
Future Development and Differentiation 1 7 5
IX. THE WoRKING CLAss 179
Why No Labor Movement in Russia? 183
The Standard of Living 188
The Workers and the Communist Party 196
X. THE PEASANTRY 203
"Right" and "Left" Communism 203
The Kolkhoz 209
Old Wine in New Bottles
2 1 2
The "Millionaires" 2 1 6
The Communist Party in the Village 17
2
The War and After 19
2
XI. FORCED LABOR 7
2 2
Labor as an Instrument of Correction 3 t
2
The First Labor Camps 2 3 5
Successful Development 39
2
The Five-Year Plans 241
The Network of Labor Camps 249
XII. THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION 263
Lenin's Party 268
Molding the Party 70
2
Stalin and His Party 2 7 5
The Real Party 279
The Komsomol 283
XIII. THE ARMY AND THE SECRET POLICE 291
XIV. AFTER THE WAR 301
SOURCES 314
INDEX 321
THER EASLOV ITER USSAI
I
"KLYUKVA"
FOREIGNERS have been discovering Russia in recent
years with the same rapture with which Columbus dis­
covered America. Nearly every month some intrepid
traveler, having exchanged the edict of the King of Spain
for the credentials of an American newspaper, and the
Santa Maria
wooden for a winged Douglas, produces a
weighty book, containing the results of his observations in
Russia. This literary output has created a very sizable li­
brary. The authors are honest, decent folk who often do not
know either the language or the country; who today are in
India, tomorrow in Tierra del Fuego, and, in between, in
Moscow; and who invariably try to be nice to the powers­
that-be in each country. For this reason, because of their
energy, American speed, and desire to combine whatever
objectivity they possess with "hot news," they produce
books, some of them called scientific, some political, which
would justify the Russian people in exclaiming in horror, as
do the Indians in a certain operetta, when Columbus comes
ashore, "Woe to us, we are discovered!"
Such is the fate of Russia. A certain French traveler, upon
visiting there a century ago, was intrigued by a plant which
klyukva,
the Russians called a cranberry plant used in the
manufacture of a popular beverage. Klyukva grows on small,
low bushes. But upon his return to France the noted explorer
related how he drank tea with Russian grandees "sous l'o mbre
d'un klukva majestueux"-under the shade of a majestic kly­
ukva. His report provoked laughter in Russia, and the word
"klyukva" came to be used as signifying a certain kind of ri­
diculous misinformation.
2 THE REAL SovrET RussrA
As an example we may cite a young journalist who tries to
be objective, but who apparently never saw women working
in either American or Russian industrial plants. He reports
that in Russia "the women are neither entirely masculine nor
entirely feminine . . . They look like a mixture of both
sexes, they are different from any other women."
Another writer, the editor of a New York newspaper, dis­
covers that "the Russians rarely say 'da'-yes; they say
mostly 'da-da-da.' "
One author of a widely circulated book reports seriously
the alleged fact gleaned in Moscow that "only one per cent
of the Russian people were literate before the Revolution."
The fact is, as is well known, that the proportion was about
40 per cent of the population over nine years. But he wanted
to be obliging to the government by showing the low level
of literacy it had to contend with at the beginning of its rule.
Another writer, for the same reason, reveals the state of ed­
ucation in Russia as the most extraordinary in the world:
"nearly half of the people in Russia know German." In
5 6
reality, only about to per cent are familiar with that lan­
guage.
One writer, having failed to grasp the Russian word for
(kipyatok);
boiled water, says it is "kippy tuck" a photog­
rapher, having snapped the picture of a woman from Tam­
bov, explains that the city of that name is located in Siberia,
although Tambov is seven hundred miles distant from Siberia.
Another author calls Stalin's father Illarion, although he
could have learned. the correct name from almost any person
in the street.
In a book published in the United States by a serious and
well-known organization devoted to the study of foreign
policy we find the following bit of information concerning
the agrarian question in Russia: "By 1914 only one-third of
the peasants owned land . . . The rest were landless peas­
ants who worked as tenants or farm hands on the estates
of big land owners.'; All of which is pure nonsense. The
"KLYU KVA" 3
percentage of landless peasants before the Revolution was
negligible, although the lot of the peasantry was not envi­
able.
In the same book we learn that "there are about 3 oo million
Slavs in Europe." The actual number is between 1 So and
1 90 million.
A good many people are familiar with the "white nights"
enjoyed by Leningrad, located in the sixtieth degree of north
latitude. But a lady journalist, having visited only Moscow,
and having heard something about "white nights," informs
her readers in the United States in klyukva style: "The white
nights of Moscow is a phrase that Muscovites have used for
centuries, but with the war it has taken on another mean­
ing."
In general, geography and history suffer most. Take the
German town of Tilsit, for example. In October, 1943, a
newspaper in Virginia published this: "In the course of the
last centuries many a conference took place in Russia which
decided the fate of Europe: the Tilsit conference of
1807 . . ."
The system of limited free enterprise reintroduced in
1921 in Soviet Russia was abolished about five years after
Lenin's death ( 1924). But a military publishing house de­
clares in a book that "when Lenin felt that the movement
toward Socialism could proceed, he abandoned the NEP."
The same book offers the following gem of historic lore
bearing upon events of 1917: "When Lenin saw that the
revolution might become a democratic or boµrgeois revolu­
tion he joined with Trotsky in violent action. Civil war
ensued."
It is strange that all such nonsense is written mainly with
respect to Russia. No one writes that Manchester is in Ire­
land or Lyons in Belgium; th.at the Germans do not say
"ja" but "ja-ja-ja," and that the Italians are all illiterate.
Careful verification of facts is obligatory for all other coun­
tries. Why is the exception made for Russia?