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334 Pages·1947·31.763 MB·English
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SOVIET RUSSIA BY DAVID DALLIN J. TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH SHAPLEN REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 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), withoutwrittenpermission 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 ofthe gradua- tion of his son, Amasa Stone Mather, who was born in Cleveland on August 20, 1884, and -vyas 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 ofthe nation. His death from pneumonia on February 9, 1920, wasundoubtedly hastened by nis characteristic unwill- ingness ever to spare himself, even when ill, in the discharge ofhis duties orinhis efforts toprotectandfurtherthe interests committedto his care by hisassociates. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION A real and durableresolution oftheincreasinginter- national tensions can come only from Russia, in the No shape of an internal transformation. 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, butnewones will take theirplace. Thestate of armed peace or, rather, armedarmistice, with allits inherent dangers and the inevitable bloody ending, will continue. Eitheran 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 awar 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 Russiait means peace or defeat and degra—dation. It is up to the people of Russia to choose the road ^thepeople, butnotthe officialleadership.Theleader- ship is committed to a political line which for decades has not varied essentially, despite zigzags and compromises. This leadership, with all its realism and cynicism, is walk- ing blindfoldtoward a deep abyss, because it is committed to follow a prescribed course. Itis unable to travel aroad 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 govern- ment had entered the road of a gradual transmutation, that vi The Real Soviet Russia the oldideashadbeendiscarded andthat, withvictorywon, the rigid internal system would be liberalized. In Russia the conviction was widespread that everything would change after the war, that there would be no going back to the old oppression, and that the first days of peace would meanthe dawn of anewfreedom. 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 combinationofseveral purges, begunin the summerof 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 firstray of hope thathas been cherishedby intellectuals and peasants, by workers and prisoners, and last but not least,bymanyaSovietArmyleader. “Socialistoffensive” on the march inside Russia always means an irritation of Russianrelationships with the world abroad. Sovietinternal poUcies and foreign policies are insolubly tied together, as theywere during the last period ofprerevolutionary 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 andforesee the foreign policies of the SovietGovernment one must understand Soviet domes- tic policy. The two are opposite sides of the same medal. Only by studying the general concepts dominating Soviet activityathome, the established social relationships, and the direction of internal political development, is it possible to comprehend Soviet foreign policy and avoid the naive and dangerous mistakes which have occurred so frequently dur- ing the last years. New Preface to the Edition vii AppreciationisexpressedtoGeorgeDenickeandVladimir Zenzinov,authoritiesinthefieldofinternationalliteratureon 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 Vagts 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 NewYorkPublicLibrarygavemeinvaluableaid. Thecharts were prepared by Alexander DaUin and drawn by W. C. Kirkwood. 11 CONTENTS L “Klyukva” I IL The So-calledEvolution of Communism 15 TheRevolutionIs NotYetEnded 20 The State Does NotDie 3 Stalin and His PartyintheWar 37 Marxism-Leninism in the War 43 AftertheWar 50 IIL The Devil’s Name Is Trotsky 53 IV. The New Religious Policy 68 V. The Soviet Concept of Foreign Policy 91 “Suspicion” and “Mistrust” 95 Wars Will Be Inevitable 10 Peaceful But Aggressive 104 VI. TheNewSocialStructure 108 More Inequality! 109 “Socialism Is Inequality” 115 TheMeltingPotandtheNewSocialClasses 118 Industrial Expansion on Communist Lines 123 ThePopulationProblem 129 VII. The New UpperClasses, L Their Rise 137 Communism and the Intelligentsia 139 FluctuationsinPolicy 142 A Strange Amalgam 148 RapidIncrease 154 TheLeviathan 158 VIII. The New Upper Classes, IL TheirFuture 163 Rigid Hierarchy 163 Vague Programs 166 The CommunistPartyandtheIntelligentsia 70 1 21 X The Real Soviet Russia Standards ofLiving 173 FutureDevelopmentandDifferenti_at_ion 175 IX. The Working Class 179 WhyNo Labor MovementinRussi_a? 183 The Standard ofLiving 188 The Workers and the Communist Party 196 X. The Peasantry 203 “Right” and “Left” Communism 203 The Kolkhoz 209 OldWineinNewBottles 21 The “Millionaires” 216 TheCommunistPartyintheVillage 217 TheWar andAfter 219 XI. Forced Labor 227 LaborasanInstrumentofCorrection 23 The First Labor Camps 235 Successful Development 239 The Five-Year Plans 241 TheNetworkofLaborCamps 249 XII. The CommunistParty of the Soviet Union 263 Lenin’s Party ' 268 MoldingtheParty 270 Stalin and His Party 275 The RealParty 279 TheKomsomol 283 XIII. The Army and the Secret Police 291 XIV. AfterTHE War 301 Sources 314 Index 321 THE REAL SOVIET RUSSIA I “KLYUKVA” Foreigners have been discovering Russia in recent yearswiththesamerapturewithwhichColumbusdis- 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 wooden Santa Maria 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. Theauthors arehonest, decentfolkwho often donot 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 exclaimingin horror, as do the Indians in a certain operetta, when Columbus comes ashore, “Woe to us, we are discovered!” A Suchisthefate ofRussia. certainFrench traveler, upon visiting there a century ago, was intrigued by a plant which the Russians called klyukva, a cranberry plant used in the manufactureofapopularbeverage.Klyukvagrowsonsmall, lowbushes.ButuponhisreturntoFrancethenotedexplorer relatedhowhedrankteaw—ithRussiangrandees“sousI’ombre d’unklukvamajestueux” underthe shade ofamajestickly- ukva. His report provokedlaughter in Russia, and the word “klyukva” came to beused as signifying a certainkind of ri- diculous misinformation. The Real Soviet Russia 2 Asanexamplewemayciteayoungjournalistwho triesto be objective, butwhoapparentlyneversawwomenworking He in either American or Russian industrial plants. reports thatinRussia “thewomen areneitherentirelymasculine nor entirely feminine They look like a mixture of both . . . sexes, they are differentfrom any otherwomen.” Anotherwriter, the editorofaNewYorknewspaper, 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 proportionwas about 40percentofthepopulationovernine years. Buthe wanted to be obliging to the government by showing the low level ofliteracyithadtocontendwithatthebeginningofitsrule. 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 reality, only about 5 to 6 percent are familiarwith that lan- guage. One writer, having failed to grasp the Russian word for boiled water, says it is “kippy tuck” (kipyatok)-, a photog- rapher, having snapped the picture of a woman from Tam- bov, explains that the city of that name is located in Siberia, althoughTambovissevenhundredmilesdistantfromSiberia. Another author calls Stalin’s father Illarion, although he couldhavelearnedthe correctnamefromalmost anyperson inthestreet. In abook published in the United States by a serious and well-known organization devoted to the study of foreign policywe 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 “Klyukva” 3 percentage of landless peasants before the Revolution was negligible, although the lot of the peasantry was not envi- able. Inthesamebookwelearnthat“thereareabout 00million 3 Slavs in Europe.” The actual number is between 180 and 190 million. A good many people are familiarwith the “white nights” enjoyedbyLeningrad,locatedinthesixtiethdegreeofnorth latitude. But a lady journalist, having visited only Moscow, and having heard something about “white nights,” informs herreadersintheUnitedStatesinklyukvastyle: “Thewhite 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 lastcenturies 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 pubhshing 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 bourgeois revolu- tion he joined with Trotsky in violent action. Qvil 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; that the Germans do not say “ja” but “ja-ja-ja,” and that the Italians are all illiterate. Careful verification offacts is obligatory for all other coun- tries.Whyisthe exceptionmadeforRussia?

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