Cold War Inside the Kremlin

Under socialism, when classes and class interests will no longer exist, the reason for the existence of political parties representing contending class interests will have gone. Decisions about the best policy to be followed to promote the well-being of all will be reached democratically by informed discussion. That situation is, however, something yet to be brought about since socialism exists nowhere in the world.

In Britain and many other countries capitalism has evolved a political system through which control of the government is vested in the politicians who are able to secure for their party or groups of parties the support of voters at elections, conducted on the basis of universal adult suffrage. This system works, and provides capitalism with the stability it needs, only because the major political parties and the voters behind them are agreed on the continuance of capitalism and differ only on secondary issues of policy.

In earlier times when the electorate was a very restricted body of property owners, and still earlier, before Parliament had made its hold on the armed forces and the monarchy effective, the struggles between contending economic interests to control the State machine were settled by disorderly public demonstrations, by show of armed force or by costly and ruinous civil war.

In Russia, since the overthrow of the Czarist monarchy in 1917, rule has been in the hands of a group based on the Communist Party, all other political parties being ruthlessly suppressed. In such conditions it was necessary to retain and strengthen the Secret Police, which, with its own powerful armed forces constitutes one of the three pillars of the Russian government, alongside the army and the Communist Party. Under this political system the rulers of Russia have had to face problems of great size and complexity including civil war, invasion in the second world war, the dispossession of the peasants and their forcible combination into collective farms, and the problem of trying to persuade and cajole the workers into accepting their exploitation and the particular hardship involved in building up modern industry in what was a predominantly peasant country. The inevitable tension has been aggravated by the need to impose a large measure of centralisation not only on strongly-autonomous regional interests inside Russia but also on the “satellite” countries in Eastern Europe brought, since 1945, into the Russian sphere of interest. Stalin’s death brought the problem to a head, and forced the question, which individual was to gain the succession at the centre and on which of the three pillars of the State, Party, Army and Secret Police, he would lean. In this situation the sudden flare up of revolt in East Berlin and the plain signs of incipient breakaway in the satellite countries were, to those at the centre, alarming reminders of the dangers surrounding them.

Beria’s removal gives colour to the view that the Party and the Army have been able to agree to line up against the Secret Police but that, even if it is a correct interpretation of forces about which so little definite is known, could only be a provisional solution. It does not settle the question of bringing all the forces of the State, including the army, under the control of political heads who would owe their authority to having majority support in a Parliament resting on genuine electoral contests. Where, as in Britain, continuous contact between electors, the government and the opposition is maintained by political parties operating in the open, and seeking both to reflect and to mould political opinion, a stable basis is provided for the administration as well as means to change it at elections. Lacking such a system contending interests in Russia, with their divergent views on the running of capitalism, can only intrigue for power at the centre and seek support in Army, Secret Police, Communist Party, regional autonomous movements, or anywhere else where discontent makes itself manifest.

The removal of Beria and the likely curbing of the power of the Secret Police, have not materially altered the system. In a country where ordinary political organisation and activity is illegal and discontent is therefore driven underground an elaborate secret police organisation is indispensable and it will be observed that Beria’s removal and other changes have all been initiated and carried out arbitrarily from the top, with the masses of the people kept completely in the dark until they are simultaneously informed of what has been done and called upon to hold “spontaneous” demonstrations approving it. As is usual in a Police State the defeated contestants are removed and held guilty without any such formality as waiting for a public trial or allowing their supporters to state their case in the open.

Whichever group wins the present round in the struggle for power the problem of broadening the base of the Russian political system remains to be solved. Whether it will be by compromise among the rivals or by armed struggle remains to be seen.
H.