10
PARTISAN REVIEW
advises the American masses to keep out of the imperialist blood·
bath, which in itself is excellent advice. But what the Party, as
Moscow's agent in this country, is really interested in is not peace
or isolationism but the victory of Hitler-Stalin over the Allies, just
as last winter, when it was shrieking for a democratic holy war
against Hitlerism, it was really concerned not with any such high·
flown business at all but quite simply with the implementation of
the Kremlin's ultimately successful attempt to force Hitler into an
alliance. C. P. "isolationism" has nothing to do with the interests
of the American masses, and will be chucked overboard tomorrow
when and if the Kremlin's foreign policy takes a new turn.
The "revolutionary" line on the war is a smokescreen to
obscure two awkward realities: (1) the Moscow-Berlin alliance;
(2) the Red Army's division of Poland with the Reichswehr, and
·the more recent imperialist diplomatic drive against the Baltic
states. The general idea is that the Soviet Union is a socialist state
· and that, in the interests of the world revolution, anything goes.
The comrades explain away the alliance with Hitler as a smart
trick: Stalin doesn't
~·really"
trust Hitler and is merely "using"
him for the time being, to betray him later on. Thus the Soviet
Union is not committed to the fascist side. But this is nothing
more than normal, everyday imperialist power politics. No one
"really" trusts any one else, and every one "uses" their allies as
much as he can, and betrays them whenever it is to his interest to
do so. Stalin made a pact with Hitler, and if the Allies seem to be
winning later on, Stalin will probably betray Hitler and return to
the democratic camp. Mussolini also made a pact with Hitler, and
he, too, if the Allies seem to be winning, may be counted on to turn
traitor to the Axis and become as ardent a democrat as-Daladier.
In that case, according to the Party line, II Duce will have also
struck a mighty blow for world socialism.
As for the Red Army's recent exploits, these are also hailed as
mighty strokes for socialism. Nothing is more ludicrous than the
attempts of the Stalinists to picture these "provincial conquests,"
in Trotsky's phrase, as though they represent the spreading of the
October revolution to the rest of the world. Even as imperialist
burglaries, they are not very impressive. The Polish "campaign"
of the Red Army, in which the chief excitement was provided by
the tanks getting stuck in the mud or running out of gas, was the
