VARIETY
365
correlate of the movement, one,
moreover, which not merely
clarifies some of the shifts between
periods, but, more significant, links
them all together in a manner to
show the cumulative development.
Up to the 5th period (the Hit–
ler Pact), which was imposed by
external events, each shift has
been correlated with a sharp
change in the management of So–
viet industry. Under War Com–
munism, a plant was run by a
"specialist" of the old regime and
a commissar. During the NEP, a
plant was run by "the triangle":
a manager, still usually a specialist
of the old regime, a party cell, and
a trade-union committee. In 1928,
the Shakhty Trial marked the end
of most of the old-regime special–
ists, and the liquidation of the
Right Opposition accompanied the
final collapse of the power of the
union committees. During the
Third Period, the managers were
for the most part hastily trained
old-time party members, the "Red
Specialists." The Trials of 1936-
38, an internal counterpoint of the
Popular Front, signified, among
other things, the end of the Red
Specialists, and their replacement
in the factories by much better
trained young men of the post–
revolutionary Stalinist crop.
During all of these changes and
until now, however, there has con–
tinued a consistent single develop–
ment: the growth and increasing
consolidation of the new Soviet
ruling class, a class in which the
bureaucracy, the army hierarchy,
and the managers fuse into a great
social grouping with its roots firm–
ly in the economy through its ex–
tension as the managerial person–
nel of the nationalized industry
and collectivized agriculture.
As the communist movement
travels up the spiral, whether left
or right at the moment, this class
is taking on historical flesh and
blood, and is gradually emancipa–
ting itself from the initial social
bases of the revolution. During the
NEP, its united fronts could go
no farther than proletarian organ–
izations; by the Popular Front it
was sure enough of itself to jump
over to liberal bourgeois; today
Ercoli can sit with Badoglio, and
Pieck with von Seydlitz. Organiza–
tionally, its freedom of action is
promoted by the perfecting of the
international communist movement
as a hardened, fully trained, ab–
solutely reliable and remarkably
flexible tool.
This does not mean that there
will be no more swings back to left
in the propaganda and tactics of
official communism. The object of
the present (Teheran) period is
to end the European phase of the
war on a basis favorable to the
perspectives of the Soviet ruling
class: i.e., in
de facto
Stalinist do–
mination of the Continent. But
this period itself, unlike the earlier
five, is not undifferentiatedly either
right or left: things are not so
mechanical nowadays, and in parts
of Europe it is a left period. It is
rightist in the United States, and
in the Western Hemisphere gen–
erally, because the plans for Eu–
rope call for the present appease–
ment of America as the best way
