134
Communist, because it does not
subject to criticism the Stalinist so–
cial and class system. But its ac–
ceptance of this system is matter–
of-fact, without pathos or enthu–
siasm.
Such a mood is apparently wide–
spread in military circles, that is,
among officers, but it goes beyond
these circles. Ehrenburg's popu–
larity was particularly great in the
army and navy press, but it went
further. His primitive anti-Ger–
manism, which was at first an ele–
mentary emotion, later, as his suc–
cess grew, developed almost into a
complete system. At the time when
he was officially reprimanded, the
war was about to end; then heap–
plied his line to other problems, in–
sistently and just as primitively ar–
guing that Germany had in actual
fact been defeated not by the Allies
acting together, but by the Soviet
Union alone. It is easy to see the
extent to which this view affects
the problems of the postwar or–
ganization of Europe. But Ehren–
burg never spoke of Communism,
capitalism, or the social systems of
any countries, even that of Russia.
In his eyes, as in the eyes of thou–
sands of his devotees, these are
secondary considerations.
The magazine
Bolshevik
reports
that the editors of the
Historical
Review
were offered an article
that declared class struggle as an
historical method to be an "infan–
tile disease of the Left." The au–
thor believes that the revolutionary
uprisings of Pugachev, Razin, and
Bolotnikov, and even the Decem–
brist movement, should be consid-
PARTISAN REVIEW
ered reactionary, for they weaken–
ed the state- "undermined the
strength of the autocratic rule in
Russia."
"If
Pugachev had been
victorious," he ·contends, "Russia's
political power would have been
exposed 'to reverses, she might have
lost her place among the world
powers." And recently the Central
Committee of the Russian Commu–
nist Party adopted a resolution
concerning the teaching of Marx–
ism-Leninism at the University of
Saratov. The resolution states that
"in lectures and seminar work,
the radical antagonism between
bourgeois and proletarian philoso–
phies is insufficiently explained,
and the superiority of the Soviet
socialist regime over the capitalist
regime is only weakly stressed."
At the Institute of Economics,
a certain Sazonov submitted a
doctor's thesis which
Bolshevik
characterized as "not seeing the
difference between socialist and
capitalist enterprises.." According
to this thesis, the operation of the
law of value in the USSR does
not differ in any respect from its
operation under capitalist condi–
tions, etc.
In such criticisms of orthodox
Stalinism, there is doubtless much
that is correct. But the only politi–
cal deviation that is tolerated is in
the new nationalism; hundreds of
Ehrenburgs and Sazonovs express
a new trend, in which the restora–
tion of pre-revolutionary ideologi–
cal elements is combined with
Stalinist socialism. But the Stalinist
social system is the old, accustom–
ed idea, and it is not mentioned,
