PARIS LETTER
which, he agreed, was depressing. But he was seriously bothered by the
procedure adopted by comrade Zhdanov. As Tito promptly pointed out,
the Yugoslav party had been excommunicated directly by its brother,
the Russian party, and all that Duclos, Togliatti, and the rest of the
gang, had been allowed to do was to decorate with their signatures the
Russian ukase after it had already been sent to Belgrade. That was a
dark foreboding. It was the
official
notice broadcast to all and sundry,
capitalists and proletarians, faithful and faithless, that there could not
be anything like an indigenous policy of this or that CP. Up to now, in
France as well as in Italy, the Communist propaganda line has not been
that "we are going to do just what they did in Russia," but, on the ·
contrary, that Communism would take different, and autonomous, forms
in each country, and especially in the highly civilized West. At the same
time, the conviction has been common among the militants, that "when
it comes to France (or Italy), the Russians will not be able to just push
us around like Bulgarians, they will have to reckon with
us
(the base)."
The hammer that hit Tito left little standing of such hopes. It was
another cause for resignation to
force majeure
added to many others. "So,
you are going to hold your nose and gulp down this one too," I told
my friend. "What else can we do? There is no alternative," he answered.
If
their party's day to day tactics gave them some ground for be–
lieving that they are headed for something like Revolution, the Stalinists
would probably be the only ones today who could successfully entertain
a mood of extreme situation. But they can't. The brightest political
perspective that is offered them is that of a Soviet invasion of Western
Europe. "What would you ·do if the Red Army occupied France?" I asked
my friend. "It would be a damn rotten business," was his answer. To such
an eventuality, no doubt, the most ardent and most sincere militants
would vastly prefer that of an underground struggle against "home re–
actionaries and American imperialism" in case of war. This would at
least involve some idealism. But they can hardly
hope
for such a thing
to happen.
The fact is that, after the Czechoslovakian coup, the Italian elec–
tion, and the Tito affair, and after the failure of last winter's political
strikes, the CP's are condemned to a policy of systematic and politically
schizophrenic agitation deprived of any intelligible prospect. In reality,
the Cominform and their leadership have manoeuvered them into a
position in which they can do little else except push defensive actions
in all possible directions. Only the mistakes of their adversaries, the
establishment of a dictatorship, or war, can get them out of their pre-
1011
