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stances, and it would be predicated on the emergence of a nominally
Leninist, but de facto non-revolutionary, regime in Russia itself. It
would therefore make a powerful appeal to those elements in the
bureaucracy, the military leadership, and the managerial caste, who
must be assumed to hanker after a more rational, less megalomaniac,
and more "traditional" way of conducting Russia's external (and
internal) affairs. It would support their drive for power within the
Party and in time perhaps encourage them to undertake a
coup
d'
etat
against the vestigial remains of pure Stalinist, i.e., terrorist,
paranoiac and world-revolutionary utopianism. A cleavage of this
kind was probably in the making at the time of Stalin's death.
If
the
old guard, with some help from middle-aged recruits like Malenkov,
has hitherto managed to retain power, one contributing factor at
least was the mixture of asinine optimism and wooden immobility
with which its propagandist gestures were greeted in Europe and
America.
It
is only too evident that in this instance most of the out–
right asininity came from Europe; the immobility was America's con–
tribution: an odd one to come from the land of dynamism.
Anyone who has watched the tug-of-war between different
cliques in the Soviet apparatus in Eastern Europe (notably in Eastern
Germany) must have come away with the impression that the weight
of "professional" influence within that apparatus is on the side of
relative moderation. It is not the Russian diplomats and military
men who want to hang on to the forward bastions in Europe, though
they will only surrender them after hard bargaining.
It
is the Party
doctrinaires and their remaining allies in the bureaucracy who are
fanatically determined to make agreement with the West impossible
and to Stalinize the conquered territories at all cost. But the Party
is itself no longer homogeneous. No one knows exactly where the
dividing line runs in terms of personalities. All we can be sure of
is that deep within its structure there is a fissure which can be ex–
ploited by a policy of calculated pressure that has real weight behind
it and sets itself realizable aims. The last qualification naturally is
not unimportant: trying to get the Red Army out of Eastern Europe
is one thing; preaching the "liberation" of all the nations of the
Soviet Union is something else again. One day Washington will have
to come down to earth---or watch the Atlantic alliance disintegrate.
But down-to-earthness is not the same as weakness. At this moment
