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PARTISAN REVIEW
by a resurgent socialist egalitarianism. Freedom in the U.S.S.R.
shrank and was suppressed as inequality grew; it can grow again only
if inequality shrinks. To be sure, Soviet society is, and will remain
for some time, highly stratified. Privileges and social differences
which have grown up over the lifetime of a generation are not
going to vanish and cannot vanish all at once. The struggle against
inequality is likely to be hard and long. But what is for the time
being of the greatest significance is that after so long a pause that
struggle has begun anew, and that the egalitarian trend has al–
ready made-with surprising ease !-its first, and rather impressive
conquests. This fact outweighs in importance volumes of abstract
political theorizing about the "impossibility of reform in a totalitarian
system."
It goes without saying that three decades of totalitarianism
press heavily upon the present situation. The social background in
which Stalinism was rooted has been greatly but not completely
transformed. De-Stalinization proceeds in dialectical contradictions.
The rule of the single Leader has been repudiated; but not the rule
of the single faction (let alone of the single party), out of which
Stalin's autocracy had sprung. The principle of the infallibility of
the party leadership has been abandoned; but party members and
nonparty men alike are still denied the freedom to criticize and re–
move the fallible leaders. The ruling men proclaim the need for free
and open controversy within a Marxist framework of thought; yet
as such controversy develops they are seized with fright and not
averse to cutting it short by administrative order. (This has hap–
pened in the important debate between the "consumptionist" and
"productionist" schools of thought.) On the other hand, the contro–
versies over the conduct of Soviet affairs in the last war and over
the restitution of truthful history writing, controversies which have a
close bearing upon present and future policies, are still in progress.
The revulsion against Stalinist discipline and mental uniformity is
universal and irrepressible; but it has not been positive enough and
inspired by sufficiently great and clear ideas to be able to impart to
society a real and fruitful diversity of outlook and to make society
politically articulate. The principles and practices of the Stalinist theo–
cracy are deeply discredited; but its mental habits again and again
assert themselves. The cult of Stalin is dead; but the cult of Lenin,
