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And as for the notorious Tito-Kardelj doctrine on the gradual spread
of socialist tendencies throughout the world, and the consequent
undesirability of political and doctrinal exclusiveness, only the new
cult of politeness prevents Moscow from stigmatizing it as heresy.
For heresy it undoubtedly is. In technical terms it is an "Austro–
Marxist" rather than a Leninist view, and if it ever comes to be
adopted by a considerable number of Western Communists, the
essential unity of the world Communist movement will be at an end.
Togliatti's reputed vacillations on this subject are an infinitely more
serious matter for the Kremlin than any number of workers' risings
in Eastern Europe. Revolts can be suppressed, and will be, as long
as the Soviet army stands ready to move against any serious threat,
and as long as the satellite governments can draw on Soviet economic
resources to get over their worst difficulties. Nationalist sentiment
can be assuaged by half-serious promises to let Poland have the kind
of relative independence enjoyed, say, by Mexico; and democratic
stirrings can be appeased by intraparty "primaries" modeled on
Western patterns; but let the worm of doubt creep into the theoreti–
cal fabric, and the political structure cannot hold. Communism stands
and falls by what Communists believe to be the case about the re–
lationship of their movement to the rest of the world.
If
ever they
come to see it as only one tendency among many-and not the most
important one at that, so far as the advanced countries are con–
cerned-belief in victory will vanish, and with it the totalitarian
drive to reshape the world. There will then remain little more than
a gigantic pressure group held together by slogans no longer related
to the will to make a complete break with tradition: one more politi–
cal party competing for relative power within the framework of demo–
cratic society.
If
this is the distant danger which threatens the Communist
parties in the West, those in the East and in the Soviet orbit are
confronted with the more immediate problem of effecting the tran–
sition to the post-Stalinist age under the slogan "back to Leninism."
When one considers that the present "Soviet Thermidor" promises
at the very least greater security, and perhaps greater power, for the
managerial caste and the privileged upper crust generally, the current
transmogrification of Stalinism into Leninism does not lack its hu–
morous aspect. For what does Leninism imply
if
not a return to
