COMMUNIST INTENTIONS
~19
achieved a little more, rather than less, national independence of
recent years. Above
all
how does it account for the two cardinal facts
that Yugoslavia has become undeniably independent, and that no
one .even suggests the incorporation of China in the Soviet Union?
Professor Goodman and his school fail to differentiate between
the internationalism and universalism of communist
intentions
and
the way in which the world is in fact developing. Blinded by the
intensity of their hatred and fear of communism they miss the
ever-growing divergence between what is actually happening in the
world and what the communist leaders would still, no doubt, like
to happen. And this is again a pity for it is the key to an explanation
of the paradox that the communists, though complete international–
ists in theory, in practice oppose any and every move towards the
establishment of even the most embryonic form of world authority
and appear upon the world stage as unyielding champions of na–
tional sovereignty. The explanation is that communists believe ex–
clusively in a post-revolutionary internationalism. Only socialist socie–
ties, which have finally overcome all capitalist resistance within
themselves, can, they are convinced, come together in a world federa–
tion (and ultimately in a unitary world society). They lay it down
that it is as impossible as it would be undesirable for capitalist nation–
states to do any such thing.
There is little doubt that the transition of the Soviet Union
into the Russian nation-state, in so far as it has occurred, has taken
place indirectly and unconsciously. What happened was that as the
years went by after the revolution, the Russian leaders began to
think of the Soviet Union as the unavoidably national incarnation
of their essentially international communist ideal. The two events,
both entirely unexpected to the original Bolshevik leaders, which
caused this paradoxical development were (1) the postponement of
the revolution in the rest of the world and (2) the consolidation,
nevertheless, of communist rule in, roughly, the territory of the
former Russian Empire.
The result has been that the Soviet Union has come to be
envisaged by communists, both
within
and without her borders, as,
indeed, a nation-state, but as a nation-state of a special and excep–
tional character. The Soviet Union had had to become, it was felt, a
nation-state in spite of herself. But if she had been forced into
this
