COMMUNIST INTENTIONS
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ist, internationalist form of the adhesion on the part of each new
communist state to the Soviet Union. On the contrary with the single
exception of the Baltic States (and can he members of the Praesidium
persuade even themselves that there was anything voluntary in
that?) all the new states of the communist world have become,
nominally at least, fully sovereign independent states. True, most of
them are effectively dominated by Russian power, including in some
cases Russian occupation. But that is a very different thing from
voluntary inclusion in the USSR. How different a thing it is became
apparent when movements of revolt took place in East Germany and
Poland and actual revolt broke out in Hungary.
And then there is the painful spectacle of Yugoslavia. What
would Lenin have said to a state which has been through a thorough–
going Communist revolution, in which "the power of the bourgeoisie
has been liquidated" quite as effectively as elsewhere in the com–
munist world, but which, far from federating itself within the Soviet
Union, obstinately goes its own way, and often has much worse
relations with Russia than with "the Imperialists" themselves.
But far more important than all this is the fact of China. Here
is the second great nation- potentially at least another super-power–
to go communist. And no one has ever (to my knowledge) even
suggested that she should become a member of the Soviet Union. It
is taken for granted that she has become a totally independent, com–
munist
nation.
What would Lenin have said to that? Would he have
pointed out that a communist
nation,
in that full sense, was a con–
tradiction in terms? That communism was a concept expressly and
from the outset designed to transcend nationalism? How could he
have denied that the emergence of completely separate and completely
sovereign communist nations was an anomaly which gave further
disturbing evidence that world development was by no means pro–
ceeding according to plan? I daresay that in practice Lenin would
have merely closed his eyes to narrower slits and repeated his favorite
maxim that "History is more cunning than any of us." But if so
that would have been because he was an extremely shrewd man, as
well as a devoted Marxist.
It may be possible to guage both the extent and the limits of
the change in Russian intentions and attitudes to war by a study of
the controversy which developed during 1960 and 1961 between
