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PARTISAN REVIEW
authoritarian system operating within strict moral boundaries–
though authoritarian regimes have existed on earth far longer than
democratic ones . It was they who set the examples for immorality and
cruelty, "from antiquity to our day, from the reigns of Nero and
Napoleon to the reigns of Hitler and Stalin ." Many people laugh at the
Socialists, who for the past fifty years have kept on hoping for the
realization of Socialism with a human face . What then should be said
about the millennial hopes of the authoritarians for the realization of
an authoritarian society with a human face?
Solzhenitsyn sees the goal of the' 'new" system as the curtailment
of economic development and the opening up of the North-East. In
reading this sort of thing one can 't escape the thought that it may be
just a joke, or perhaps the whole letter is based on some wager? Human
beings are living in unspeakable poverty , and he proposes the
curtailment of economic development instead of the
restructuring
of
its inner character. And on top of that, the idea of the North-East!
Experts and everyone else who knows the Soviet North-Eastern
Territory-two thirds of which consist of eternal frost, taiga, swamps
and cruel climate-understand that the opening up of these regions
for human habitation in the foreseeable future is the purest illusion . If
it were possible at all , it would be only with the help of those who
inhabit the Gulag Archipelago and for the sake of the Gulag
Archipelago .
The notion of the Chinese threat makes more sense against this
background . But most thinking and informed people , and Andrey
Sakharov is one of them , tend to agree that such a threat is not very
real. Not only Soviet leaders , as Solzhenitsyn admits , but the Chinese
leaders as well are realists, or rather pragmatists , and they understand
perfectly well that a Sino-Soviet war can only destroy their regimes and
perhaps all their subjects. And, if they did decide to start a war, it
would never be because of conflicts in Party lines, but because of
conflicts about borders. Much more realistic and advantageous for the
Soviet leaders could be an expansion toward the West, toward the
Middle East , toward Rumania or Yugoslavia . Or toward West
Germany or Italy , perhaps , in the event that real trouble starts there.
But let us return to Solzhenitsyn 's main thesis : Communist
ideology . It would seem that out of his disgust with Marxism
