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In addition, many political observers are assuming that
glasnost
will lead to a curbing of Russian military growth and political expan–
sion. This assumption, which is based on the questionable idea that
prosperity reduces the appetite for an adventurous foreign policy,
could turn out to be correct. On the other hand, it might not.
If
the
Soviet Union should be strengthened by Gorbachev, it might simply
become a stronger adversary. In these matters, rosy predictions of
the future often cloak bleak estimates of the present.
Another question to be asked is how the events in Russia will
affect those who profess to be Marxists or socialists, especially in this
country. After all, Gorbachev has announced the death of Marxism–
Leninism.
It
has been known for some time that the Russian leaders
themselves do not believe in Marx or in socialism. But Gorbachev
now has made this heresy official. He also has declared that an econ–
omy run by the state, which, it will be recalled, was to do away with
the social evils and economic failures of the profit system, does not
work. And, according to
The New York Times,
Gorbachev is reported
to have said that there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a
profit.
To be sure, the tragic fate of the socialist idea in the Soviet
Union does not prove that a genuine democratic socialism can never
be realized. But the historical- or logical- possibility does not lend
any credibility to the academic Marxists or the faithful socialists,
who act as though nothing has happened to question the viability of
the socialist hope.
If
to be a socialist is to mean more than not aban–
doning one's political idealism, then the entire philosophy of social–
ism has to be rethought. And those who cling to a belief in socialism
have to indicate how the perversion of their ideals in Russia, Cuba,
and Nicaragua, for example, can be avoided.
It
is certainly no acci–
dent that the number of Marxists increases dramatically the further
one gets from Moscow and Warsaw.
It
would seem that Russia is in
the business of exporting the myth of socialism abroad while openly
abandoning it at home.
* * *
I should like to add a footnote to the report about the debate of
the German historians in the last issue of
Partisan Review
and the let–
ter by Jeffrey Herfin this one. The controversy, about national guilt
and identity, is a striking example of the polarization of political
thinking in some of the Western democracies.
Though it has taken a somewhat different form in America,
