Mao’s Deviation SPEECH WILL FEED FERMENT IN RUSSIA.

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28321, 5 July 1957, Page 10

Mao’s Deviation SPEECH WILL FEED FERMENT IN RUSSIA.

[By ISAAC DEUTSCHERI

London, June 22.—When the Russian communists introduced N.E.P. (the New Economic Policy), the act was described as an attempt to steer the revolution “down a steep hill, with brakes on.” This description may be applied with even better reason to what is going on in the Communist world at present. DeStalinisation is, indeed, for all Communist countries a descent with brakes on, except that some Communist parties have to go down very steep hills, while others move on gentler slopes. Mao’s is a relatively mild slope: and he has so far handled his brakes more skilfully and with a more even temper than Khrushchev, who has rushed down one or two stretches of his very steep hill with no brakes on.

Communist China has not been an “isolated and besieged fortress,” as Bolshevik Russia was in the course of three decades; and Soviet assistance has smoothed China’s progress. Consequently, only seven years after the revolution, the Chinese economy, which started from a lower level than the Russian, appears to have achieved an advance comparable with that which Russia achieved only after 11 or 12 years of Bolshevik rule. China’s standard of living, inevitably low, is nevertheless well above the pre-revolu-tionary level, whereas the Russian people, very many years after the revolution, were poorer and lived harder than before the revolution. In part this was due to a major difference in the fortunes of the two regimes. The Bolshevik first seized power and then had to fight civil wars and resist foreign intervention. The Chinese Communists, on the Contrary, fought their civil war before they seized power; and so once they took office they were more or less free to turn to constructive economic tasks. Fruits of Revolution This difference has had important political consequences. Any nation driven by misery and despair to make a revolution looks forward hopefully and impatiently to the fruits of revolution; and it judges its new rulers according to whether these fruits are forthcoming or not. They cannot be forthcoming if civil war develops after the revolution.

In 1924-25, seven years after they had seized power, the Bolsheviks still faced, empty-handed, the nation they rule; while the Chinese Communists can already take pride in having improved the people’s lot. Consequently, China has experienced little of the social and political tensions, of the dissillusionment of the masses and of their estrangement from Communist rulers, which were characteristic of post-revolu-tionary Russia and to which the Bolshevik leaders reacted with an obsession with the revolution’s and their own insecurity, with an acute distrust of the people, and a determination to suppress all opposition and to set up a totalitarian state.

Mao and his colleagues seem to be more or less free from such obsession and distrust. Their system of government, for all the terror that has gone into its making, has never had the massive mechanical and nightmarish oppressiveness of Stalinism. Their party has not been shaken and torn by any internal conflict as dramatic and bitter as the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, which was at its height seven years after the revolution and resulted in the party’s mental paralysis and moral degradation. (The Chinese Party, on the other hand, has never enjoyed the inner party democracy which was characteristic of early Bolshevism.) Scope for Withdrawal Thus for a variety of reasons the Chinese have not moved in the totalitarian direction even half as far as the Russians have gone. This makes it easier for them now to withdraw, to change direction, and to move towards a nontotalitarian Communist regime. This is not to say that they are ready to withdraw all the way. They are beset by the dilemma which is Inherent in any singleparty systems.

If various social interests are to be allowed scope for exercising pressure and if diversity of opinion is to be tolerated and even encouraged, will this not result in the break-down of the singleparty system, in which most Communists still see a condition of the revolution’s survival, and in the emergence of several parties?

It is curious to note how Mao wrestles with this dilemma. He first refers to some people in China who have already, under the influence of the remote Hungarian rising, asked “for the adoption of the two-party system of the West, where one party is in office and the other out of office.” He rejects this demand quite categorically. Yet, as the Chinese Communist regime is not nominally a single-party system—for it has allowed various non-Communist parties to lead a shadowy existence—Mao goes on to argue that the middle classes should be allowed political expression and that “the democratic parties of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie should be allowed to exist” side by side with the Communist Party “for a long time to come.” They must even be allowed to “supervise” the Communist Party as the latter “supervises” them. The bourgeois parties should exist, express their views, eyen “supervise,” but in no circumstances must they behave like an opposition striving for office. A Half-way House? It would probably be wrong to say that all this is sheer hypocrisy and make-believe, and that Mao is merely interested in using puppet-parties as a facade. What he really wants —and this is true of Gomulka as well—is a half-way house between the single-party system and the multiparty set-up, a half-way house in which the non-Communist parties should act as real and even vigorous pressure groups but not as the alternative government. The trouble, from the Communist viewpoint, is that such parties, half real and half puppet-like, tend to assume blood and flesh and even become pretenders to power at moments of crisis, when the Communist Party seems to lose or only loosen its grip. Both Mao and Gomulka have already found themselves compelled to

address stern warning to their non-Communist or bourgeoii parties. It is doubtful whether any of these parties will ever become a real threat tn Mao, but they may become dangerous to Gomulka. However, for the time being, both Mao and Gomulka appear to be convinced that they must face the risk of a limited break with the single-party system for the sake of that diversity of opinion without which the Communist parties would be condemned to ossiflea- / tion and impotence.

Let us now try to foreshadow briefly the impact which Mao’s pronouncement is likely to have on the U.S.S.R. and other Communist countries. Mao’s statement has come at a most inopportune moment to those elements in Moscow which, since the Hungarian revolt, have exerted themselves to curb and to reverse In part the process of de-Stalinisatiofc, “Pravda” has, nevertheless, had no choice but to publish Mao’i address in full. It is now avidly read, scrutinised, and pondered by many millions of Soviet citizens who draw from it their conclusions.

There is not a shadow of doubt that Mao’s words are giving a new and powerful impulse to deStalinisation. He has come to the rescue of the intellectual opposition in Russia, especially the writers and historians who are now under strong attack for the heresies they have voiced. They, will turn his words into their* battle-cry, especially the words about the flowers and the weeds and about the harm of hothouse protection for Marxism and the advantage of tolerating heresy. Effect on Russian Workers More important than the repercussions in intellectual circles will be the impression which Mao makes on the Soviet workingclass. For nearly 35 years Soviet workers have been told that to strike under a socialist regime is a counter-revolutionary crime. Masses of workers have spent many years in concentration camps, not for striking but for ordinary absenteeism and still lesser offences. Now Mao tells the Russians that the worker has a right to strike, that if he downs tools not he but the bureaucrat must be blamed, that strikes may even provide a useful check on those in power, and that strike agitation should go unpunished. All this is political dynamite for Russia. Why, Soviet workers will ask, should we be deprived, 40 years after the revolution, of the rights which the Chinese enjoy after seven years? Are we now the coolies? Nor are the workers likely to miss Mao’s incidental remarks directed against too wide discrepancies in wages and salaries, or to miss the quasiegalitarian tenor of his strictures on the bureaucracy. After decades of suppression the

egalitarian mood has asserting itself recently and gain-: ing strength among the Soviet working class. It will now feed on Mao’s views; and as the ferment of ideas spreads from intellectual circles to the workers, this renascent opposition to inequality will come to the fore.

To sum up, Mao’s speech will probably not stun and confuse minds in the Communist world as Khrushchev’s “secret” speech did; but it is certain to contribute solidly to the winding up of what is left of the Stalinist orthodoxy and method of government.— World Copyright Reserved. (Concluded)