After Zhukov “BONAPARTE” GHOST HAUNTING MOSCOW?

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28434, 14 November 1957, Page 14

After Zhukov “BONAPARTE” GHOST HAUNTING MOSCOW?

[By

ISAAC DEUTSCHER]

London, November 3. —The ghost of Bonaparte will probably continue to haunt Moscow. Zhukov has. after all. not been “liquidated.” He has emerged triumphantly from one disgrace; he may yet re-emerge from another. His popularity is still far greater than Khrushchev’s. Millions of soldiers and thousands of officers who fought under him still look up to him as to the national hero. The mass of the peasantry is strongly susceptible to the magic of a “military failure,” though the urban workers may be less impressed by it. (Only the other day I watched how that magic worked, even in quiet unexpected quarters, when a former high official of the Communist International, who had spent in Soviet concentration camps and prisons 22 years, from 1934 to 1956. sought to persuade me of the advantages of military dictatorship to present-day Russia.). Marshal Zhukov-’s position may be similar to that of General de Gaulle’s in France. In the late 1940’s General de Gaulle was a claimant to power. He then had J to withdraw into the wilderness. Still at moments of acute political instability many of the French turned their eyes on him; and a violent social convulsion may yet bring him to power. Similarly, many Russians will still turn their eyes on Zhukov; and political turmoil or a war-like emergency may yet bring him again to the fore. The trend towards military leadership has been inherent in more than one society unable to govern itself in a democratic manner. As long as Soviet peoples have not learned to govern themselves, this trend will remain in being under the surface of monolithic party politics; and it is a matter of only secondary importance whether Zhukov or any other general acts as its exponent. It is not only from the military, however, that KhrusMchev must be prepared to met another challenge. The circle of his opponents is widening continuously. He has deprived Molotov and I Kaganovich of office; but he has| not "liquidated” them either. They are still the leaders of the Stalinist diehards who, discredited and downcast, represent, nevertheless, some influence. From his power station in Turkestan. Molotov, who also has his following, still watches the contest for power in Moscow, waiting for his opportunity. Now the Zhukov group, which comprises many important generals, is being removed to the sideline. As long as the sailing is plain for Khrushchev they may all be helpless against him. But should he run into rough waters and suffer any grave economic or political reverse, then they may all move from the sidelines and converge on him. A similar situation once led Stalin to extract from his defeated opponents humiliating recantations, to stage purge trials and finally to exterminate them all. In Stalin’s Foosteps Khrushchev is driven by the circumstances of his struggle to follow in Stalin’s footsteps and thereby to "rehabilitate” Stalinism implicitly. Yet he himseif has made it very difficult and almost impossible for him to follow in these footsteps. He must pander to the popular revulsion against autocracy which he himself has done so much to arouse. He is compelled to justify every blow he inflicts on his enemies as part of an endeavour to do away with the legacy of a sinister dictatorship and to restore “Leninist democracy.” He seeks to discredit all his opponents on the ground that they are tainted with Stalinist vices. All the more awkward and dangerous becomes his own position when, in some measure, he himself exhibits the same vices.

He has tied at least one of his hands when he may need it for further struggle. He dares not boost up his own personality. He must obey, or pretend to obey. Ihe tricky niceties of the party statutes in which he may get entangled. Every few weeks he must place his fate anew in the hands of the Central Committee, watching anxiously the result and fight for his margin of victory. Khrushchev’s Insecurity Despite all his successes, he is not yet acclaimed as the leader, as Stalin was less than three years after Lenin’s death when it had already become the accepted formula that "the Central Committee is united round Comrade Stalin” and that it marched with "Comrade Stalin at its head* Nearly five years after Stalin’s death, the present Central Com-

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mittee, even though Khrushchev claims to have its unanimous backing, does not describe itself as “united round Comrade Khrushchev” or as marching with “Comrade Khrushchev at its head.” He must still move with "Leninist modesty” as one of a team exercising collective leadership. He knows that if he came forward undisguisedly as a single leader he might be swept away by popular indignation and revolt. He still shrinks from donning the autocrat's blood-stain-ed garment because he fears that this, like the mythological shirt in which Heracles perished, contains the poison that may kill him. It should be emphasised once again that if Russia's spectacular industrial advance, exemplified by the Sputniks, continues, and if it is accompanied by marked improvement in the economic conditions of the masses and by wider social, progress, then present strains and stresses are likely to diminish and the political conflicts to grow milder until the precedents of the Stalin era, those of autocracy and recurrent purges, cease to be relevant to the new situation. Then the rivalries of the Soviet rulers may come to be seen as merely belated reflexes of people bred and conditioned by Stalinism but belonging to a closed epoch, and then a new era would follow in which the peoples of the U.S.S.R., confident in the vitality of their social institutions and needing no Czar or tyrant, would reassert their dignity and rights and become masters of their own destiny.—(World Copyright Reserved.) [Concluded.]