The Emerging Russia

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30965, 22 January 1966, Page 4

The Emerging Russia

Russia After Khrushchev. By Robert Conquest Pall Mall. 264 pp. Index.

The new science of “Sovietology” often has no firmer base than inspired guesswork because of the shroud of silence which normally covers internal political activity in j Russia. A corner of thati shroud was lifted briefly at the time of Mr Khrushchev’s “resignation" in October, 1964, and. working from irrefutable sources wherever possible, Mr Conquest has attempted to describe and make predictions about the new Russia which is emerging. He is wary of any simple explanation of the workings of what is for the West still a strange political system. “The most strik-| ing difference (from the West) is that there is no mechanism for the social forces to express themselves.” Mr Conquest points out that the new leaders have inherited machinery designed to enforce their will against public tendencies. Thus a Russia, which under Khrushchev seemed to be relaxing internal dictatorship and outward intransigence, now presents “an unprecedented lack of

both quality and credibility among those at present best situated in the struggle for power,” which implies a period of marked instability.

In an effort to point a way to the future he analyses the recent past, the evolution of Stalinism, Khrushchev’s “liberalisation,” the anti-Stalinist reaction, the party apparatus, the personal attributes of Brezhnev and Kosygin, and the current power positions of their potential rivals. “There is considerable evidence of widespread classhatred in the Soviet Union—or fear and envy on the part of the under-privileged towards the ruling castes. But it is not really directed against the regime itself . . .

The divine right of the ‘apparatchik’ to rule in general i has not been challenged.”

But with weakness or schism at the centre Mr Conquest puts forward the possibility of eventual secession by certain of the peripheral republics restive under Moscow rule, in which case the U.S.S.R. could conceivably break up. However, the most crucial challenge comes from China. As an industrial country with consumer standards well above starvation level the Soviet Union has a community of interest with the other developed powers in preventing a nuclear war, whereas: “. . . for the Chinese atomic warfare. however devastating, would mean the destruction of other people’s power and bring the whole world down to the Chinese level. Thus any conceivable regime in Moscow must take a different view from Peking.”

Mr Conquest foresees in Russia a “progressive disintegration” of the effective political challenge to the Western world, giving rise to a situation where Communist countries can retain their present social structure and party rule and yet cease to be a threat to world peace, or in continual strife against their own populations. Probably, “any rulers arising in Russia over the next 10 years will at least be sufficiently prudent about atomic war,” but it is not certain. And so "the mere existence and maintenance of the military power and world alliance of the West is a powerful pressure on the Russian leadership.” In such circumstances, without relaxing its guard, the West should be anxious to strengthen those in the Kremlin most inclined to compromise. As Mr Conquest sees it, Kosygin and Brezhnev, and their nearest rivals Shelepin and Podgorny, Suslov and Polyansky, are not the men to rule a great country beset by crises. Nor do they appear capable of dismantling the giant party bureaucracy, as they must if the pressures from below are not to become explosive.

“The grip of the machine would at present only be shaken by a decisive split either within the Presidium or between it and the army command, or a combination of both,” Mr Conquest predicts, cautiously, that “we might conclude that some such development—and in the fairly near future—is not unlikely.”