'File 6/23 Communism (Including Soviet Broadcasts, Anti-Communistic Policy and Stalinism, etc)' [‎27v] (54/62)

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Soviet Union’s crusade for communism.
In January 1948 came a drive for the re
valuation of Russian classical literature,
the purpose of which was to point out that
the works of even the best Russian writers
of the past contained certain “ internal
contradictions '' and were not without out
worn ideas and sentiments alien to the
spirit of Soviet man. Finally, the recent
purge ’ ’ of outstanding Soviet composers
completed the process of hermetically
sealing oh all Soviet intellectual life from
the West and imposing party directives as
the only basis for creative activity.
31. This re-dedication of Soviet thought
is the post-war background against which
the pronouncements of Zhdanov, Malenkov
and Molotov in the last part of 1947 must
be read. Malenkov, in particular, summed
up and explained the entire process of the
return to Communist orthodoxy in his
speech at the Cominform foundation
meeting in Poland. The war, he said, had
left certain weaknesses in the Soviet State
and the Communist Party and ideology and
organisational standards had declined. He
also drew attention to the “ survival of
bourgeois thinking” among the Soviet
intelligentsia and to the need to press on
with the inculcation of Soviet patriotism,
to eradicate subservience to foreign ideas,
to emphasise Soviet vigilance, and so to
increase production as to make the Soviet
Union militarily and economically strong
enough to face any crisis. Molotov, in his
address on the eve of the 30th anniversary
of the October revolution, said that the
third period of Soviet development had
now begun. He, too, pointed to the tenacity
of “capitalist survivals” in the Soviet
Union, but added that there were now
“ vast opportunities to conduct the struggle
for the elimination of these survivals with
success.”
32. To-day, then, the Soviet policy
makers have gone far towards trans
forming the Soviet Union into a rigidly
controlled community in which all economic,
intellectual and emotional forces are
canalised in the service of the Party-State.
In the process they are not above utilising
the natural emotions of their peoples even
when those feelings are in direct conflict
with Marxist teachings. The most flagrant
example of this is the pandering to Russian
nationalism, the strength of which became
strikingly apparent in the course of the
war. The lesson having been duly absorbed,
the party leaders have continued to turn
this non-Marxist spiritual force to their
own use while at the same time trying to
reconcile it with official doctrines. The
feat of squaring this particular circle
is accomplished by the concept of
Soviet patriotism. Soviet patriotism is
patriotism of a higher type ” ; its essence
is loyalty to the Soviet ideal and thus,
unlike ordinary patriotism, it is subject to
no limitations of country, race or creed, so
that, in theory, there is no reason why
Poles, Serbs, Roumanians or Englishmen,
if sufficiently purified of bourgeois
instincts, should not subscribe to it. It thus
retains the dynamic of the German
Herrenvolk theory, while skilfully avoiding
the latter’s antagonising exclusiveness.
The same opportunism is shown in the
exploitation of religion and Slavism. The
Russian Orthodox Church is allowed to
function because, apart from the support it
gives to the regime inside the Soviet Union,
it can and does reach out into other Ortho
dox fields, combat hostile religious forces^
such as Roman Catholicism, and enhance
the prestige and influence of Moscow in the
spiritual realm. The All-Slav movement
also serves an obvious immediate tactical
purpose in Eastern Europe, although in
this case, in view of its dangerous exclu
siveness, it is not to be expected that it will
ever be given more than a secondary role.
33. In actual fact, now that the achieve
ment of communism has become an affair
of the Soviet State, the part to be played
by each Soviet citizen has dwindled to
working to strengthen the State in every
way and to following blindly the instruc
tions of his superiors. In the two and a
half years since the end of the war, the
Soviet leaders have accurately assessed the
discrepancies between Soviet post-war
reality and the path of development^
mapped out by Stalin at the 18th Party
Congress, and they have applied with ruth
less consistency the correctives necessary to
force the Soviet people back on to that path.
The short period of limited contact with
other ideas and of the resurgence of
traditional Russian ideals is now over and
further developments within the Soviet
Union, as long as the present phase lasts,
can only be in the direction of sundering
what minor connexions may still exist with
the capitalist world, of concentrating all
forces on the preservation of the Soviet
myth in its entirety, and so strengthening
the material might of the Soviet community
that all other communities will be con
strained to succumb to it.
Soviet Foreign Policy since the War
34. It has been reiterated countless times
by Soviet spokesmen and propagandists
that a fundamental change occurred in the