Zdzisław Stahl

“A better Russia” will not bring down Soviet Russia

Last week we discussed in these pages the thesis of an American expert of Soviet affairs and a columnist G. F. Kennan1 that a change of the Soviet system can be achieved peacefully and by the action of forces only internal to that empire. An article by this author under the title America and the Future of Russia contains yet another thesis, closely related to the first, but equally erroneous, pernicious and superficial. This is the idea of the transformation of today’s Soviet Union, but into a new empire, also unitary and based on the omnipotence of the Russian people, as long as it is willing to coexist peacefully with the democracies of the West.

This concept is yet another proof of how stubborn the supporters of Yalta are in defending their system and how blindly, doctrinairely, they are prepared to defend it. For at the heart of the Yalta policy is the idea of co-rulership of the world by the United States and the Eurasian Empire, ruled from Moscow, at the expense mainly of Europe and the principle of freedom of nations in general. The Yalta system is the opposite of that idea of freedom, equality and self-determination of nations, the triumph of which ended in the First World War, and whose loudest ensign was also the then President of the States, Roosevelt’s2 noble predecessor, W. Wilson3.

The deductions of G. F. Kennan make it clear that he would have seen most readily some sort of inheritance of rule in Moscow, as painlessly as possible, by a new group which, however, was to be bequeathed the whole of Soviet rule intact and committed only to certain changes in its policy:

“(...) two things are of great importance,” he writes in his article America and the Russian future (Foreign Affairs, April), “(...) 1. that we know what we want; and 2. that we know how to proceed on our part to facilitate rather than hinder the coming to pass of what we want (...) We are dealing here with a foreign country and our role may be at best marginal, supplementary to others who will play an important part...” (s. 352).

“There is great good in the Russian national character, and the realities of that country scream out today for a form of administration more considerate of that good. Let us hope that it will come. But when Soviet power has run its course, or when its personalities and spirit begin to change (for the ultimate outcome could be one or the other), let us not hover nervously over the people who come after, applying litmus papers daily to their political complexions to find out whether they answer to our concept of ‘democratic.’ Give them time; let them be Russians; let them work out their internal problems in their own manner.” (p. 356 – emphasis mine).

To this future, “better” Russia, whose rulers in their “democratic” methods of government Mr Kennan would not want to prevent from being Russians or impose his notions of democracy on them, he makes only certain cautious demands designed to satisfy American politics. The good namely and desirable for the US would be a Russia which “(…) will refrain from pinning an oppressive yoke on other peoples who have the instinct and the capacity for national self-assertion” (p. 361); “(…) the Russia of the future: that she lift forever the Iron Curtain, that she recognize certain limitations to the internal authority of government, and that she abandon, as ruinous and unworthy, the ancient game of imperialist expansion and oppression” (p. 362).

Kennan further supplements the above recommendations with remarks that “nothing will be achieved by maintaining an attitude of indignation against an entire nation”, that totalism “is not a national phenomenon” and that Americans must act differently from Germans. They will achieve nothing by simultaneously fighting “the Russian people and the Soviet government”. All of this reveals a doctrine clearly based on the conviction that the culprit for the collapse of Soviet power can primarily be the Russian people themselves, whose ambitions or interests for their country to be a superpower should therefore not be compromised in any way. Above all, therefore, the idea of the freedom of the peoples of the Soviet empire should not be mentioned, as this could discourage the Great Russians from overturning Stalin’s rule and from then cooperating with the West and trading with the American companies and the entire great financiers of the democratic world.

This concept must arouse sympathy in the pacifist circles of the Western democracies, because it creates the illusion of avoiding war, and salutes the old idea of the “big three” or preferably “two” ruling the world, with disregard for moral principles and the interests of the so-called “small nations”. This concept, however, not based on a real-world rationale, has only the appearance of the greatest practicality and bears all the hallmarks of a behind-the-scenes suggestion by groups that are primarily concerned with maintaining the Eurasian empire and securing it against external pressure. Kennan is of course correct when he warns against using Hitler’s political methods against the Soviets, but this does not at all mean that condoning Russian imperialism and its gains is the correct thesis. For Hitler’s main mistake was not in offending Russian national ambitions (on the contrary, he considered them strongly, renounced his Ukrainian programme for them, and commissioned Vlasov’s Russian troops4), but in the absence of any clear programme for the future arrangement of the Soviet territories, and in his brutal cruelty in treating both the entire population of the occupied lands of the Soviet Union and Soviet prisoners of all nationalities.

To a population oppressed for decades by Bolshevik tyranny, and thirsting above all for freedom and prosperity, Hitler’s German occupation brought new tyranny and disillusionment to the possibility of liberation by German intervention. It alienated not only the Russian population, but all nationalities that encountered the German invaders. Also, the only lesson that American policy should learn from the past war is the dogma that German troops must not be used in the march to the lands of Soviet occupation and the Soviet empire. For a German soldier would stir up the memory of the atrocities of the last war and rouse the resistance of the local population.

Thus, the winning of Russian superpower interests against Soviet totalism is not supported by the experience of the last war, but neither is any other argument based on objective knowledge of things. Not only is Bolshevism not the opposite of the national tradition of the Russian state, but, on the contrary, it has inherited from it and merely glorified external imperialism and tyrannical methods of internal rule, the very qualities that Mr Kennan would not wish for the future. It is difficult, therefore, to understand why, in wishing to introduce more liberal rule and renouncing total methods in the Soviet areas, the American bystander recommends giving freedom precisely to the Russians, who, after all, led the country “from the white to the red tsarism”. Everything points to the fact that any regime of theirs, on whatever ideology it might be based, would always end in the same thing: a new “tsarism”, that is, precisely some form of totalism at home, and imperialism in foreign policy.

Secondly, one would have to ask where Mr Kennan sees these national Russian forces, suitable for mobilisation against today’s Kremlin rulers in the name of a new “better Russia”, which would retain the character of a unified empire and would only be expected to grant some, modestly reserved, autonomy to its people and its peoples. Mr Kennan intends to leave his Russians with their own notion of democracy, which they never had, as every person familiar with history knows, but as the Russian people, above all, and even better the other peoples of the Soviet empire, who have lived under the yoke of Moscow for much longer than thirty years, know well. I think that those elements, whom Mr Kennan wants to please, have no reason whatsoever to speak out against Soviet power, for it is precisely that which best suits both their notions of democracy and their imperialist aspirations.

The Soviet system is based on a synthesis of two elements: communism and the traditional imperialism of Moscow. Whoever, therefore, wants to overthrow it in the name of human freedom and the future of civilisation must act against both elements simultaneously, abandoning prevaricating and opportunist formulas. And the force on which it is possible to rely inside the Soviet Union, after the necessary action from outside against the tyranny of the Kremlin, is only the longing for freedom and prosperity of all the people, nations and peoples inhabiting the vast areas of Eurasia, not excluding the Russian people, but also not giving it any unique or prime role. On the contrary, the Russian people are – like the German people for Hitler’s tyranny – particularly responsible for the totality that made Moscow its capital. Having therefore brought freedom to the peoples of the Soviet empire, it must also be brought to the Russians, but not so that they can subjugate other peoples again.

It is also necessary, finally, to remove from one’s imagination the false image of the Soviet empire as “Russia”, i.e., a nationally homogeneous territory, a misnomer consistently used by Kennan. These vast areas of Eurasia are in fact inhabited by dozens of indigenous nations, peoples and tribes of various levels of culture, but equally desirous of and deserving of freedom. And if American policy in general takes an attitude of aversion to states of the colonial type, if Great Britain renounces this character of hers, as incompatible with the spirit of the times, it is difficult to understand why towards the colonial empire of Moscow, ruled by methods a hundred times more brutal, some exceptional sympathies and privileges are preserved in certain circles of democratic states. In the free “one world” of the future there can be no place for the empire of Eurasia, and only the liberation of the peoples of that area is a programme with a chance of moving the masses, lingering in Soviet bondage, and facilitating with their help the destruction of the communist-Moscow empire after the armed forces of the world of freedom have struck the world of knout and bondage.

The political thought of the United States is developing rapidly, readily abandoning doctrines which are false and obsolete, and absorbing ideas which are new and more vital and in keeping with the spirit of the times. Since Yalta, the world has shrunk further and the idea of co-government of the globe by a partnership of empires has become obsolete, because the friction between partners now threatening each other mortally across continents and oceans, as if they were neighbours on a spit of land, has become too dangerous for the peace and prosperity of nations. The idea of a “one world” already contains new images, although not yet fully realised. It is a world in which there is no longer any place for the Eurasian empire, always a threat to world peace. The rapidly growing sense of strength and responsibility in the American people seems to be on the way to these new concepts, and with their victory, the shallow opportunism of the Yaltaites will end up in a dustbin.

Let us have some patience and initiative.