The changes are, on the whole, well known, although the knowledge of them is no guarantee against the temptation to think of the Russia of the 1950's in terms that would have been perfectly up to date and realistic in the 1930's, or even 1940's, but which are now becoming obsolete. It is a common propensity of the political analyst to lag mentally behind the times. It is even more common for statesmen and politicians to try to apply to new problems solutions successfully or even unsuccessfully applied to previous situations. We are liable to make such errors in our thinking about any nation. But with regard to no nation is this time lag likely to be as great as in relation to Russia, because every recent decade has brought about changes in Russia's national existence more radical and profound than those normally occurring in the life of a nation over half a century.
The West has had its eyes fixed on the purges, the witch-hunts, and the terror which Stalinism employed in its merciless struggle to perpetuate its hold over the minds and bodies of the Soviet people, and more recently of all peoples within the Soviet orbit. That struggle has been real enough; and so has its effectiveness. Yet it was Stalin himself, not his opponents, who in a sense waged the most bitter and effective struggle against the perpetuation of his own system.
Stalinism has persistently and ruthlessly destroyed the soil in which it had grown, that primitive, semi-Asiatic society on whose sap it fed. By its barbarous methods it has succeeded in driving out of Russia most of the barbarism from which it had drawn its strength.
It has achieved this because, even while it expressed the ascendancy of the Oriental-Russian backwardness over Marxism, it also represented the dictatorship of Marxism over that backwardness.
Marxism had postulated an industrial society as the prerequisite for the establishment of socialism. In a titanic struggle with the inefficiency, the sluggishness, and the anarchy of Mother Russia, Stalinism has carried its industrial revolution almost to every corner of its Eurasian realm. The core of Stalin's genuine historic achievement lies in the fact that he found Russia working with the wooden plough and left her equipped with atomic piles.
None of the great nations of the West has carried out its industrial revolution in so short a time and under such crippling handicaps.
Great Britain long enjoyed the advantages of being the world's first and only industrial workshop. Protected by the Channel from foreign invasion, the British devoted their undivided economic strength to the development of their productive resources. The industrialization of Britain, now gaining and now losing momentum, stretched over centuries.
In the United States the process took several decades only. But the United States benefited from exceptional geographic, climatic, and historical advantages. Its people were protected by two oceans and had no need to waste their resources on the requirements of war. They were also fortunate in not having to break down and to overcome inherited anachronistic forms of economic life in their own country. And they were assisted by an abundant influx of foreign capital and machinery, by the immigration of many enterprising spirits and vast numbers of skilled and unskilled labour from all countries of the old world.
Germany also was assisted in her industrialization by foreign capital; and she could freely draw on resources in craftsmanship accumulated over the ages. The process by which Germany changed from an agricultural into an industrial nation lasted nearly half a century, a half-century of an expanding world economy and peace in Europe (1871–1914), which allowed Germany to invest only a negligible proportion of her resources in unproductive armaments.
The Stalinist industrial revolution has so far lasted less than a quarter of a century; and nearly half a decade of this was taken up by a most devastating war, which obliterated much of the achievement of previous years. Even in peace the threat of war hung over Russia's vulnerable frontiers most of the time; and armament production drained off a huge portion of the nation's resources. Foreign investment played no part in Soviet industrialization. The contribution of foreign skill and labour, if not totally absent, was comparatively negligible, while Russia's own resources in administrative and industrial skill were extremely poor.