Thus Stalin's last writings might be described as his political testament. He said in effect to his heirs: Your estate is one-third of the world. Keep it, preserve it, and build it up into a power which will eventually daunt all your enemies. In the meantime beware of hotheads and adventurers. Do not take risks. Do not rush into revolutionary enterprises in which you may dissipate what you possess.
In this shrewd caution Stalin remained true to himself to the end. During his life-time history sometimes proved him right; but more than once it mocked his caution and made of him the strangest of adventurers. Is history perhaps for the last time going to mock his caution post-humously? Will Stalin's successors be willing or able to carry out his political testament?
PART TWO
RUSSIAIN TRANSITION
CHAPTER SIX
THE MORAL CLIMATE
The crisis which Stalin's death accelerated and brought into the open was caused by a fundamental change in the relation between rulers and ruled. Before the Stalin era Bolshevism, in its aspirations and outlook, towered above its native Russian environment. Then it levelled itself with that environment and transformed it, with the paradoxical result that towards the end of the Stalin era the nation was culturally superior to the method of government and the moral climate of Stalinism. At first Bolshevism debased itself into Stalinism in order to be in harmony with Russia. Then Russia had to suffer permanent self-abasement to keep in line with Stalinism.
The fact that the nation had outgrown Stalinist tutelage was at the root of the acute malaise of the last years and months of the Stalin era. This malaise, which even the outsider could sense, did not express itself in clear political terms. There was no articulate opposition to the Stalinist system of government. After decades of terror all potential centres of opposition had been destroyed. No group existed capable of formulating any independent political programme and acting on it. Society as a whole had lost the capacity and the habit of forming its own opinion. As society's guardian Stalin exercised control so tyrannically that he deprived his ward of any intrinsic political identity. In time Soviet society grew tired of the harness of Stalinism and was anxious to throw it off; but it had also grown so accustomed to the harness that it could take no step without it. This ambivalent attitude towards Stalinism characterizes the period of transition to a new era.
We cannot say how long the period of transition may last. It may take Russia a few years to overcome her political numbness and to grow articulate again. If one were to judge Russia's state of mind by the cacophony of meaningless slogans put out by various groups of Soviet refugees to the West, the outlook would be unpromising indeed. But such a judgment would be absurd. Hardly any of those refugees belonged to the political or intellectual elite of their nation and in this respect they can in no way be compared to the emigres of the pre-revolutionary era. Sooner or later, the Russian people will learn to form and express its own opinions; and once it begins to do so, it will progress at a breathtaking pace and astonish the world once again by the extraordinary fertility of its political mind.
In the meantime, however, the initiative lies entirely with the men of the ruling group. Only reform decreed from above can force a way out of the impasse into which Stalinism finally landed itself. Moreover, reform from above forestalls upheaval from below. The first moves of Malenkov's government have shown an awareness of this fact.