Soviet publications reflected these strains and stresses only negatively and indirectly, and still do so even after Stalin's death. Thus, for instance, the March 1953 issue of the Kommunist (the former Bolshevik) says:
‘We must definitely put an end to opportunistic indifference and eliminate the anti-Marxist theory that the class struggle is calming down, a theory which starts from the premiss that as we are moving forward towards communism, even though we are doing so in capitalistic encirclement, the enemy becomes more and more harmless…’
The polemical distortion of the criticized view is obvious enough; but one would look in vain for any exposition in the Soviet Press of this view or for any indication of the persons holding it. Another paper, brought out some time before Stalin's death, castigated members of the intelligentsia — their names and academic titles were given — who set out unorthodox views in special memoranda and circulated these in typescript among friends and even in official institutions. This detail revealed more about the actual ferment of ideas than reams of Stalinist and anti-Stalinist writings. It indicated a relaxation of totalitarian control: no one would have dared thus to circulate unorthodox views under his own signature in the late 1930's or perhaps even in the 1940's.
Such attempts to propagate heretical ideas are in line with a good old Russian tradition. A hundred years ago Russia's progressive thinkers, unable to air their views in the licensed Press, similarly circulated their manuscripts, which made history. It was in this way that, for instance, Belinsky, the great radical critic and precursor of revolutionary trends, spread his ideas under the rule of Nicholas I, the Iron Tsar.
Unlike their predecessors, however, the Belinskys of contemporary Russia, if they exist, can be only reformers, not revolutionaries. They can aim only at improving and cleansing the existing social order, not at overthrowing it. That the main trend of Soviet anti-Stalinism was reformist could be seen even in the distorting mirror of recent emigre writings. Some time ago the Russian emigre Press reported that by far the most numerous party among post-war Russian refugees was one which described itself as the ‘Lenin Party’ and advocated a return to the democratic origins of the Bolshevik revolution. Hostile correspondents who reported this pointed out with some alarm that ‘at least a good half’ of the mass of refugees belonged to that party, although it had no periodicals and no organization, and although its adherents in the camps for displaced persons lived in constant terror of being denounced either to Soviet or to Western ‘security organs’.
The ‘Lenin legend’ is surviving the Stalin cult, although the latter cynically exploited and abused it for its own purposes. It is difficult to define the implications of this fact. Leninism is subject to widely differing interpretations; and it may be held that the slogan about a ‘return to Lenin’ is unreal: history rarely, if ever, returns to its starting-point. But what the slogan sums up is a yearning for regeneration of ‘Soviet democracy’ and a desire to reform the present order, not to overthrow it.
The strength of the ‘Lenin legend’ may be judged from many indications. We can cite here one other instance which seems as convincing as it is strange. It will be remembered that during the Second World War the Soviet General A. Vlasov, taken prisoner by the Nazis, later fought on the German side and commanded a Russian army formed of prisoners of war. After the war Vlasov was handed over to Soviet military authorities and executed as a traitor. Recently a book on Vlasov was published by a Russian emigre who was Vlasov's adjutant and was by his side when the Nazis conducted him from a prison camp to Berlin. The author describes that on the way Vlasov argued thus with the German officers who were escorting him: ‘I want to give you my advice on how to overthrow Stalin. This can be done only with the help of Lenin.’ There was, Vlasov said, only one way of gaining the confidence of the Soviet people, and this was to tell them that Stalin had distorted and falsified Lenin's teaching, and that the time had come to restore the true Leninist republic of workers and peasants. ‘We ought to tell the people that we are going to begin anew where the great Lenin left off — if Lenin had been alive everything would have been different.’
It is difficult to imagine a scene of greater bathos than this, in which a Soviet general, setting his foot on the slippery road of treason, pleaded with the Nazis that they should appeal to the Russian people in the name of Lenin. Vlasov hated the Stalin regime and allowed himself to be carried away by this hatred. The Nazis were willing to use him, but, of course, his advice sounded to them like the raving of a disordered mind. No anti-communist power could risk conjuring up the spirit of Lenin. Nevertheless there was a great truth behind Vlasov's grotesque pleading: The hope of a renascence of the revolution has never been extinguished in the Soviet people, and it has been kept alive by remote memories of the Leninist period. This hope still remains an imponderable and most vital factor in the political climate of Russia.
Significantly during Stalin's last months there re-sounded throughout Russia a warning against those who argued that now, when Russia was no longer the only
communist country in the world, the old ways and habits of Stalinism had become outdated. With one foot in the grave, Stalin heard his lieutenants raising the alarm about the recurrence of ‘Bukharinist and Trotskyist deviations’ in the party. And Stalin himself, in his last published letters, had to rebuke young Soviet economists for a relapse into these long-suppressed heresies.