1938: Communism

Communism, or revolutionary Marxism, is the doctrine evolved by Lenin and Stalin and supposedly directing today the political, social and economic system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the successor to the former Russian Empire. Communism claims to be a universal doctrine applicable in every country. In its beginnings Communism therefore developed a world-wide propaganda, and aimed at creating Soviet Republics in all parts of the world. Communism was unsuccessful in its attempts. In the turmoil in Central Europe following the World War two very short-lived Soviet Republics came into existence, in Bavaria and in Hungary, but they were quickly suppressed by a reactionary regime, the 'white terror' of which determined the fate of these countries for the years to come. A few years later an attempt at spreading Soviet influence in China also miscarried. There the native Nationalist movement under Marshall Chiang Kai-shek put an end to Communist agitation and suppressed with great cruelty the youthful groups in which Communism had spread.

Change of Policy.

At the beginning of the thirties it may be said that Communism under the leadership of Joseph Stalin abandoned the plans and agitations for world revolution and for a world-wide expansion of Communism, although of course the old terminology was still used from time to time. In reality Stalin's efforts were concentrated upon building up a Socialist order within the Soviet Union; and a quick modernization of her economic life was to change the country from a backward, agrarian, semioriental one into a progressive, industrialized, almost Americanized one. This new orientation expressed itself also in the Soviet foreign policy. The Soviet Union until then had refused to collaborate with the capitalistic powers and with the League of Nations which it regarded as a bulwark for the maintenance of the capitalist status quo. The growing strength of Fascism which, although from the opposite point of view, also threatened to overthrow the capitalistic system brought about a realignment in the Soviet foreign policy. Fascism under the leadership of the Germany of Hitler expressed its uncompromising hostility to liberalism and democracy as much as to Communism, and regarded both as stemming from the same root. Hitler proclaimed openly his desire to attack the Soviet Union and destroy her. In 1934 the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations, after Germany and Japan had left the League, and looked for a closer collaboration with France and Great Britain in an effort to maintain international peace and to prevent aggression on the part of the Fascist powers against weaker or isolated states.

This new international orientation was accompanied by a similar change of policy in the national field. In many countries the efforts to create Communist parties had been unsuccessful, as in Great Britain, the United States, Austria. Scandinavia and the Netherlands. In Germany and in other Fascist and semi-Fascist countries the Communist parties had been suppressed and outlawed. In some countries like France and Czechoslovakia the Communist parties, although definitely a very small minority, nevertheless were strong enough to be able to play a certain rôle through their parliamentary representation. Up to 1934 these Communist parties had been sharply opposed to the 'bourgeois' and moderate Socialist parties. In Germany the Communist party, out of opposition to the moderate Socialists and the Weimar Republic, had before 1933 indirectly helped the National Socialists not only to undermine the Weimar Republic but to come into power. Now the Communists devised a new tactic, to support the moderate Socialists and the liberal bourgeoisie in the attempt to defend their countries against Fascist aggression and to strengthen the system of collective security.

These new tactics were generally associated with what came to be known as the 'Popular Front.' As liberalism and democracy were threatened by Fascism as much as by Communism, and as, at least for the time being. Fascism, and not Communism, showed itself as a world revolutionary force undermining established forms of government, a cooperation between Communism and liberalism seemed to many observers advisable as the only means of stopping the rising tide of aggression. The Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Maxim Litvinov, became one of the leading spokesmen for collective security in the councils of the League of Nations. The Soviet Union abandoned all aggressive designs. The Communist or Third International, or Comintern, the federation of all the Communist parties in the world, which had acted under the leadership of the strongest of these parties, the Russian Communist Party, became dormant. Only very rarely did the Chairman of the Comintern, the Bulgarian Dimitroff, make any speeches which recalled the old phraseology of the Comintern. This policy of conciliation and cooperation dominated the entire communist outlook after 1932.

Trotskyism.

A small group of Communists under the leadership of Leon Trotsky did not believe in the possibility of cooperation with the capitalist powers and continued to adhere to the idea of a world revolution. In 1927 Trotsky was deprived by Stalin of his membership in the Communist Party, was expelled from the Soviet Union, and found refuge first in France, then in Norway, and finally in 1937 in Mexico where he lives at present under strict guard, the target of bitter Communist hostility. His adherents, the so-called Trotskvists, are to be found in the Soviet Union and in many other countries. Although they form only a very small proportion of the Communists, they have founded a new International, the so-called Fourth International, as against the Third or Communist International of the Stalinists, and the Second International of the moderate Social-Democratic parties. It cannot be said at present that the Trotskyists, insignificant in number, apply themselves to the task of world revolution: instead, they concentrate all their efforts not on the fight against Fascism or capitalism, but on the fight against Stalin and the official Communists whom he directs.

New Leadership.

The war between these two camps of Communism has proceeded during the last few years with an unprecedented severity, not only in the different European countries and in the United States, but also in the Soviet Union. There the struggle culminated in the famous monster processes against the 'Trotskyist opposition.' In these processes practically all the old leaders of Communism, who had belonged to the party from early pre-revolutionary times and who had been during the first years of the Soviet regime the closest collaborators of Lenin, were accused of treason against the Soviet regime. After long drawn-out public trials which did not allow the outside observer to form a definite judgment as to the extent of the guilt of the accused nor as to the strange psychological attitude which led to confessions and self-incriminations, most of the accused leaders were executed, some committed suicide, others were sentenced to long prison terms. It may be safely stated that all the well-known names associated with Communism during the first decade of the Soviet regime were annihilated. Of the older generation, who had regarded Communism under world-wide aspects as a revolutionary movement, none remained but Stalin whose rôle in the first years of the Communist revolution had been secondary. These trials removed from the stage not only the leading Communist theorists and writers but also many of the most gifted industrial organizers, diplomats and generals of the Soviet regime. This complete overhauling of Communist doctrine and Communist personnel weakened the Soviet Union by depriving her of her most competent leading figures, but it strengthened undoubtedly the position of Stalin and of his policy of concentration upon the Soviet Union alone, and away from all plans of a world revolution. A new interpretation was then given to Communism and to the history of the Communist Revolution in Russia. All text-books on recent history and all doctrinal manuals had to be rewritten. All allusions to the great achievements of the men who had cooperated with Lenin and to whose efforts the success of the Revolution was due, were wiped out, Stalin became the hero of the Revolution, and his doctrines as they had evolved during the last years were represented as the only official doctrine underlying the whole development of Communism.

To outside observers this purging process which continued through 1938, seemed to reveal a weakening of the power of the Soviet system, of its army, its administration and its economic structure. The efficiency and the growing strength of the Soviet army and of the economic set-up had been generally judged very favorably in 1934 and 1935. In 1938 more and more doubts were expressed as to the real efficiency and strength of the Soviet regime. It was again practically impossible to find out how much of this estimate was based upon any knowledge of the facts and how much of it was determined by wishful thinking.

One result of this purge of Trotskyist elements was clear, the establishment of the personal dictatorship of Stalin. Communism, differing in that respect fundamentally from Fascism, is a doctrine which does not admit of any hero cult or of any personal dictatorship. Communism is based upon a primarily objective interpretation of history and of the social and economic forces, in the interplay of which the individual plays only an insignificant rôle. Communism does not recognize the embodiment of an idea, of a race or of a class in a personality having almost magic powers. Individuals in Communism are only the servants, preferably anonymous, of an objective idea and of super-individual historical process. Stalin has claimed, in contradiction to the original Communist theory, the rôle of an individual leader who is a hero as well as an embodiment of the idea of Communism and of the Russian Revolution. All opposition to Stalin's personal dictatorship has been ruthlessly suppressed. Stalin has surrounded himself more and more with men who were his blind followers and tools. He has had to look for them among the younger generation which has grown up after the Russian Revolution, the new Soviet intelligentsia.

Soviet Patriotism.

Whereas the older leaders of Communism had lived many years abroad and had world-wide views, this new generation has been brought up within the Soviet Union and entirely concentrated upon it. They have proclaimed a new patriotism, divested of the earlier world-revolutionary aspirations, a Soviet patriotism proud of the fatherland and common to all the working men and women of the many races and peoples inhabiting the Soviet Union. In this way the new Soviet patriotism is different from the more narrow nationalism and chauvinism of the Fascist countries. It repudiates any narrow exclusivism, it welcomes men and women of all races and of all peoples, it is based upon the recognition of the equality of all men and all races, it stresses, however, attachment to the native soil, to native traditions and to the achievements of the new social order. As a consequence a new stress was put upon the history of the Russian and other peoples living within the Soviet Union. The great heroes and the great literary and cultural achievements of their past were no longer condemned as signs of 'feudal' or 'bourgeois' backwardness, but were more justly appraised in their importance. Thus the teaching of history and generally the system of education became more 'conservative.'

In addition the importance of the family was stressed, divorce was frowned upon. The leading Soviet papers spoke of the strengthening of family ties and a dignified family relationship built on an enduring basis. The number of marriages registered in the Soviet Union for the first half of 1938 showed an increase of 12.1 per cent as compared to the registration of marriages in the same period of 1937. In some of the smaller national republics which compose the Soviet Union, the increase was much greater. At the same time the number of divorces showed a rapid reduction. In Moscow for example 16,182 divorces had been registered during 1936. In 1937 this figure had shrunk to 8,961 divorces for the year, and a further decline was expected for 1938.

This new and in a certain way anti-revolutionary patriotism finds its expression also in the lip-service paid to democracy as embodied in the new Constitution. The growing danger of Fascist aggression against the Soviet Union, especially from Germany and Japan, has increased this new patriotism. The 125th anniversary of the death of Field Marshal Kutusov, the general whose strategy had defeated Napoleon in 1812, was celebrated publicly in March 1938 in the Soviet Union, as well as the 750th anniversary of the composition of the famous heroic epic of Russia, the story of the expedition of Prince Igor against the Polovtzes. The heroic defense of the fatherland against alien and barbarian invaders was stressed. In a certain way the present regime in the Soviet Union regards itself as the fulfillment and consummation of the hopes which throughout the centuries have animated the Russian and the other peoples of the Soviet Union.

The New Intelligentsia.

By the end of 1938 the younger Soviet intelligentsia were fast replacing the older leadership. Whereas this older leadership was to a large extent of bourgeois or intellectual origin, the new intelligentsia of today have grown out of the proletariat and the poorer peasant class. The task before Stalin's regime is now the education of this younger Soviet Intelligentsia for the purposes of the new Russia. An important instrument in this education is the Communist Youth Organization or the Komsomol. Its head, Kossarev, was dismissed in December, 1938 apparently to facilitate the complete 'Stalinization' of Soviet youth.

Appeal to Other Nations.

Thus we find in the Soviet Union a definite change of Communist doctrine and of Communist personnel during 1938. But the distrust, noticeable in many leading circles of Great Britain and other countries against the Soviets, has forced the Soviet Union in 1938 to withdraw more and more into isolation. Some members of the ruling classes in the democracies were more apprehensive of Communism than of Fascism. As a consequence they were inclined to cooperate with the Fascist countries and to 'appease' them. Unwilling to cooperate too closely with the Soviet Union, they weakened the system of collective security based upon the League of Nations. The Pact of Munich convinced the Soviet Union that the British and French Governments seemed unready for any concerted action against aggressors. Thus the Soviet Union felt herself thrown back upon her own resources in withstanding a simultaneous attack, which she expects from Japan in the East and from Germany and her satellites in the West. It seems that Communism has lost entirely its world-wide appeal, that its influence is everywhere on the wane, that it is, at least for the time being and for the near future, not an aggressive force at all, but most vitally interested in the maintenance of the international status quo. On the other hand Fascism appears to be spreading fast, to be penetrating into foreign countries, to act there as a subversive influence and generally to be, at least at present and for the near future, an aggressive force, undermining international stability and destroying the traditional order and values. The situation after the Pact of Munich has also curtailed the activities of the Communist Party in the only two European countries where it seemed of any importance whatsoever. In Czechoslovakia the Communist party was outlawed in October, in France the Popular Front disintegrated. One of its component elements, the Radical Socialists, under the leadership of Prime Minister Daladier, turned bitterly against the Communists. A new majority was formed from which the Communists were excluded. The Pact of Munich brought, all over Europe, a marked shift towards the Right, towards Fascism, and away from any cooperation with Communism.

In Spain.

At the beginning of the Civil War in Spain Communism played a large part in supporting the Republican Government against the Insurgents. In view of the fact that the French and British Governments refused to support the legitimate Government of the Spanish Republic, and that the German and Italian Governments openly supported the cause of the Insurgents from the beginning and supplied them with arms and munitions, the Soviet Government supplied, in accordance with international law, the established Spanish Government with some of the necessary means of defense. As a result the influence of the Soviet Union in Governmental Spain was considerable during the first years of the Civil War. But Governmental Spain soon became a battle ground between the two Communist factions of the Stalinists or official Communists and the Trotskyists, organized in the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista. The Stalinists showed themselves rather conservative, ready to cooperate with all bourgeois factions, whereas the POUM pursued a revolutionary policy, as did the anarchists. The victory of the moderates within Governmental Spain, which was expressed in the formation of the Cabinet of Dr. Negrin and Indaletio Prieto, put an end to Communist influence. The POUM was outlawed in Spain at the end of 1938, its youth organization, the Yuventud Comunista Iberica was dissolved, and all the leaders sentenced to long imprisonment. The Spanish Republican Government disbanded all the foreign volunteers who had fought for the Republic among whom some had been Communists and many had Communist sympathies. Thus it may be said that the possibility of a Communist Spain was definitely removed during 1938.

In China.

Similar was the situation in China, the other country where an open, bitter and long-lasting, although unofficial war was being fought in 1938. As against the aggression of Japan and the danger of the complete subjugation of China to Japanese influence, Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, who had been a bitter opponent of Communism and had fought it in many military expeditions, accepted the help of the Chinese Communists in a common patriotic effort to save China. The Chinese Communists have organized their government in the thinly-settled, backward and poor section of western China. They have undoubtedly succeeded in raising the standard of the Chinese peasant population and in preparing long-needed agrarian reform. The Japanese aggression aroused in the Chinese Soviet provinces, as they were formerly called, or, in the Chinese frontier provinces, as they are now called by the local leadership, the determination to cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek, who was praised by Communists as China's great statesman and military leader. The Chinese Soviet army, the so-called Eighth Army, excelled by its strict discipline, by its organization, and by its emphasis on cooperation with the civilian population. They did much to awaken a determined national spirit in the peasant masses for the defense of their country. Thus the so-called Communism in China is a strongly nationalist movement with a program of regenerating the Chinese people by necessary economic and social measures and of combating the dead weight of vested interests which militate against the necessary reforms. Its leader, Mao Tse-tung, a son of Chinese peasants, stressed in 1938 the necessity of close cooperation with the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek's leadership.

In Japan.

Towards the end of 1938 Japan proposed to China the conclusion of peace under the condition that China should become practically a Japanese protectorate, but above all that China was to join the anti-Comintern pact with Japan, Germany and Italy, which would thus enable Japan and the other Fascist Powers with the help of their adherents to attack the Soviet Union. The aim seemed to be to dissolve the Soviet Union into a number of smaller states, in all of which pro-Fascist governments would be created, thus making these states the satellites of the Fascist Powers, Germany and Japan. Whereas Japan tried to turn her victory in China into a preparation for the attack against the Soviet Union, Germany tried to proceed in a similar way from the west and to use Hungary and Rumania as stepping stones for a penetration into the Ukraine and into the Caucasian regions. It was hoped that the defeat of the Soviet Union by the concerted efforts of Japan and Germany and their satellites would bring a termination of the Soviet regime. A new government, probably under the new pretender to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Vladimir, who is being groomed by some German groups as the future ruler of Russia, would assure the cooperation of Russia and her immense resources with the Fascist powers, for their final struggle against the great democracies and for Fascist world domination. Much of the course of the coming year will depend upon the inner strength and cohesion of the Soviet Union.