Democracy in the Russian army (1945)

From the November 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In “Soviet Democracy” (published by Gollancz in 1937), Mr. Pat Sloan contrasted the democracy of the Red Army with the relationship between officers and soldiers in the old armies. He declared (p. 157) that “the old relationship between soldier and officer was completely abandoned, and all ranks mixed together as equals when off duty. . . .” 

The following report from the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Mail (September 3rd, 1945), shows the latest development:—

“The Russian Army Newspaper Red Star to-day announced the formation of Officers’ clubs for the exclusive use of officers. Army clubs have up to now been open to all ranks. The newspaper says 'under present conditions of cultural enlightenment work, it is necessary to have sharp differentiation and separation.' ”

Lunacy: The Struggle for Space (1962)

From the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A schoolboy fantasy is fast approaching realisation. There may be a man on the moon in the next three or four years if the latest Russian achievement is any indication. Recently two men—Major Nikolayev and Lt.-Colonel Popovich—were sent up within twenty-four hours of each other, about 150 miles above the earth.

“Quite fantastic,” said Sir Bernard Lovell. This man of science at Jodrell Bank was quick to point out the depth of Russian resources which must have been behind their double space shot, and there is general agreement that it brings a lunar expedition very much nearer. According to Colin Frame in the Evening News, the preliminary to a moon landing would be a space base assembled about 500 miles up, from which further rockets would be launched. Professor Lovell thinks that the Soviet experiment may well have this in view.

From the available evidence then, the Soviets seem still to hold the lead in this field, but it need not mean that they will continue to do so. President Kennedy has admitted that America does lag behind, but for some time now desperate efforts have been made to shorten the gap, and contracts have already been placed in connection with a future U.S. Moon Shot, estimated to cost $30 thousand millions. It makes nonsense incidentally, of the rather silly suggestion in the Evening News editorial that the American failure is because money has been diverted to other things more urgent, such as houses, roads, etc. In fact, the budget of the National Space and Aeronautics Administration has increased this year from $1,700 millions to $3,000 millions, and it has been said that none of its work in the space programme is hampered for lack of funds.

So the Russian advantage is a technical one, and this must be causing the American government some concern in more ways than one. It seems almost too obvious to say that this is a severely competitive world and the space race is no exception. Linked with it is the struggle for prestige between the two giants of capitalism, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., and prestige means a lot when you are jostling for influence among the newly rising states.

Nor should we lose sight of another and much more sinister aspect which Sir Bernard Lovell himself has mentioned. Talking about the Soviet feat on August 13th, for example, he told reporters that “. . .  you cannot divide the military and peaceful significance.” And again, on August 15th, he spoke of the ". . . terrible avenue of the militarisation of space which is now obviously opening before our eyes.” In this respect, he was not concerned merely with the Russians, but was critical of their combined failure with U.S.A. to achieve ". . .  co-operation on a big scale . . .  to further the peaceful exploration of space.”

Yet it is precisely this peacefulness which is an impossibility in a private property set up. A mere absence of actual fighting does little to conceal [that] the vicious RAT Race in Space undertones working to another horror later on. Research into new weapons and perfection of the old are going on all the time, and it is futile for Professor Lovell to talk of peaceful co-operation when on his own admission there is really no such thing. And for all their talk, the actions of the U.S. and Russian governments show that they don't believe it either. Both sides have been developing rockets capable of delivering nuclear warheads, and it is interesting also to see from The Guardian of 16/8/62 that twenty unidentified American satellites have been launched under military secrecy since last November. At least some of them have been designed for missile warning and reconnaissance work.

Indeed, Max Freedman put his finger on the sort of dilemma which confronts capitalist powers when he wrote:

  The Kennedy Administration is unshaken in its central belief that outer space should be reserved for peaceful purposes alone. But it is aware that it cannot allow Russia to achieve an acknowledged lead in outer space without running the risk that the U.S. one day may find itself at a formidable disadvantage in measuring its ultimate military power against the Soviet Arsenal.

Even Britain, barely an also ran in the race so far, is thinking of edging into it by way of a high performance aircraft capable of eventual orbit. The R.A.F. is said to be seeking support for such a programme and its possibility is being studied, according to Aviation Minister Julian Amery speaking at the Society of British Aircraft Constructors dinner in London last month.

What a prospect then, for the future! Maybe a man on the moon in three or four years and the certainty anyway of a frantic arms race pushing itself more and more into space. Already nuclear bombs have been exploded high above the earth's atmosphere by both America and Russia, and Professor Lovell thinks that the Russians may well be able to shoot down American satellites. Incidentally, this sparked off an interesting but largely futile speculation in one newspaper on the legality of such action. Futile, because legality is just about the last thing capitalist powers will allow to stand in the way of their interests.

And then Soviet scientist Fyodorov innocently says: “There is room for everybody in space — and nobody need fight over it.” Well, don’t you believe it! Capitalist powers will fight over anything if they think their interests justify it. And these need not be only of a military nature. A new and specialised market is in prospect with the advent of space exploration. In Britain, for instance, eight large industrial firms have formed British Space Developments Ltd., and one of the backers, Sir Robert Renwick, believes that: " . . . there is more money in space than ever dreamed of. The use of space in the next two decades will be a major key to continued prosperity."

Having said all this, the outstanding thing to remember is the shocking wastefulness of it. This is not to decry space exploration as such. We might well have it under Socialism, though in its proper sequence of priority and in any case not for the destructive and harmful purposes behind today’s efforts. It was bitterly ironical that the latest Russian astronauts burst through the natural wall of gravity almost exactly one year after the building of the man-made wall across Berlin. But such incongruity probably never occurred to the flying young men Nikotayev and Popovich, or for that matter countless other people here on earth. And those who did notice it do not seem to have gone so far as to question the whole social system which can solve the tricky problems of space travel, but cannot even feed clothe and house most of its earthly population decently.

Eddie Critchfield

Which Way Russia? (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have always held that dictatorship, even though it is inaugurated by people who call themselves Socialists, cannot lead to Socialism. Russia is now showing us where it does lead. Hardly anybody but the editor of the Communist Daily Worker, can regard the latest wave of plots and executions as evidence of a healthy condition in the Soviet State. To him it is a simple story of treachery by men in high positions who wished “to place the people of the U.S.S.R. under the yoke of capitalist slavery” (Daily Worker editorial, June 12th, 1937). Happily, the ever-vigilant intelligence service unearthed their dastardly plot and crushed it in the nick of time. Otherwise “they would have wrought incalculable harm to the cause of peace, progress and Socialism.” This may satisfy the members of the Communist Party, but nobody else. How, for example, does it come to pass that highly-placed army generals with distinguished records, some with 20 years’ membership of the Communist Party, should have conceived the desire to turn their backs on what an admirer, Mr. G. B. Shaw, calls “the amazing success of the Soviet Government” in order to establish the capitalism they had spent a lifetime trying to destroy? How does it happen that men bred from their youth in the Communist tradition could have such aims? And how came they to believe that those aims could be welcomed by or forced upon the 160-million population of Russia? The Daily Worker does not give the answer because it is so mesmerised by Stalinist self-advertisement that it does not even know there is a problem.

Explanations—Plausible and Otherwise

Many explanations have been offered, some of them as unconvincing as the Daily Worker’s. One which fits at least some of the known facts and probabilities is that published by the News Chronicle (June 16th, 1937). It is based on statements made by Soviet circles in London. It is that the executed generals had decided to seize power and set up a military dictatorship in place of the present party dictatorship. They did not want Germany and Japan to profit by the temporary disturbance by declaring war, so they asked the military staffs of those countries for a pledge to lay off. In return those two countries were promised territorial concessions. Inside Russia the plotters relied on the support of the army to raise them to power and crush the opposition. That is the story told to the News Chronicle. It is by no means impossible, for dictatorships have a habit of breeding vaulting ambitions among the military leaders. And colour is lent to it by the known fact that the Russian and German general staffs secretly maintained close relationships for years before Hitler came to power. It was Russian policy to help Germany to rearm against their common enemy, the allied powers. It is now said that the dead Russian generals were some of those in active charge of these secret contacts and that when the Russian Government ordered their discontinuance, some time after Hitler took office, they maintained them without the knowledge of their own Government.

An explanation along these lines is at least a possibility, and it is not much different from the official version given out in Moscow, but it is credible only on two very significant assumptions. One is that the generals were so stupid as to be on the borderline of imbecility. The other is that there is something very much amiss with the Soviet system. The generals formed the idea of setting up a military dictatorship, but how could they form that idea unless they were confident that their movement would be actively supported by a large proportion of the military and civil rank and file? And how could they have that confidence unless they thought they could see convincing evidence of widespread discontent with the existing regime? We are forced, therefore, to choose between two conclusions. If the generals thought that they could establish a military dictatorship without having any popular support at all, and against the determination of army and civil population alike, then they must have been weak in the head and utterly incompetent to judge any kind of situation. But everyone agrees that they were clever and experienced men, many of them as much at home in Communist political circles as in military ones. The only alternative, and one we have to accept, is that they did not believe the Stalinist claim that all Russia, except a handful of Trotskyist plotters and foreign-paid agents, is behind the existing regime. On the contrary, they counted, evidently, on widespread discontent and disillusionment to give them the support without which they knew they could not possibly succeed.

“Everyone Suspect in Russia”

The most terrible indictment of the belief that party dictatorship is a means of achieving Socialism is to be found by comparing a current account of Russia, written by a correspondent who has hitherto shown himself sympathetic towards the Stalinist point of view, with a claim made a few years ago by the Government itself.

First, the claim made for Russia in preamble to the Constitution adopted in 1923: –

   “Here – in the camp of Socialism – are mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, and dwelling together in peace and the brotherly collaboration of peoples.”

Now for statements about the present peaceful the and brotherly condition of Russia, by the correspondent in Moscow of the Daily Herald

EVERYONE SUSPECT IN RUSSIA.

   "Suspicion, denunciation, high and low hunts for alleged Trotskyists, spies and wreckers have reached such a pitch throughout Russia that it is safe to say that the past and future of everybody in the country is under review. Members and officials of trades unions, the Army and all political organisations are being sifted and sorted as though by a gigantic sieve. . . . Idols of the past become Trotskyists, wreckers or enemies overnight. So swift and vast are the changes in industry, from leadership down to the lowest grades, that it is impossible to keep track of them.” – (Daily Herald, June 5th, 1937.)
   

  “News of arrests, suicides, plots, still pours into Moscow from all parts of the Soviet Union. In the city of Ordjonikidze, in the North Caucasus, 5,362 people have been expelled from the Communist Party, according to newspaper reports. More than 30 Party and Government officials have been arrested at Rostov. One prominent Communist had committed suicide. The “Pacific Ocean Star” reports that Krutov, President of the Executive Committee of the Far Eastern Region, has been denounced as a “Japanese and Trotskyist enemy.” In White Russia, wreckers are alleged to have maimed thoroughbred bulls sent there to improve local stocks.” – (Daily Herald, June 18th, 1937.)

  “Wholesale denunciations and arrests of officials for alleged shortcomings in their work are threatening to bring Soviet industry practically to a standstill. Demoralisation increases rather than diminishes because of the element of fear under which all are working – each one fears he may be the next to be denounced.” – (Daily Herald, June 19th, 1937.)

Mr. G. B. Shaw may go on thinking that the Russian Communist dictatorship is an amazing success, but Socialists remain of their first opinion: that dictatorship of a party does not lead to Socialism. Russia appears to be one more proof that it leads to a condition in which threatened chaos gives ambitious Napoleons their opportunity to plot for military dictatorship.

Edgar Hardcastle