The Advantages of Detours

While the rest of the world watched skeptically, the grim visage of Communism seemed to crinkle into a Sphinxlike smile. The most powerful tyranny the modern world has known showed signs of slackening its pressure, not only on the millions imprisoned by its Iron Curtain, but on the nations without. It was barely a month since Joseph Stalin died, yet in that short spell his heirs had launched a busy peace offensive. They talked of peace in more earnest-sounding tones than they had used since Litvinov's heyday. They made concessions where the conceding did them no hurt: a da instead of a nyet in the U.N. Security Council, a pardon for a drunken Briton held in a Moscow jail, an agreement to talk over the exchange of wounded prisoners in Korea.

Inside Russia, they lowered prices, proclaimed an amnesty for thousands of petty offenders, and reversed themselves by releasing 15 Soviet doctors accused last January of a "terrorist plot" to assassinate Soviet leaders. The doctors' confessions were faked, they said, in a startling repudiation of a purge that had been approved by their god-leader, Joseph Stalin.

Tantalizing Clues. To a world that had hoped for changes after Stalin's death, the eight-day offensive was bewildering, welcome, sinister. Statesmen, pundits and plain reporters marshaled and studied the facts. What did they portend? A basic change of attitude in the U.S.S.R.? An elaborate maneuver to screen further aggressions from the world? A deadly feud among Stalin's heirs? Except for the party-liners and the starry-eyed (who joined in saluting the peaceful intentions of Malenkov & Co.), no man could get to an answer. But there were some tantalizing speculations to be made.

The conclusion that leapt most often to guessers' lips was that, lacking Stalin's stature, Malenkov not only needs time to establish himself over his rivals, but must also win the support of the Russian masses. Yet here one intriguing fact is relevant: the surprising absence of a buildup of Malenkov personally. Since the first week, when he made the key funeral speech, was proclaimed Premier and was shown snuggled up to Stalin and Mao in a doctored photograph, he has been neither seen nor heard from. China's Chou En-lai proposed the Korean talks and Molotov seconded them. Beria publicly redressed the "error" of the doctors' purges. Voroshilov announced the price cuts. Such popular gestures are the kind that might be presumed useful in building up Malenkov as the first among his peers and the benign father of all the Russias. Perhaps they add up to an essentially different conclusion: that Stalin's heirs have so far contrived to keep Malenkov from achieving the top role he must play if he is really to succeed Stalin.

Another possibility is that the new crowd --whether united or feuding--feels that the old man, in his last years, went too far in his toughness in foreign policy. Sharing his long-range ambitions, they might feel that for the present, toughness is no longer paying dividends. Communist subversion in Greece led to the strengthening of Greece and Turkey. The 1948 Czechoslovak Putsch forced Western Europe into NATO; the invasion of Korea sparked Western rearmament. By 1956, the Kremlin may reckon, the Communist world is apt to find itself confronted by an armed and aroused U.S., supported by a coalition in which German and Japanese arms loom large. Here again, fact bolsters guess: now is perhaps the last chance to halt the rearmament of Western Germany.

Text by Lenin. Where Communists are concerned, it is sometimes instructive to listen to what they themselves say. Last week the Taegliche Rundschau, official organ of the Red army in Eastern Germany, recalled how Lenin had made peace with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk to give the Soviet land "a breathing space . . . to give it the chance of putting the economy in order, to take advantage of disputes within the imperialist camp . . ."

"Thus," wrote Taegliche Rundschau, "Lenin gave a classic example of the adaptation of Marxist strategy and tactics. He taught that detours often are necessary if, at a given moment, the opponent is superior in strength; that one must withdraw temporarily in order to summon up new strength. Only thus will it be possible to prepare the new attack, to establish the basis for the final victory ..." The Kremlin masters, it is safe to assume, have read their Lenin.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.