Monday, Mar. 30, 1959
The Flexibles
In its drive to bewitch and bother the West, the Kremlin is moving in more directions at once than fire in a hay barn. The latest Soviet maneuver: a determined trafficking with Western Europe's opposition Socialists.
Into London, in response to a longstanding invitation from a group of British Laborite backbenchers, flew a high-powered Soviet parliamentary delegation headed by gaunt, shock-haired Mikhail Suslov, 56, top Stalinist theoretician. He chucked babies under the chin, watched the House of Commons in action, and laid the inevitable wreath on the Highgate grave of Karl Marx. But his real interest was in long, private discussions with top Laborites Hugh Gaitskell and
Nye Bevan. His message: Let's all us Marxists work together for peace.
Tug at the Sleeve. Obviously Nikita Khrushchev had not overnight abandoned his belief that "Social Democrats are the worst enemies of the working class." nor were the Socialists of Western Europe eager to revive their prewar Popular Front with the Communists: too many of their comrades have died in Arctic prison camps. Nonetheless, Socialists continue to tug at the sleeve of the conservative governments of their countries with insistent demands for Western "flexibility" in negotiations with Russia.
One reason is that by long tradition, most of Europe's Socialist leaders are antimilitarists--men who can never quite bring themselves to believe that it is sometimes wiser to spend money on bombers than on welfare programs. And even when, like Bevan, they have been awakened to power realities by political responsibility, they cannot escape the fact that their political strength rests on voters who seem to believe that the only thing that can stave off nuclear holocaust is Western concessions to Moscow.
Mission to Moscow. Thus driven, Socialist leaders sometimes find themselves operating in a kind of political no man's land between East and West. They often seem readier than conservative opponents to trade off elements of Western military strength in return for Soviet political concessions. It has not got them very far. Suslov was full of peace talk, but no more willing than Khrushchev to make any substantial compromises.
And two respected German Socialist leaders, Carlo Schmid and Fritz Erler, returned from Moscow last week, having learned for all their "flexibility," that the Russians had their own definitions of "the possibilities of reducing tensions." Schmid and Erler talked for three hours with Khrushchev. Afterwards, Khrushchev indicated that Socialists might be easier to get along with than Konrad Adenauer. But Socialist hints that they would be willing to take West Germany out of NATO got no response from Khrushchev. Waving a stubby finger at the two Socialists, he said bluntly: "Let's be honest. No one really wants German reunification. No one!" With equal force, Khrushchev ruled out any attempt to unite the 54 million West Germans with 17 million East Germans by free elections (that would mean, he said, that "the majority, not truth, would triumph").
Incredibly, 24 hours after their mission returned from Moscow, West German Socialists proclaimed anew their program for winning German reunification by military concessions. But there were signs that a disillusioned realism was settling over the German Socialist leadership.
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