An Apocalyptic View of Russia's Future

IN George Orwell's chillingly prescient novel 1984, the totalitarian state is seen as a form of organization that is assured of complete, self-perpetuating supremacy. According to Andrei Amalric, a young (31) and as yet little-known Russian writer, Orwell was way off. In a controversial essay that only recently reached the West, Amalric observes that the once monolithic Soviet state is already "distending itself and disintegrating like sour dough." Between 1980 and 1985, he predicts, it will explode in "anarchy, violence and intense national hatred."

In the Soviet intellectual world, Amalric is considered a combative gadfly. He has done time in Siberia, charged with writing "patently anti-Soviet" literature. He has not hesitated to criticize other Russian writers, notably Defector Anatoly Kuznetsov (TIME, Dec. 5). His forte is a particularly acute and abrasive sort of political commentary, and it places him somewhat apart from the mainstream of Soviet dissent, which has always been long on anguish but short on social analysis. Amalric's piece appears this week in Survey, a London quarterly on Soviet affairs, and is to be published in the U.S. next March by Harper & Row. It is entitled "Will the U.S.S.R. Survive Until 1984?" Amalric's answer is no. In his view, a disastrous end, resulting from internal upheaval and war with China, is not very far off.

Amalric's thesis is so obviously heretical that the question legitimately arises: Why isn't he in prison? A few observers suggest that he is unwittingly being used by the KGB, but it is difficult to imagine why the secret police would want such critical articles to appear in the West. Most probably, he has been left free--so far--because to jail him would give undue publicity to his work.

Amalric dismisses as "naive" the popular U.S. notion that the Soviet regime is mellowing with age. He scoffs at the theory that "the spread of Western cultural ideas and ways of life would gradually transform Soviet society, that foreign tourists, jazz records, and miniskirts would help to create 'human socialism' "--a reference to Alexander Dubcek's attempts to humanize Czechoslovakia's regime. "We may get socialism with bare knees," he concludes, "but certainly not with a human face."

As the old regime ages and stagnates, Amalric says, Soviet society is growing more unstable. Sullen class rivalry has already developed, particularly between the bureaucratic elite and a middle class of intellectuals, managers and professionals. Both, in turn, are distrusted by the great surly majority--he mass of peasants and former peasants. At present, says Amalric, the people and the state face each other like "one man with his hands raised above his head while another points a tommy gun at his stomach." Inevitably, he says, the state "will get tired and lower the tommy gun." The result will not really be "liberalization" but anarchy.

Amalric outlines a chilling, decade-long scenario of dissolution. Disorder is already evident in "an unusual spread of casual robbery." Having discarded the old Christian morality, the Kremlin is desperately trying to substitute nationalism, with its "inherent cult of force and expansionist ambitions." Already, there have been clashes with China along the Ussuri River in the East.

Amalric predicts that China will launch a war with Russia "somewhere between 1975 and 1980"--as soon as Peking has amassed a credible nuclear stockpile. The Soviets, Amalric's script continues, will look to Washington for help. But the U.S., Amalric says, will already have established some sort of modus vivendi with Peking. The war will be long and demoralizing. Moscow will have to withdraw troops from Europe, leading to the "desovietization" of the East Bloc.

Isolated abroad and at home, the Kremlin will have to send troops to put down riots in Russian cities, thus "hastening the collapse of the army." Eventually, one final jolt--a battlefield defeat, a disturbance in Moscow--will topple the regime.

What then? Remnants of the middle class, if powerful enough, might be able to stitch together a loose federation, something like the British Commonwealth, out of some of the Soviet republics. But in Central Asia, Amalric writes, there would probably remain a lone state that would regard itself as "the U.S.S.R.'s successor." It would integrate "traditional Communist ideology with the features of Oriental despotism."

Fanciful though Amalric's thesis may seem, there are serious students who accept all or part of it. Most observers, however, would be stunned if the U.S.S.R. were to collapse in the foreseeable future--much less within 15 years, and in the manner foreseen by Amalric. While he need not be taken literally as a political prophet, he does illuminate most of the problems that plague the country. The value of his work is to point out that Russia could undergo some dramatic changes as it seeks to cope with those problems.

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