De-Stalinization

power was so enormous that the consequences of STALIN'S his death were bound to be immense. The inevitable mystery in all political power, was especially profound in the murk of Stalin's Russia. And yet, although the autocrat's successors, especially the cocky extrovert Khrushchev, acted less secretively than the dread vozhd (Fuehrer), his death probably made it more difficult to analyze the Kremlin's policy. To be sure, the perspectives on which most Soviet specialists were in agreement have been justified. Serious students knew that difficult adjustments, possibly convulsions, would follow the dictator's death. None predicted, and perhaps none could have fully foreseen the sensational tempo of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the national Communist movement in Poland, and the anti-communist in Hungary. Today there is some fear of re-Stalinization. I doubt if a quick, undisguised relapse to the psychotic, terroristic pattern of the late Stalin era is the most likely Soviet reaction to the Hungarian revolution. Great despots like Stalin do not quickly establish themselves. His successors are mostly men in their sixties who would like to avoid repetition of Stalin's political cannibalism. As long as they are in office, they have the strongest motive, namely, self-preservation, for seeing to it that collective leadership rather than autocracy armed with terror should prevail at the center of political power. But is this possible? Can there be a gradual, selective, normalization of Stalin's revolution from above? Can the centralized Soviet state function long without a dictator? My guess is that the long-term trend in Russia, despite recent discouraging developments, is toward liberalization, socialist legality, increasing, but by Western standards depressingly limited, intellectual freedom, and a slightly more humane and rational order. Political freedom, which Russia has never enjoyed, even in 1905-1914, will probably remain indefinitely beyond the horizon. This pro

Business · Physics · Political science · Term (time · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Geology · Soviet and Russian History

• Chinese Migration to North-West China and Inner Mongolia, 1949–59

  Open Access•Henry G Schwarz•The China Quarterly•1963

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