The Challenge

All Russia celebrated the anniversary of history's greatest social revolution this week. It was the most important of the 27 anniversaries that have been solemnized thus far. For the first time since Lenin opened the first session of the Supreme Soviet (and a new chapter in human history) with the casual words: "We shall now proceed with the organization of the socialist state," Russia had ceased to be a defensive power. It had passed over to the offensive. In retrospect it was clear that the revolution was the most important fact of World War I. Russia's emergence as the No. 1 power in Europe and Asia might well be the most important fact of World War II.

In the old Russian fairy tale, Vasilisa the All-Wise walks up to the little hut that stands on hen's legs and says : "Little hut, little hut, turn with your face to me and your back to the sea." And the voice of Baba Yaga, the witch, answers from within the hut: "Fee fo fum, I smell Russian blood. For today the Russian spirit is marching through the world, and it throws itself on your breast and it slaps you in the face. . . ."

Last week there was not a country in Europe or Asia, scarcely a country in the world, where Russia's influence was not on the march. This influence was due not merely to Russia's new military might. The Russian Government, temporarily "respectable." was permanently revolutionary. Its appeal, reaching far beyond its war fronts and frontiers, was, in theory, one of the noblest in the history of human hope -- nothing less than the freeing of mankind from want, fear and suffering. But to safeguard its purpose, and focus its energies, it had organized one of the most resolute dictatorships the world had ever known, serviced by one of the most complex and efficient systems of secret police. In carrying its ideals abroad, it had developed a new tactic in power politics -- the appeal to the foreign masses to organize, conspire and ultimately revolt against the dominant classes in their respective countries. The promise was that when the socialist organization of abundance was complete, the totalitarian state would dissolve of its own superfluousness in a new kind of classless democracy. To most Americans and western Europeans this was the uncertain ideal, dictatorship, the inescapable fact.

Hitherto Russian influence had operated most effectively in the backward regions of Europe and Asia. But, as a result of World War II, Russian influence was marching into political power in Italy and France, would soon close in on Austria and a large part of Germany. There was one way in which the western nations, for whom even an economically secure life without political liberty was not worth living, could meet this challenge--by freeing themselves from want, fear and suffering while remaining free. The history of the next 20 or 30 years would report their success or failure. If they succeeded, Russia's influence might be kept within Russia's present political frontiers. If they failed, Russia might someday celebrate other, global anniversaries.

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