At the Heart

For nearly a decade the U.S. has known its enemy to be ruthless, wily, flexible.and, in the main, successful. Communist success is ascribed partly to U.S. blunders and hesitations, partly to the enemy's freedom from scruples. But lack of moral restraint is often the product of detachment from reality. Last week the Kremlin demonstrated--again--the weakness that lies at its heart.

The Power to Blame. As U.S. readers of the Russian mind dove into the news of Malenkov's descent, interpretations rippled further and further from the central point. Did the change portend a reversal of the post-Stalin "soft" line? Was it a struggle between "liberal" Communists favoring consumer goods, and "tough" Communists relying on terror and bent on war? Or was it a purely personal struggle for power?

The last question led back to the gist of the news. Malenkov and Khrushchev had both been on both sides of the planning issues, and both had been involved in recent failures for which Malenkov took the blame. Since lines could not be drawn in terms of political issues, personal rivalry was suggested as the explanation. But personal struggle for power goes on in all nations. Why among the Communists does it take the form of upheaval, purge, false confession? Why can't they, nearly 40 years after their revolution, get their power struggle channeled into the institutions of orderly government?

The basic and simple reason was in danger of getting lost under the waves of complex analysis. The Soviet farm program of the last two years failed not because of Malenkov's "inexperience" but for the same reason it has failed for the past 30 years, i.e., the collective-farm program defies the facts of human nature. At another level, Communist politics cannot "mature" (as so many neutralists hoped they would), because the unreality of Communist morals will not provide a base for orderly politics.

The Kremlin's weakness is not that of individuals but of the system that the individuals profess. The nature of this particular power struggle is for each leader to destroy another by blaming him for the faults that are inherent in the system.

The Will for Freedom. In this way, the main point of the Kremlin crisis for the U.S. is a reminder of the opportunities open to the anti-Communist world. On the day that Malenkov was kicked out, President Eisenhower addressed by television 35 U.S. meetings to raise funds for Radio Free Europe. Said the President: "We must help intensify the will for freedom in the satellite countries behind the Iron Curtain."

One of the great U.S. assets is the knowledge of the enslaved peoples--including the Russians--that the Communist system holds out no real hope. As they gyrate through shifts and purges and betrayal, the Red leaders must eventually come to know what their slaves and the free world see ever more clearly.

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