IDEOLOGICAL SCHISM IN THE COMMUNIST WORLD

The aim of socialism is the elimination of the fragmentation of humanity in petty states and the individualism of nations--not only the coming closer of nations to each other, but their merger or fusion.

--Lenin, 1916

The task of the Communist parties [abroad] is to support Soviet power, since the Soviet Union is the mainstay of the revolutionary movement in all countries.

--Stalin, 1925

THE Soviet Union has always argued that it was more than just a nation. As the fountainhead of an ideology that promised to right the world's wrongs and usher in a golden age of peace and equality among men, it has possessed a unique mystique and prestige that enhanced its already formidable power as a huge and populous sovereign state. As the defender of Communism, moreover, the Soviet Union long could do no wrong in the eyes of its followers the world over. The image of Russia as the ideological motherland was buffeted by the defiance of Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito, the invasion of Hungary and the unseemly quarrel with Communist China--but the Soviets have up to now managed to maintain their ideological primacy. Now, after three weeks of continuing protest among Communists abroad over the invasion of Czechoslovakia, there is a serious question about how long Russia can exert that primacy over the minds of the world's many millions of Moscow-oriented Communists.

The Soviet Union itself has openly recognized the problem. In a long commentary, Pravda admitted that "many people, including Communists in fraternal parties," did not agree with the Soviet Union's action in Czechoslovakia. Pravda put the blame on the inability of outsiders to perceive that a "quiet counterrevolution" had, in fact, been going on in Czechoslovakia. One must not wait, wrote Pravda, "for the shooting of Communists and the appearance of gallows before going to the aid of the adherents of socialism." Such tortuously dogmatic reasoning was apt to exacerbate rather than calm the anger of Communists abroad. As Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban observed: "The Soviet Union has lost one of the great dimensions of its foreign policy, namely the remarkable capacity that it had to appeal to the minds and consciences of millions of people outside its borders."

Unprecedented Defiance. Russia's Czechoslovak invasion may, in fact, prove to be a watershed in the development of Communism that could surpass in importance the breakaways of Yugoslavia and China from what was a monolithic world organization at the close of World War II. In an unprecedented show of defiance, the great majority of the world's 88 Communist parties have refused to approve Moscow's action against Czechoslovakia. Albania, China's Adriatic ally, even seized on the occasion last week to announce its complete withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.

A few parties, most notably the big French one, have backed off somewhat from their initial condemnation of the Soviets. The switch is not a change of mind but an effort to prevent their own membership from splintering over the issue. But many of them now seem determined to convert Communism from an international ideology into a basis for national parties that can compete for votes without having to look over their shoulders at masters in Moscow. Says Dr. Wolfgang Abendroth, a political science professor at West Germany's Marburg University: "This use of tanks destroyed the last few threads of religious fixation that bound the parties in the West to Moscow."

The mood of new-found independence was typified last week by Luigi Longo, the secretary-general of the Italian Communists, who form West Europe's largest Marxist party. Writing in the party newspaper, Longo bluntly accused the Soviets of resuming the cold war. He warned that his party would not attend the planned summit meeting of Communist parties in Moscow in November unless Warsaw Pact forces withdrew from Czechoslovakia. Ernst Fischer, the Austrian Communist theoretician, called for another kind of conference--one of all the West European Communists--to found "an independent and autonomous movement."

Pure Aggression. At the same time, the mood has changed markedly among Europe's old-line leftists, who in the past all too gullibly accepted Soviet outrages--such as the slaughter of the kulaks and Stalinist purges in the 1930s --as necessary if regrettable acts in the defense of Communism. Even Bertrand Russell, who normally reserves his wrath for the U.S., condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Asked his opinions of the Russians' behavior, venerable leftist Jean-Paul Sartre replied: "I consider it pure aggression of the sort that is defined in terms of international law as a war crime."

The Soviet action also produced severe misgivings among Europe's New Left. Ever since their rise to prominence a few years ago, the Continent's young revolutionaries have derided Soviet Communism as too bureaucratic--and in many cases too establishmentarian--to appeal to today's youth. Even so, they still felt a powerful ideological inclination toward Moscow, where, after all, a revolution once triumphed. That attitude has now changed. The New Leftists feel that the Soviets have betrayed Communist principles; they are bracketing Russia with the U.S. as a superpower that cannot keep its hands off small countries. Of course the comparison is hardly exact, since the U.S. intervened in Viet Nam in order to res cue an established government from subversion while the Soviets invaded a friendly neighbor in order to undermine a government that was struggling to gain a measure of independence and freedom.

West Berlin's Republican Club, a New Left citadel, charged that "the concept of proletarian internationalism has been subordinated by the top leadership of the Soviet Union to a strategy of stabilizing and maintaining their own dominant position." Says Tariq Ali, the Oxford-educated Pakistani who leads Britain's New Left: "What has been made clear in Czechoslovakia is that Marxist concepts are not being applied in the Soviet Union. If Moscow felt the need to intervene somewhere, it should have been in Viet Nam."

Pleasing Peter. Adding to Communism's internal turmoil, the Czechoslovak episode naturally raises severe doubts in the free world about the course that Communism is taking. Ever since the cool-off after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, most people have felt that Soviet Communism, with its renewed stress on peaceful coexistence and the introduction of some capitalist-style economic reforms at home, was becoming less violent and more pragmatic. Indeed, such a development was taking place, though most Westerners optimistically overestimated the depth and impact of the new trend.

The lesson of Czechoslovakia is that the Soviet leaders do not operate from ideology or stated principles unless it serves their political purpose to do so. What was involved in Czechoslovakia was an expression of Russian nationalism and military power. Feeling endangered by a political threat and an unsafe border, the Soviets elected to violate their own principle of nonintervention. They thus prejudiced their position as world leader of Communism in order to secure the territorial integrity of what they must consider their European empire. Peter the Great would have done the same.

All this bears on the debate over how the U.S. should now behave toward the Soviet Union. Some argue that the U.S. should scuttle all attempts at detente and arms control to protest the Russians' behavior. To be sure, an evenhanded strengthening of NATO's conventional defenses is in order, and the U.S. must insist on foolproof surveillance clauses in any nuclear-arms-reduction treaty. London Historian Walter Laqueur points out: "As Soviet foreign policy becomes less Communist in character, it also becomes less predictable and rational. The ideological appeal of Soviet Communism no longer exists, but the Soviet Union still has built-in drives toward expansion."

For the short term, Britain's Victor Zorza, one of the few Sovietologists who predicted a Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, feels that the West must apply selective measures, such as the cancellation of trade and cultural exchanges, to influence the Soviet leadership, which seems to be divided on the Czechoslovak issue. Says Zorza: "There are people in the Politburo saying, 'We have to push them hard because we have already expended so much political capital.' The proper amount of Western pressure could help the moderates win the day. However, this is a dangerous game, and by carrying the boycott too far, we could damage the liberals. The timing has to be precise. Not too much. Not too little."

Culture Magnet. For the long run, the U.S. should continue its efforts for detente. That is not because it condones the Soviet acts in Czechoslovakia, but because the magnet of Western culture and trade--as it has already done in Czechoslovakia--must inevitably create a climate in which liberalization will be too great a temptation for the Communist countries to resist. This is particularly important now because the Russians themselves are being forced to admit that dissent is present--and growing--among the intelligentsia, who realize that the only way to a more efficient modern state is through greater freedom of ideas.

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