THE. TWENTY-THIRD CONGRESS -- A
PRELIMINARY APPRAISAL
By Henri Vallin
Since the texts of the reports and speeches are still unavailable, it is too early to make a final appraisal of the twenty-third congress of the Communist party of the Soviet.Union [CPSU]. But.the . main aspects of the congress are quite clear. Doubtless the analysis’ will have to be filled in later, but this will involve only the secondary features of the congress.
The twenty-third congress seems particularly "bleak" and "lackluster" as against the three previous congresses with their sensational events, turns and settling of accounts. But contrary to © Brezhnev's declaration that the lack of sensations at this congress ~~ testified to the "ceaselessly strengthened unity" of the Central. Committee of the CPSU, it must have expressed the balancing of profound '~ differences among the various tendencies in the Soviet bureaucracy, © differences that threatened to flare into a public rift, if they were not previously arbitrated by the Central Committee, which met on the eve of the congress.
The congress was therefore dominated by the aim of. staging everything without a hitch, leaving nothing. to chance. All of the speeches of the reporters and top leaders as well as those of the so-called representatives of the "rank and file," were perfectly orchestrated. Success in this was made possible by the collective fear of the bureaucracy that any "Slip up" might touch off a conflict with unforeseeable consequences. Two Focal Points of Difference
The two focal points around which internal differences in the bureaucracy revolved were unquestionably policies in the economic and ideological (attitude. toward culture and the youth) fields.
Foreign observers, not only among. the Western bourgeoisie but also in the Western Communist parties had anticipated various "sen~‘ sational turns" in the two fields. On the one hand there was the possibility of extending "Libermanism" (the reforms inspired by Professor Liberman with respect to using profitability in individual enterprises as an essential criterion in fulfilling the plan) and on the other of condemning it. On the one hand, there was talk of a brutal offensive against the so-called "liberal" or "modern" writers” and artists; and, on the other, of a comeback of the "de-Stalinizers. "
Furthermore, there was no lack of portents in both areas before the congress.
In the economic field, the technocratic partisans of "realism" appear to have won their case for slowing down economic growth, the growth rates proposed by the new plan being less than those of the Khrushchev plans. Stress was placed on the effort to raise the stan-
dard of living of the workers on the Kolkhozes and in the cities. Stress was similarly placed on the growth of productivity; that is, on the necessity to pass from an "extensive" to an "intensive" phase of industrialization, but without lending fresh importance to the Liberman reforms. . vIn the ideological field, one blow after another was ‘struck -the Daniel- Sinyavsky trial, the lauding of Zhdanov in the press, ‘the elimination of Tvardovsky and. Polevoy as delegates to the congress and the alarming rumors of a "rehabilitation of Stalin" that gave foreign and domestic partisans of "de-Stalinization" cause to fear the worst.
_ If -- aside from the brutal attacks on the youth and on the "liberal" artists by Sholokhov and Pavlov, the head of the Komsomol — -- the congress did not.end up by reverting to the worst aspects of Stalinism and Zhdanovism, this was doubtlessly due to a last-minute. counterattack which camé both from the vanguard of the intellectuals and from oppositionists in the Soviet Union itself and from” several Western Communist parties.
In this connection there was the courageous attitude of the accused in the Daniel-Sinyavsky trial; the Kolokol movement in Leningrad, which was shielded by influential atomic scientists, the demonstration of old Bolsheviks in Red Square; the semiofficial intervention of the Italian Communist party which made it known that it would not support in any way whatever the possible "rehabilitation of Stalin.
The resultant of all these pressures, and of counterpressures emanating from certain currents in the bureaucracy, was precisely the absence of any decision in favor of one side or the other at the twenty-third congress.
“If such an analysis of the twenty-third congress is correct, we must expect new convulsions within the Soviet bureaucracy before long, such as the manifestation of outright oppositionist sentiments among. the vanguard Soviet youth on a widening scale.
The Soviet generation on the threshold of civic and political life today is the first generation which never knew the worst excesses of Stalinism. It is a generation which is not terrorized and which is not turned toward the past; on the contrary, it is chafing at the Kremlin' s petty and bureaucratic attempts to regiment them.
The fear inspired in the bureaucrats by the youth can be judged by the complaints of Pavlov at the twenty-third congress. He insisted on the necessity of taking the "army spirit" as the model upon which to more and more mold the ideology of today's Soviet : “youth.
Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet Dispute |
In the realm of international policy, the twenty-third congress was. marked by the same lack of decisiveness as elsewhere.
On the eve of the conflict a definitive rupture with China was expected. The Kremlin's accusations became more: violent; while the attempt of the Chinese to create an underground "Polish Commun— ist party" “opposed » to the official Khrushchevist Polish party =~ for. the first time ina country where a Communist party is in ‘power! -could only reflect a desire to complete the split.
However, in the congress itself Brezhnev's references to the Sino-Soviet conflict were astonishingly moderate, so moderate that some explained this new turn by his desire to hide differences on this question within the CPSU itself.
With respect to the question of the struggle against the American intervention in Vietnam, one got the impression at the beginning of the congress that the Soviet bureaucracy was thinking of getting away with merely sharpening its tone in Washington's direction -- which was done by Kosygin, Gromyko and various military figures -- and with emphasizing Chinese "sabotage" of aid to Vietnam.
But here again things did not turn out exactly as the Kremlin leaders had foreseen. The strong appeal made by Armando Hart, the delegate of the Communist party of Cuba, to support the Vietnamese revolutionaries by extending the revolution internationally aroused the unconcealed hostility of the bureaucrats assembled in the Hall of ‘Congresses. (See World Outlook April 15.)
In addition, it was learned -- a week after the event! --=-" that a young Soviet truck driver committed suicide in the way of a Vietnamese monk because his application to go to Vietnam as a volunteer had not. been accepted. This incident undoubtedly shows that there is at least a current of opinion in the Soviet Union favoring much more energetic and effective aid for the Vietnamese revolution. than the. trickle the bureaucracy has been willing to give up to now.
.On this issue, too, the differences were suppressed at the twenty-third congress. But they existed nonetheless and they will come to the surface with one of the inevitable twists and turns in = the international situation.
What the twenty-third congress confirmed was that the "peform= ist climate," the hope that Soviet society would evolve by way of: "reforms from above" which was prevalent among the principal layers | of Soviet society in Khrushchev's time, is now coming to an end. Decisions like those made by the twenty-third congress are not the kind to revive such hopes. Therein lies still another reason to expect that different currents of Soviet society will take the path of "action from below."
April 18, 1966