Facing Soviet reality
!tali"' used to speak of 'useful fools'. He meant those i•eluded people in the West, not dedicated and unsenlabental Communists but bien pensant well-wishers, who rv.e such aid and comfort to his tyranny: the Webbs dectIng that Soviet Communism was a 'new civilisation', Mrs Lonsevelt admiringly inspecting the Gulag labour camps. a sense the relationship of the West as a whole to Soviet "ssia has been characterised by folly, folly of a kind most Itiseful to the Russian rulers. There is more than one kind of of course. One sort stems from fanatical antirannunism. No wise man ever wishes for wars: in the qtriticlear age only a madman would. Destroying Comdtillisni by military means is a fantasy, and potentially a sangerous one i , as the Americans found to their cost n °lab-East Asia.
f 'kit the converse, and much more common, folly is the I1Y, of Panglosse: the belief that everything will turn out :r the best; that the faults of Communism are incidental !ather than fundamental and will, like a nasty cold, go away In. the end. That was the error of fellow-travellers and sat:cieed many liberals in the Thirties and Forties. The delu12,°n Persisted through every kind of horror, though at each 4Itrage a few more Soviet sympathisers fell away: the 3senw Trials, Spain, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Prae,.13udapest. But despite all of that, a capacity for illusion wi'v,rsists not merely among leftists but among most of those 210 guide and govern the western democracies. There uld not be a clearer illustration of this than the reaction last week's trials of dissidents in Soviet Russia. Liberal pPlnion in this country, in America, in France, is appalled. crotests are registered. Most comically of all, the British %,111rnunist Party expresses its concern. ar"ut why the outrage, why the surprise? The Soviet rulers e acting purely in character. To expect them to engage in if`eaceful dialogue' with dissidents is to expect a carnivore breast to lose its taste for blood. The trials, it is said, are a fheach of the Helsinki Final Act. Could delusion go 'rther? The Soviet government has not, and never had, any intention at all of honouring the ridiculous 'baskets' of that ridiculous and indeed shameful treaty. To that extent, though it is a harsh thing to say, Mr Alexander Ginsburg and Dr Anatoly Shcharansky may not be suffering in vain. If their imprisonment under conditions which amount to torture remove the final shreds of illusion about Soviet Russia, they will have done a noble service.
Is it enough to disabuse ourselves of these illusions? And is there anything more than we can do? We can begin by understanding the nature of the problem. Part of the Western difficulty in dealing with the Soviet rulers comes from the residual belief that they are what they say they are, revolutionary socialists. Conservatives of all kinds are especially prone to this mistake, as is seen whenever they talk of the dangers of 'Communism' and 'Marxism'. But as Solzhenitsyn has said — and it is perhaps the single most valuable lesson he has to teach — there are no Marxists in Russia. The Soviet Union is run by cynical and brutal gangsters. To treat them as philosopher kings (however nasty their philosophy) flatters them and deludes us.
Once that, in a sense abstract, point is grasped important practical consequences follow. It is no more use appealing to the idealism of the men of the Politburo than of any other gangsters. What they understand is force, and firmness, and deals. It may be — sad as it is to say it — that there is nothing the West can do to help dissidents. The latest kick in the teeth to Helsinki shows how little pressure we can in fact exert over internal Soviet affairs. Even putting economic screws, on — withholding our supinely offered credit and subsidised exports — will not help Russia's Jews and Christians and political oppositionists. But those screws, when tightened enough by the western powers, surely can control Soviet expansionism and military adventurism, particularly in Africa. The West, if it recovers its nerve, can hold back the advance of Soviet power outside Russia. Inside Russia there is nothing to be done except pray, and wait. And that waiting is not in vain; for no tyranny lasts for ever, and one day the dawn will come.
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