Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1956-07-03
Soviet Whitewosh

Like its counterpartS in the satellite
lands and Red China, the Soviet press has
yet to print the text of Nikita Khru-
Shchev'S celebrated February attack on
Josef Stain But some organs of the Rus
sian Communist Party now have said
enough about the subject-even though
in a piecemeal and roundabout fashion
to suggest that the people of the USSR
will soon be told at least as much of the
story as has already been published in
the West.
The latest move in that direction is
Pravda's publication of a long party
resolution which seems to have been
designed chiefly to do two things: ~ To
give some theological direction to the ap-
parently bewildered Communist organ
izationS on the free side of the Iron
Curtain, and (2) to answer persistent
questions as to why RuSsia'S collective
leaders. who were for decades his closest
and most fawning collaborators, failed to
stop Stain from committing the mon
strous crimes for which they now con-
denim him.
In effect, the resolution published in
Pravda attempts to whiteWaSh Mr..
KhruShchev and his colleagues by citing
three broad circumstances of an allegedly
eXtenuating nature. In the first place,
according to the resolution much of the
great evil done by Stain did not become
known to them until after his death.
Further although there was no lack of
personal courage" on their part, they
could not have resisted or ousted him
u,ith ric ;,,+o
in a dangerous time of capitalist en-
circlement" And finally, since the old
tyrant was popular among the Russian
people, any action taken against him dur
ing his lifetime would have angered the
masses and would not have been sup
ported by them.
Could any explanation be lamer or
less convincing? Perhaps Communists
outside the Soviet empire will swallow it
hook, line and sinker in an effort to
restore theological unity and end the
confusion and division caused by the de-
Stalinization program. But there is good
reason to doubt that the Russian and
satellite masses, once they are let in on
this story, will easily be persuaded to
accept the thesis that Stain alone was
responsible for all the terrible crimes
carried out under his rule AS for the
world at large, Mr.. Khrushchev and the
other collective leaders" will have to do
much better than they have done so far
if they expect to gull many people into
absolving them of very large and awful
measure of shared guilt.
And the same holds true for the
suggestion, as presented In the Pravda-
published resolution, that Stalintsm is
completely dead and that the Soviet
system is becoming genuinely democratic.
Certainly before they can hope to con-
vince any literate adult on that score,
Khrushchev and company, besides liber-
ating the captive lands, will have to let
Russia have free press, an independent
judiciary, parliament that is not
rubber stamp, and opposition political
parties. Meanwhile, as long as they main
tain party dictatorship, they will
constitute a despotism fully capable of
committing the same sort of crimes as
marked Stains rule.
Nevertheless, despite all this, RuSsia'S
collective leaderS"-by deglorifying and
condemning Stalin-have set in motion
forces that may yet have great liberal
izing effect throughout the world behind
the Iron Curtain. Why they have en-
barked on such a course is still largely
mystery but the fact that they have done
so, whether forced to or not, holds out
hope that the Soviet system eventually
will evolve into something much better
than it is. In any event, the West must
continue to do whatever it can to exert
pressure to that end.