Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-02-19
An Evolving Russia?

Although he warns that Moscow led
international communism still constitutes
very great threat, Director Allen w.
Dulles of our Central Intelligence Agency
feels that there is real ground for hoping
that the Soviet system may yet evolve
into something that the rest of the world
will be able to live with in peace and
friendship.
Mr.. Dulles, Of course, does not guar
antee that such an evolution will take
place, but he makes persuasive case for
the idea that many factors are tending
to bring 1t about, no matter how slowly.
These factors, as he has Just told the
Mid-America Conference sponsored by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy, are part and parcel of three main
problems that weigh heavily on the men
of the Kremlin - heavily enough, in his
judgment, to suggest that 1t is the Soviet
empire rather than the free West that
faces general crisis.
AS Mr.. Dulles sees them, the three
problems may be summed up as follows:
~ The difficulties that Nikita Khrush-
chev and the other collective leaders"
have been experiencing in their effort to
replace Stains terroristic one-man die
tatorShip with kind of uneasy oligar-
chical rule that has felt impelled to soften
police-State rigors and otherwise appeal
to the masses for popular support (2)
The need, at home and in the captive
lands, to restore initiative and enterprise
to peoples numbed by long years of fear
and poverty Of consumer goods-a need
intensified by the fact that the de-Stalin-
ization program, which is exceedingly
hard to reverse, has stirred up "revolu-
ton of rising hope and expectations" in
Russia and throughout the Soviet empire.
And (3) great complications in dealing
with the outside world, where the Krem-
lin has run into major theological trouble
and where its pose as a champion of
peace and freedom has been shattered
by events in Hungary. VIZ
In this generally difficult situation,
perhaps the greatest challenge confront
ing Mr.. KhruShchev and his colleagues
is the intellectual and spiritual ferment
to be found everywhere in the world of
the Soviets. Wholly apart from the ex-
plosion in Hungary, it is ferment that
continues to express itself in rumblings
OF mass discomfort among workers, stu
dents and every other important group,
all Of them looking for greater freedom
and more of the better things of life. So
the presSures for change are very real,
and it Is doubtful, as Mr.. Dulles says, that
they can bemet satisfactorily with merely
self-contradictory mixture of non-Sta-
linist and Stalinist policies or combina-
ton of limited reforms and loud exhor-
tations to observe party-line discipline.
What, then, can be expected from
these evolutionary forces now at work?
Although Mr.. Dulles makes no fiat pre-
dictionS, he thinks it is at least conceiv-
able that the Kremlin, acting on grad
ual basis, may end censorship of thought
in Russia, put greater emphasis on salts
flying the economic wants of the individ-
ual, accept genuine cooperation with
other nations, and eventually grant free
dom Of political choice to the satellite
countries. True, all this may turn out
to be just another wishful dream, but we
are living in such a fast-changing age
that almost everything seems possible
now, including even a profound Soviet
change for the better.