students we met were agreed that there was now more intellectual freedom in the Soviet Union. People like the poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to four years in the Arctic, was released after serving only eight months of his term, shortly after the fall of Khrushchev.
About this event there was a general feeling that Khrushchev
had "been getting above himself." His portrait, appeared everywhere and "a new cult of the personality was developing around him." One student, speaking for a number of them, said:
"We are now going through a very interesting period, For the first time in Russian history we have no recognized top man. We feel that this can be the beginning of genuine people's participation dn the organs of government. The next: two years will be crucial,' Lo
There was no hesitation to talk about Stalin, The Stalin period is euphemistically referred to as the "cult period." Criticism tends to be indirect and almost nonpolitical. Thus the young girl student who acted as one of our guides in Moscow asked me what I thought of the Moscow underground with its stately marble halls and elaborate chandeliers, I replied cautiously that it was certainly impressive, "Yes," she said bitterly, "but why build palaces under the ground when the people | above were crying out for simple homes to live in?"
* In Leningrad a student. asked me what I thought of the China- Soviet question.
"Can I speak frankly?" T asked,
"Please," he replied. "Please speak frankly."
I told him that as a socialist I never conceived the possi-= bility of a conflict between two workers! states. We always took.it for granted, I added, that the establishment of workers! rule would end the antagonisms between countries, antagonisms which had their roots in capitalism and the imperialist struggle for the major share of the world market. He nodded in agreement. I decided to take the plunge.
"All this," I said, "is not accidental. Under Stalin the Soviet Union turned its back on internationalism when it adopted the policy of socialism in one country. Trotsky (I looked him in the eye as I uttered the forbidden name but he never blinked) warned in 1936 that the national chauvinism engendered by Stalin would be reflected in the international Communist movement, that each national Communist party would become nationalist-Communist in outlook. We are now paying the- price | for this policy in the awful prospect of a Soviet-Chinese conflict.
"Our leaders will never allow it to come to that," he replied, while agreeing with most of what I said. Throughout one's talks with Soviet students and Komsomols, one got this complete reliance on the "leaders" rather than on the need for action from below to control the leaders and to correct their mistakes. The seeds of Stalinism were sown deep and all the crops have not yet been hare vested.
“21
Another interesting side light on life in the USSR today came from a meeting with a Jewish student. in Leningrad. He asked me if I could get him a Teach Yourself Yiddish book and a Russian= Yiddish dictionary as he was anxious to Learn Yiddish. I asked him why.
"T feel the need to belong to a national group. At the university all the other Jewish students speak Yiddish. Like the Ukrainians, the Uzbekistans, the Georgians and others they have a national life of their own. I feel out of it -- a Jew who only speaks Russian and English." .
This, almost fifty years after October! He also told me that.his parents, of the. generation which grew up since the Revolution, objected strongly when he married a Russian (that is non-= Jewish) girl.
; At the Moscow State University, what impressed me most was the almost complete control which the Komsomol organisation has’ over all. student activities. Here were young bureaucrats of tomorrow in the making. Some foreign students we spoke to complained of feeling always being overlooked. We met some African students who felt that they were not socially acceptable. One of the mistakes the African states make is to send only male students to the Soviet universities and colleges. A fair proportion of girl students would hie peace of the main points of friction between Soviet and African students, .
On a short visit to the Lenin Library, I asked the English= speaking guide if the works of some of the earlier revolutionary writers were available. He looked. puzzled. "Who do you mean?"
I gulped and shot out as rapidly as possible, "Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Bukharin, Preobrazhensky and so on,"
He collected himself and replied quite calmly, “Yes, their writings are available but only to students of the period. k T tried to convince him that I was a student of the period; but, as I know no Russian, that was as far as i eould get with that Line of ques-~ tioning «
When we were leaving Moscow for Smolensk, one of the party of students seeing us off asked me whether I had enjoyed my visit to the Exhibition of the Achievements of the USSR. I replied that we had time only to visit the Cosmonaut Pavilion. "Ah," he answered, "but what did you think of the architecture of the pavilions?"
I told him that, like the Moscow University, this was not my favourite type of architecture, "Yes," he agreed, "but it is a good thing we have it. It will remind future generations of the period of the cult and the sort of man Stalin was." ©
At Smolensk the only real point of interest was the visit to the National History Museum. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, is from the Smolensk region and in the hall devoted to the Cosmonauts he is prominently featured. But there is not a single picture of. Gagarin being received by Nikita Khrushchev. “Plus ga change, plus c nce méme chose." [The more things change, the more they're the same,
At Minsk we met the top Komsomols of the Byelo-Russian Republic. In the course of our talks, I asked if there was any discussion of the "cult period, " how it arose and how, it could be prevented from happening again. -- The reply came pat from the secretary. "No, we are not discussing this. This matter was settled by the Twentieth Congress of the party and there is no need to discuss it further."
When another student asked what happened when there were differences between the Komsomols and the party, such as happened between the Young Socialists and the Labour party in Britain, the bureaucratic reply was: “It is not possible for differences to arise between the Komsomols and the party." And that was that.
One of the most surprising experiences in the tour of our group came when one of the girls was. asked, quite out of the blue, by a youth she met, “Do you think you can: get me Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution?"
There is an awakening among Soviet youth and a sense of enquiry; but it would be utopian to expect that after the long torpor of Stalinism they have. suddenly rediscovered international : socialism. They eagerly discussed the Sino-Soviet dispute, Vietnam and so on but completely failed to see these problems within the framework of developing world revolution.. .
.: Their greatest concern was lest Chinese “intransigeance" would lead them into war against the United States. Fear of war was the main impression one carried away, perhaps understandable in a people whose land had been so savagely ravaged only two decades ago. But there was no hesitation that if war should come between China and the United States the Soviet Union would range itself on China's side, Let no one be under any delusion about this.
It is facts like these which gives one hope about Soviet youth, their instinctive solidarity with the other workers! states and the colonial revolution. That, and when people like Yevtushenko speak out boldly and proclaim that “We must learn our politics from our grandfathers (that is, ‘the generation who made October) and not from our fathers!" a