Foreign News: The Big Congress

In March 1939, Joseph Stalin said to the rapt delegates to the 18th Congress of the Russian All Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks): “It is now a question of a new redivision of the world, of spheres of influence and colonies, by military action.” Five months later, Stalin concluded his infamous alliance with Adolf Hitler. One week after that, “military action” began.

Last week, Joseph Stalin summoned the 19th Congress of the Russian Communist Party to meet in Moscow Oct. 5. In the 13½ years since the last Congress and Stalin’s prophetic remark, the Russian motherland has grown powerful beyond the wildest dreams of the Czars. East & west, 569 millions have passed under the sway of the Communists. Western Europe is tired and uncertain, the British Commonwealth exhausted. Only the U.S. has sufficient force to stand between Russia and the drive for World Communism.

It has been quite a “redivision.” The U.S. could not help wondering last week what further “redivisions” the 19th Party Congress might foreshadow.

What Is It? Theoretically, the Congress is the “supreme organ of the party,” reviews the work of the party leaders and sets policy. Until the late ’20s, it actually had some power. But afterwards it has been only a blank check for Stalin and the Politburo. Calling of a Party Congress frequently—but not necessarily—means that Stalin wants to prepare the party for a shift in policy. The Congress is supposed to meet at least once every three years, but Stalin simply has not bothered to call one since 1939.

There will be one delegate for every 5,000 party members, plus one alternate for every 5,000 members who are still on probation. Total delegates this year: more than 2,000. They are theoretically elected by secret ballot at regional party conferences.

Delegates will hear reports on internal and external policy and on party and state organizations. The delegates will pass resolutions approving the political line and the practical work of the Central Committee, and gohome. Their function then will be to propagate the new “decisions” down through regional, district and local committees, to the tiny three-member party cells, and so to the mass of Russians.

What Does It Mean? It may be months, possibly years, before the outside world will know precisely what the 19th Congress means. But in the documents issued last week (i.e., the Congress agenda, new party rules, directives for the Five-Year Plan), there were some fairly reliable clues:

1) The chief report at the Congress will be made by Georgy Malenkov, the tough, 50-year-old Politburocrat who has shot up through the party like a skunk cabbage (he weighs 250 Ibs.). In the past, the post of chief “reporter” has been held only by Lenin and Stalin. This signal honor is further evidence that Malenkov, son of an Orenburg Cossack and long regarded in the West as Stalin’s most probable successor, is moving closer & closer to the top. Malenkov used to be Stalin’s personal secretary, is said to have a phenomenal memory capable of recalling at will details of the dossiers Stalin keeps in his private files. Malenkov is one of the second generation of Communists who never really knew the world before the Revolution.

2) New party rules to be submitted to the Congress reveal no major shakeup, but nevertheless contain some interesting changes (see below). They suggest that Stalin is trying to tidy and tighten up the party, possibly to avoid, for a hand-picked successor, the murderous party strife which surrounded his own successsion to Lenin, thus perpetuate his power beyond death.

3) Directives for the Fifth Five-Year Plan—which was actually started in 1951 —will be “approved” by the Congress. The 10,000-word draft seems to show that Stalin wants the Russian production machine to churn on pretty much as before. The plan calls for an overall production increase of 70%. As before, the lion’s share of that is to be heavy industrial production. Even if the Five-Year Plan reaches its targets (actually, the percentages given by Russian statisticians have only a remote relation to reality), Russian production will still be far behind the U.S.—approximately where the U.S. was about 25 years ago.

But the U.S. would be foolish to take comfort from this fact: Russia devotes about three times as much of its total production as the U.S. to heavy (i.e., war-supporting) industry, and can convert from peace to total war production far more quickly and ruthlessly than the U.S. can. Comments the Economist: “It looks as if the Russians are planning not for peace or for war, but for what the West calls cold war . . . From the point of view of the Soviet rulers, the cold war is probably the ideal planning situation, for just sufficient tension can be maintained to justify the priority given to heavy industry . . . and to convince most workers—without frightening them unduly—that the delay in improving their standard of living is due, not to their own government, but to the threats of the capitalist world outside.”