COMMUNISTS: For Sale: Revolution

A short moment of silence jails upon the Great Hall of the Kremlin. The great Leader rises and directs his steady and measured steps towards the rostrum. All present rise to their feet. The walls of the Kremlin Palace shake with the echo of “Hurrah.” All that fills the soul of the Soviet man, all that has been dearest Jor the Communist is put into this ovation, which expresses a boundless sea of love for their Leader. A minute passes—two, three. The ovation, like an Alpine avalanche, grows greater and greater. It only ends when the desire to hear Stalin becomes uppermost . . .

Thus Radio Moscow last week reported the opening of the last session of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party (TIME, Oct. 13 et seq.). Stalin, as expected, was to have the last word.

The Word. Shorn of its doublespeak, the word was cynically frank. Henceforth, said the Leader, the Soviet Union will openly and officially export revolution to capitalist countries. Since 1936, when Stalin declared that the “export of revolution is nonsense,”* the U.S.S.R. and its underlings abroad have publicly maintained the fiction that foreign Communist parties are independent, national organizations, unconnected, except by ideology, with the fountainhead in Moscow. Stalin’s speech made little attempt to continue the fiction.

The Soviet Union, said Stalin, owes a debt of gratitude to its “brothers” in other lands: to the “British workers” who organized “Hands Off Russia” campaigns in 1918, to Comrade Thorez of France and Comrade Togliatti of Italy for restating for all to hear that their peoples would never fight against the Red army. In helping the Soviet Union, said Stalin, these leaders had naturally helped themselves, yet now that Communism is a “mighty force,” it is the bounden duty of the Soviet Union to help them too.

The Leader was careful not to make any warlike promises which might queer the party’s official peace offensive. But he made it plain that short of war, the Soviet Union will assist “struggles of liberation,” as in Korea, struggles for the “retirement” of “warlike governments” and the overthrow of capitalism, as in Czechoslovakia and China, and the promotion of war between “imperialist” states.

Shock Brigades. At one point the Leader waxed nostalgic. Today, he said, the task of the “shock brigades of liberation” (fifth columnists) is easier by far than it was in the glorious days of 1918 when the true Heroes of the Soviet Union (men like Joseph Stalin) stood alone against the world. “Today . . . from China and Korea to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, new shock brigades have appeared in the forms of popular democratic governments.” The Leader set forth a new set of rules:

¶ Since Europe’s bourgeoisie have “sold” their nations’ pride and liberty for a mess of U.S. dollars (the Marshall Plan), Communists have a glorious opportunity to pose as patriots’ raising the banner of national independence. In other words, whip up French against Germans, Germans against British, British against Americans.

¶ Infiltrate and corrode West Europe’s Socialist parties by enlisting them in anti-rearmament coalitions, i.e., popular fronts.

The chairman declared the 19th Congress closed. Loud applause. All rise. Exclamations of “Glory to Stalin.” The delegates with great inspiration sing the Internationale. Another stormy ovation breaks out in honor of the Beloved Leader and Teacher, the Great Stalin.

The 19th Congress had lasted ten days. Some of its decisions might not be known for months, perhaps not for years, but the most obvious tangible result was the-expansion and shake-up of the party bureaucracy. Top government bureaucrats for the first time got top party jobs: in effect, party and government were entwined more than ever before. The Congress appointed:

¶ A new 125-man Central Committee (former membership: 71) which included for the first time scores of young provincial Communists, drawn in from the so-called Soviet Republics (e.g., Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan). Chairman of the Committee: Joseph Stalin.

¶ An all-powerful Presidium (25 full members, eleven alternates) to replace the defunct Politburo (TIME, Sept. 1). No. 1 on the list of Presidium members: Joseph Stalin. Chief aides: Molotov, Malenkov, Beria. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, His Master’s Voice at the U.N. (see above), got a pat on the back: he was included as an alternate member of the Presidium (his Menshevik past has previously kept him from higher honors). Politburocrat Andrei Andreev, onetime boss of collective farms, was not on the list.

¶ A ten-man secretariat (kitchen cabinet) with five new members. First secretary: Joseph Stalin.

* In an interview with U.S. Publisher Roy W. Howard.