Page:The Hero in History.djvu/130

130 strengthened under Stalin when the construction of “Socialism in one country” became the standing order of the day. The full effects of Russia’s withdrawal from the world market were apparent in the devastating crisis of 1929–32 when huge surpluses of commodities and capital piled up in the chief capitalist countries for lack of outlets while unemployment and want mounted correspondingly. The potential Russian market could have absorbed a vast amount of goods and services. Its closed doors accentuated the severity of the crisis.

When the Bolsheviks took power, they did not expect to hold it without a revolution in the West. Once that revolution took place, they assumed that Russia, because of the primitive state of its productive forces, would lapse once more into its backward role in a socialist world economy. To facilitate the “inevitable” revolution in the West, the Communist International was founded. It was distinguished then and forever afterward from the Soviet régime and the Bolshevik Party only by a different letterhead for its stationery.

The “inevitable,” however, did not occur. The few efforts made to force it in Germany, Hungary, Finland, and China resulted in disaster. The Bolsheviks had to hold on or voluntarily abandon State power. Marx’s doctrine that no ruling class ever voluntarily surrenders its power turned out to be true for the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party, too. The reversal in the policy of the Communist International was signalled by Stalin, who had succeeded to Lenin’s mantle, despite the latter’s political testament. From then on “the defence of the Soviet Union” became transformed from a slogan, which had rallied the Western workers during the years of Allied intervention, into the guiding principle behind the activities of Communists throughout the world. The history of every national Communist Party is proof of this. For example, the French Communist Party which bitterly opposed the present war changed its line not when its own country was invaded by Hitler but only after Russia was invaded. The same holds true everywhere else.

The defence of the Soviet Union was now identified with the stability of the Bolshevik régime. The stability of the regime was bound up with correct relations with other states, particularly the absence of international conflict. These good relations could easily be imperilled if revolutionary movements, which derived their material resources in part and their ideal inspiration entire from the Bolshevik régime, were to make a bid for power and