Page:The Hero in History.djvu/131

Rh fail. The ensuing struggle and reaction might unloose the much-dreaded war and intervention which would interrupt the building up of “socialism.” Consequently, the Soviet rulers, because of the needs of national defence and of the expansion of the state economy, developed a vested interest in preserving peace. What is more, they committed themselves to maintaining the domestic status quo in all capitalist countries in so far as its upset might provoke international conflict. Where the Soviet Government believed it had nothing to fear in the way of interventionist designs by a foreign country, or believed it could turn these designs aside by trade or political treaty, it was eager to enter into cordial relations with that country, whether it was totalitarian Italy and Turkey or democratic France and England. If anything, because of the history of the early years, it was more suspicious of the latter than of the former. Even after the advent of Fascism in Germany, despite Hitler’s candid declaration of his policy toward Russia, the Bolshevik régime was punctilious in fulfilling all its treaties, pacts, and trade agreements. In fact, it renewed the old ones and entered into new ones with Hitler, not because it had no fear, of his intentions but in order to avoid a provocation that Hitler’s words and acts showed he would not wait upon.

At the same time that it acquired a vested interest in the perpetuation of the status quo in foreign countries, the Bolshevik régime was compelled to keep national Communist Parties alive within them. It was an axiom of Bolshevik doctrine that the differences between any group of capitalist powers was as nothing compared to the differences between the Soviet Union and all capitalist powers. The palpable contrasts between capitalist democracies and Fascist countries were regarded as superficial. Fascism itself was defined as the final and normal phase of democratic development in the era of finance capitalism. It followed, according to Bolshevik doctrine, that there was an ever-present peril that any or all capitalist countries might attack the Soviet Union instead of one another. To forestall such a dire eventuality, and to secure active, strategically situated allies in case it did occur, the national Communist Parties had to be strengthened as an elementary form of insurance. As the Bolsheviks conceived it, this meant that they had to achieve leadership and domination in the socialist and labour movements of all countries, not to carry out a revolution, but to influence the national and foreign policy of those countries, directly and indirectly, as the interests of the