761.00/12–147: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Durbrow) to the Secretary of State
3304. It seems clear judging from the lengthy lead articles in latest World Economics and World Politics (No. 10 sent to press October 27) that Varga’s recent chastisement was more of tactical or correctional nature than prelude to his removal from scene.1 His latest piece entitled “Thirty Years Of Socialism And Capitalism” while in many respects a rehash of his previous mouthings, reflects also effects of his chastisement in its glowing endorsement of Cominform declaration and the reiteration on almost every page of the doctrine of absolute and inevitable collapse of capitalism and final and full victory for Soviet type socialism throughout world. He concludes his article “there can be no doubt whatsoever of outcome of struggle: The final [Page 625] victory of socialism will liberate mankind from the oppression of capital, from new destructive and bloody wars.”
On other hand one of most striking new notes is his frank admission that; “in US, regardless of fact that the general crisis of capitalism is markedly apparent in field of economy, the capitalist social order, in contradiction to that of Europe, is still quite firm in its social and political aspect;” and that “reaction inevitably will meet with defeat although externally its force still appears considerable.” Moreover, in contrast to his several positive predictions of the imminent economic crisis in US, he carefully avoids any implication of imminence by stating; “from the historical point of view the victory of socialism throughout the whole world is secure. It goes without saying that it is impossible to anticipate ahead of time when actual final victory of socialism in the struggle of the two systems will occur.” He further qualifies his prediction by pointing out that although the transition from slave economy to feudalism took fifteen hundred and feudalism to capitalism took three to four hundred years “capitalism and socialism will exist side by side for a considerably shorter period.”
He clinches argument of inevitable socialist victory and inevitability of a conflict by quoting Stalin’s prediction; “in the course of the future growth of the international revolution there will be set up two centers of world scope: A socialist center which attracts to itself the lands that are leading toward socialism, and a capitalist center which attracts to itself the lands that are tending toward capitalism.” This prediction, he continues, has now come true; “there are two centers, two fortresses of the warring systems: The Soviet Union, the fortress of socialism, and the USA, the fortress of capitalism.”
This means, he says, “in the present historical period any opponent of the Soviet Union is a reactionary and every reactionary inevitably is an opponent of the Soviet Union.”
While in his customary manner he uses highly selected unfavorable statistics and untenable economic premises to “prove” advantages of socialist economy the article is more political than economic polemic.
Although he predicts eventual victory of socialism in Europe he admits it will not be easy. It is perhaps significant therefore, that he expatiates at length on and gives particular emphasis to China and Asiatic colonial areas, “the most thickly populated areas of the world” and their “striving for greater independence”. While castigating the Indian bourgeoisie for their cooperation with English bourgeoisie, he declares; “the broad masses of the colonial workers and peasants are striving, with decisive force, toward the final liquidation of the colonial system.” He asserts therefore that; “after second world war much armament remained in hands of natives. The national-liberation movement of colonial peoples has an enormous progressive significance. [Page 626] Granted favorable circumstances, the colonial and independent countries, liberated from imperialist domination will be able to by-pass completely the development of capitalism.” Elaborating this point he states; “the duration of the period of the change-over to socialism throughout the whole world will in a significant degree depend on the question whether these broad colonies will have to first go along the path of the full growth of capitalism or whether they will, as Lenin indicated, skipping this state, find a shorter more direct path to socialism.”
In contrast to these areas he discounts immediate gains for socialism in the “slave owning economies” of Latin America and Africa. This may be significant in view of information reported in A–1269, November 252 to effect cadres not now being trained in Moscow for Latin America.
This authoritative restatement of Communist doctrine may well portend shift in major Kremlin efforts toward east. It seems to reflect loss of confidence in imminence of an economic crisis in USA and in possibilities of further Soviet gain in Europe in face of Marshall plan developments and growing European antagonism to Soviet aggressive tactics. If Europe can indeed be held firm and if we become deeply committed on the continent in the process, we may then see the Kremlin turn to direct development and exploitation of what Stalin termed the great “reserves of the revolution in the colonies and dependent countries.” Full text by pouch.
Sent Department 3304, Department pass London 358, Paris 388, Belgrade 22.
- Evgeny (Eugene) Samoylovich Varga was a prominent Hungarian-born economist in the Soviet Union, who was secretary of the economic and law sciences section of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. As part of the struggle for control over cultural affairs by Party dogmatists, led especially by Andrey Alexandrovich Zhdanov, serious faults of a bourgeois-reformist nature had been found and criticized in the official press in his book Changes in the Economy of Capitalism as a Result of the Second World War, published in 1946. After October 1947 he was no longer the director of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics, which was to be fused with the Institute of Economy of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences into a new Institute of Economy with one of his chief critics, Konstantin Vasilyevich Ostrovityanov, as director. Varga was restored to full favor in 1949.↩
- Not printed.↩