SOVIET RUSSIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 November 1941, Page 7

SOVIET RUSSIA

PLACE IN POST-WAR WORLD REGARDED AS NECESSARY ELEMENT. . IN ORGANISATION MAKING PLACE SECURE. (From the “Christian Science Monitor.”) BOSTON, August 8. Russia, having joined the list of antiNazi Powers, is to participate .shortly in a London conference of allied governments. The significance of this announcement is not immediately clear because the whole question of Russia’s place in the community of nations is not clear. Yet, notwithstanding all doubts and uncertainties the future peace and security of the world cannot be considered apart from the role that the Muscovite Empire is to play in the new order.

In considering so large a question as a new order for the world, one cannot limit one's horizon to the fact that in 1918 and for several years afterwards the Communists, who had seized the Government in Moscow, abandoned the concept of Russian nationalism and launched their abortive plan for world revolution. Nor can the view be restricted to the fact that during 1939, 1940, and even the beginning of 1941 the present precarious Russian dictatorship was signing a succession of accords with the Nazi chieftain. Those events, all happening within a brief couple of decades, may be merely a short episode in the long history of the slow-moving Russians. The point is to find what estimate, based on a long-range view of the Russian people, can be made as to the likelihood of their fitting into the type of new order that the democratic nations hope to construct. NEW FOUNDATIONS. Apart from Russia’s peculiar political ideals and propensities, the arguments for including it as a needed unit in the new order are almost overwhelming — particularly at a time when most plans for the new order have been wrecked by the extensive German conquests, and the democratic nations are eagerly searching for new foundations for the work. Original designs for a revised League or a world Federal Union have been whittle down to something little more than a glorified Anglo-American entente. In short the planners have reduced their design to include just those powers which can supply a bed-rock foundation for the new order. It is in the matter of selecting the foundation powers —these world centres of control—that the question of Russia’s inclusion becomes vital. Nations have never yet settled themselves automatically into harmonious groups. Some powers—Rome, Persia, the Holy Roman Empire, Turkey, Britain, or another —have invariably established themselves as control centres to provide the needful cohesive element for humanity generally, and to protect the weaker nations.

The moment that the American colonies sensed their nationhood, President Monroe and his advisers realised that there must be some power to act as control centre to supervise the Western Hemisphere, and in his famous doctrine of 1823, constituted America as that power. In sb doing he was giving America precisely the same functions as the British, Germans, and Russians were exercising in Europe— France, occupied with domestic upheavals, had ceased to wield its former imperial influence. These three empires did not embody their supervion in a “doctrine.” But each of the three watched its own preserve with a political, military, or naval vigilance beyond anything possible or necessary in the Americas. SYSTEM THAT BROKE DOWN. Today’s upheaval is due in large measure to the fact that in the years before 1914 the three-power control system in Europe was breaking down. Britain and Russia, in extending their empires to world-wide proportions, were raising problems for themselves, respectively, in the Far East, India, the Middle East, or in North and South Africa, and otherwise dispersing their strength, while Germany, closely contained between the two, was conserving its forces and developing ambitious schemes for lebensraum.

Hence the four-power world system that had maintained stability from Napoleon to Wilhelm 11. failed to function. Its collapse has made Hitlerism possible. The chaotic conditions of the last two decades have given warning that the first essential for world sta-.

bility —before any form of world government can be erected —is to get the foundations laid in the establishment of workable centres of control. What are these centres to be? AMERICA’S ROLE. One of these control centres'must be America unless the country is to forgo its place in the post-war world. The United States, changed from a debtor nation to the tune of 3,500,000,000 dollars around 1914 to a creditor to the extent of some 5,000,000,000 dollars in 1919, has become today the world’s great creditor thereby exercising the most potent means of influencing the rest of the nations. Moreover, America has discovered that supervision over this hemisphere alone cannot guarantee its security. Another control centre must be Britain, whose fleet still controls the seas and whose Empire has proved one of the greatest stabilising forces in history. But are these two powers, sufficient control centres for the world? Mr Anthony Eden on May 29 said that “the British Empire and its Allies, with the United States and South America, would alone be in a position to carry out Europe’s rehabilitation.” Mr Eden, who spoke before Russia had come into the anti-Nazi fold, had certainly allotted to the two democarcies a herculean task.

Consider the general make-up of Europe. It is composed, except for the non-dominant Latins, primarly of two leading races which, since the fall of Rome, have been engaged in one long endless struggle—the Teutons and the Slavs. BASIS OF PEACE. If Europe contrived to keep stable for the best part of the nineteenth century, it was because Berlin —representing the Teutons and dominating the west —and Moscow —exercising a general sponsorship over the various Slav elements from the Poles on the Baltic to the Serbs and Bulgars in the Balkans —preserved a fairly even balance on the Continent. If one side showed signs of growing too powerful, Britain was at hand on the sidelines to throw its weight in the opposite direction.

When in 1878 Russia planned, in the San Stefano Treaty, to extend its influence in the Balkans by the creation of a greater Bulgaria, Britain, using Turkey as a sub-control centre, threw its weight to the German side and by the Treaty of Berlin blocked the plan. When Germany in the years before 1914 was pushing eastward toward the Dardanelles for its BerlinBagdad project, and also westward with its newly built fleet, Britain brought Russia into the Triple Entente with France in 1907.

Today, therefore, the question arises whether one or other of these two ready-made control centres —Germany or Russia —must not be added to the Anglo-American combination to ensure proper stability among the distraught nations on the Continent of Europe. Assuming that the Germans are too aggressive and warlike for safe collaboration in a peace system at present, the conviction, is growing, that the other control centre-—the Russian —should be brought into the system — if there were a reasonable expectancy that the Russians would adequately perform the funtcion. What qualities might be called indispensable for such a function? Russia is not a democracy today. It has never known a workable democratic government. It is uncertain whether it will evolve one in the near future. Americans are naturally suspicious of all attempts to collaborate with an autocracy. Still more would they dislike any dealing with a Communist Government — although the present Russian dictatorship appears to have little of the original Communist element in its make-up. MUTUAL CONCESSIONS. For the sake of benefits arising from the stability to be gained by such an understanding, however, it is probable that the Russian people might well be willing to make such concessions as would remove some of the main American scruples. As for the British, it would no doubt be sufficient that Russia should be willing to co-operate fully with democratic governments. Sir Samuel Hoare, speaking as Foreign Secretary in 1935, in reference to Soviet Russia, said: “Any State sincerely desirous of maintaining the peace of Europe, whatever may be its government, will have our collaboration in that aim.” Another stipulation would be that the power in question should not be an aggressor nation. Russia, having more territory than it can cope with already, may be considered unlikely to go to war merely to absorb more territory. Moreover, the Slavs in general and the* Russians in particular, while fine soldiers in defending their country, are poor fighters abroad —as may be seen by comparing the poor shewing of the Russians at Austerlitz in 1805 with the fine defence set up at Borodino in 1812, or their failures in Finland in 1939 with the heroic defence of Smolensk today. The aggressive action of Moscow against Finland and the Baltics has been proved by subsequent strategic necessity, in an attempt to complete the defence system against German aggression. WHAT OF STALIN? How much Russia represents the communistic doctrine today is less easy ,to say. Stalin, as distinct from Lenin, has never interested himself primarly in pushing world revolution or in developing Communism as such at home. On the contrary, he has liquidated many of the “idealists” who stood for the pure communistic policy. On the other hand, he has built up the army and air forces as a great defence force for nationalistic purposes and has played power politics along the same lines as his Tsarist forbears. It is in defence of Russia as a nation—not as a defence of Communism—that the Russian people are fighting so effectively today. Russia in many ways is more primitive than, and not fully sympathetic to, the western democracies.

But the democracies may find they can afford to overlook these drawbacks if, in its leadership of the various and often mutually hostile Slav races, it has generally shown inherent stabilising qualities. The fact that Russia will probably be found to meet most of these requirements, and in any event will need all the help the democracies can afford it to develop its own unexploited resources, would seem to point to the Muscovite pire as a naturally and relatively safe counterweight to Europe’s warlike Teutons—provided that the necessary agreements can be arrived at with its present rules.