RUSSIAN RESHUFFLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 815, 11 March 1955, Page 32

RUSSIAN RESHUFFLE

HE reshuffle at the top [in the Soviet Union] is not as important as what is behind the reshuffle at the bottom. Russia has kept the rest of the world under threat. To do this, she’s had to make arms and keep armies in being. And when you make tanks, you can’t make tractors as well. And when you make guns, you can’t make refrigerators as well. And you can’t make washing machines ... We're apt to forget that they’ve had to do without a lot of things that we’ve had in plenty . .. They haven’t enough food in Russia and they haven’t enough food in the satellite countries. And they don’t like being without food... That brings us to the real point of the crisis of this week. The whole purpose of the new regime is to concentrate on heavy industry. That’s been made perfectly clear. One way of putting that is to say that consumer goods must take second place .. . In these circumstances, Khrushchev has engaged in one of the biggest gambles in history. That’s no _---

exaggeration. He’s going to try to provide more food at all costs. And the Army’s going to help him, not only by keeping the people in order but also by lending him its best brd@ing ... How is all this going to affect us? The optimists among us are apt to think in terms of a sudden terrible and bloody revolution in Russia in which the heads of the wicked will roll and in which the Russian people, without leadership or organisation, will somehow take immediate control and make friends with us so that we shall live happily ever after. The pessimists, on the other hand, seem to imagine that Russia will quickly overcome these internal difficulties, and that her leaders, by accident or design, will (continued on next page) =

Extracts from commentaries on the International News, broadcast from the Main National Stations of the NZBS

then plunge us all into a terrible atomic | war in an attempt to conquer the world. Or they have an alternative, that Russia will not overcome her difficulties: and, that her leaders will plunge us all into this same atomic war in an attempt to save an unpepular regime at home by a popular war abroad . I can only say what. the facts lead me to expect. I should expect soon to see the great Khrushchev gamble on collectivisation in operation. I should expect te see an intense, a tremendous, and a last effort to make Communism work in the country in which the Communist experiment began ... I should think that, in the end, the effort would failhuman nature seems to make failure in-evitable-and that in the end a more comfortable world must emerge. But of course, in the meantime, we can’t | count on that, or on being allowed to calculate the chances from the facts, which will olmmoaet rartainivu Ke hiddan.

R. M.

HUTTON-POTTS

February 12, 1955

THE MIDDLE WAY

JK NOWING the grave implication of what’s happening in and around Formosa Strait now we shall all watch carefully to see whether a middle way can open up before things go too far and neither side can dtaw back. Suppose

for a moment that Communist China would reconsider her decision to go ahead

with the use of force if she could see some advantages in prospect as a reward for moderation. Suppose the parties could be persuaded to parley. Would the United States be disposed to make concessions on some of the matters which at present annoy Peking? Would she consider diplomatic recognition more sympathetically, and perhaps eventual admission of Red China to U.N.? Could there be an arrangement to neutralise Formosa so that it was controlled by neither Nationalists nor the Communists in the meantime, with the 10,000,000 Formosans being allowed to decide their own future after Chiang and _ his Nationalists had gone and the tension had died down? I feel this may be the direction in which Western diplomacy is working behind the scenes . . . But I’m afraid that, on the surface, and at the moment, we can’t get away from the disturbing fact . . . that if two forces, Communist China and the United States, won’t budge from the road they say they're going to tread, a collision is inevitableand that means a shooting war the extent and end of which no one can predict. It’s a terrible risk that’s being taken, this playing with fire. If the United States has reached the stage where she’s determined that. Communism shall be halted militarily in Asia, many of us think it’s a great pity she didn’t choose a better place than Formosa for the trial of strength. The rights and wrongs of sovereign title to Formosa are by no

means clear cut.

RUSSELL

PALMER

February 19, 1955