Here again Russia's new rulers may be confronted by a difficult dilemma. If the communist bloc is to pursue a policy of self-containment and ‘peaceful coexistence’ with capitalism, its leaders may think it advantageous to prevent the further spread of communism which might endanger the status quo. Yet they may not be able to impose upon foreign Communist Parties the discipline under which Stalin kept them. They may not be in a position to dictate the policies and control every move of French, Italian, or Indo-Chinese communists. We have seen how first Tito and then Mao wrecked Stalin's policy of self-containment. Another Mao may rise in some corner of Asia or another Tito may reach out for power in some part of Europe, and wreck Malenkov's policy of self-containment as well. Even if the rulers of the communist bloc were to discourage new revolutions, as Stalin did, their background and tradition would compel them to identify themselves with every new communist regime emerging in any part of the world. And any such development would tend to aggravate or bring to a head the conflict between East and West.

The prospects depend, however, not only and not even primarily on what happens in the communist world. They may be determined more decisively by the trend of American policy.

Russia's new conciliatory attitude has been in the nature of a delayed reaction to the American policy of ‘containing’ communism, the policy of which George Kennan is widely regarded as the inspirer. Indeed the overtures of Malenkov's government are a signal success ofthat policy. The new Soviet leaders have acknowledged that the mutual pressure which East and West have brought to bear upon one another has resulted in an equilibrium which can form the basis for peace.

This indubitable success of the American policy of containment has, however, coincided with a crisis of that policy. Its inspirer has left the State Department at the very moment when official Washington might have celebrated him as the victor of the day. A cry to abandon ‘containment’ in favour of ‘liberation’, a cry to overthrow communist regimes in Eastern Europe and China, has gone up. Large sections of American opinion are clamouring for a crusade; and official Washington at times behaves as if it were anxious to yield to the clamour.

These auguries, when seen from Moscow, appear to promise little success for conciliatory overtures. Yet, Malenkov's government, not allowing itself to be discouraged, hopes to be able to calm the clamour for ‘liberation’, to dispel suspicion, and to induce the Western powers to revert to a policy ‘based on facts’. But it also knows that if the West were in all earnestness to abandon ‘containment’ in favour of ‘liberation’, self-containment would become meaningless for the Soviet bloc.

Should a war-like threat come from the West before the new regime has had the time to consolidate itself, another dramatic shift may occur on the Russian scene: the Malenkov government may be compelled to withdraw and to make room for its opponents. It may be succeeded by a military dictatorship, a Soviet version of Bonapartism.

The dynamic potentialities of the Soviet State are still incalculable; and the emergence of a Soviet Bonaparte is one of the possible surprises. The part played by military leaders in the recent crisis in Moscow is still obscure in some respects, but there is no doubt that it was important.

The Russian revolution has been the only one among the modern revolutions which has so far not led to a military dictatorship. But the ghost of Bonaparte has haunted it for three decades; and both Trotsky and Stalin, each in his own way, wrestled with the ghost. Trotsky repeatedly warned the Bolshevik Party of the military dictator who one day might rise above its head and crush it. Stalin suspiciously scrutinized the faces of Tukhachevsky, Zhukov, and other marshals to see which of them might secretly nourish this dangerous ambition. As in Dante's tale about the man who wrestles with a snake and in the struggle himself assumes the snake's shape, Stalin assumed some features of a Soviet Bonaparte when, as Generalissimo, he placed himself above his generals. But this was in part a masquerade. Stalin remained the civilian party leader in uniform, representing only a diluted and adulterated Bonapartism.

The mere need for such an adulteration shows that the trend towards Bonapartism was latent in Soviet society; it was no mere invention of the lovers of historical analogy. The trend remained only latent, in part because Russia was until recently too weak to breed a Bonaparte. A Bonaparte cuts no figure if he cannot conquer a continent. The Soviet generals of the past were incapable of such a feat—Russia's industrial-military strength was altogether inadequate for that. At the close of the Stalin era this may no longer be true. Nobody can say whether a real general, whom the uniform of a Bonaparte would fit much better than it fitted Stalin, may not appear in the Red Square one day. It is not irrelevant to the situation in Russia that the trend towards the ‘rule of the sword’, to use an old-fashioned expression, has been so much at work in the non-communist world as well.

There are as yet no signs of the advent of a Soviet Bonaparte. But if the peace offers made by Stalin's civilian successors were to fail, it may be with him that the West will have to deal next.

The day on which a Russian Bonaparte rises in the Kremlin may see the end of all self-containment, for the Bonaparte would disperse the party secretaries and make straight for the English Channel.

The close interplay of domestic and foreign factors will determine the outlook of post-Stalin Russia. Just as an aggravation of the international situation may contribute to the emergence of a military dictatorship so domestic developments, in their turn, will exercise a powerful influence on foreign policy. It may, therefore, not be out of place to consider here the alternative directions in which the Soviet regime may evolve.

There are, broadly speaking, three possible variants of development:

(a) a relapse into the Stalinist form of dictatorship;

(b) a military dictatorship;

(c) a gradual evolution of the regime towards a socialist democracy.

The conditions under which each of these variants is likely to materialize deserve to be examined. An analysis of these conditions leads to the general conclusion that the balance of domestic factors favours a democratic regeneration of the regime. A prolonged relapse into Stalinism is highly improbable. The essential prerequisite for a military dictatorship would be a war-like threat from the West. The real alternative seems to lie therefore between military dictatorship and democratic evolution.

The great bourgeois revolutions, which were in a sense the predecessors of the Russian revolution, resulted in the establishment of military dictatcrships. In Puritan England and post-Jacobin France these dictatorships came into being only a few years after the beginning of the revolution. The Soviet regime is well advanced in its fourth decade; but throughout this time it has preserved its character as a civilian, not a military, dictatorship.

Before exploring further the prospects for the future, we must briefly consider the main reason for this difference between the Russian and the other revolutions.

Every great revolution begins as a broad popular movement, whose leaders strive to establish a system of government very much more representative and broadly based than that which prevailed under the old order. Cromwell started by defending the rights of Parliament against the Crown. The French revolution represented at first all the Estates against the Court. The Russian revolution sought to establish the rule of Councils of Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies in place of Tsarist autocracy and the political vacuum of the Kerensky regime.