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303 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1956)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0303 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD Rarely has there been a more intense interest in any subject-or a wider range of speculation-than in Soviet developments since Stalin's death in March 1953. As the old dictator's power grew in range and intensity, he had tended more and more both to concentrate the exercise of power in his own hands and to project even minor preferences and prejudices of his own into the shaping of Soviet policy. At first cautiously, then with greater assurance, Stalin's successors undertook to revise some of his policies and to modify some of his methods. For Moscow bu- reaucrats, the change of working hours must have been a portent of greater changes to come. For several decades the upper ranks of the bureaucracy had remained at their posts into the early morning hours, since Stalin worked at night and there was no knowing when he would demand their presence. By the end of 1953 nor- mal working hours, from nine to six, were instituted. To the Soviet population at large the new leaders' promises of more food, cloth- ing, and housing must have had a familiar ring, but it also received some slight evidence of their partial fulfillment. The presence, after long years of exclusion, of non-Communist tourists from outside the Soviet bloc also strengthened their belief that a new war, with even greater potential for destruction, was perhaps not so imminent as they had believed. To the world outside the Soviet bloc the new leadership, though selected and trained by Stalin for high responsibilities, began to show a somewhat different demeanor. Without relaxing its insistence on Communist purity and consistency of dogma at home, it seemed better able than at any time since the war to distin- guish the real alignments of forces in the outside world. It abandoned some of the mistaken claims of Stalin's last years while stubbornly maintaining its essential positions of. strength, as in the case of Eastern Germany and the satellites. What has been the meaning of these trends? Has the Soviet regime turned into a national state, responsive to the aspirations of its own people for a better life and for peace? Has the revolutionary belief in the world-wide triumph of the Communist system given way to a willingness to coexist indefinitely with other political systems? Are world politics going to move in calmer channels? No single or simple answer to these crucial questions can be given by the con- scientious student of Soviet affairs, for Soviet life and actions are themselves full of contradictions, despite the strenuous attempt to measure all life by one dogma. Careful analysts of Soviet developments are constantly examining and re-examin- ing the available data, which are now more abundant than they were in Stalin's last years, and criticizing their own and others' estimates. Since World War II the resources of trained personnel available in the United States for the study of Soviet affairs have grown a great deal, and large bodies of specialized, even highly technical, analyses are being produced at great effort. In some respects, in this as in other fields of research, the gap between the scientific literature and the news- paper headline tends to grow wider. One of the purposes of this special issue of THE ANNALS is to enable the intelligent reader to catch up with a large part of the findings of the specialized research projects in this field, and to see how these findings bear on one of the most crucial questions of our time, Whither Russia? vii

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