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6 Probs. Communism 1 (1957)
Party vs. State: The Permanent Revolution Is on Again

handle is hein.journals/probscmu6 and id is 223 raw text is: CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS Party Vs. State The Permanent Revolution Is On Again By Richard Lowenthal EDITORS' NOTE: The spectacular purge of the top CPSU echelon last June--in which Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and Shepilov, along with lesser leading lights, fell victim to Nikita Khrushchev's ascendant power and wily manipu- lations in the party apparatus-confirmed long-obvious signs of severe dissension in the so-called collective leadership over the current course of post-Stalin (read Khrushchevian) policy. The complex issues involved in this newest shake-up have been the subject of widespread comment and analysis- none more incisive, in the view of these editors, than the essay presented below by the distinguished British writer Richard Lowenthal. It is reprinted here from the August issue of Commentary magazine (New York), through the courtesy of the publishers. ON THE EVE of the fortieth anniversary of the Bol- shevik seizure of power in November 1917, the Soviet Union has been launched on yet another social revolu- tion-on yet another turn of the wheel, that is, of the permanent revolution from above by which the rule of the Communist Party is maintained. This and nothing less is the meaning of the recent dramatic victory scored by Khrushchev over his opponents in the presidium of the party. It is obvious to all that by eliminating his chief rivals, Khrushchev has ended the fiction of collective leader- ship and restored the primacy of the head of the party machine, familiar to us from Stalin's time. It is equally obvious that he has done so in the name of new policies- policies which he claims represent neither a return to A frequent contributor to Problems of Communism, Mr. Low- enthal is chief political analyst for the London Observer and a noted authority on East European affairs. Stalin's system, nor a repudiation of the main line of the Stalinist tradition, but a bold advance forward from Stalinism. What is not yet generally understood is just what these new policies are. Yet it seems to this observer that the signs are plain enough for all to read. Khrushchev's primary objective is neither destalinization, nor decentralization, least of all democratization. It is nothing less than the ending of the dualism of party and state machine by which the Soviet Union has been governed for the past four decades-the institution of direct rule over the country, including direct management of its economy, by party secretaries. The Soviet state is to wither away at last, as Lenin promised-but only in the technical sense of having its bureaucracy no longer controlled but replaced by that of the party. It is a tremendous undertaking without example in the annals of modern totalitarianism, and it may fail. But let us first examine the evidence for saying that it has started. DURING RECENT MONTHS, the Soviet Union has been without a government in the traditional sense of the term. Not only have 25 industrial ministries been dissolved; not only have the prime ministers of the 16 constituent republics been granted membership in the all-Union government, thus making it a representative rather than an executive body; but the life and soul of the government, the inner cabinet of deputy prime ministers, has disappeared, and nothing has taken its place-nothing, that is, on the governmental plane. Some of the former deputy premiers have become sec-

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