THE TABLET, February 11th, 1956. VOL. 207, No. 6038

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Rccjina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

FEBRUARY 11th, 195 6

NINEPENCE

The Church in Malta: The Danger o f an Emerging Anti-Clericalism

Violence in Cyprus : Impressions After a Recent Visit. By Patrick Wall, M.P.

Ireland Looks Ahead : Background to the Five-Year Plan. By Declan Costello, T.D.

American Prospects : The Presidential Election Year

Benefactors of M.alaya : To the Credit o f “Colonialism” . By F. J. Moorhead

Hobbit’s Apotheosis : The World o f Professor Tolkien. By R. C. Scriven

Understanded of the People: Translations o f Scriptures. By A. H. N. Green-Armytage

Critics’ Page : Free and Not So Easy, by J. A. V. Burke ; Catholics on ITA, by M. W. Stephen ;

Cameras over Cortina, by Phyllis Holt-Needham Books Reviewed: The Nature and Function o f Priesthood, by E. O. James ; Moslems on the

March, by F. W. Fernau ; The interpretation o f Psyche, by C. J. Jung and W. Pauli ; The Dog at Clambercrown, by Jocelyn Brooke ; A Book o f Spiritual Instruction, by Ludovicus Blosius ; Italy Builds, by G. E. Kidder-Smith ; A Tangled Web, by Nicholas Blake ; Soeur Angèle and the Embarrassed Ladies, by Henry Catalan ; The House that Died, by Josephine Gill ; and a selection o f books for children. Reviewed by Professor E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Sir Rupert Hay, Renée Haynes, M. Bellasis, J. McDonald,

George Scott-Moncrieff, Anthony Lejeune and M. C. de Putron

SOVIET DEMIURGE

T HE Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is to meet in Moscow on Tuesday. It is defined by the 1952 Party Statutes as “the supreme organ” of the party. In Stalin’s lifetime it was nothing of the sort. “The Party leads but does not replace,” emphasized the Eighth Congress in 1919. Its exclusive functions of leadership are constitutionally determined, but in the course of Stalin’s dictatorship authority came to be wholly concentrated in his person. He himself was the State, and in February, 1941, M. Malenkov could rightly say : “We are all servants of the State.” Attempts have been made since 1945 to show that the influence of the Communist Party has in fact never been curtailed, but this is clearly contrary to all that happened during the war, and to the emotional impulse of Russian resistance. Stalin’s power was based on the police, which became a State within the State, and which, with his help, usurped the various functions of the Party. Since his death, however, the Party has acquired real importance, not because it truly is “the supreme organ,” but because it can be represented as such. With the fall of Beria ended, for the time being, the particularly dark chapter of Stalinist methods of government. Today power, ostensibly derived from the people and the workers, is concentrated in the Leninist Central Committee, but wielded in fact by the Presidium and its First Secretary.

industrial leaders of modern Soviet Russia, because he alone has the secret of an all-embracing ideology. The inner struggles of Soviet society take place within the dominating but by no means “monolithic” Party.

But the elevation of the Central Committee from rubber stamp to a court of reference has both been caused by and contributed tó the disunity and factionalism which has split the Presidium since Stalin’s death. On the one hand, a group in the Presidium unable to get its way there might succeed in having a dispute referred to the Central Committee, where it might hope to control or cajole a majority. On the other hand, manoeuvres designed to increase personal or factional support in the Central Committee would exacerbate relations within the Presidium. However, the Congress is not a democratic assembly. Disagreements on basic policy are not publicly threshed out. Every motion is accepted unanimously, and the Twentieth Congress will not differ from its predecessors, but will underwrite whatever proposals are put before it. The delegates have been handpicked by the first secretaries of local Party Committees ; and M. Khrushchev can count on the certain support of the Ukraine, where he himself controlled all appointments for some twenty years, of Leningrad, where he was able to prevail over the Malenkov group in 1953, of Moscow, and of sòme other major Party organizations. He will therefore be able to dominate the Congress.

The Communist Party has become the absolute ruler. At the same time the Party is anxious not to be identified with the State. In the beginning was the Party ; it is above the State, and controls it in the role of what Mr. Borkenau calls

But the ascendancy of the Khrushchev “Left” over the Malenkov “Right” is not as absolute as it seems. Particularly in the last months of 1955, various incidents affecting indivi-