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New Course. At a time when the Soviet Union spurns negotiation, strains to make superbombs, rejects disarmament, and presents to the outside world a face more brutally intransigent than at any time since the Berlin airlift, the Kremlin's domestic accent on sweets and serviceable footwear may be hard to credit. Yet for all their skepticism, many Western diplomats think that Russia's "New Course" is on the level. They point out that the Soviet Union is now offering to buy butter, meat and TV sets from anyone who will sell them, and that the payment Moscow proposes to the world is gold or strategic minerals.
Equally impressive is the detail and preciseness of the Kremlin's decrees, indicating that the New Course is not a hurried phony to give a propaganda boost to an uncertain new regime, but a well-laid-out scheme that might only have needed Stalin's death to get the go-ahead. The proof is in the preparation: 100,000 words prescribing how many acres must be planted to each crop on every collective farm; sheaves of instructions saying exactly how much steel has been allotted to each factory to fill written orders for bicycles and refrigerators. Such detailed specifications. Western analysts argue, involve millions of people; they cannot be easily countermanded, orally and overnight.
There is no evidence in the decrees—or anywhere else—that the Kremlin wants a letup in the arms race, or that Russia shrinks from permanent cold war. Yet one top U.S. official says that the New Course is "as significant as America's New Deal." The Soviet plans, he says, are "serious and sincere"; their immediate objective ("to raise living standards") is genuine, even though the ultimate goal (to strengthen Russia for war) is predictably cynical. Looking on, Sir Winston Churchi11 concluded optimistically that "internal prosperity, rather than external conquest, is not only the deep desire of the Russian peoples, but also the long-term interest of their rulers." In fact, there is mounting evidence that the Kremlin is subject to economic pressures that it cannot forever ignore.
Unbalanced Economy. Since Stalin's death, more (and more conclusive) statistical information has come out of Russia than in any period of Stalinist rule. It has been sifted and evaluated by the growing body of Soviet specialists at work in Western Europe and in the U.S.—in Government departments and in special study centers such as those at Harvard and Columbia. The information suggests that the Russian economy is becoming increasingly powerful, but also dangerously lopsided, almost to the point of overbalancing. Since 1940, Russia's heavy industry has made what the U.S. State Department calls "remarkable and dismaying progress.'' The evidence (in millions of metric tons): *
1940 1952
Coal 166 301
Steel 18.3 34.4
Oil 31 47.5
Electricity 48.3 116.4 billion kw-h