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Perturbation-Proof. Avtorkhanov's book may tempt some readers to conclude that Communism carries the seeds of its own failure. The author acknowl edges that Russia has flopped as an industrialist (half the state enterprises are run at a loss), as. a farmer, even as a seminal example to other Communist states. Writes Avtorkhanov of the deepening schism between Moscow and Peking: "The contradictions are so deep that in perspective they make war between these two Communist states, if not unavoidable, at least fully possible."
Avtorkhanov concedes that Brezhnev and Kosygin have granted what amounts to unprecedented concessions to democracy. Russian industry has introduced the profit motive. The Red army, which played a hand in Khrushchev's fall, has been given political rights and powers that, for the first time, crack the monolithic power structure of the state. But Avtorkhanov warns that none of these alterations should give much comfort to the West. Russian Communism, he says, comes perilously near to being self-perpetuating, proof against every perturbation beneath it: "The party apparatus is superior not only to the state but to the party itself. Its solidarity and its stability do not depend upon an individual or upon a few individuals but on a structural system. Communist dictators come and go, but the Communist dictatorship remains."