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When they came to power in October 1917, many of the Bolsheviks seriously doubted that they could govern the vast, chaotic land of Russia by themselves. "We can't hold out!" cried one of the prominent leaders. Lev Kamenev. Lenin himself hoped at first that the October Revolution would last as long as the Paris Commune of 1871 —71 days—to serve as a warning to capitalism. "It is most surprising," he later said, "that there was no one there to kick us out immediately." This week, to mark the 50 years that have passed since that shaky start,*the Soviet Union is holding the biggest birthday party in its history. Beneath all the fanfare, however, beneath the orgy of self-praise and the endless litanies of statistics, today's Russia and its leaders are also troubled by doubts and uncertainty about the future.
The indisputable achievements of Soviet Russia—in space, science, education, industrial growth—have been amply chronicled in an unprecedented anniversary outpouring. From feudal czarist Russia the heirs of Marx and Lenin have created a modern state that trails only the U.S. in power and production. Moreover, though no country has ever freely elected a Communist government, they have managed to impose their ideology on one-third of the earth's population, about one billion people.
The cost of it all has been huge. The vicious civil war that followed the Bolshevik coup decimated the Russian population and laid waste the land. The Stalinist reign of terror destroyed millions of Russians, among them many of the most intelligent and talented, and put a permanent scar of guilt on the nation's psyche. Industrialization was accomplished only by forced labor and the long and severe deprivation of the populace. The self-defeating collectivization of agriculture was squeezed from the blood and brows of the stolid and melancholy peasantry. Fear has been the single most dominant characteristic of 50 years of Communism.
Despite the burden of such a legacy, Russia is changing faster and in more ways than at any time in its history. Instead of the fiery prophet Lenin, the obsessed and brutal Stalin or the bub bly and unpredictable Khrushchev, it is led today by an oligarchy of sober, cautious bureaucrats who embody the country's new striving for respectability. Under the aegis of Premier Aleksei Nikolaevich Kosygin, 63, whose hound-dog countenance is better known in the West than the two or three others with whom he shares power, the government is experimenting with economic liberalization and cautiously widening the still narrow limits of individual freedom and expression. Ideology, long the great bugaboo of Soviet life, is being sacrificed to pragmatism in order to get things done. And the regime is facing a growing gap between Russia's government and its citizens, brought about by the onslaught of technology and the rise of new and striving classes in the "classless society."