4. ANÁLISIS E INTERPRETACIÓN DE RESULTADOS
4.1. PRESENTACION DE LOS RESULTADOS
4.1.1. Respuestas de la encuesta realizada a las madres de los preescolares
When Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, after nearly thirty years as leader of the Soviet Union, it created a power vacuum in the Kremlin and an atmosphere of anxious uncertainty on the world diplomatic scene. I. F. Stone seized the op- portunity to call on his own country to adopt a more realistic and accommodating stance toward the other great power of the post-war era.
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March 14, 1953
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mid the burst of bad manners and foolish speculation, there was remarkably little jubilation. A sudden chill descended on the capital. If Stalin was the aggressive monster painted in official propaganda, his death should have cheered Washington. Actually the unspoken premise of Ameri- can policy has been that Stalin was so anxious for peace he would do noth- ing unless Soviet soil itself were violated. With his death, the baiting of the Russian bear—the favorite sport of American politics—suddenly seemed dangerous. Even Martin Dies rose in the House to say that while Stalin was “utterly cruel and ruthless, he was more cautious and conservative than the younger Bolsheviks.” Few would have dared a week earlier to dwell on the conservative and cautious temperament of the Soviet ruler, much less imply that this was favorable to world stability and peace. Now this theme leaked from every State Department briefing. There was apprehension that after Stalin there might come someone worse and more difficult to deal with.The cold war claque was critical of Nehru for calling Stalin a man of peace, but Washington’s own instinctive reactions said the same thing. The stress put by the White House on the fact that its condolences were merely “official” was small-minded and unworthy of a great power. After all, it is fortunate for America that when Stalin’s regime met the ultimate test of war, it did not collapse like the Czar’s. The war against the Axis would have
lasted a lot longer and cost a great many more American lives if there had been a second Tannenberg instead of a Stalingrad. Stalin was one of the gi- ant figures of our time, and will rank with Ivan, Peter, Catherine and Lenin among the builders of that huge edifice which is Russia. Magnanimous salute was called for on such an occasion. Syngman Rhee, ruler of a satellite state precariously engaged in fighting for its life against forces supplied by Russia, demonstrated a sense of fitness in his own condolences which Washington seemed afraid to show.
It is difficult to pursue dignified and rational policy when official propa- ganda has built up so distorted a picture of Russia. Many Americans fed constantly on the notion that the Soviet Union is a vast slave labor camp must have wondered why the masses did not rise now that the oppressor had vanished. The Bolshevik Revolution is still regarded here as a kind of diabolic accident. The necessities imposed on rulers by the character of the countries they rule is ignored. To understand it would be to put the prob- lem of peaceful relations with Russia in quite a different perspective and to dissipate febrile delusions about “liberation.” The wisest of the anti-Com- munist Russian émigrés of our generation, Berdyaev, in his The Origins of
Russian Communismhas touched on the way bolshevism succeeded because
it was so deeply rooted in Russia’s character and past. Bolshevism “made use,” Berdyaev wrote, “of the Russian traditions of government by imposi- tion. . . . It made use of the characteristics of the Russian spirit . . . its search after social justice and the Kingdom of God upon earth . . . and also of its manifestations of coarseness and cruelty. It made use of Russian mes- sianism. . . . It fitted in with the absence among the Russian people of the Roman view of property. . . . It fitted in with Russian collectivism which had its roots in religion.”
Every great leader is the reflection of the people he leads and Stalin in this sense was Russia. He was also the leader of something new in world history, a party: a party in a new sense, like nothing the world has known since the Society of Jesus, a party ruling a one-party state. It is this differ- ence which makes nonsense of prediction by analogy based on the principle of legitimacy in monarchy or the later history of the Roman empire. Strug- gle among the party leaders occurred after the death of Lenin and may oc- cur after the death of Stalin, but the party itself provides a cement strong
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enough to hold the state together despite such struggles. To regard this as a group of conspirators may prove a fatal error. This is a movement, with a philosophy comparable to the great religions in its capacity to evoke devo- tion, and based on certain economic realities which give it a constructive function. It has proved itself capable of industrializing Russia and opening new vistas to its masses, and this is its appeal to similar areas in Asia. This is a challenge which can only be met by peaceful competition, for only in peace can the West preserve what it has to offer, and that is the tradition of individual liberty and free thought.
It is time in the wake of Stalin’s death to recognize two basic facts about the world we live in. One fact is Russia. The other is the Communist move- ment. The surest way to wreck what remains of capitalism and intellectual freedom in the non-Communist world today is blindly to go on refusing to recognize these facts and refusing to adjust ourselves to coexistence on the same planet with them. Eisenhower in leaving the door discreetly ajar to possible negotiations with Stalin’s successor was wise, and the lesser powers should seize on the sobering moment to urge Washington and Moscow to get together.