To the Editor:

In his review of Walter Laqueur’s Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations [Books in Review, April], Leon Aron overlooks an important statement Laqueur makes: “Stalin and Stalinism were apparently genuinely popular.” In the course of his book, however, Laqueur submits no evidence to support this opinion.

The German biographer Emil Ludwig once said to Stalin: “It seems to me that . . . to a certain extent the stability of Soviet power is based on fear.” The dictator replied: “You are mistaken. . . . Do you really think that it would be possible to retain power for fourteen years and to have the backing of the masses, millions of people, owing to methods of intimidation and fear? No, that is impossible.”

But Yagoda, head of the GPU, indiscreetly admitted to an American correspondent, William Reswick, “We are a minority in a vast country. Abolish the GPU and we are through.” . . .

Ludwig might have asked Stalin: “How is it possible for a minority party (the Bolsheviks won less than 24 percent of the vote in 1917) which killed millions of its own people, and which inflicted terrible economic conditions upon its people, to have the backing of the masses?” If Ludwig had said this, it is doubtful whether he would have gotten out of the country—he probably would have met with an unfortunate “accident.”

Stalin did resort to various theatrical performances to win public support, but his main concern was with the foreign media. Inside the USSR, people expressed support because they had no other choice. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for example, told the story of the factory manager who, being the first to stop applauding in a tribute to Stalin, was arrested. The evidence suggests that inwardly people hated the regime.

George F. Kennan told in his memoirs of a huge spontaneous demonstration of Soviet citizens outside the U.S. embassy in Moscow at the end of war in 1945. According to Kennan, the people went wild, but why in front of the American embassy? Obviously they were desperately trying to send a political message to U.S. officials. A demonstration like that normally could not take place, but VE-Day gave the people an excuse. Soviet officials saw the meaning in a flash, but Kennan, and most U.S. officials, seemed politically obtuse.

In October 1947, Modern Review published an article titled “Voice Out of Russia” by an anonymous but prominent Soviet specialist which stated that so far as the workers were concerned, “perhaps 5 percent among them are in favor of the Soviet regime” while “among the peasants you find no supporters of the regime.” (Stalin was still very much in power in 1947!)

More recently Viktor Suvorov has written: “If . . . if . . . if only someone had realized how the Russians loathe Communism.” The available evidence suggests that this was, and is, closer to the truth than Laqueur’s observation.

Robert E. Walters
Winter Park, Florida

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Leon Aron writes:

I thank Robert E. Walters for drawing my attention to Walter Laqueur’s remark. That the incessant and deafening propaganda secured a measure of genuine popular support for the cult of Stalin no one who lived through that period would deny. Yet I doubt that the author meant his comment to be interpreted more broadly, viz., as an endorsement of Stalinism by most Soviet people. Walter Laqueur’s entire oeuvre shows that he knows very well both the real nature of Stalinism and the depth of popular hatred of it.