Groping Between

The evident confusion in recent Soviet policymaking (TIME, May 5) got a pat explanation by the Polish Communists, who professed to see a power struggle between Politburocrat Mikhail Suslov, identified as an old-fashioned Stalinist ideologist, and that beaming old pragmatist, Nikita Khrushchev. The New York Times, playing the Polish thesis hard, even reported--but without offering supporting evidence--that Mao Tse-tung had sided against Khrushchev. But highest-level foreign policymakers in Washington, after weighing all the available but fragmentary reports, have now come to the conclusion that what is going on is not a struggle between individuals fighting to impose a hard or soft line of action but an effort to find a new policy between the hard and the soft.

The Russian "smiles'" approach, while useful on the world scene, tends to create a demand for freedom both at home and in the satellites, and the Communist Party cannot keep appeasing the demand without jeopardizing its rule. Furthermore, the Soviet policy of economic aid to non-Communist nations has not led swiftly to the political conquests the Kremlin seeks (it is noteworthy that Nasser returned to Egypt full of Russian propaganda backing but saying nothing about getting any rubles). It has also become clear that Russia cannot whistle up a summit conference on its terms alone.

Last week the leaders of seven captive East European countries were summoned to the Kremlin for a big socialist camp meeting. In a general tightening-up to mesh satellite economies into Russia's forthcoming revised seven-year plan. Eastern European countries were directed to drop pet national industrial projects and produce what they can produce best. For the first time Soviet-bloc economic integration was extended to Communist Asia (China, North Korea, North Viet Nam).

At home, too, the Soviet regime felt the need for tightening up. Last year Khrushchev proposed a radical decentralization of ministries, creating 105 regional enclaves, which the 105 bosses have tried to remake into self-contained little kingdoms. Plants dependent on outside supplies found them hard to get. In Tashkent, for example, the Voroshilov farm machinery works had to lay off workers for two months when shipments of vital castings from the Stalingrad tractor works failed to appear. Last week the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, worried by a "chain reaction" that is growing "like an avalanche." published a decree imposing fines and jail terms up to three years for "parochial" administrators who unpatriotically lag on delivery to other districts.

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