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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 17, No. 11. June 24, 1953

The Second Failure

page 2

The Second Failure

The riots in Germany serve to remind us that East Germany is still occupied territory. They also serve to remind us that whatever may be said (usually by communists) in favour of a communist regime, such a regime is to say the least, economically no more satisfactory then a capitalist regime.

Undoubtedly is will be alleged that the riots were caused by enemy agents; we can believe that or not as we choose: fundamentally the revolt had on economic basis. We know that it is wrong to argue from the particular to the general and we cannot say that because communistic socialism is failing in Eastern Germany. It must also fail elsewhere: we can say, however, that as it is unsuccessful in Germany, so it may be unsuccessful elsewhere

Basically the problem to the communists is different outside Russia from inside Russia. The people of Russia may be contented. They have never known freedom or a high material standard of living, but what is most important of all it that, for good or bad, they are not being ruled by a foreign power. To the Germans, the Czechoslovakians, the Hungarians and what is left of the Poles is the knowledge that their rulers are foreigners. While their head of state may have been born within their state, his policy has not. Such intermeddling with another nation's affairs which appears to go on between Russia and neighbouring states, would not be tolerated by the people in a free state. Basically this it the cause of what has become known to the world at "Titoism,"

The approach adopted by the Soviet Union towards colonised states was as brutal as it was transiently effective. We are told by one Roumanian refuges, for example, that her husband was arrested and presumably deported, that the criminals were relased from the jails, given good salaries, and called policemen. Since this has come from one who has been it happen we have no reason to doubt it.

Even so, a generation of ruthless indoctrination could probably produce a nation of fanatical totalitarians. It it not we who have to fear Eastern Europe, but rather our sons and daughters, or perhaps their sons and daughters. We do not believe that the people

What, then, are we to say of the rebellion in Germany? Germany, as well as Czecho. of Eastern Europe are yet Communist lovers. Their greatest danger will come when they are. Slovakia, it fanatically nationalistic. This revolt will, we fell, only stir once more the flames of nationalism. From their own point of view, the East German government acted well: they put down the revolt before it had grown to sufficient proportions to represent a milestone in German history. Had they not done so. Germans for generations might have remembered and hated communism for it. The government, however, made one mistake. They let the Russians loose. If there is one thing really calculated to inspire hatred, it having one's own people killed brutally by an invader's tanks.

The legacy, we think is this: a renewed hatred amongst the Germans for the Russians and a growth of antipathy towards their own government. The letter can perhaps be overcome by reforms, but the former will not to easily be eradicated.

It it easy to fall in to error when one is distant, both in mind and in body, from the subject of one's judgment, and events may prove us wrong, but with this reservation, we have formed the conclusion that Russian communism in Germany has failed.

—F.L.C.