One is always tempted to view the Communist order, as it exists in Russia today, as something essentially static. But Communism does not differ from other orders: it is subject to the same eroding process of time.

The Communists themselves firmly believe that the ‘contradictions’ inherent in the capitalist order are insoluble, and that, sooner or later, they are bound to bring about the downfall and disintegration of the bourgeois society. They admit the existence of certain conflicts in their own society, but claim that these conflicts are merely the natural outcome of the eternal struggle between old and new elements. A closer scrutiny of these conflicts reveals, I think, that their character is far more serious than the Communists would be prepared to admit. Indeed they constitute a grave danger to the continuation of the regime as we know it. Four of these conflicts—one in the sphere of foreign policy and three in that of domestic affairs—may be usefully considered.

The contradiction which exists in the field of foreign policy is a comparatively simple one. The Soviet Union tries to pursue two contradictory aims at one and the same time, that of expansion and that of isolation.

The expansion is an essential element of the Communist doctrine of the world revolution. This expansion requires a great number of Soviet citizens to be stationed abroad. Their stay abroad implies close acquaintance with the outside world} the penetration of certain ideas and attitudes alien to their original Communist attitudes. At the same time, ever since 1948 at least, perhaps even earlier, there has been the doctrine of isolationism, the doctrine that the bourgeois world, the non-Soviet world, is an evil thing against which the citizens of the Soviet Empire ought to be guarded.