The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

318 THE FREEMAN Maymade no pretense to being· aprophet about timing. In 1848there were revolutionary situationsall over Europe. But the revolutionswere either aborted orrepressed.. Since nobody could besure about timing, Lenin believedin the long-term financing of for~eign Communist parties, frontsand secret agents who would beon the spot if a revolutionary situationshould become ripe. Khrushchev,who followed Lenin's strategy,couldn't have known thatCastro would turn the anti-Batistarevolution into a fullfledged Communistrevolution. But the Communistshad their party and their"sleepers" ready to exploit Castro'sdiscovery that he had alwaysbeen a Marxist.What burns Mr. Beilenson up isthat "bourgeois" statesmen cannever seem to realize that Communistnations believe in havingtheir mounts "well shod on all fourfeet" even when the talk is ofdetente, or co-existence, or peace.All Communist agreements arelike· pie crusts, made to be brokenif a revolutionary situation develops.Ho Chi Minh waited fortwenty years to take over in NorthVietnam. Mao Tse-tung was willingto enter a coalition withChiang Kai-shek in 1946, butwhen the Soviets gave him allthose captured Japanese arms hewould settle for nothing less thanthe total defeat of the Kuomintang.Lenin signed the Treaty ofBrest Litovsk with Imperial Germanyto'. take Russia out of WorldWar 1. But when the Sovietsopened an embassy in Berlin, theyused it to spread subversion insidethe country that had permittedLenin to ride to the Finland. Stationin a sealed car. The LeninAdaptation makes no connectionwith gratitude.The Cautious SovietsAs Mr. Beilenson sees it, theSoviets, in using the Lenin Adaptation,err on the side of supercaution.If the United Stateshadn't been obsessed with Suez in1956, Khrushchev would neverhave dared send his tanks intoHungary to suppress the revolt.The Soviet army had withdrawnfrom Budapest in fear that Britainand America might send helpto the Hungarians. But when itbecame plain that Eisenhower andJohn Foster Dulles were givingpriority to their dispute with England,France and Israel, the Sovietarmy returned to Hungary.This does not mean that theSoviets will always be cautious.Lenin believed'in the inevitabilityof war with the capitalist world,and if the Soviets ever thoughtthey could win that war without