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Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev Part 03
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RUSSIAN CHANGES CALLED OLD PLAN
Moscow Diplomats Declare Autonomies Are Evolution of Stalin-Lenin Policies
By RALPH PARKER
By Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
MOSCOW, Feb. 11-Although the changes in the Constitution adopted by the Supreme Council last week are emphatically held; here to be mainly of domestic con-cern, keen interest is taken in the lively foreign reaction to them.
Now that full reports of Amer-Ican press comment are available, It has become possible to compare the opinions of American com-mentators with the opinion of for-eign diplomatic representatives in the Soviet capital. There is a wide difference in their interpretations.
According to diplomatic observ-ers here it is necessary to view the recent changes from a histori-cal perspective. The nationality policy identified with Premier Stalin, they contend, has been de-veloped steadily along the lines he and Lenin agreed upon, long be-fore the revolution, as compatible with Socialist doctrine. This policy envisaged the freeing of the small-er nations within the sphere of Russian influence from the danger of becoming victims of acquisitive great powers, and when Premier Stalin first turned his mind to the problems of these small nations Czarist Russia seemed to him the power, from which the danger was most acute.
In Russia Saw Domination
After the revolution, these ob-servers say, Russia saw many small nations on her borders, sud-deny released from Czarist hands, fall under the domination or more or less direct influence of the gwat powers. According to the Russian view, Baron Car. G. E. von Mannerheim's counter-revolution in Finland never gave the Finnish people a chance to develop their national identity, and the succes-tive Governments prepared that country for the role of a great-power stepping stone in a war on Russia.
The Russians also contend that for a time Transcaucasia became a playground for foreign concession hunters; that the three Baltic re-publica were destined to fall under German influence unless Russia was vigilant; that parts of White Russia and the Ukraine and all Bessarabia passed under the control of lands which were seen neither to give them the opportunity to de-velop their national identity nor to take measures for defense against resurgent Germany; and that alien influences sought to stir up trouble in central Asia.
And, this interpretation of Soviet history continues, because Moscow foresaw the attack on the Soviet Union the unfolding of Premier Stalin's policy to give the republics autonomy went hand in hand with concern for strategic considerations.
Evolution of Policy Seen
In the opinion of diplomatic cir-cles new measures are therefore the logical evolution of Premier Stalin's nationality policy and not
sudden and unexpected. But it felt here that the prtifie