ABSTRACT
From Peter I to Nicholas II there were two centuries of state-ordained and fostered industrialization, with continuing powerful state-owned and state-managed basic industry, mining, metallurgy, munitions, railroad construction, and ownership, and some state commercial monopolies, all crowned with a huge and predominant state banking and credit system. The problem of "statecraft" in a despotism is that of preventing the discontent and longing from assuming independent and organized form. Industrialization, too, came with state initiative and an enoromous preponderance of state ownership and management. In the Soviet Union even loyalty to the underlying principles on which the state itself was founded has been declared a degrading crime and punished with incredible cruelty. Where the Soviet army was not admitted, there is a Japan free to criticize its occupier and determine its own destiny. Thus an awareness of the nature of Soviet totalitarianism and its aim would have made a difference in the freedom of hundreds of millions of human beings.
