ABSTRACT
The new Soviet leaders have shown greater imagination, and have made more subtle distinctions between their different opponents and between the different brands of neutralism, than Stalin made in the last years of his life. Stalin had been unwilling to take seriously the new independent states of southern Asia. In France the communists maintained their hold over the bulk of the French working class in the five years following Stalin's death. Since Stalin's death the Soviet Union has made huge political gains in the Middle East, but local communist parties have not played a large part, though they are likely to profit from them. In general, Soviet policy has been successful in the Arab lands but not in the non-Arab Middle Eastern states, Turkey and Persia. The aim of Soviet policy was not to bind the new states directly to the Soviet bloc, but to make their neutrality as harmful as possible to the West.
