Ten years after Stalin: Leonard Shapiro interview

Ten years after Stalin: Leonard Shapiro interview; 3:ENGLAND: London: ITN Studio:INTCS Leonard Shapiro (Lecturer of Soviet Affairs at University of London) interview SOF (What difference might there be in the world today if Stalin was still alive?) Well there would be no substantial differences inside Russia of course, I think Stalin was preparing another of his big purges just before he died: So far as the world itself is concerned; I should think, it is very difficult to say, but I should think if he had pursued his incidentally inflexible policy, there would have been a very good chance of war. I think it is also possible that Stalin would have been more successful then his successors been, in keeping the Communist block together which means, we would have presented with a much soldier menace, a much soldier front, which perhaps could have only been dissolved, war. Beyond that I should not like to speculate: (But in the field of internal, rather than foreign affairs what would be the most significant changes since Khrushchev took over?) Well, they have been enormous of course in all sorts or respects. I should say the most striking thing of all, particularly, from the point of view, of the man inside Russia is the fact that people have been given some kind of sense of not living under this pressure of terror: Stalin really maintained a really big umbrella of terror over everyone. I think that's gone, I haven't been to the country, I can only speak in the tense from what I hear & what appears in the press, but it definitely now has the sense of being a more relaxed country. (Yet four men were condemned to death, for private enterprise?) Yes, I was about to say these things are relative. These things are relative in the sense that while there isn't the over all terror, there is still of course a very stiff regime, and a regime that is really fully prepared when necessary, to obituary methods. The only thing is that it doesn't do it quite so ofte...