Some years ago, Paul Winterton, onetime Moscow correspondent for the London News Chronicle, wrote, “There are no experts on the Soviet Union; there are only varying degrees of ignorance.” To this, I agree. I am no expert on Communist Russia. But, since of late there has been so much conjecture as to the future course of the Soviet Government under new Premier Georgi Malenkov, perhaps my views may be of some assistance to illuminate our general area of darkness.
I first began to vary my state of almost total ignorance about Communist Russia when I went to Moscow in October, 1941, as senior American Naval Member of the Beaverbrook-Harriman Mission to provide Lend-Lease aid for embattled Russia. During my 19-month sojourn in the Soviet Union as American Ambassador, I decreased considerably my ignorance about the Russian people, the Soviet Government, and the leaders of the Russian Communist Party. Since I left Moscow for the last time in October, 1943, I have endeavored to keep up with events in Russia and with the activities and the fates of the Russian officials I knew. By a combination of experience in dealing with the Russians and a continuing study of the tactics which support Kremlin policy, I have had some luck in predicting trends.
The Russian Communist Party and the Soviet Government
To give point to my further observations, it is advisable to consider first the manner in which power and authority are exercised in the Soviet Union. There are three separate but parallel channels.
The present channel of government was established by the 1936 “Stalin” Constitution, which was written by Stalin’s trusted advisers and Revolutionary comrades, Bukharin and Radek; to the casual reader, it appears to establish a representative form of government with many fine guarantees to Soviet citizens. The Supreme Soviet, top legislative body, is composed of two chambers, the Union Soviet and the Council of Nationalities. The Constitution gives these two chambers joint power to pass laws, elect the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, appoint the members of the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Court, and the Attorney General. Theoretically, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet is Soviet Chief of State. In practice, the Council of Ministers is the supreme executive with law making power, its chairman having duties and responsibilities roughly similar to those of a Premier in some European countries.
The “rubber-stamp” nature of the Supreme Soviet was never better exemplified than in the despatch with which it approved the drastic reorganization of the government proposed by Mr. Malenkov and his Council of Ministers at its hastily summoned meeting shortly after Stalin’s death.
This governmental channel of authority reaches downward through similar organizations at State and Provincial levels to the city soviets and the small individual soviets in the villages and in industry, which elect the delegates to the huge Supreme Soviet.
Parallel to this governmental channel of power runs the channel of authority of the Communist Party. Its Party Congress is supposed to meet once each year to elect the Central Control Committee, the Central Revision Committee, the Central Committee, and the Secretariat of the party. When not sitting, the Party Congress and the Central Committee delegate their power to a smaller group selected from the membership of the Central Committee, once called the Politburo, now known as the Presidium.
This channel of authority reaches downward through every level of organization to the individual party cell in city, village, collective farm, or industrial plant.
The third and most vital channel of authority is the Secret Police. Lenin once said, “The purpose of the terror is to terrify.” Whether it is called the CHEKA, OGPU, GPU, NKVD, or, as at present, MVD and MGB, the Secret Police is the instrument of internal espionage, supervision, and terror. With about one person in every five in the Soviet Union either a member of MVD or MGB, or informers for them, a family can hardly sit down to dinner or have their neighbors in for a visit without being pretty certain that there is an informer in the group.
The chief of the Secret Police has always been a fully loyal, trusted, and devoted follower of the party leader; that several of them have been hanged or shot, died suddenly of mysterious ailments, or simply disappeared only indicates that they had ceased to possess all of these attributes to the complete satisfaction of the leader and thus had become dangerous to him.
At all levels of government, in all echelons of party organization, there are “interlocking directorates.” To understand how the Russian Communists accomplish this, we will consider the 1949 tabulation of memberships:
Politiburo |
Council of Minsters |
(In order of seniority) |
(In order of Importance) |
Stalin |
Stalin (chairman) |
Molotov |
Molotv (deputy) |
Voroshilov |
Beria (controls MVD, MGB, supervises atomic research) |
Andreyev |
|
Kaganovich |
Andreyev (supervises agriculture) |
Mikoyan |
Mikoyan (controls foreign and domiestic trade) |
Khrushchev |
|
Beria Malenkov |
Kosygin (helps supervise agriculture) |
Kosygin |
Voroshilov (Marshal of the Red Army, proconsul in Budapest) |
Alternates: |
Kaganovich (indisutrial trouble shooter) |
Shvernik |
Malenkov (First Secretary, Orgburo, Cominform) |
Bulganin |
Bulganin (Marshal of the Red Army, deputy chairman, supervisor of the Armed Forces) |
Although not a member of the Council of Ministers, Shvernik was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet; Khrushchev was Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian Republic.
Of the ten members of the Council of Ministers, not one was commissar of a government ministry, yet each was a member of the Politburo and had the authority and responsibility for supervising the activities of important ministries. While the fiction that government and party were separate and independent entities was maintained, the distinction was more theoretical than real; the members of the Politburo were the men.who shared with Stalin the dictatorial power and the privileges; they were Stalin men, completely loyal, subordinate, and dedicated to him. At the pinnacle of power in the Soviet Union, in his positions as General Secretary of the Party, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Premier, and Generalissimo of the Armed Forces stood Joseph Stalin.
As Stalin said of Lenin in 1925, “Not a single one of Lenin’s disciples is worthy of Lenin’s mantle,” so it is now with Stalin—he was so preeminent among his associates in the Politburo that it is impossible to imagine that any one of them is worthy to be his successor. Let us take a brief look at how Stalin got that way.
The Politburo Through the Years
To compare the membership of the various Politburos from 1924, when Lenin died, to the present has always held a fascination for me. For convenience, I have assembled here in parallel columns the names of the regular and alternate members of that powerful political body at certain significant dates.
1924-25 |
1927 |
1934 |
1935-36 |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Zinoviev |
Bukharin |
Molotov |
Molotov |
Kamanev Rykov |
Kaganovich |
Kaganovich |
|
Trotsky |
Tomsky |
Voroshilov |
Voroshilov |
Bukharin |
Molotov |
Kirov |
Kuibyshev |
Rykov |
Voroshilov |
Kalinin |
Kossior |
Tomsky |
Kalinin |
Rudzutak |
Rudzutak |
|
Kuibyshev Rudzutak
|
Kuibyshev |
Mikoyan Andreyev |
When Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922, Hero of the October Revolution, organizer of the Red Army, military genius of the Civil Wars, popular party orator, Leon Trotsky was the only other outstanding figure in the Party. Stalin was almost unknown outside the controlling circles of the Party. Early in 1923, while Lenin still lay ill, Zinoviev and Kamanev organized a bloc within the Politburo and the Party. Needing an experienced administrator, they invited Joseph Stalin to join them, forming a Troika, the Russian version of a triumvirate, which dominated the Politburo for several years. What united the three conspirators was their fear of Trotsky and their determination to prevent him, a former Menshevik, from becoming Lenin’s successor.
Zinoviev was the master politician, the demagogue, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet; Kamanev was the brain, the strategist, once Lenin’s deputy, Chairman of the Moscow Soviet; Stalin was the tactician, more importantly the General Secretary of the Communist Party, controlled the Party organization and through it the provinces. All three were Old Bolsheviks; they represented the tradition of the Party. Not one of them could have stood up against Trotsky alone; together, they were a formidable force which virtually controlled the Party and the government.
Neither Zinoviev nor Kamanev suspected their fellow triumvir, the inarticulate Georgian, the plodding, inconspicuous work horse of the Secretariat, of ambition to become Lenin’s sole successor. But Lenin had recognized in Stalin, the comrade whom he had installed in the post of General Secretary, not only such an ambition but also an overweaning lust for personal power that was unbecoming in a Communist leader. In March, 1923 just before the third stroke which led to his death, Lenin wrote a note to Stalin severing all personal relationship with his former comrade. Had he recovered his health, doubtless Lenin would have demoted Stalin. In his “last will,” which he dictated to his wife on his deathbed, Lenin warned the Party of Stalin’s thirst for power and stated in a postscript that he intended to remove Stalin as General Secretary and replace him with a man more patient, loyal, polite, and attentive to his comrades. With the help of Zinoviev and Kamanev, Stalin managed to suppress Lenin’s will.
Thus we see that, while Lenin still lived, Stalin had become a very important member of three controlling party mechanisms—the Organization Bureau, the Central Committee, and the Politburo. With his control of the Party Secretariat, he could put men selected for personal loyalty to himself into key positions in the party organization and exile to the provinces and to positions abroad those comrades inimical to him. In this way, Stalin built up a personal organization beholden only unto him.
When Lenin died at Gorky on January 21, 1924 Trotsky was in the Caucasus for his health; he has written that he failed to return to Moscow for Lenin’s funeral because Stalin gave him the wrong date. Whatever the reason, Trotsky was absent; in the unLeninlike pomp and ceremony of the state funeral, the spotlight was directed on the members of the Troika. Many believe that, had Trotsky been present for the Lenin funeral, he might have succeeded to Lenin’s power and prestige instead of Stalin. Perhaps so; I am inclined to think, “No.” It will be interesting to examine into what happened to the seven members of the 1924 Politburo.
Trotsky.—Lenin’s heir apparent, extremely popular with the rank and file of the party, yet Trotsky had many enemies. By January, 1925, the Troika at Stalin’s behest was able to force Trotsky’s resignation as Commissar of War. Because of his belief in Party discipline, Trotsky could fight back only within the Politburo, felt himself obliged to accept and acquiesce in decisions and mandates of the Politburo which he had opposed in its meetings. In October, 1926, Stalin had Trotsky dropped from the Politburo. In November, 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the Party. In January, 1929, Stalin persuaded a subservient Politburo to exile Trotsky from the Soviet Union. After residence in Turkey, France, Sweden, and several other countries, Trotsky took political refuge in Mexico City. Chief defendant in absentia during the purge trials of 1936-37, Trotsky was sentenced to death. This sentence was executed in Mexico City on August 20, 1940, when an obscure party member smashed in Trotsky’s head with an axe.
Zinoviev and Kamanev.—After disposing of Trotsky as Commissar of War in 1925, Stalin broke with the other members of the Troika, refusing to consult them or concert with them in Politburo meetings. He maintained a majority in the Politburo by securing the support of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. Zinoviev was expelled from the Politburo in October, 1926, from the Party in November, 1927. Kamanev was expelled from the Politburo in October, 1926, from the party in December, 1927. Both Zinoviev and Kamanev recanted, repudiated their deviations from party dogma, and were readmitted to the party, but never again possessed any considerable influence.
Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky.—As soon as he had defeated Zinoviev and Kamanev, Stalin turned on Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. With his loyal supporters Molotov, Kuibyshev, and Rudzutak now installed in the Politburo and “some special hold” on both Voroshilov and Kalinin, Stalin no longer needed his former partners.
Too late, Bukharin sought an alliance with Zinoviev and Kamanev. “He will strangle us,” he told Kamanev. “He is an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to his appetite for power. At any moment, he will change his theories to get rid of someone.” Apparently the repentant Kamanev informed on Bukharin. Late in the Summer of 1929, Bukharin was ousted from leadership of the Communist International and the Politburo; Rykov was removed as Premier of the Soviet Government and expelled from the Politburo; Tomsky was ousted from leadership of the trade unions and the Politburo. Before the end of 1929, these three Old Bolsheviks recanted, repudiated their views, and made an uneasy peace with the Soviet dictator.
Stalin’s control of the Party and the government was now complete. Not one member of the Politburo dared to challenge his authority. His subservient ministers directed the most important commissariats of the government, the Secret Police, and the Armed Forces. At the end of 1929, Stalin could announce that “the decisions of the Politburo are being taken unanimously.”
Why then did Stalin feel compelled to resort to the bloody purges of 1936-39? Of them, Trotsky wrote, “Stalin is like a man who wants to quench his thirst with salted water.” The first of the great purge trials took place in August, 1936, a few months after Hitler’s army marched into the Rhineland without opposition from the Western powers; the last purge trial ended early in 1938 as Hitler announced anschluss between Austria and Germany. Fearful of losing his personal position of authority by revolt during the war he saw coming, Stalin set out to destroy his former comrades in the Revolution who might constitute the nucleus of an opposition and the political centers from which a counter-revolution might spring during the supreme crisis of war.
Among the defendants in the “trial of the sixteen” in August 1936 were Zinoviev and Kamanev; in the “trial of the twenty-one” in March 1938 were Rykov and Bukharin; Tomsky committed suicide rather than face trial; in exile, Trotsky was tried in absentia— every member of the 1924 Politburo had been ruthlessly eliminated—not only these leaders of Stalin’s opposition but also their supporters down to the third and fourth echelon, including the Chief of the General Staff and a group of conspiring generals of the Red Army and two former Chiefs of the Secret Police. Mere deviationism and Trotskyism were not heinous enough crimes—each defendant was charged with espionage for Great Britain, Japan, France, or Germany, with treason to the Soviet Union, with entering into secret treasonable agreements with the Nazi or some other government.
With all opposition eliminated at home, Stalin was now ready to make a cynical deal with the Nazi dictator of Germany, which would give him time to prepare for the war that was coming. When he assumed the additional posts of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Premier of the Soviet Government, Generalissimo of the Armed Forces, and took direct control of the Secret Police through his loyal supporter, Lavrenti Beria, Stalin became the complete dictator, probably the most powerful, absolute, and autocratic ruler in the history of the world.
Let us now consider the composition of the various Politburos during and since World War II.
|
|
|
|
|
|
1942 |
1946 |
1947 |
1948 |
1950 |
19531 |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Stalin |
Malenkov |
Zhdanov |
Molotov |
Molotov |
Molotov |
Molotov |
Beria |
Molotov |
Beria |
Beria |
Voroshilov |
Voroshilov |
Molotov |
Kalinin |
Malenkov |
Zhdanov |
Beria |
Andreyev |
Voroshilov |
Khrushchev |
Mikoyan |
Voroshilov |
Kaganovich |
Kaganovich |
Khrushchev |
Andreyev |
Voroshilov |
Mikoyan |
Andreyev |
Mikoyan |
Bulganin |
Voroshilov |
Andreyev |
Andreyev |
M ikoyan |
Khrushchev |
Kaganovich |
Kaganovich |
Zhdanov |
Kaganovich |
Malenkov |
Beria |
Mikoyan |
Mikoyan |
Kaganovich |
Khrushchev |
Khrushchev |
Malenkov |
Saburov |
|
Khrushchev |
Malenkov |
Kosygin |
Kosygin |
Pervukhin |
|
|
Alternates |
|
|
|
Beria |
Shvernik |
Vosnesensky |
Vosnesensky |
Shvernik |
Shvernik |
Shvernik |
Vosnesensky |
Shvernik |
Shvernik |
Bulganin |
Ponomarenko |
Vosnesensky |
|
Kosygin |
Bulganin |
|
Meinkov |
Shcherbakov |
|
Bulganin |
|
|
Bagirov |
Malenkov |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Note how little this top group of Communist Party leaders has changed during the past eleven years. With but few exceptions, the new Presidium of the Central Committee takes care of all members of the 1950 Politburo. The leading figures of the Soviet ruling hierarchy would seem to be so firmly entrenched in their positions of power and preference that no force short of death can dislodge them. However, from our previous examination of the Politburo, we know that this was not always so—nor will it necessarily continue to be in the future.
Of the changes to be noted in the membership during the past eleven years—Kalinin, the venerable and venerated Old Bolshevik who occupied the honorary position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet when I was in Moscow, retired from political life shortly after World War II because of age and ill health; he died in 1946. Zhdanov died in 1948. A few months later, Shcherbakov died under mysterious circumstances. Vosnesensky was dropped from his position as an alternate member of the Politburo in 1949 without explanation. It is hard to tell just what happened to Andreyev, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, member of the Politburo since 1932, Chairman of the powerful Committee on Party Control, and member of the Supreme Soviet. Apparently omitted from the 25-man Presidium of the Central Committee which replaced the 12- man Politburo in October, 1952, and from all government positions. Kosygin was demoted from full member to alternate member in October, 1952, and has disappeared from party and governmental circles.
Georgi Maximilianovich Malenkov.—Probably the most significant feature is the phenomenally rapid rise of Malenkov from last of the alternate members of the Politburo in 1942 to Number One on the list of 1953 Presidium members. When I was in Moscow, Malenkov was relatively unknown. I saw him only a few times, a fat, flabby individual, with a moonlike, expressionless face, in a drab party uniform. Highly intelligent, sly, and clever, as his impressive list of accomplishments during and since the War would indicate, as with Stalin in the early days of his rise to power, Malenkov’s very obscurity probably has been an asset.
Too young for the October Revolution, Malenkov enlisted in the Red Army while still a boy and spent his time checking up on the loyalty of his comrades. He left the Red Army in 1920, joined the Party, impressed his supervisors with his brilliant work, and was sent to school. It was Kaganovich who brought Malenkov to the attention of Stalin. From 1925 to 1930, he was chief of Stalin’s personal secretariat. He followed Stalin’s route to power, rising through the party secretariat to become personnel chief of the Central Committee and a member of the Party Secretariat; there, as a favorite of Stalin, he doubtless had much to do with the preparation of the papers for the great purges of 1936 to 1939.
In those days, Lavrenti Beria was his only close friend. They are said to have had serious personal disagreements some years ago, but nothing really accurate is known about their present personal relationship. Officially, for the present at least, Beria is Malenkov’s man.
During the War, Malenkov ran the Russian aircraft factories. By war’s end, he stood high in Stalin’s favor, probably just below Zhdanov and Molotov. His drop from fourth place on the Politburo list of 1946 to last place in 1947 coincided with his grim struggle for influence with Zhdanov, Stalin’s first deputy for Cominform and Communist Party affairs, then considered Stalin’s favorite. Malenkov was appointed First Secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat in 1947, was removed from the Secretariat a few months later. During the interim, he won his battle with Zhdanov, humiliating his sick rival through his son, Zuri Zhdanov, by discrediting the younger Zhdanov in an argument over genetics and Lysenko’s theory. Three weeks later, the elder Zhdanov died, reportedly of a heart attack; recently, I noted that a group of the most distinguished Soviet physicians, accused of deliberately giving Zhdanov, Shcherbakov, and other party leaders incorrect treatment for their ailments, were tried, convicted, and imprisoned. Of even greater significance, the Malenkov regime has recently admitted that the accusers of these doctors lied and that the confessions of the doctors were completely spurious and, by implication, were obtained “by impermissible means of investigation which are strictly forbidden under Soviet Law.” It must not be forgotten that at least one of the potentates of the Soviet Hierarchy, for whose death the accused doctors confessed responsibility, was Malenkov’s bitter enemy, Zhdanov.
Back in Stalin’s favor, in July, 1948, Malenkov was reappointed First Secretary of the party secretariat and was pushing hard to pass Molotov in Party favor.
At the first Party Congress in thirteen years held last October, Malenkov delivered the all-important policy speech, which Stalin had always made. He appealed to non-Communist countries of the West to break with America and to forge closer ties with Soviet Russia. Later in Warsaw, he said: “We believe that the co-existence of two systems— capitalism and socialism—is inevitable for a long period of time.” But make no mistake— Malenkov is a true Communist, Soviet Russian style. He believes just as firmly as Stalin in the “permanent revolution.” As well as he can, he will press for the spread of Communism throughout the world.
In a recent interview with U. S. News and World Report, Malenkov said that the Communist Party in Russia exercises a monopoly on thought, the Presidium deciding in every case what is right or wrong; in other words, the men in the Kremlin do the thinking for the Party, the people, and the country— whosoever might indulge in the luxury of independent thought exposes himself to the charge of being a deviationist, a saboteur, and a menace to the Soviet State; he might well be liquidated or exiled into slavery.
In January, 1953, on the occasion of Malenkov’s fiftieth birthday, Radio Moscow saluted him as dear Georgi Malenkov, “True pupil of Lenin, comrade-in-arms of Stalin.” I doubt that Malenkov ever saw Lenin, but close comrade of Stalin in 1952 and 1953, he had become. In his position as First Secretary, he had replaced the dead and the discredited with men of his own choosing, men personally loyal to Malenkov and owing their advancement to him; like Stalin two decades earlier, he has patiently built up an organization of his own within the structure of the party. Ambitious, clever, and unscrupulous, he had the good sense to get under a good man and work up. At 51, his twenty-six years of slavish loyalty to the boss have paid off.
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov.—As Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Molotov was the Russian with whom I had the most frequent contact during my stay in Russia. Scrupulously correct and courteous, he was often cold and repelling and almost completely humorless. Even after upward of fifty meetings, both official and social, I never felt that I really got to know him.
An old Bolshevik and revolutionary comrade of Stalin, he was Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1930-39), a member of the Politburo since 1926. For many years, he was considered to be closest to Stalin of all his advisers, although it appeared to me that Zhdanov and later Malqnkov moved into this coveted position. Unlike Malenkov, who has never been out of the Soviet Union and has a reputation around Moscow of hating all foreigners, particularly Americans, Mr. Molotov has had many contacts with the outside world and Western ways. Restored to the post of Commissar of Foreign Affairs, his considerable experience and foreign knowledge may have a softening effect upon the decisions that Malenkov and the new Presidium make.
Lavrenti Beria.—Of the same breed of young Communist as Malenkov, like Stalin, a Georgian, Beria is a hero of the Civil Wars, worked his way up through Soviet administration in the Caucasus, becoming party secretary of the Caucasus in 1929. He was elected a member of the Central Committee in 1938 and became a member of the Politburo in 1946.
Called in during the great purges to be vice-chief of the NKVD under Yezhov in 1938, he replaced Yezhov when he was executed that fall. Beria has the military rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, but I hardly ever saw him in uniform. When he became a vice-Premier in 1947, he gave up the Commissariat of Internal Affairs but his principal duties in the Politburo and the Council of Ministers consisted of supervision of the activities of the MVD and MGB through commissars formerly his subordinates and nonentities in the party. Since the stability of the Soviet Union depends upon the Secret Police, Beria’s assignment as Commissar of Internal Affairs demonstrates his importance in the inner party circles. Yet he must occasionally reflect upon one unpleasant fact—his predecessors, Yezhov, Yogoda, Dzherzhensky, all went from that same position of power and influence to the fate which each of them had prepared for so many other persons.
This new Troika, it seems to me, represents the power and authority of the new regime in the Communist Party and the Soviet Government—Molotov, Vice-Premier and expert in conduct of foreign affairs; Beria, who controls the organizations for state security and the secret police, with their large numbers of highly disciplined and politically reliable troops; and Malenkov, who controls the party machinery, is Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and has inherited the all-important function of directing the party’s ideological policy.
If we look again at the new 1953 Presidium of the Central Committee, we can see how well this Troika has taken care of members of former Politburos both in the Presidium and in the government.
Marshal Voroshilov, a military elder statesman, has been moved up to the honorary position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Marshal Bulganin is Vice-premier and Commissar of War. Kaganovich is Vice-Premier and member of the Presidium. Mikoyan is Commissar of Internal and External Trade. Shvernik is Chairman of the All Union Council of the Trade Unions Council. Khruschev was recently given the vital control of the party secretariat and party patronage. We may be sure that the new members and alternate members of the Presidium are loyal supporters of Malenkov.
Thus we see that, although the system of “interlocking directorates” between Party and Government continues, the Troika has returned to Stalin’s wartime organization with Presidium members directly responsible for the conduct of affairs as commissars of the most important ministries. The new Presidium, which replaces the Politburo, and the member of the Presidium who can dominate it, still can exercise total power in Soviet Russia.
Straws in the Soviet Wind
It is my view that the Communist Party Congress held in Moscow in October, 1952, was convened as a result of the known poor condition of Mr. Stalin’s health. It will be recalled that Malenkov, Molotov, and Beria were the principal speakers at that Congress. Almost the only publicized accomplishment was to abolish the Politburo and to substitute for it an unduly large and unwieldy Presidium of 25 members. This may explain the alacrity with which Malenkov and the Troika acted to reorganize the party and governmental structure after Mr. Stalin’s death.
With regard to the method of operation of the Presidium, when I was in Moscow, I observed that almost never was I given an immediate answer to any question I presented either to Mr. Stalin as Premier or to Mr. Molotov as Commissar for Foreign Affairs. I felt then, and I still feel, that every important decision is delayed in order to present the question to the Politburo for discussion. Some days after presenting a question, Mr. Molotov or Mr. Stalin might summon me to the Kremlin and give me a decision, or the question might be completely ignored for months. I believe that the Politburo acted then, and the Presidium will act now, as a board of directors. I am convinced that Stalin, as Chairman of the Board, certainly had the power of decision, but he always listened to the discussion, advice, and arguments of the other members. For a while, at least, I believe that Malenkov will have to depend upon a majority in the Presidium to gain his ends. With the backing of the Troika and the new members, he seems to have a working majority.
The very fact that Malenkov has so heavily stressed unity in the party indicates to me that he is apprehensive as to the situation behind the Iron Curtain. In my opinion, there is unrest in Russia and the satellite countries. The knowledge of such unrest helps to account for the haste in announcing the changes in party and governmental organization. The recent border incidents, resulting in shooting down an American jet fighter and a British bomber, are symptoms of this state of apprehension. I believe that Malenkov and the new Troika want time to consolidate their position and to ensure the stability of the new regime—that may be why Malenkov sings a hymn of peace.
I do not believe that we can expect any real change of Soviet policy because of the passing of Mr. Stalin. The creed of the Communist Party still reads that “it is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist for a long period side by side with imperialist states. Ultimately, one or the other must conquer.” Despite devious twisting and turning in Communist tactics, the men in the Kremlin will still conspire, negotiate, and be ready to fight for the “permanent revolution” and the establishment of the Russian brand of Communist dictatorship in every country of the world.
I can see no reason to think that there is any change in the long-range objectives of Soviet policy—the consolidation of the Soviet gains within its sphere of influence, the deterioration of the anti-Communist coalition, and the spread of Communism to other countries. Malenkov’s return to Stalin’s tactics in pronouncing the possible “peaceful coexistence” of communism and capitalism is beyond doubt only a tactic. Later on, Malenkov, like Stalin, may discover that, for preservation of Communist despotism in Russia and over the satellite nations, he needs an atmosphere of tension and fear of danger from attack. If so, we can look forward to a more truculent attitude by word and deed. If such be not forthcoming within a reasonable time, we must look carefully for other signs of a reorientation of basic Soviet policy.
I believe that we can certainly look for a “Kremlin revolution,” a bitter struggle for supreme power among the members of the Presidium. There are some students of Soviet Russia who believe that the struggle for succession has already been joined. I am not so sure. When it does come, in my opinion, it will not seriously affect the long-range objectives of the Soviet Union; whoever wins will still promote the world revolution by every means of persuasion, coercion, intimidation, and even war. We must not be misled by the sinuous deviations of Communist tactics.
When I left Moscow in 1943, I made this entry in my diary:
Stalin’s successors:
1. Zhdanov
2. Beria
3. Bulganin
4. Molotov
5. Malenkov
6. Kaganovich
Zhdanov is dead. Bulganin, with his control of the Armed Forces, is a potent force to be considered. Molotov is 62, probably too old to begin a prolonged struggle for power for which he is ill-equipped with potentiality for either force or terror. Kaganovich is 60 and has steadily lost influence as his former protege rose in the party hierarchy. Malenkov controls the party machinery, the organs of propaganda, and has the backing of the party organization and the party workers in the provinces. Beria, young, ambitious, and strongly intrenched in his position as Commissar of Internal Affairs, has the potentiality of force and terror of the MVD and MGB behind him. Bulganin might throw his influence and the power of the Armed Forces behind either of these contestants.
Still, one must never forget that Stalin, as only General Secretary of the Party, had an even more formidable opponent in Trotsky, Hero of the October Revolution, commanding the absolute loyalty and devotion of the Red Army; that he had three of his Chiefs of Secret Police purged when he suspected them of conspiring against him; and that, in the bloody purges of 1937, he was able secretly to try, convict, and execute Marshal Tukhachevsky and a group of the highest generals of the Red Army.
We must also remember that Stalin was able to capitalize on his relationship with Lenin. At every opportunity, he glorified the Great Lenin as the idol of the Russian people, the Communist deity of the Soviet Union. Life-sized pictures of the Great Lenin with his disciple Stalin on his left were displayed in the Red Square, in all schoolrooms, on public buildings, and in every public place. During the War, Stalin issued weekly bulletins in which he extolled the virtues of the Great Lenin and urged the people to hold sacred and to preserve the heritage handed down to them by the Great Lenin. It was as a devoted disciple of the Great Lenin that Stalin maintained his control of the Communist Party and his power over the Russian people.
Malenkov never had any personal contact with Lenin; his association with Stalin, while close and sometimes intimate, was such as to make it difficult for him to set up a Great Stalin as his own and the Russian people’s idol, and thus, by extolling the virtues of a “Great Stalin,” preserve the power which has been conferred upon him. It is probably highly significant that, since the State Funeral of Stalin featuring the three members of the Troika and the delegation to Krushchev of control of the party secretariat, the deification of a “Great Stalin” has markedly decreased and party unity and loyalty have been stressed.
Stalin had something else of importance in his favor—the rigid party discipline, which made his enemies acquiesce in their own defeat. Malenkov also possesses this advantage, but there is a difference. If a contest arises with Malenkov for sole and supreme power and authority, party discipline will probably prevail, because it has become painfully clear that the faction which loses will be destroyed. In my opinion, the issue will be decided in favor of the contestant who can muster to his support and control the greater array of potential force and power. The odds, today, strongly favor Georgi Malenkov to win.
Yet, when I compare the above entry made in 1943, the membership of the Politburo in 1942, and the membership of the Presidium of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers in 1953, I cannot help but be impressed with the permanency of the structure of the Russian Communist Party and the Soviet Government during the past eleven years. I believe that any material change in the true objectives of either domestic or foreign Soviet Russian policy will be accompanied with drastic changes in the membership of the Presidium, similar to those in the Politburo which we considered earlier. Such a reorientation of Soviet objectives and policy are, in my opinion, highly improbable.
Postscript
Unrest in the satellites has broken into open revolt. Lavrenti Beria has fallen from his high estate as Number Two in the Troika which has conducted an uneasy “government by committee” in the Soviet Union since Stalin’s death and is a prisoner of his own secret police. With all his potentiality for power and terror, how could this come about?
The above happenings only confirm my prediction that there “was unrest behind the Iron Curtain,” and in some of the satellite countries, and, also, that there will eventually be a conflict and a temporary change in policy as a result of this contest for power. I hardly expected these to happen so soon; other possible changes may antedate my expectations. The rapidity with which the “struggle for power” and the evidence of unrest have manifested themselves may indicate some slight possibility for a change of direction of Russian Communist policies.
We need look for no conflict over theory or Party ideology between Beria and the members of the Presidium, who dragged him down from his high place; even though Beria is accused of “criminal anti-party and anti- state actions, intended to undermine the Soviet State in the interests of foreign capital” and branded with the usually fatal epithet of “an enemy of the people,” what really took place was a naked struggle for supreme power between Beria and Georgi Malenkov.
For a while since Stalin’s death, it has looked as if Beria were winning—Malenkov was deemphasized; his wife’s brother, Krushchev, took over the Party Secretariat; Beria installed his supporters in important posts in the Ukraine, Georgia, the Caucasus, and the satellite countries. But Malenkov, along with the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers (Premier) and the Party machinery, apparently has inherited something more useful and important—Stalin’s super-Secret-Police, which took its orders direct from Stalin or through his personal secretariat and reached out into key places in Beria’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the Government bureaus, the Party organization, and the Armed Forces. It is probable that General Sergei Kruglov, who was Beria’s assistant, prepared his arrest, even as Beria prepared the arrest of Yezhov, his superior in NKVD.
The Red Army may have participated, but I doubt it. Rumors come out of Moscow of tanks and troops rolling down Sadovaya Boulevard toward Beria’s home on June 27th, the day that the Police Chief disappeared from public view. These might not have been Army troops at all but some units of the 15 divisions of elite troops which belong to the Secret Police. That Malenkov had the power to arrest Beria and to charge him with high crimes and treason before the Presidium and the Central Committee of the Party was proof enough that he had won his first battle in the struggle for supreme power in the Kremlin. The history of Stalin’s rise to power is repeating itself, with Malenkov playing Stalin’s role in control of the Party machinery. With no other support, Stalin was able to eliminate four of his Chiefs of Secret Police; apparently it was not difficult for Malenkov to purge the first of his.
I have referred to an entry in my diary as I was leaving Moscow, giving my estimate as to the priority of prominent Communist Russians as Mr. Stalin’s successor. Mr. Malenkov was then in fifth position, with the others in this order—Zhdanov, Beria, Bulganin, Molotov, and Kaganovich. Malenkov is credited with eliminating Zhdanov in the “doctor’s plot”; Beria has been purged; which apparently puts either Bulganin or Molotov next in the uneasy seat. Perhaps Bulganin’s position is somewhat more secure because of his situation as Marshal of the Red Army, which may have the effect of tieing Malenkov and the Red Army headed by Nikolai Bulganin, the Commissar for War, and Marshal Georgi Zhukov, Red Russia’s top professional soldier, up in the same package.
A recent Press statement out of Moscow states that Mr. Dekanozov has been relieved of his important post in Georgia. This is significant. He is not a “Beria man” but for years was one of Mr. Molotov’s principal assistants in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. This may put the purge finger on Mr. Molotov, my fourth priority successor, in the next regrouping in the struggle for supreme power in the Kremlin.
This leads up to a fascinating thought: where does the man whom Lenin called “that dumbbell” and “the best file clerk in Russia” stand? Is Vyacheslav Molotov content to play second fiddle and the supporting role to Malenkov’s Dictator, as he did so loyally and faithfully for Stalin for so many years? I recall a delightful cartoon I saw not long ago. Mr. Molotov and Marshal Bulganin sat in a Soviet office discussing the state of affairs in the Soviet Union. Said Marshal Bulganin, “How long shall we Old Bolsheviks let these young upstarts continue to lead us around by the nose?”
Mr. Molotov was depicted as smiling one of his rare smiles. “Let them go for a while, Nikolai,” said he. “Maybe they’ll invent some new tricks that we haven’t thought of yet.”
The naked struggle for power will continue, not between parties or factions within the Party, but between individuals moving toward the seat of supreme power, which Stalin occupied for so many years. In this joined battle, Georgi Malenkov now has another task unit in his task force, the potentiality for power and terror of the police apparatus, of which Beria, in his hour of challenge, lost control.
It would be a bold crystal gazer who would pick the winner or try to predict with any certainty the future and direction of the course of World Communism.