From Malenkov to Khrushchev
Rader, Jack
If there is one lesson to be learned from the Malenkov "resignation," it is that most of the journalistic guesses about the specific power relations in the Kremlin are utterly fruitless. No one...
...Yet—and here we come to still another contradiction in the Russian economy—if agriculture is now to be emphasized after three decades of ruthless stress upon building up heavy industry, one of the major consequences must paradoxically be a renewed emphasis on heavy industry...
...There is more evidence for the view that the new ruling group as a whole shared the general feeling that life had to be relaxed somewhat and more goods made available to the people...
...Which leads us to our final point...
...Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that tensions and conflicts repressed during Stalin's reign are beginning to break out into the open...
...Nor does any solution appear in sight...
...Two OTHER FACTORS MAKING FOR CRISIS in the Russian bureaucracy may at least be mentioned...
...If this sketchy analysis of the Rus sian situation has any validity at all, several things follow...
...And how can we be certain, as most of the "Russian experts" seem to be, that the divisions in the Russian ruling circles take place along institutional lines (army vs...
...In fact, it has been the fundamental problem of Russian economy and it remains unsolved despite the movement toward industrialization...
...it suffices to say that from 1940 to 1952, while industrial output increased 2.3 times, total production of agriculture (in comparable prices) rose only 10 percent...
...ONE OF THE MAJOR SPECULATIONS about the recent government changes is that Malenkov represented a "soft" policy of greater emphasis on consumer goods, while Khrushchev placed the dominant stress on heavy industry...
...Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev could not rule by personal fiat, as Stalin had...
...It is an organic social crisis, and one, we would suggest, that is almost certainly insoluble within the context of a totalitarian society...
...They had to take into account the wishes of their own top circle and, to a certain extent, the managerial and bureaucratic class...
...So that the occasional announcements of changes in major personnel, while in themselves not sufficient for an analysis of what or between whom this struggle consists of, is clearly evidence that the crisis within the ruling bureaucratic group remains...
...IF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL FACT to remember with regard to the Russian state is the high concentration of power in a small ruling group, the next most important fact is the certainty of continued conflict among the power cliques...
...Greater party responsibility in agriculture, as provided for by Khrushchev's plan, could be exercised largely by control of the tractor and machine stations...
...Yet the questions, unanswerable as they may be, persist: Does the rise of Zhukov and Bulganin mean an increase in the power of the army...
...party, secret police vs...
...administrators etc...
...This vision the facts have now shattered...
...That is not to say that the party and state are in all instances "the same," since some formal and indeed actual distinctions no doubt exist...
...The most fundamental is that the unchanging element in recent Russian history has been the concentration of political power in one man or a very small group, a power exercised through a totalitarian party...
...No more than capitalism can the world of Stalinism achieve social stability...
...given an economy that is statified and a society that is totalitarian, it cannot be otherwise...
...The regime remains totalitarian, but the element of personal rule is now reduced and problems that had formerly to wait on Stalin's pleasure can now manifest themselves, as it were, in independent form...
...But while industry had achieved a condition that would make possible such abundance, the trouble, Khrushchev continued, was the state of agri culture...
...The fundamental relations of social and political power in Russia remain as they have been for the past two decades...
...And vast new territories in central Asia were to be opened to cultivation...
...Emphasis added...
...it felt a need to consider that mass response which in a totalitarian country may be repressed but nonetheless exists...
...The whole area would be organized on the basis of state farms and "agrocities" and in this vast new effort there would be no need to consider peasant traditions, especially the eternal yearning of the peasant for his own land...
...Malenkov promised to provide relief from the long years of austerity and to promote a higher standard of living...
...Nothing that has happened, neither Malenkov's rise nor his fall, can yet be said in any serious way to modify this fact...
...Said Khrushchev: A definite disproportion has set in between the rate of growth of our large-scale socialist industry, the urban population and the material well-being of the working masses, on the one hand, and the present state of agricultural production, on the other...
...What is more, every step toward a solution seems only to exacerbate them...
...It followed from the basic contradictions within the Russian totalitarian system—a crisis which beset the ruling bureaucracy as a whole, and which led, in traditional Stalinist fashion, to the sacrifice of one part of the bureaucracy by another...
...to open the steppes of Central Asia to farming on the scale Khrushchev envisages—is once again to place another major strain upon heavy industry...
...The first is the problem of Russo-Chinese relations...
...The new regime was not yet certain of its popularity...
...And this, in turn, means to cut clown on the production of consumers goods, to continue the regime of austerity and therefore the harsh political climate...
...Stalin's heirs did not inherit a happy state• of affairs...
...During 1953 and 1954, it is reported, over 100,000 young Communists were settled in Central Asia...
...There was to be a sharp increase in material incentives to the peasants...
...JACK RADER 103...
...In order to "shift the vast army of specialists working in offices to the country-side and to reinforce collective farms, machine and tractor stations and state farms with leading personnel" (Khrushchev), strong measures had to be taken to compel people to take on new hardships and to leave comforts behind them...
...Amidst the whirl of speculation a few facts might be remembered...
...To try to keep up with the United States in the production of atomic and hydrogen bombs can only place the heaviest burdens on the Russian economy—still another deterrent to the policy of in creasing consumer goods...
...But there is some reason to doubt that such a cleavage, if it existed, was fundamental...
...Just as a few decades ago there was a tendency to accept the fearful idea that Hitler's regime might really last a thousand years, so there has recently been a noticeable tendency to assume the immutable existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia...
...The Russians, particularly in view of impending German rearmament, count heavily on their alliance with the Chinese...
...And Khrushchev went on to say that given the state of Russian economy There is the practical possibility of organizing a sharp advance by all branches of the light and food industries, of considerably expanding the production of consumer goods, because the main aim and the chief task of socialist production is the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society...
...Actually, the one constant in all the power struggles is the party, the omnipresent power center which reaches into every corner 99 of the country—it is this, together with the unprecedented uses of terror and ideology, which marks the distinctive stigmata of the modern totalitarian state...
...Incentives to the peasantry would mean that more and better foods would have to remain in the countryside...
...The plan for cultivating Central Asia has deep contradictions of its 101 own, not the least of which are the barrenness of the land and the insistence of the regime on developing it with little if any regard for the people settled there...
...But in order to participate in so vast an effort as the industrialization of China, the Russian regime must turn back toward the traditional Stalinist policy of emphasizing heavy industry at home and must abandon, in large measure, its earlier plan for a certain increase in the production of consumer goods...
...The shake-up 102 in the ruling bureaucracy was not primarily one between two conflicting groups with a clear-cut programmatic difference (heavy vs...
...To mechanize the agricultural sector of the economy...
...rather than along lines which cross, horizontally, the various institutions...
...Simply to ask such questions is to realize how difficult it is to answer them—we lack information, we lack the facts...
...consumer industry...
...And if the subject were not so grave, there would be something inexpressibly comic about the "Russian experts" whose expertness consists of little more than a close study of the photographs in Pravda and the order in which the names of the Russian rulers are listed...
...The party, becoming still more directly involved in agricultural production, would assume the main burden of improving the backward agricultural areas...
...Readers familiar with modern Russian history will recognize that this is a problem which had already appeared in the Twenties and Thirties...
...Power in Russia is not primarily economic or military...
...There was and is a widespread 100 hunger for more and better food, for diversity and improved quality in all commodities, for less harshness in the conditions of work, for "job security" within the bureaucracy and managerial class, and for more material benefits to the peasantry...
...Half in fear and half in thinly veiled admiration, some writers have begun to envisage a constant, unimpeded improvement of Russian life under the auspices of a benevolent autocracy...
...it is only to assert the dominance of the party in the state, in the economic bureaucracy, in all spheres of culture, communal life and army affairs...
...The contradictions between agriculture and industry, between traditional Russian backwardness and its overlay of modern technology, these are still operative...
...power resides in political control, which means in the party...
...A certain fluidity has begun to appear on top of the monolithic structure...
...in the very process of expansion it creates possibilities and tendencies toward its own destruction...
...The plenum of the party's central committee heard Khrushchev declare on September 3, 1953 that The great successes achieved by the Soviet people in developing socialist industry enable the Communist Party and the Government to get down directly to solving the problem of creating an abundance of articles in popular consumption in our country...
...Several steps were proposed to meet the failure of the agricultural sector (which, it need hardly be said, can only be understood in terms of a deeper malaise within the Russian economy itself...
...So long as the Russian system remains what it is, crisis will follow upon crisis— and in a total society each crisis tends quickly to assume a total form...
...No one really knows...
...There seems to have grown up a profound yearning in all sectors of the population, including the bureaucracy itself, for a relaxation of social tension, a breathing spell from promiscuous terror and a relaxation into what might be called regulated authoritarianism...
...This latter plan was intended as a means for providing a new granary completely subservient to the state...
...His report stands out as the first full-scale analysis of the failure of Russian agriculture that has been made public since the beginning of collectivization in the late 1920's...
...is there, as Secretary Dulles implies, a split between the party and the state, and is the latter now gaining a certain independence...
...This, be it noted, is not significantly different from what Malenkov was saying...
...A total of over 100,000,000 acres of land never before put to the plough were now to be seeded...
...At his funeral Beria felt called upon to promise a new respect for individual rights...
...Does, for example, Bulganin represent the army or the party...
...they have to...
...But in terms of the Russian economy as a whole the plan had the effect, together with the other measures for increasing the agricultural yield, of immediately coming into basic contradiction with the desire to improve the quantity of consumer goods...
...And then there is the obvious factor of the atomic armaments race...
...China's greatest need is industrialization, and the Mao regime turns to Russia for the necessary capital, machinery and technicians...
...But while the rule of the party is the constant, there have been important changes in Russia since Stalin died...
...to give the tractor stations a markedly greater quantity of machines and parts...
...The crisis is not merely or even primarily due to a conflict of view as to whether the Russian regime should stress "coexistence" or a more aggressive international policy...
...The speculation that can probably be dismissed most easily is that of Dulles, which tries to establish some sort of independence in the administrative cadres of the Russian state vis a vis the party...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
