Battle of the Marshals:
BORKENAU, FRANZ
Zhukov vs. Konev Battle of the Marshals By Franz Borkenau MARSHAL Ivan Konev, not Marshal Georgi Zhukov, delivered the Bolshoi Theater address when Moscow celehrated the tenth anniversary...
...The struggle between the Marshals is...
...It is now less certain than ever who will be in power tomorrow...
...Konev faction owes its position to the party...
...he was the secondrank member of a Soviet delegation headed by Mikhail Pervukhin, a rather minor figure in the Soviet Presidium...
...But politically-trained Pravda readers understood that he was maintaining his old claims in this form...
...Since Stalin's death, this struggle has taken on a complicated and obscure form...
...Konev struck a blow for Khrushchev with an article on the occasion of Red Army Day (March 23...
...Zhukov dwelt at length on the fraternal military alliance with the West during the war and sentimentally contrasted it with the present state of conflict...
...Nor was Zhukov, the supreme commander of Soviet armies in World War II, the featured speaker at the V-E celebration in East Berlin...
...As a result of this moratorium, Zhukov's name was not mentioned at all during the anniversary celebration—except as the author of his article in Pravda...
...Malenkov, who had been a key member of the Supreme War Council, attempted to inherit this glory...
...Konev Battle of the Marshals By Franz Borkenau MARSHAL Ivan Konev, not Marshal Georgi Zhukov, delivered the Bolshoi Theater address when Moscow celehrated the tenth anniversary of the victory over Germany...
...There, on May 11, the conference of the Soviet bloc created a united military command and named Konev its chief...
...Neither Marshal Chuikov nor Marshal Moskalenko can be considered a follower of Zhukov...
...Only Zhukov failed to receive the slightest mention...
...For a long time, the struggle took the form of a "struggle for glory...
...Meanwhile, on the occasion of the Stalingrad anniversary in February...
...In his message to the U.S...
...Previously, this organ of the So\iet occupation forces had printed the Pravda article about Stalingrad...
...Zhukov circumvented this ban in his article by repeating almost unchanged the description of the decisive operations he had given in the Hearst interview...
...Konev was more blunt in breaking the compromise...
...in the final analysis, the struggle over the domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet Union...
...For a while...
...In it...
...These are only two signs of a concerted effort by Moscow factions to place Zhukov and Konev on the same level in the public mind...
...Political disintegration must have been well advanced if Pravda used a Marshal to polemicize against the Defense Minister, while at the same time...
...The debate was obvious in literature about the war...
...that is...
...Perhaps more important, the battle itself received a new interpretation: Its purpose had not been the destruction of the German forces, which had been a foregone conclusion, but the prevention of cooperation between the German and Anglo-American leadership which aimed at a German surrender to the Western Powers instead of to the Russians...
...The attempt to harmonize the heterogeneous bloc of irreconcilable elements which today constitutes the Soviet regime has failed again, as it failed under Malenkov...
...The fact that they nonetheless refuted Khrushchev's claims so drastically showed that the "Left" Army faction was refusing to be deprived of its military glory and that it would not accept the freelyinvented military achievements of Khrushchev...
...Khrushchev and the "Left" Army faction, on the other hand, are out to discredit Zhukov personally and thus to provoke a severance of this contact...
...It had been agreed to stress the role of the party during the war, to quote Lenin, and to mention Stalin at least once...
...Now that the speeches and articles on the V-E anniversary are available, the situation appears to have developed as follows: On February 3, Pravda had published an article commemorating the victory of Stalingrad...
...Malenkov's downfall put an end to this phase, and the "struggle for glory" became a conflict between Zhukov and Khrushchev...
...Khrushchev was closely coupled with Stalin and given great prominence...
...Kursk and all the other great victories...
...Right now...
...But it had printed it after a delay of three weeks and it had deleted Khrushchev's name...
...It is obvious that any conflict between two Army leaders with independent command positions—Zhukov as Defense Minister and Konev as commander-in-chief of a supranational Communist army—is an exceedingly serious business, at least as long as their power is equally balanced...
...Whoever wants to rule Russia must have the support of the Army, or at least of its dominant faction...
...Khrushchev appeared to have lost this fight, but Zhukov did not conclusively win it...
...The chief document of Khrushchev's new counter-offensive was Chuikov's article in Pravda on the anniversary of the fall of Berlin, May 2. Chuikov not only stressed Stalin's and the Party's share in the victory, but went so far as to minimize Zhukov's military achievement...
...Konev devoted a few words to the comradeship-in-arms and then returned to his aggressive tone...
...Thus the deeper political meaning of the struggle among the Marshals emerges...
...And this "intramilitary" struggle now overshadows the "intra-party" struggle...
...And Kaganovich himself was even sharper than Konev in a speech at Prague...
...Konev's speech, indeed, gave everyone his due: Lenin, the Party and Stalin, the Supreme War Council, the Commissars, the Army leaders...
...This was made transparently clear in the speeches on the V-E anniversary...
...The Zhukov faction, however, bases itself mainly on Zhukov's World War II achievements and his resulting popularity in the nation, while the other...
...The latter had not belonged to the Supreme War Council, and therefore his adherents sang the praises of the group of leading front Commissars, of whom Khrushchev had been one...
...Overseas Press Club, Zhukov arrogated to himself once more the role of representative of the entire Soviet people...
...roughly since the end of March, there have been more and more signs of an increasingly successful refutation of Zhukov's claims and a corresponding increase in Konev's role...
...He did not explicitly claim sole credit for himself, as he had in February...
...Communist veteran Lazar Kaganovich, so often omitted, was now, once again, eulogized by Konev as a leading war Commissar...
...He accurately forecast the dreath of Stalin and fall of Beria...
...Marshal Vassily Chuikov had written an article for Red Star, the Army paper, which failed to mention Khrushchev's name...
...As a counter-stroke, Malenkov allowed Zhukov to participate in the glory of victory...
...At first Stalin was the victor in this struggle, and Zhukov was exiled to Odessa...
...Because of the catastrophe that befell the secret police in the summer of 1953, the Soviet Army today is the most important wielder of physical power...
...What makes this conflict enormously important is its connection with Soviet foreign policy...
...especially in war fiction...
...He specifically named Khrushchev—and ranked him first—when praising the wartime political Commissars...
...Confusion is caused by the fact that both opposing Army factions are at least nominally loyal to the Communist party...
...Khrushchev used the intramilitary struggle to spoil the Defense Minister's negotiations in the international arena...
...on Red Army Day, Marshal Kirill Moskalenko followed the same line in an article in the Berlin Taegliche Rundschau...
...Stalin had the support of the Army's "Left" faction in this battle...
...This article was along the same line as a long series of speeches and articles by Khrushchev himself, claiming a decisive share in the victory...
...Some six weeks later...
...from the beginning of 1954...
...Who won the war—Zhukov and the General Staff or the party and the Supreme War Council under Stalin?' This question arose immediately after the war...
...he met strong opposition from Khrushchev...
...Once again, the West must reconcile itself to the fact that, in any negotiations, no Russian leader can give a signiature valid beyond the day it was written...
...In order to align an obedient lackey like Konev with such independent Army extremists as Chuikov and Moskalenko...
...A strange procedure in the case of the top officer of the Communist party...
...not so much between the various Army leaders as between the Army and the Communist party...
...on the other hand, no living Party or Army leader was to be specifically linked with any war achievement...
...At stake here is much more than simple personal rivalry...
...Zhukov merely wrote (as he had in 1954) the Pravda article commemorating the event...
...To the contrary, Zhukov adhered to the old argument (originally stated by Malenkov last summer) that the effects of atomic war would be horrible, without touching on the question of who would emerge victorious...
...Zhukov's and Konev's V-E statements, as well as a number of other speeches on the same occasion, show the nature of this compromise...
...Since he did so...
...Khrushchev had to shelve his personal claims...
...On this basis, he corresponded (and perhaps still corresponds) with President Eisenhower...
...however, it seems more likely that the conflict will be settled by political means—by one of the two sides securing overwhelming support in the Army and the Party...
...A few days after the Chuikov article, a formal compromise seems to have been arranged, but it was immediately violated...
...Franz Borkenau, author of European Communism and other books, is a leading authority on the struggles inside the world Communist movement...
...Khrushchev, thus, had been forced to retreat, but there was also a tactical calculation involved here...
...This new turn was, by the way, accompanied by uninhibited attacks on Western political leaders, undiluted by any reference to "coexistence...
...After all, a coup by military proclamation is always a possibility in military politics, and the effect of one by Konev some day would be no less decisive if carried out "on party orders...
...He made clear beyond doubt that he had won the battle of Moscow, and that he had planned Stalingrad...
...The struggle between the Marshals is a struggle between differing political trends within the Army...
...Later...
...Perhaps more significant is this: Zhukov spoke at length about the dangers of atomic war, but he did not repeat the shibboleth, coined by Khrushchev and Molotov and now dogma, that atomic war would not destroy civilization, but only capitalism...
...A few days later, Zhukov replied in his famous interview with the Hearst journalists...
...For the time being, however, this was the last proKhrushchev statement...
...While Zhukov went to Berlin, Konev went to Warsaw in an analogous capacity...
Vol. 38 • May 1955 • No. 22
