Russia in Flux: A Major Triumph for Zhukov
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS I.
A MAJOR TRIUMPH FOR ZHUKOV By Boris I. Nicolaevsky The Soviet Union today is witnessing political changes of tremendous importance. It has, quite probably, embarked on a major new era in its...
...The main issue at the conference was "the state of Party-political work and the tasks of the political organs and Party organizations" in the Army...
...The entire system which permits such criminals to set up an unlimited despotism over a nation of 200 million must be condemned as intolerable in human society...
...What official accounts left in doubt were the lengths to which this liquidation would go, and the forms and tempo it would take...
...They remained in the Ministry to watch over Zhukov after Bulganin became Premier...
...The aspects of the situation that I have dealt with here cannot, of course, explain completely the complex struggle which preceded the regime's sharp reversal of policy and Khrushchev's dramatic speech...
...The rapporteur on this issue was Marshal Kirill Moskalenko, commander of the Moscow Military District...
...His closest colleagues in the Presidium must also have realized this...
...who were accomplices in his crimes...
...by implication at the very least, leveled at Stalin...
...In the fall of 1944, he became a member of the State Defense Committee and Stalin's closest adviser on political and police matters in the Army...
...His report did not touch on any major policy matters, and he confined his role to that of an economic specialist...
...Pravda used this term for the last time on January 23...
...Zheltov and his closest aides will surely be replaced soon...
...Soon he was able to take his revenge on Zhukov...
...As yet, these changes have not been reflected in the major policies of the Soviet regime...
...The answer must be sought in the struggle that raged within the Party on the eve of the Congress...
...From the start, Zhukov disliked the cunning, two-faced Bulganin and friction arose between them...
...This event, unparalleled in Soviet history, testifies to the complete victory scored by Zhukov...
...He was a shallow, vain man who knew nothing of military matters but arrogated to himself the glory of those who, despite all his blunders and crimes, managed to rescue the USSR from the blind alley into which he had led it...
...I am referring to Essays on the History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, which was officially sent to press on September 20, 1955, seven months after Zhukov became Defense Minister...
...with the help of the Great Purges of 1937-38 and the projected new purge, early in 1953, which was aborted by his death...
...Much of their information is unquestionably second- or third-hand and not completely accurate...
...The latest reports emerging from Moscow through various channels show unmistakably that this liquidation of the Stalin legacy is proceeding so rapidly and, as regards intra-Party relations, is being carried out so thoroughly that it must be compared to a mighty avalanche...
...One cannot help matching this with the results of the elections to the Party Central Committee at the 20th Congress: Not one of the leading operatives of the Political Administration was elected either a member or a candidate of the Central Committee...
...The post-Congress decrees on collective farms indicate the regime's desire to retain the main lines of its old farm policy...
...Could this have been a kind of protest against the new course...
...After reading the report of this conference and of Zhukov's speech, one must conclude that the Defense Minister dealt a well-prepared blow to the Political Administration of his Ministry because that administration was pursuing a political line which he opposed...
...These two points, however, do not exhaust the accusations which Khrushchev...
...He, too, criticized the activity of the Political Administration, whose chief, Colonel-General Zheltov, and his assistant were present...
...The most important of Khrushchev's statements were his admissions of the falsity of two key Stalin myths: (1) the charges on which Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and his associates were condemned to death and thousands of the best officers of the Red Army were wiped out, and (2) the legend that Stalin was a brilliant strategist and statesman who won the war against Hitler virtually single-handed...
...It reported that Defense Minister Zhukov had spoken, stressed that he had been "warmly received by those present," but said nothing about the content of the speech...
...But it definitely cannot be said that there will be no such changes: The break with all the ideological premises on which the Party's work was based has been too decisive, and the changes in the very foundations of intra-Party relations have been too far-reaching, for major Party policies to remain unchanged for any prolonged period...
...Stalin also created such "united fronts...
...These essays are saturated with the old anti-Zhukov sentiment which Bulganin cultivated in the Ministry...
...It was used in an article on the Ukrainian Communist Party Congress, where Ukrainian Party Secretary Kirichenko employed it to conclude his report...
...Stalin, it now develops, was a criminal who destroyed the flower of the Red Army and basely slandered the people whom he murdered...
...How far that apparatus went can be judged by the history of World War II recently published by the Institute of History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, prepared by scholars who had risen under the aegis of the Bulganinist Political Administration...
...Such attempts continued for some time in the provincial press...
...A much more detailed report appeared in Red Star, daily newspaper of the Defense Ministry...
...But after January 23 this term disappeared forever from the columns of Pravda...
...In the light of Khrushchev's revelations, all of Stalin's actions must be reviewed as well as the actions of his "comrades-in-arnis...
...He must have foreseen their shattering effect abroad, as well as further difficulties for the regime at home...
...But it is an important episode, vital to an understanding of the struggle as a whole...
...What could this event have been...
...Malenkov's remarks in England remove any doubt...
...The foreign press noted Bulganin's disappearance from the limelight for several weeks before the Congress...
...and soon afterward Stalin's name disappeared altogether...
...Stalin needed Zhukov at that time and had to yield to his wishes...
...Zhukov's struggle against Bulganin is only one episode in the vast and complicated struggle for power now in progress...
...Zhukov's victory now gives him control of all Party-political and Party-police work in the Defense Ministry work which has heretofore been in the hands of the Party-political apparatus selected by Bulganin and traditionally anti-Zhukov...
...As I have said, the last months of 1955 and January 1956 were marked by attempts in the Communist press to restore the Stalin cult, which had suffered severe blows while Malenkov was in power...
...What induced Khrushchev to make such disclosures...
...January 23 was...
...The beginning of Bulganin's temporary disappearance coincides roughly with Zhukov's speech at the conference of the Moscow Military District...
...Zhukov's role, on the other hand, is systematically minimized...
...then, a turning point...
...What forces made it necessary in February to undertake a decisive liquidation of the Stalin legacy, discrediting Stalin in such a manner that any return to high-handed Stalinist methods of intra-Party rule is psychologically impossible...
...Bulganin was removed but did not forget his defeat...
...In May or June 1946, Zhukov was removed from the Defense Ministry and sent into virtual exile first in Odessa, then in Sverdlovsk...
...Careful study of the Soviet press discloses several extremely interesting facts...
...Official Soviet press accounts made it clear that the 20th Communist Party Congress had been marked by a brutal and successful attack on Stalin, and on the structure he created in the Party...
...But this is only a partial explanation...
...The attempts in the last months of 1955 and in January 1956 to restore the Stalin cult show that certain elements in the Soviet ruling group sought to create the foreign-policy "united front" by the use of Stalin's methods...
...This struggle continued the old fight between Bulganin and Zhukov, which started 15 years ago...
...then, did they nevertheless feel compelled to discredit Stalin in this manner...
...In other words: In mid-January, when Kirichenko flew from Moscow to Kiev for the Ukrainian Party Congress, Khrushchev still favored glorification of Stalin...
...His election as a candidate member of the Party Presidium underscores the extent of his triumph...
...Some of the confusing aspects of Bulganin's behavior just before and during the 20th Congress may be related to this struggle...
...Nor has there been any sign of changes in foreign policy thus far...
...In Moscow on or about January 28 was held the Party conference of the Moscow Military District...
...One of the most glaring of these attempts was the popularization of the term "party of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin...
...But the stream of reports from various sources suggests that the essential story they tell is correct...
...Stalin's wartime role is exalted, almost more than while he was alive...
...The newspaper reports on Khrushchev's speech at the closed session of the Congress are somewhat unclear and contradictory...
...at every opportunity, the authors stress his "military wisdom, unbending will and courage...
...Here we learn that the entire activity of the Ministry's Political Administration was subjected to criticism at the conference...
...This liquidation of the Stalinist heritage had, it was also clear, been virtually decided in advance...
...Kirichenko, a member of the All-Union Party Presidium, is one of Khrushchev's most devoted adherents...
...Zheltov and the entire staff of the Political Administration were selected by Bulganin when he was Defense Minister...
...Now, of course, this sort of thing will cease...
...In my last article ["The 20th Congress and Soviet Foreign Policy," NL, March 19], I said that a decisive influence on the behavior of the Soviet ruling clique was its desire to create a sort of "united front" within the Party for the sake of pursuing an active foreign policy...
...It has, quite probably, embarked on a major new era in its history...
...Pravda published an item of several lines on this conference...
...Zhukov's own speech was quite restrained, but nevertheless quite definite...
...What compelled them to abandon this attempt...
...there is no mention, for example, of his part in organizing the defense of Leningrad and Stalingrad, to which Zhukov himself saw fit to refer in his conversation a year ago with William Randolph Hearst Jr...
...Zhukov's speech at the January conference marked the crushing of this group...
...If the charges against Tukhachevsky were false, then the charges against other victims of the purges must also have been false above all, those who were condemned in the three main trials in 1936-38...
...About this time, some event occurred which ended the attempts to glorify Stalin in the Moscow press...
...It should also be added that at the 20th Congress Bulganin was by no means as important as he had been in preceding months...
...Now Zhukov has evened the score...
...Where will it stop...
...Much remains unclear, but one set of facts should be noted...
...Despite restrained language, the critical speeches by several speakers are most striking...
...Zhukov is fast becoming, if he has not already become, unchallenged master of the Defense Ministry...
...Nor can all this be confined to intra-Party purges...
...In the winter of 1941-42, Stalin entrusted Zhukov with the defense of Moscow, but appointed Bulganin political observer to watch him...
...Perhaps Bulganin's absence from all sorts of meetings and receptions at that time was connected with Zhukov's struggle against him...
...The articles by non-Soviet Communists, especially those by East German Party boss Walter Ulbricht, are a reliable means of determining what Khrushchev said: Those portions of Western press accounts which coincide with the accounts of foreign Communists can he considered accurate...
Vol. 39 • April 1956 • No. 14
