Behind the Moscow Purge

...Here let us recall that it was Malenkov who introduced the theme of relaxation of international tension in the first period after Stalin's death and who, to all appearances, meant it seriously...

...The Soviet Party line in the recent period, echoed in the satellite countries and also, it is important to note, by Gomulka in Poland, has distinguished two deviationist tendencies in the Party, one called "sectarianism and dogmatism," the other "revisionism...

...In Hungary, the leading "revisionist" proved to be former Premier Imre Nagy, who ultimately led the abortive revolution...

...Khrushchev's great effort to persuade culminated in a crisis of Soviet persuasion...

...Khrushchev, as we know, has a way of casually tossing out new ideas which are destined, in his mind, to become official Soviet policy...

...So serious was the view taken of Khrushchev's failure in leadership that two elements of quite different political complexion could make common cause against him...

...When last seen by foreigners, on the night of February 17, 1953, Stalin commented on "wolves" and the ability of the "Russian peasant" to deal with them...

...Insofar as "revisionism" in a verv mild form had any representation in Soviet ruling circles...

...Although Khrushchev's line of policy was pursued in 1955 and the greater part of 1956 to the accompaniment of slogans of coexistence, detente, and improvement of East-West relations, it was thoroughly anti-Western and anti-American in its underlying orientation...

...Not only was Yugoslavia itself a potential sphere of Soviet influence...

...For it may well transpire that Khrushchev has no intention of giving them a mandate to turn out many of the old-line Stalinists unless they are prepared also to deal as harshly with their "revisionists'* as he has with his...

...If it proves in any sense a key to his foreign-policy intentions, then the future is not promising...

...Khrushchev would put out "some sort of a document," a la Stockholm peace appeal...

...Thus, the official indictment of the opposition deliberately falsifies the situation...

...Two quite distinct elements in the ruling circle, the Molotov-Kaganovich group on the one hand and the Malenkov group on the other, combined forces in this opposition effort, which was also apparently joined by Shepilov...

...In foreign affairs, this leadership is accountable in very significant measure for the Hungarian revolt and events in Poland and elsewhere in the Soviet bloc which could not but be disquieting to many in Moscow...

...They are best typified by those sections of the Polish intelligentsia which have preached the need to reconsider the whole question of Marxism-Leninism and recapture in some way the lost mora] meaning of the European socialist idea...

...One view holds that Soviet foreign policy is not likely to be affected, since the issues in the conflict between Khrushchev and his opposition were mainly domestic...

...He was speaking, at that time, of the international situation...

...My italics...

...And the grandiose expansion of Soviet influence largely went up in the smoke of the Hungarian events...

...Titoism was a potential disruptive force in Soviet Eastern Europe only so long as it remained a symbol of anti-Soviet Communism...

...A whole series of Soviet actions were undertaken in 1955 and 1956 with this aim of persuasion in mind...

...And the key to the whole problem of relaxing Stalinist controls in the satellites was Yugoslavia...

...Elsewhere in the interview, Khrushchev complains that the masses "have not sufficiently comprehended" the danger of war...

...Thus, the attack on the Soviet opposition as a group of Stalinist conservatives is calculated to mislead...

...When that cleared, little was left of Khrushchev's foreign policy but a not-too-firm position in the Near East, held by courtesy of Colonel Nasser and the totalitarian movement he represents...

...Khrushchev's revival of this form of political semantics was published in Pravda on the morrow of his victory over the opposition...

...He would make the universal fear of pollution of the earth's atmosphere through continued nuclear tests an ally in this pressure movement...

...The main asset which Russia has left now in foreign policy is its military might...

...The "revisionists," on the other hand, are the ones whose thinking tends in a liberal direction...

...This, in brief, is the foreign policy which the "anti-Party group" is now bitterly condemned for opposing, and which is quaintly described by the July 3 communique as "the Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems, of relaxing international tension and establishing friendly relations between the USSR and all the peoples of the world...

...The real question is whether Khrushchev's victory Robert C. Tucker, an attache at the U.S...

...What better nay to neutralize this disruptive force than to make Tito once more a friend, even if not a wholly trustworthy friend, of Moscow...

...From a Soviet point of view, there were weighty grounds for concern about the competence of Khrushchev's leadership and the potential hazards of letting him go on indefinitely having his wilful way in the determination of national policy...

...This is the course which was ratified by the 20th Congress and which the July 3 communique describes as "'measures to ease international tension and promote universal peace...

...There is a covert back-to-Stalin motif in the background of the present noisy campaign against the Soviet "old-line Stalinists...

...This is Khrushchev's interview of June 18 with the editor of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun...

...How, for example, could Russia make propaganda for a suspension of nuclear tests if nuclear tests were in fact suspended...

...Steps were taken to make the Soviet military posture in Eastern Europe appear less menacing, and a show of partial demobilization was made...

...Thus, there will take shape a kind of united front of states fighting for cessation of nuclear-weapons tests, for ending the arms race, for peaceful coexistence...

...Some decrease in East-West tension was needed to convince Europe and Asia that the world was now safe for non-alignment, and this was how the summit conference fitted into Khrushchev's calculations...

...By Robert C. Tucker Behind the Moscow Purge Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist' drive may lead to a new Stalinism in foreign policy What does the political convulsion in Moscow portend for Soviet foreign policy in the near future...

...He is now a consultant at the Rand Corporation...

...The delay in publishing this document was unusually long, and it, or issues raised by it, may have figured in the struggle going on behind the scenes in Moscow in the last 10 days of June...

...Khrushchev, in short, refuses to acknowledge that anything was ever amiss with a foreign policy which has so far been a gross failure and has had some disastrous consequences for the Soviet regime...

...But this is Khrushchev speaking, and the views expressed must be regarded as his own...

...should be construed as an encouraging turn of events as regards prospects for international tranquility and healthy change in Eastern Europe...

...This was the path that Khrushchev took, and it led to Budapest...

...is "consolidation of the socialist countries...

...The little lecture on the lambs and the wolves, and the need for Soviet "fangs," is no omen of good things in store for the world from Khrushchev's further stewardship of Soviet foreign policy...

...He suggests to the Japanese editor an alternative to unilateral Soviet suspension of nuclear tests...

...On the contrary, it is based squarely on the idea of maintaining international tension, for it is designed to mobilize people in a great propaganda campaign against the "imperialists...

...The official indictment of the opposition, published in the Party communique of July 3, plays down this fact, speaking merely of a single ""anti-Party group" composed of the three prominent figures, with Molotov as its leader...

...Khrushchev's political victory is in no sense a victory for liberalism, either at home or in the Soviet bloc...

...The watchword of present policy there, according to a recent issue of the Soviet Party journal Kommunist...

...This, in essence, was the pattern of thought underlying Khrushchev's foreign policy...

...Russia and Japan will sign "some sort of a joint document," later to be supported by China, "all the socialist countries," and, finally, former colonial countries such as India, Burma and Indonesia...

...In my view, there is ground for grave doubt on this score...

...His Russian patron was Malenkov...

...And he went on: "If we stop tests, we will in some measure weaken our defensive power...

...Even now, nine months later, the condition of Eastern Europe is far from stable...

...The fact is that some lessening of East-West tension was a precondition of its success, and that accounts for the eagerness with which Khrushchev solicited and then attended the summit conference at Geneva...

...It is the line which the opposition, particularly Molotov, is denounced for opposing...

...Let such a movement expand among states, and it will lead us to the achievement of the goal...

...There is, however, one significant difference between Khrushchev's suggested line and Stalin's...

...in reference to non-Russian countries, national Communism...

...Some light is thrown on this by a significant document which has gone more or less unnoticed in the West...

...The foreign-policy line laid down by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress is triumphantly reaffirmed, just as though nothing had happened in Eastern Europe and Khrushchev's stewardship of Soviet foreign relations had been fully vindicated by events...

...And, though he was deposed from the Premiership by Khrushchev in February 1955, Malenkov had by then begun to acquire real popularity among rather wide circles of the Russian people...

...More important, perhaps, lie would undertake to rally I lie other "socialist countries" around an international propaganda enterprise which the Soviet Union could dominate by virtue of being a military superpower...

...If dependent countries in Europe and Asia were to be persuaded to disalign themselves from the West, something obviously had to be done about the Soviet satellites in order to reassure the independent countries that friendship with Russia was not necessarily fatal...

...It excludes any real agreement with the Western powers on disarmament and other issues...

...Soviet Defense Minister Zhukov, to whom Khrushchev refers flatteringly in the course of this interview, may have been pleased to hear this talk about the need for a policy of "deterrence" and for ever-increasing military strength to back it up...

...However, we can already see certain significant elements in the still somewhat obscure pattern of events...

...In this instance, he tossed one out in response to the Japanese editor's question as to whether the Soviet Union would be willing to suspend its nuclear tests unilaterally with a view to putting moral pressure on other countries to follow suit...

...And what of Soviet relations with the other Communist countries in the period ahead...

...He would 11-y in this way to salvage something out of the foreign policy that failed—by putting fangs into Soviet persuasion...

...However, a reactionary note has been sounded...

...This suggests why it is that Khrushchev now tries to bracket Malenkov with Molotov and Kaganovich as a leader of the "sectarian and dogmatic" deviation, i.e., as a conservative, diehard Stalinist...

...They had to be given at least limited national autonomy within a relationship of continued Soviet hegemony...

...Wolves can lose their skins and maybe even more—their heads...

...Is it only the exigencies of the battle against the opposition that force him to take this position, or does he really mean to persevere in the attempt to transform Eurasia into a great Soviet-oriented "peace zone...

...The third reaction is one of "wait and see.'" On the whole, this last position seems the wisest under present circumstances...

...The political motive behind this "Molotoviz-ing" of the opposition will be touched upon later...

...Eventually, it was reasoned, this would facilitate the spontaneous appearance of new "people's democracies," perhaps even by a peaceful "parliamentary path...

...The Soviet political crisis appears to have been precipitated by the attempt of a heterogeneous group in the Party Presidium to challenge Khrushchev's ascendancy on the ground of his incompetent leadership, meaning his incompetent style of leadership as well as specific political mistakes...

...In effect, it argues that all Khrushchev's opponents were old-line Stalinists who resisted every reform, every change for the better, after Stalin died...

...But it is precisely by this power that we deter the forces of war and strengthen the forces of peace...

...Not that Khrushchev wants to turn the clock of Soviet foreign policy all the way back to 1952...

...Eurasia outside the Soviet bloc, and especially the newly independent countries of Asia and the Middle East, would become a sphere of preponderant Soviet influence...

...It tries to obscure the fact that the ousted leaders represented a merger of both wings of the opposition, the "dogmatic" and the "revisionist...

...He was thus instrumental in helping to provoke, among other things, a revolution in Hungary which for a time endangered the whole structure of Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, shook the Soviet world and international Communism to its foundations, and intensified unrest within Soviet Russia itself...

...But what, specifically, is Khrushchev's new idea...

...adding: "But if the popular masses grasp in full the danger of war, then the militarist groups in various countries will be compelled to accept an agreement with the aim of averting war and strengthening peace...

...Both in internal problems and in matters of foreign policy," says the July 3 communique, "they are sectarian and dogmatic...

...And this, in turn, must be taken seriously into consideration when we speculate on the possible implications for the satellite regimes...

...The danger is that this policy may, as a result, become more and more militaristic...

...Embassy in Moscow from 1944 to 1953, revisited Russia and the satellite countries in 1955...

...And it is of the very essence of the "peace campaign" in this Stalinist form that it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with peace, relaxation of tension, or improvement of East-West relations...

...The State Treaty with Austria was signed, and that country evacuated and neutralized, in order to persuade other small countries that they, too, could be Austrias—neutral and safe...

...In particular, it was Khrushchev's brash moves in 1955 toward rapprochement with Tito, resulting only in a very illusory reconciliation, and his anti-Stalin diatribe at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, which set the train of events rolling toward the Hungarian catastrophe and a new Time of Troubles in Eastern Europe...

...My reference here is to the "Molotovizing" of the opposition in the July 3 communique...

...The former refers to the diehard Stalinist conservatives, of whom Molotov and Kaganovich would be leading examples in Soviet Russia...

...Such a view may be based on a misreading of signs deliberately contrived in Moscow to be misread...

...Immediate Western reaction has been divided roughly three ways...

...First, one must emphatically agree with the view that issues of Soviet foreign policy did figure in the factional conflict...

...Whatever the differences between Molotov and Malenkov—and they were probably many and serious— both were cool, cautious politicians and must have shared a revulsion at the high-handed and frequently reckless style of Khrushchev's leadership...

...In Yugoslavia, incidentally, the outstanding "revisionist" is Milovan Djilas, now in jail as a political prisoner...

...Does the purge of Soviet "Stalinists" betoken a similar pattern in the satellites, with a resultant strengthening of the forces favoring national independence and democratization...

...This foreign policy motivated Khrushchev's effort, over Molotov's strenuous objections, to make friends with Tito...

...Others have taken a rather hopeful attitude...

...Meanwhile, Khrushchev and Bulga-nin went out into the world as apostles of ""normalization," trade, Soviet capital export, cultural exchange, etc...

...A major upheaval like the one that has just occurred in Russia is certain to involve a whole system of differences between the rival factions, over foreign as well as internal policy...

...Malenkovism was a pale Russian version of what we have come to call...

...Liberated from the cramping compulsions of Stalin, for whom the only satisfactory relationship with a foreign country was one of absolute Muscovite control, this new policy of Khrushchev's aimed at expanding Soviet influence...

...Many were beginning to look upon him as a Russian statesman, just as many in Hungary in 1954 were beginning to view Nagy as a Hungarian...

...They contend that foreign policy was at issue and, further, that Khrushchev's victory over the "old-line Stalinists" may betoken a liberal trend in Soviet-satellite relations and a more conciliatory Soviet policy toward the outside world, perhaps a better era in troubled East-West relations...

...We have to have fangs so that the wolves will know that they cannot attack peace-loving countries with impunity...

...The basic policy conception elaborated publicly at the 20th Congress envisaged the transformation of Eurasia into a great neutralized buffer zone ("peace zone") of the Soviet Empire, a cordon sanitaire in reverse...

...Judging by the censored news reports from Western correspondents now in Moscow, he is not having much success...

...The brutally repressive Soviet response in Hungary seriously compromised the ambitious new course in foreign policy with which Khrushchev was pre-eminently associated, a course whose milestones were the Austrian State Treaty, the Geneva summit conference, the travels of Khrushchev and Bulganin in Asia and Europe, and the arms deal with Nasser...

...This is, in part, Khrushchev's way of trying to reconcile the Russian people to Malenkov's departure from the political scene...

...Malenkov was its leader...

...What it all presages, if Khrushchev is telegraphing his political intentions here, is a revival of the international "peace campaign" in a broadly Stalinist form as a main focus of foreign policy...

...It revives, in fact, a terminology which Stalin was using in the dark final days of his life...

...That, said Khrushchev, would only "encourage the aggressors...

...This sentence, again, is strikingly reminiscent of the tone of the Soviet press toward the end of Stalin's time...

...It was published in the Soviet press on June 30, the day after Khrushchev's political victory over the opposition, and it bears certain earmarks of an advance manifesto of that victory...

...The immediate operative aim was to detach various countries of Europe and Asia from a Western orientation in foreign policy and, especially, from the Western military-security system...

...For this it was necessary to persuade their governments that the world was now safe for non-alignment in the sense that Russia had no intention of molesting them, that non-alignment could bring important benefits in trade and aid from the Soviet bloc, and, finally, that it was only prudent to be neutral in the nuclear age when world war would visit untold destruction on small countries which contained American military bases...