Molotov Loses to Tito
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS I.
Battle in the Kremlin—4 Molotov Loses to Tito By Boris I. Nicolaevsky (Fourth of a series) Georgi Malenkov was deposed as Premier on February 8, 1955 by a coalition of several groups. The...
...It would be much better for you if you didn't listen to her...
...Molotov did not oppose establishing diplomatic relations with Tito...
...The first of these was a peace treaty with Austria, which Tito saw as a guarantee against Soviet aggression...
...Shatalin had replaced him after Stalin's death...
...Beria had made the first attempt to negotiate with Tito, and these were continued by Malenkov...
...On April 15, the treaty was signed...
...The economic managers whom he had nurtured were scarcely touched, and only a few of his more obvious proteges, such as Minister of Culture G. F. Alexandrov, were transferred or dismissed...
...One particular national leader impressed Khrushchev in 1955 as a likely "ice-breaker" for a "third round of wars and revolutions": That was Gamel Adbull Nasser...
...On April 11, Austrian delegates arrived in Moscow...
...For that purpose, an agreement with Tito was vitally important...
...Now Aristov returned to his old post...
...The policy of rapprochement with Tito had two important motives...
...During the collaboration with Hitler, she did not conceal her disapproval...
...Ambassador Charles Bohlen on convening a conference...
...Khrushchev's position at the July 1955 plenum may be read as a direct continuation of this policy...
...The First Deputy Premiers comprise the Presidium of the Soviet Council of Ministers, or Cabinet, which decides practical questions of foreign policy...
...The motives for their opposition to him were not identical...
...Khrushchev decided to bet on this card...
...Moscow justified its policy by the notion of Hitler as "icebreaker of revolution...
...People feared a return to Stalinist terror...
...On April 19, four days after the signing of the Austrian treaty, the press carried a report of the first conversation between Molotov and U.S...
...But the victorious Soviet leaders were by no means agreed on how to take advantage of their victory and what policy to adopt in place of Malenkov's...
...Beria had felt that the Kremlin, in the interest of self-preservation, should give up at least part of the satellite domain...
...On March 12, Pravda published the first announcement by the Soviet Foreign Ministry of negotiations with Austria which had begun on February 25...
...An interesting political conception lies back of Khrushchev's ability to put Tito on the same level with Ribbentrop...
...On May 26, the Soviet Government accepted Washington's conditions for the "summit" meeting at Geneva...
...In the summer and fall of 1954, the Soviet radio's anti-Tito campaign was halted, as were all Russian-language broadcasts from Belgrade...
...and made them subordinate to the new Party Secretary Dmitri Shepilov, then at the peak of his short-lived career...
...Molotov's wife, an Old Bolshevik from pre-Revolutionary days and a Jewess, had decidedly independent political views...
...At the decisive moment, they united in voting against Malenkov's foreign policy, which they regarded as excessively cautious...
...Communists in the satellites saw in Tito a man who had shown how to rid oneself of control by the foreign occupiers while maintaining the foundation of one-party Communist dictatorship...
...The Government hastened to announce Malenkov's appointment as Minister of Electric Power Stations and Deputy Premier, and reveal that he was remaining a member of the Party Presidium...
...In the Party apparatus, however, First Secretary Khrushchev quickly carried out one key shift: N. N. Shatalin, Malenkov's "eye" in the Secretariat and head of its cadre section, was sent to the Maritime Provinces as Provincial Party Secretary, replacing Averky B. Aristov...
...Malenkov's fall, observers have reported, produced near panic in Moscow...
...Tito set a number of conditions for such collaboration...
...Malenkov's supporters in the Government and Party suffered little...
...In 1952-53, not only did she make plain her opposition to official anti-Semitism at home and abroad, but Molotov himself tried to check it...
...Although Moscow had once regarded the leaders of the national revolutionary movements with ideological suspicion...
...questions of basic principle are decided by the Central Committee Presidium...
...The first outward indication of the continuing struggle was the publication by Pravda on March 10, 1955 of Tito's critical remarks about Molotov...
...First, Khrushchev felt that he could use Tito to strengthen the Kremlin's position in the satellites, where Soviet representatives were regarded by the whole population and many Communist party members as foreign occupiers...
...according to reliable information, she was actually arrested...
...Seweryn Bialer had an opportunity to read the transcript of its July 1955 plenum, which summed up the disputes between Khrushchev and Molotov over relations with Tito...
...The situation was difficult...
...At the July 1955 plenum, while not condoning the prevalent discontent in the satellites, he had nevertheless placed responsibility for it on the organs of the Soviet Government —and, in particular, on Molotov personally...
...According to this theory, the war which Hitler started against the West would smash the ice of bourgeois society and clear the way for great social-revolutionary events...
...The same "ice-breaker" concept guided Stalin's political plans in the last months of his life...
...For that reason, at the 18th Party Conference in March 1941, she was removed from the Central Committee...
...Molotov doubtless thought so, too...
...The reference was revealing...
...She is your evil spirit...
...Molotov favored an uncompromisingly hostile attitude toward the Western countries, but no active search for a force which could .serve as a new "icebreaker of revolution...
...That day, too, a plane left the Vnukovo airport near Moscow, carrying Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan to Belgrade...
...Khrushchev, on the other hand, is eager to incite and exacerbate international conflicts...
...but he did not mention Marshals Rokossovsky and Grechko, or Police General Ivan Serov, whose conduct had gone far beyond anything that could be laid at the door of Molotov's diplomats...
...The fact that at the July 1955 plenum Khrushchev felt he could play this card against Molotov shows how close the situation in the Kremlin was to that of 1952-53...
...She pushes you and makes you ambitious...
...Khrushchev agreed...
...He soon realized he was mistaken...
...It lay at the basis of his brief speech at the 19th Party Congress in October 1952, when he predicted a war within the capitalist bloc, and of his incitement of the Arab states against Israel...
...When Molotov defended this view, Khrushchev, according to Bialer, remarked sharply: "But you talked with Rib-bentrop in 1939...
...Khrushchev cited facts about the two successive Soviet ambassadors in Warsaw...
...Khrushchev's agreement with Tito enabled these men to use Tito's prestige in negotiations with various satellite Communists...
...On March 25, Pravda announced the Soviet Government's agreement in principle to sign a treaty...
...He was not named a First Deputy Premier, but few realized the significance of this...
...Immediately after the July plenum, Khrushchev appointed Party functionaries as ambassadors to the satellites (Ponomarenko in Warsaw, Fi-ryubin in Prague, etc...
...Khrushchev did not attack the command of the occupation armies, whose treatment of the local Communists was the worst of all, or the representatives of the Soviet Party apparatus, who conducted purges of those suspected of "national Communism...
...Nevertheless, in February 1955, it seemed to many that Vyacheslav Molotov had been the main victor in the struggle with Malenkov...
...According to Bialer, Khrushchev concluded his last speech against Molotov at the plenum with this stern warning: "Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, all this is your wife's fault...
...In the campaign which the Poskreby-shev-Khrushchev-Bulganin bloc was conducting against Molotov, his wife's position played a major role...
...Molotov replied that those negotiations were "politics," to which Khrushchev retorted: "But aren't our present negotiations politics...
...But there was still another motive for the agreement, and that was Tito's influence with leftist politicians in Asia and Africa...
...This jaunt can be understood only in the light of the internal struggle in the Soviet Party Central Committee...
...What he objected to was discussing Party matters with Tito, since he regarded the latter as having departed from Communism and, indeed, as an opponent of Communism...
...But Khrushchev was not satisfied: He wanted not a non:aggression pact on the airwaves, but broad political collaboration...
...nor were their political views...
...It is easy to grasp both the nature of Khrushchev's differences with Molotov and the real significance of his maneuvers with Tito...
...On March 27, just after the announcement that the Soviet Government was prepared to sign an Austrian treaty, Premier Nikolai Bulga-nin publicly expressed a desire for a meeting of the Big Four powers...
...Khrushchev saw another solution of the problem in more sincere cooperation with the satellite Communists...
...Popov and Lebedev, who had treated Polish Government and Party leaders like lackeys...
...In the winter of 1952-53, when Pos-krebyshev and Khrushchev were preparing the "second Yezhovshchina," Aristov had headed the cadre section...
...Tito had developed extensive contacts with them, and Khrushchev recognized their value in the struggle against the Western democracies...
...What role, according to official ideology, did Stalin's agreement with Hitler play in Soviet foreign policy...
Vol. 40 • August 1957 • No. 33
