The Surprise of the 20th Congress

...Instructions from Moscow to organize coups in Hungary and Poland could emanate only from these executive organs...

...In post-Stalinist Russia, there has been only one center of stubborn resistance to cultural de-Stalinization —the Central Committee Secretariat, headed by Khrushchev...

...It was impossible not to take these demands into consideration...

...For the whole country, the dismissals probably amounted to 25 per cent—which means that, of a total of more than 300,000 Party cells, some 75,000 saw their secretaries removed...

...Essentially, the report contained the necessary basis for a future defense of Stalin as a mentally ill man who fell under the influence of various political scoundrels from some "anti-Party group...

...Early in 1954, A. A. Andreyev, chairman of the Party Control Commission, had launched an investigation of the bloody repression of the Stalin era...

...This volume was to include articles for the years 1934-39—the period of the Yezhovshehina, when several million people were wiped out, including some 500,000 Party members and three-quarters of the Central Committee...

...The 20th Party Congress, the first since Stalin, could not but hold the center of attention among Communists throughout the world...

...This organizational shake-up of the Party apparatus (directed by Averki B. Aristov of the Secretariat's cadre section) was linked with an ideological "tightening up" directed by Pyotr N. Pospelov, Central Committee secretary for agit-prop...

...It was this group that resorted to provocation in order to check the successes of the "revisionists" in Hungary and Poland...

...This shake-up not only eliminated those who were not completely reliable in the eyes of Khrushchev and his aides...

...Khrushchev controlled the executive authority in both...

...These reports were adopted by a solid majority...

...Yet all these activities were only preliminary to the grand offensive launched by Khrushchev in the fall of 1955...

...When the whole policy of "thaw" was liquidated in Hungary, the Central Committee Secretariat, i.e., Khrushchev, circulated a special letter among Communist organizations, arguing that the policy which Nagy had pursued with Malenkov's support had been dangerous to the satellites and to the Soviet Union...

...The question was raised of hearing Andreyev's report at a closed session of the Congress...

...The campaign ended with the removal of the entire editorial staff of Voprosy Istorii...

...In the Uzbek Republic, for example, the percentage of dismissals was 36...

...in February 1955, he succeeded in ousting Georgi Malenkov from the Premiership...

...Almost immediately after the Congress, his apparatus launched a struggle against those press organs and writers who tried to put anti-Stalinist sentiment on a solid foundation...

...Stalin's name was blazoned across the entire press, and a slogan describing the Soviet Communist party as "the Party of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin" was widely displayed...

...By February 17-19, the very first days of the Congress, statements were appearing in the press showing that the dead Polish and Hungarian Communists had already been rehabilitated...

...at the Central Committee's plenary meeting in July 1955, he scored a decisive victory over Vyacheslav Molotov on the question of relations with Tito...

...Then he began energetically to pack the forthcoming congress...

...Once the foreign victims of the Yezhovshchina had been rehabilitated, there was no way of avoiding rehabilitation of the Soviet victims— particularly since the Andreyev commissions had already prepared lengthy reports, the Presidium was already familiar with them, and rumors about their existence were beginning to circulate among the Congress delegates...

...Bugayev, the contributor to Partiinaya Zhizn who launched its fight against Voprosy Istorii, has recently-been named editor-in-chief of a new magazine, Voprosy Istorii KPSS ("Problems of the History of the CPSU"), which is to become the authoritative official source on the history of the Communist movement...

...Who were the Moscow Stalinists who could give orders to the Soviet commanders in both Hungary and Poland...

...Especially interesting was the speech by the crafty Mikoyan— a kind of warning to Khrushchev not to attempt to defend Stalin, lest the whole story of the Yezhovshchina in the Ukraine, for which Khrushchev was largely responsible, be publicized...

...In his struggle against Molotov, Khrushchev had attacked the activity of Soviet diplomats—for whom Molotov bore official responsibility—in the satellites, but said nothing about the even worse behavior of representatives of the Soviet Army, police and Party...

...Furthermore, the United Nations report on the Hungarian Revolution has established that the outbreak of violence in Budapest was the result of deliberate provocation...

...But Khrushchev's attitude in no sense corresponded to the legends which formed about his role...

...Khrushchev's report, though its picture of Stalin's crimes was not even remotely coherent in a political sense, was nevertheless filled with colorful incidents which made a powerful impression on the 1,300-odd delegates...

...and there is no doubt that it was the pressure of a majority of the Presidium that forced Khrushchev, after his return to Moscow, to telephone Gomulka and apologize...

...At any rate, it provided no material for a principled critique of Stalinism as an evil, socially dangerous system...

...Khrushchev banked primarily in his ideological work on returning to the traditions of consistent Stalinism...

...We know that at these negotiations the most irreconcilable was Khrushchev...

...In his speeches before Party meetings in Warsaw in 1955, Khrushchev had denounced "national Communist" sentiments in Poland, but his fight against Molotov provided the "national Communists" with new ammunition...

...8, 1956) we know that the Congress received statements from an enormous number of purged Communists, disclosing the treatment they had received and requesting a review of their cases...

...His chief instrument was Partiinaya Zhizn ("Party Life"), organ of the Secretariat, whose editors had been selected by Pospelov...

...From I. Boitsov's article in the magazine Kommunist (No...

...This delegation, which flew into Warsaw on October 19, consisted of Khrushchev, Mikoyan and two "oppositionists," Molotov and Kaganovich...

...Naturally, all of them—Molotov, Kaganovich and Molotov alike—bear considerable responsibility for the Stalinist crimes...

...Formally, it followed the program Khrushchev had laid out...

...By Boris I. Nicolaevsky (Fifth of a series) The Surprise of the 20th Congress From the time Nikita Khrushchev re-entered the Secretariat of the Soviet Communist party after Stalin's death, he waged a formidable struggle against numerous powerful adversaries...

...This was exactly what Khrushchev wanted in the extremely difficult sitI uation which had arisen...

...The leaders of these parties, forced to flee from persecution at home to the Soviet Union, were there mercilessly annihilated during the Yezhovshchina...

...Many people, on the basis of the "secret report," proclaimed Khrushchev as the leader of the anti-Stalinist wing in the Kremlin, forgetting all his activities until the very eve of the Congress...

...In these circumstances, only a Stalinist idealist, ready to jeopardize his whole career in order to defend the honor of his mentor, could continue to glorify the dead dictator...

...This journal launched the campaign against Voprosy Istorii ("Problems of History") for its attempts to start accurately portraying Stalin's role in the Bolshevik movement and the Revolution...

...On his instructions in 1954, a campaign was launched against Pomerantsev, Shche-glov and other writers for the magazine Novy Mir ("New World"), who had preached "sincerity" in literature...

...Nagy's fall was followed by the return of Matyas Rakosi and Erno Gero, who had been responsible for the worst acts of terror in Communist Hungary...

...Rokossovsky would take such a step only on Moscow's orders...

...On Khrushchev's instructions, too, new campaigns have more recently been organized against "revisionists" in literature and science, against Voprosy Istorii, against Voprosy Filosofii ("Problems of Philosophy"), against Literaturnaya Moskva ("Literary Moscow"), against Konstantin Simonov and Novy Mir...

...When Andreyev was elected chairman of a similar commission under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, his investigation had become both a Party and a Government affair...

...Only the efforts of the other three members of the Moscow delegation averted an open break...

...Many threads from this terrible past led to the 20th Congress...

...Continued next week...

...Broad sections of the population and rank-and-file Party members gave Khrushchev credit for this development...

...Against this background, the articles lauding Stalin could not but produce revulsion among Soviet readers, including Party workers...

...It also raised en masse in the Party hierarchy a large group of new people who based their hopes of a career on Khrushchev...

...Pospelov, who had joined the editorial staff preparing the Works, saw no need to pay any attention to this...

...Khrushchev managed in one way or another to imply complicity in the worst of Stalin's crimes on the part of all those Presidium members who are now, in 1957, included in the "anti-Party group...

...Gero and the Stalinists in Moscow who backed him were preparing a bloodbath for all the Hungarian anti-Stalinist groups, the "revisionist" Communists as well as the non-Party intelligentsia...

...The die-hard Stalinists who opposed every attempt at de-Staliniza-tion in the Soviet Union and the satellites were, above all, the group around Khrushchev...

...and the Ukraine, which for nearly two decades has been virtually Khrushchev's special patrimony, was by no means hardest hit...

...Edward Ochab, then First Secretary of the Polish Communist party, has reported that several days before the critical events of October T' 2.'i he was approached b\ Marshal Konstantin Rokosso\sk\ with the proposal to stage a putsch in Poland...

...Malenkov picked Imre Nagy to be Premier of Hungary in July 1953, and Nagy was removed shortly after Malenkov's deposition...

...One sign of this "tightening up" was the policy of rehabilitating Stalin...

...To be sure, during the fall of 1956 opposition to Khrushchev in the Presidium was great, but none of the leaders of this opposition had any connection with the executive organs either of the Party (the Secretariat) or of the Government...

...Although the 20th Party Congress was carefully prepared both organizationally and ideologically, to a considerable degree Khrushchev's hopes for complete victory were dashed...

...This went so far that in the May 1953 issue of the magazine Smena, a work by the poet Lugovsky which glorified Stalin had been blacked out and replaced by a revised version which made no mention of him...

...Yet, even among them there were quite a few dismissals, including the first secretaries of the provincial committees of Gorki, Sverdlovsk and Saratov...

...Even more important, a wave of similar statements arrived from the "fraternal parties" in the satellites, especially from Poland and Hungary...

...Hence, at the very last minute, he decided to change course—probably after becoming convinced that otherwise the report would be read by Andreyev, who would have presented quite a different picture...

...After creation of the commission under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the number of purge victims returning to their families rose rapidly...

...Since 1953, several attempts have been made to ease the latter's position...

...Of a total of 1,356 voting delegates at the 20th Congress, some 500, or 37 per cent, owed their advancement to Khrushchev...

...The shake-up was even more drastic in higher Party organizations...

...See "The Revolt of the Moscow Writers," page 1!!.] To Khrushchev, as Party First Secretary, lead the threads of all the slanderous campaigns being conducted in Lit-eraturnaya Gazeta ("Literary Gazette") and Pravda against authors who show the slightest independence...

...Seweryn Bialer, who observed these events as a well - informed Polish Communist, wrote in the July 29 New Leader that Malenkov's policy was the most liberal toward the satellites...

...It made an even greater impression on rank-and-file Party members, to whom, by decision of the Congress, the content of the report was systematically made known...

...Making use of the material gathered by Andreyev's commissions, Khrushchev not only unscrupulously doctored it in his "secret report," but utilized it to settle scores with his own foes in the Presidium...

...It was he who would not agree to Gomulka's return as First Secretary and who tried to deliver an ultimatum about Rokossovsky, whose recall was demanded by the Polish Communists...

...A number of the speeches at the Congress contained anti-Khrushchev notes...

...Only Khrushchev or someone acting for him could have done this...

...As early as October 21-22, i.e., before the beginning of the student demonstrations, Soviet troops in Hungary were placed in a state of battle readiness...

...the main events were his report on the activity of the Central Committee and Bulganin's on the new Five-Year Plan...

...This demand was hinted at in the speeches of some Presidium members, notably Anastas Mikoyan...

...In preceding years, Khrushchev had opposed every attempt to clear the way for free inquiry in literature, science and art...

...But this external discipline at the Congress by no means reflected what was happening behind the scenes...

...This type of character—the man who nearly two decades earlier had fallen victim to false denunciations and was punished for no just cause—has now appeared in Soviet literature, showing us the tremendous effect the returnees' accounts have had on the Soviet public...

...After Beria's April 1953 report to the Central Committee, Stalin's name had virtually disappeared from the Soviet press...

...In January 1956, too, it was announced in the Literary Gazette that the 14th volume of Stalin's collected works would shortly be published...

...Only with the first secretaries of provincial and territorial committees was Khrushchev somewhat more cautious, for they were all either members or candidate-members of the Central Committee...

...and greater yet abroad, where news of the report, and then its text, quickly made its way...

...Systematic rehabilitation of Stalin started immediately after the July 1955 plenum, forming part of Khrushchev's preparations for the 20th Congress...

...True, he tried to load all the responsibility onto Beria, but when, in theaters throughout the Soviet Union, the heroes of Alexander Korneichuk's play Wings proclaimed their indictment of the organizers of merciless repression, everyone understood that not just Beria was involved...

...Khrushchev's role is essentially the same in regard to the satellites...

...In July 1953, he helped bring about the fall of Lavrenti Beria...

...The 20th Congress was attended by large delegations from the satellite parties, and they all brought demands for rehabilitation of those who had been liquidated and liberation of those who survived...

...In a number of provinces, the dismissals of regional-committee secretaries reached 100 per cent—the entire leadership was changed...

...For he had gone into the Congress intending to settle scores with all his opponents, but the situation had proved unfavorable...

...Another contradiction was evident in Khrushchev's policy toward the satellites...

...Khrushchev had no desire to play the gallant knight, perishing in defense of his father's honor...

...Yet, in the interests of his struggle against Malenkov, he had staged the trial of Deputy State Security Chief Abakumov, thus opening up one of the many pages of the book of Stalinist terror...

...First, Khrushchev advanced the scheduling of the 20th Party Congress, moving it up from October 1956 to February 1956, and at the same time dismissed the old Central Committee plenum, which had been chosen under Malenkov's aegis...

...After the 20th Congress, a wave of anti-Stalinist sentiment rolled over both the Soviet Union and the satellites...

...In the Ukraine, some 20 per cent of the secretaries of Party cells were removed in the months before the Congress...

...The volume had been ready for publication while Stalin was still alive, but it had been held up on the latter's orders, obviously because the "father of peoples'' might strike the reader as a little too bloodthirsty in its pages...

...As early as the summer of 1954, the press began to announce the presentation of awards to "old Bolsheviks" who had vanished without a trace 15 or more years before...

...The make-up of the delegation reflected the Presidium's unwillingness to let Khrushchev act on his own authority...

...The report also contained a good many concealed attempts to defend Stalin, whose well-thought-out, skilful campaigns to destroy his political foes were portrayed by Khrushchev as the actions of a sick man, suffering from a persecution complex...

...But an equal measure of responsibility lies with Khrushchev himself and his present allies, whom he depicted not as Stalin's accomplices but as people who themselves escaped falling victim to Stalin only by a miracle...

...Such speeches, insofar as they became known in the satellite parties, hurt not just Molotov but the Soviet regime as a whole...

...1955 was not a jubilee year, but all Soviet organs marked the anniversary with prominent articles...

...A similar plot was being prepared in Warsaw...

...The latter was a jubilee year—the 75th anniversary of Stalin's birth—and yet not one of the major newspapers marked it in any way...

...The campaign ended with the removal as editor - in - chief of Alexander Tvardovsky, who had been linked with Malenkov since his student days...

...This policy of the Khrushchev-dominated Secretariat becomes clear if we compare the reaction of the Soviet press to Stalin's birthday in 1955 with that in 1954...

...This is confirmed by our information about the negotiations conducted by Khrushchev and other delegates of the Presidium with the Polish Communist leaders...