The Meaning of Khrushchev's Victory

...The Party machine has always sought to discredit this group...

...Thereupon, Solod returned to Moscow, where he is apparently Khrushchev's chief expert on Middle Eastern affairs...

...The unified economy was...

...Khrushchev was obviously frightened at seeing too much power in the hands of a man so closely associated with Malenkov—particularly since Malyshev, who held the rank of colonel-general and had played a big wartime role in organizing war industry, had extensive contacts among the Army command...

...Khrushchev had previously never distinguished himself by the slightest sympathy for decentralization or for extension of local self-government...

...The scapegoat was Maxim Z. Saburov, Chairman of the State Economic Commission, but this was merely an attempt to soften the blow struck at Khrushchev...

...Essentially, the plenum had decided to create a veritable "second government" to handle all economic matters—a government, moreover, by technocrats...

...Khrushchev, long before, had driven wedges between his foes in order to prevent them—especially Molotov and Malenkov—from reaching an agreement...

...The defeats were all the more bitter because he had been deserted both by his own proteges among the economic managers and by Shepilov, his closest aide in organizing the Egyptian adventure...

...But, with Party control over what appears in Soviet magazines, much of the published writing of this type has tended to strengthen the Party functionaries in the recent struggle...

...He distinguished himself along the same lines in the post-Stalin years...

...for example, he defended Zinovy T. Serdyuk, Secretary of the Lvov Provincial Committee, removed by Beria for his excessively crude Russification policy...

...The December plenum also decided to call a session of the Supreme Soviet for February 5. The agenda included not only reports on the budget by Mikhail Pervukhin, as chairman of the reorganized State Economic Commission, and by Finance Minister Arseni Zverev, but also a report on the world situation by Foreign Minister Shepilov...

...Throughout the Malenkov period, i.e., from March 1953 to the spring of 1955...

...He described his plans in an interview reported by Joseph Alsop (N...

...The USSR, under this system, was a unified economic whole, from which it would be impossible to detach any of the component geographic parts...

...2. The Commission was transformed into the central body directing all organs of Soviet economic activity, agricultural as well as industrial...

...As Khrushchev said with sardonic cheerfulness, 'These gentlemen are now to be sent out into the provinces to do more productive work.' " The economic managers numbered some 2 million men (nearly 30 per cent of all Party members) grouped around the various ministries, which directed not only industrial enterprises but scientific research and the training of specialists in their fields...

...With so much trouble at home, it was difficult for the Kremlin to launch on a foreign adventure...

...This basic significance of the plenum decisions was emphasized by the decision to reorganize the State Economic Commission, the highest organ of Soviet economic activity...

...Let us attempt to sum up: In the years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev systematically drew into his apparatus all the survivors of the group which had been plotting a second great Party purge in Stalin's last months—a purge directed against Malenkov and the economic managers, as well as against Molotov, Kaganovich, Beria and Voroshilov...

...Nevertheless, the question of what stand to take in Egypt produced a struggle in the Presidium...

...Molotov's exclusion from the Solod-Shepi-lov negotiations with Egypt had been too systematic and too obvious...

...It is impossible to miss the connection between the visit of Syrian Defense Minister Khaled el-Azm to Moscow (where on August 6 a joint communique expressed Soviet sympathy with Syria's efforts to overcome "the consequences of colonialism") and the pro-Soviet coup carried out in the Syrian Army on August 16...

...There were many reasons for this behavior...

...He is also an expert on U.S...

...August 19], Molotov had opposed the anti-Israeli, pro-Arab course which characterized the last period of Stalin's life...

...As a result of the December plenum, a new majority in the Presidium prepared the February session of the Supreme Soviet, with the reports by Pervukhin on economic planning and by Shepilov on foreign policy...

...While refraining from repressive measures against pro-Malenkov managers, the Khrushchev-Bulganin Government tried to combat their influence by promoting economic functionaries whom they thought they could draw into their own orbit...

...There followed an increasingly aggressive Egyptian foreign policy and a more provocative stand toward the West, especially Israel...

...This has been true throughout the Soviet period, but never before has this parasitical Party apparatus been as extensive...

...Lucien Laurat, an observant economist who has analyzed this data, concludes that a severe crisis has been caused not so much by the reduced rate of growth of industrial output as by the exceptionally high capital investment required to achieve even the reduced rate...

...And it was precisely these provincial leaders who assured his triumph at both the February and June 1957 plenums...

...Even D. Chesnokov turned up again—the closest collaborator of the notorious Poskrebyshev...

...One of Khrushchev's adjutants told a writer for Le Monde: "Many highly placed officials, accustomed to living high in Moscow, will have to sleep in tents in Alma Ata...

...political and cultural-educational work in the country had long been its monopoly...

...In order to win this victory...

...General Shtemenko, chief of staff in Stalin's last years, has now received the Order of Lenin and begun to appear at receptions with Marshal Zhukov...

...Shepilov's report, as delivered at the Supreme Soviet session of February 12, 1957, doubtless reflected both the majority sentiments at the plenum and specific Presidium decisions after it...

...In 1955, he returned to Cairo, this time as Ambassador...

...However, Nasser, the intended "ice-breaker," instead of smashing the ice-fields of bourgeois society, yielded all the territory east of Suez to the Israeli Army in a few days, with the loss of huge stocks of Soviet arms...

...policy: In 1951-52...

...Only the December plenum's decisions on economic matters have been published, but the plenum—first to be held after the Polish-Hungarian and Middle Eastern crises of October-November—doubtless discussed questions of broader Soviet policy...

...On February 13, however, opened an extraordinary plenum of the Party Central Committee, which, before it was through, wiped out the Pervukhin and Shepilov reports as well as the decisions of the December plenum...

...The December plenum marked the definite end of a stage in Khrushchev's relations with the Party technocrats, a stage of relative "peaceful coexistence" between the technocrats and Khrushchev's Party apparatus...

...The acute crisis in Eastern Europe (at the height of the Middle Eastern crisis, fighting was in progress in the streets of Budapest) coincided with student unrest throughout the USSR...

...He doubtless retained his connection with atomic industry to the end of his life...

...the decision to close the gap between "targets for production and capital investments" and "available material resources" clearly indicated what direction this review would take...

...The Supreme Soviet unanimously adopted both reports...

...As shown earlier [NL...

...in fact, the essential basis of national unity...

...Malenkov's return to the arena of international activity, decided either at the plenum itself or by the Presidium immediately afterward, signified an important change in the top-level approach to foreign policy...

...After coming to power in February 1955, the Khrush-chev-Bulganin Government removed few of its opponents in the economic apparatus from their posts...

...Though the final decree of the June 1957 plenum expelling the "anti-Party group" contained no hint of a dispute over Egypt, there is no question that such a dispute did take place in the Presidium...

...But whereas in December the question had been decided favorably to the technocrats, at the February plenum the Party functionaries annulled the December decisions and took an enormous step toward establishing their dictatorship oyer industry...

...The chief published resolution of this plenum recognized the necessity of revising the Bulganin Five-Year Plan, adopted only ten months earlier, in order to "adjust the targets for production and capital investments to the available material resources...

...In this period, Soviet foreign policy had been directed by Molotov and Malenkov, both free of anti-Israeli feeling...

...He received the Order of the Banner of Labor in November 1944 for his work in Cairo...

...Only the industrial administration retained some independence of the Party for a time...

...Many Soviet stories and novels now deal with talented young inventors who cannot break through the bureaucratic curtain in the ministries...

...And it was support by Khrushchev that made possible Nasser's intransigence during the negotiations Battle in the Kremlin—6 of August-October 1956—an intransigence which made the subsequent outbreak of fighting inevitable...

...In the situation created by the Eisenhower Doctrine, which made it more difficult to "limit" conflicts in the Middle East, Shepilov's speech indicated considerable Soviet readiness to pull back, renounce aggressive activity in the Middle East, and loosen the Kremlin's ties with Egypt...

...If one compares the speech with the utterances of Khrushchev and his closest aides in the same period, one must conclude that Shepilov had deserted his erstwhile patron and gone over to the foes of Khrushchev's adventurist policy in the Middle East...

...He developed extensive contacts throughout the region, but is especially familiar with Egypt, where during the war he was First Secretary of the Embassy...

...Their wives, of course, will not want to go along...

...Khrushchev had to make peace with forces against which he had previously waged a bitter struggle...

...Thus Khrushchev, in December, suffered serious defeats both on industrial administration and on foreign policy...

...As a result of this, his Jewish wife had actually been arrested...

...Saburov, a Malenkovite, may not have been a good planner, but he had been forced to work within the framework of the Bulganin-Khrushchev Five-Year Plan, and the discrepancy between "the targets for production and capital investments" and "the available material resources" lay at the very basis of that Plan...

...He probably prepared the Soviet agreement with Nasser which the Shepilov mission ratified in July 1955...

...Official data published by the Soviet Government reveal a reduced rate of industrial development...

...3. The Commission was composed exclusively of leaders of the great Soviet economic organs, with no representation whatever for the Party machine or even for the political organs of the Government apparatus...

...The centralized unity of the party was a mechanism to express the leadership's unity of action, but the centrifugal forces in Soviet society were checked, above all, by the unity of national economic life, by the interrelatedness of all the parts of the economic organism...

...He apparently lost his majority in the Presidium, and was not deposed largely because his adversaries failed to agree on a policy to replace his...

...Y. Herald Tribune, July 8): "As Khrushchev himself pointed out to me, the plan was and is a direct attack on the vested interests of 'tens of thousands' of the most highly placed officials, technicans and administrators in the Soviet Union...

...This was particularly evident in the Western Ukraine in 193941 and after 1944...

...Soviet delegates took a stand at the UN that was not unfavorable to Israel...

...This is evident from the composition of the presidium of the State Economic Commission, as it was reorganized by the December plenum...

...Khrushchev began to push decentralization because he needed the support of leaders of the Union republics in the struggle against the economic managers...

...many are undoubtedly sincere critics of the entire regime...

...Further such moves by Khrushchev may be expected...

...The roster of candidate members of the new Presidium was promptly filled with the names of the Party secretaries of the Union republics...

...Turning industrial administration over to the localities was not sufficient for Khrushchev...

...The main question examined by the February plenum was the reorganization of industrial administration—the very question that had been before it in December and on which the Supreme Soviet had just unanimously adopted Pervukhin's report...

...And this new structure was, in effect, placed above the Five-Year Plan adopted by both the Party Congress and the Supreme Soviet...

...There is much truth in these narratives, but they usually remain silent about—or even exalt—the role of Party representatives...

...Examples were Vladimir A. Kuche-renko, who had been close to Khrushchev in the Ukraine, and Mikhail Khrunichev, whom Bulganin had advanced to the post of Aviation Minister back in 1945...

...Apart from Malenkov himself, who was barred from foreign-policy decisions, scarcely any of the Party technocrats suffered...

...The new Party apparatus in the villages numbers 60-70,000 regional secretaries and instructor-assistants, plus auxiliary personnel...

...It is useful to identify the real author of the whole policy of stirring the Arabs against Israel: Daniel S. Solod, a young Soviet diplomat (Moscow University, class of 1937...

...For the key to his policy is and has been adventure in the Middle East...

...Apart from outright police terror, two factors have enabled the regime to maintain unity: One was the strictly centralized ruling party: the other was the centralized organization of industry, based on nationwide planning...

...he was temporary chief of the U.S...

...This whole question was placed before the Central Committee plenum which met in December 1956 and administered a severe defeat to Khrushchev...

...As we have seen, Khrushchev had pinned his hopes from the start chiefly on the aggravation of the situation in the Middle East, where Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser was to serve as an "ice-breaker of revolution...

...Even worse, the Kremlin itself could not act in a decisive manner...

...Calling for a Big Four "peace pact" and arms embargo in the Middle East, it represented a significant departure from the general theme of Soviet policy during the preceding year...

...Immediately after the ouster of Malenkov, Molotov, et al., all sorts of "peace" delegations from Asia and the Middle East began arriving in Moscow...

...Pervukhin's report was presented to the Supreme Soviet on February 6; Shepilov read his report on the 12th, and its theses were embodied in a note sent the previous day to the great powers...

...Simultaneously with the publication of the general statement of the February plenum, a short statement announced Shepilov's resignation as Foreign Minister (three days after his report) and replacement by Andrei Gromyko...

...This decentralization, the Soviet press contends, is necessary to combat the terrible danger of growing bureaucratization...

...This presidium apparently contained a majority of Khrushchev-Bulganin lieutenants (Kucherenko, Matskevich, Khrunichev), but they undoubtedly supported the December plenum's plan in its entirety...

...Soon afterward, a fleet of Soviet cargo ships set out from the Black Sea for Egypt, carrying "Czech" arms, artillery, tanks and airplanes worth hundreds of millions of dollars, together with Soviet technical instructors who hurriedly drilled young Egyptian officers in the use of their new weapons...

...It was for that reason that Dmitri Shepilov flew to Cairo in July 1955 and concluded an agreement with Nasser...

...His policy during the years when he was boss in the Ukraine was, if anything, characterized by crude Russi-fication...

...For the decentralizing of industrial administration will, beyond question, tend to promote the rapid growth of centrifugal forces within Soviet society...

...Khrushchev's adventurism had marked somewhat of a turn from the early Middle Eastern policy of the post-Stalin regime...

...Khrushchev had established a certain hegemony for the Party functionaries, but he virtually refrained from the use of force...

...It stresses the desire of Khrushchev's ruling group to "broaden the powers of the Lnion republics in the realm of economic and cultural construction" (resolution of the June 1957 plenum...

...But, because of the very nature of the technocrat's view of the Soviet economy, these technocrats, too, slipped into the Malenkov orbit...

...In Soviet society, however, the main cause of bureaucratization is the existence of the huge, parasitical Party apparatus, which fulfils no constructive functions in national life but, penetrating every part of the social organism, diverts to its own use a major part of the output of the country's productive forces...

...The new Five-Year Plan, adopted at the 20th Party Congress on the basis of Bulganin's report, had run into serious trouble within its very first year...

...Under Khrushchev's leadership, the Party seized control of the Soviet police apparatus: since 1953...

...Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula on October 29 and Anglo-French air-power entered the battle on the 31st, but not until November 5, when it was already clear that hostilities would be halted in a day or so, did the Soviet Union intervene with statements suggesting that it was prepared to aid Egypt...

...This is indicated by his presence at atomic test explosions in 1955-56 and also by his death, which, Moscow reports suggested, was the result of radiation poisoning...

...The struggle within the Presidium over the Nasser adventure was linked with disputes o\er other issues, primarily economic policy...

...Indeed, a British Foreign Office spokesman asserted at the lime that Shepilov's proposals, containing points which were close to Western policy, required careful study...

...This reorganization had three main aspects: 1. The Commission was empowered to review the targets set by the Khrushchev-Bulganin Five-Year Plan...

...On these questions, too, Khrushchev's forces suffered a setback, as the following two developments show: • For some 22 months after his ouster as Premier, Malenkov had been eliminated from participation in Government decisions on foreign policy...

...Avraami P. Zavenyagin, Malyshev's deputy as Minister of Medium Machine-building, apparently died from the same cause...

...they'll manage somehow...

...he had to smash the economic managers as a class...

...After the February plenum, the struggle against the technocrats became virtually a war of annihilation...

...On the other hand, Khrushchev has already ousted Beria, Kaganovich, Malenkov and Molotov (Voroshilov, who survives, is harmless), and is carrying out a veritable social revolution in smashing the class of economic managers...

...the decisions of the February plenum put an end to this...

...The chief reason for dissension at the end of 1956, however, was the confusion of the Soviet leaders in the face of the acute crisis facing them...

...Meanwhile, the Party apparatus is growing with tremendous speed...

...Between 1941 and 1951, Solod held various responsible posts in Soviet embassies in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt...

...Shepilov's removal stemmed from his change of sides in December...

...But before long Malyshev was made director of the Committee on Inventions...

...Malenkov, whose aim was to avoid foreign-policy complications, supported Molotov in reversing this policy after Stalin's death...

...And Semyon D. Ignatyev, former Minister of State Security who organized the infamous "Jewish doctors'" case, is moving up again...

...But that's no tragedy...

...it has directed agriculture...

...Khrushchev now has a clear field for his foreign-policy operations...

...All these ministries were located in Moscow, and the thousands of members of their technical and administrative staffs, who enjoyed a high standard of living, played a vital role in the life of the capital...

...section of the Foreign Ministry...

...In February, Khrushchev felt free to remove the "two-facer...

...The conference was attended by both Party and Government representatives of the USSR, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia...

...The Soviet press, attempting to conceal the existence of the sharp social antagonisms in Soviet society, depicts the decisions of the February plenum as a victory for the principle of decentralization...

...Not that their authors are conscious tools of the Party machine...

...It was this accord with the Soviet Union that enabled Nasser to seize control of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956...

...The potential size of the apparatus for industry is indicated by the fact that there are some 200,000 industrial enterprises and 100,000 construction projects in the Soviet Union...

...One after another Khrushchev brought back Averky Aristov, Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Ignatov and Frol Koz-lov, whose articles in Kommunist in early 1953 had heralded the coming purge...

...True, Vyacheslav A. Malyshev was removed as Minister of Medium Machine-building (cover-name for atomic industry) while remaining a Deputy Premier...

...These decisions last December represented a tremendous victory for the economic managers...

...Yet, immediately after the December plenum, Malenkov flew to Budapest together with Khrushchev to take part in a conference called by the Kadar regime and its "Hungarian Socialist Workers party...