Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR KREMLIN BATTLE I would like to reply to several letters (NL, September 9) commenting on my recent series of articles, "Battle in the Kremlin." I cannot understand how anyone who read...
...Throughout the history of the Soviet regime, there has not been a single honest, consistent attempt to adopt the first approach...
...There have been a number of revolts in Soviet forced-labor camps, and there have also been student disturbances in many universities...
...All concrete decisions of foreign and domestic policy depend on how it is resolved...
...Its most active spokesmen have been systematically exterminated and the popular masses have been systematically atomized, so that today they face the heavily armed and entrenched dictatorship bereft of any organization whatever...
...No doubt, he has relied on a circle of talented advisers who conceive and elaborate his plans, but wasn't that equally true of Stalin...
...Several methods were possible: (1) It could make honest concessions to popular pressure and, by means of appropriate changes in policy, try to eliminate the basic causes of discontent...
...Khrushchev's June coup d'etat brought an end to a definite period in the struggle at the top Kremlin echelons, and I tried to sum up this period...
...I have written about Zhukov a number of times, starting in 1945, and I do not think I need change much of what I wrote...
...The regime has always combated discontent by either deceit or terror, usually some combination of the two...
...As for Tukhachevsky, I am inclined to feel that the newspaper reports of his rehabilitation by the Soviet regime are premature...
...The West was greatly harmed by listening to the slighting appraisals of Stalin's ability...
...In any case, it is now clear that he is primarily military specialist...
...But the point of my article was precisely to show that, behind the personal intrigues of the Soviet leaders, great social forces are at work...
...One can safely say that there has never been a time in the history of the USSR when the regime enjoyed the support of a majority of the population...
...New York City Boris I. Nicolaevsky...
...While he describes the latter, in Sidney Hook's terminology, as "an event-making man," he regards Khrushchev as man who is made by events...
...Yet, recognizing this unchanging negative attitude toward it by the people, the regime has naturally had to deal with it...
...They have all been forced by the situation, however, to make concessions to the masses...
...He supports Khrushchev because the latter favors unlimited arms appropriations...
...Gruenbach tries to minimize this danger by asserting that Khrushchev is man of different type from Stalin...
...This struggle, of course, does not account for all the complex processes under way in the tremendous social laboratory which is the USSR...
...The question of what dimensions these concessions should assume in order to preserve the Soviet system was the main cause of the rise of factions in the Kremlin...
...If the regime wants to conduct an "active" foreign policy, it must increase arms expenditures and therefore cannot improve the standard of living of the Soviet people...
...But the purpose of my articles was not complete survey of these processes...
...latest victory does not put an end to this struggle, which has penetrated deeply into both the ruling party and the entire apparatus of the regime...
...That is why it has never given the people an opportunity to express its real feelings toward the Soviet system by a free vote...
...This question of the degree of "activation" of Soviet foreign policy, and hence of the size of the military budget, is a true barometer of the Soviet regime's war on the Russian people...
...The question is how...
...Neither Beria, nor Malenkov, nor Molotovr nor Khrushchev ever wanted to make genuine, honest concessions...
...Conversely, if it makes improvement of living standards its chief task, it must cut the arms budget...
...The regime, provided it remains internally united, is unquestionably capable of crushing any opposition by "the Soviet people as a whole...
...Anyone who pins his hopes on a man like Zhukov does not grasp the menace of total war in our time...
...The main feature of the post-Stalin years has been the internal struggle within the regime, and it is to this struggle that the Soviet people owe all the privileges and relaxed controls which they have obtained in recent years...
...In any case, one can scarcely deny that Khrushchev has shown himself not only an exceptionally skilful intra-Party intriguer, but also a bold maneuverer in matters of grand policy...
...I fear that there is little truth in these comments...
...little question that Khrushchev's victory is a major step toward eliminating dissension within the Kremlin, Mr...
...These are events of tremendous significance, about which I have written in The New Leader and elsewhere...
...If the citizens of Leningrad gave him an enthusiastic reception, they must be forgiven, for they do not know many things which readers of The New Leader do know...
...They are expressed in the struggle between the two main, social groups which have formed within the Communist party and which exert a decisive influence on Soviet policy, to wit, the Party apparatus and the economic managers...
...It is still too early to say what forms the struggle will assume next...
...I cannot understand how anyone who read my articles could assert, as did Ernest Gruen-baeh, that I concentrated my attention on the intrigues of Khrushchev, Poskrebyshev et al...
...As regards the masses of workers and especially of peasants, we have indefinite information which permits us to state that there is rising discontent, but there is no remotely precise data about open opposition by "the Soviet people as a whole...
...Stalin's death created a grave situation for the regime, but not one of the groups engaged in the power struggle undertook an honest, consistent change in policy in order to achieve a reconciliation with the people...
...2) It could try to deceive the masses and, by making minor concessions of little significance, divert their attention from the primary causes of their discontent...
...Khrushchev's...
...But there is...
...But four decades of struggle have largely exhausted the people...
...Regrettably, "the Soviet people as a whole" have not yet taken up open struggle against the regime...
...A proteg6 of Malenkov, he turned against him when Malenkov deemed it necessary to cut military expenditures...
...Intrigues play a tremendous role in a totalitarian state, as in the despotisms of the past...
...In World War II, he was the leading representative of the school of Soviet commanders who believed in only one kind of war: the total variety...
...They were based on an article in the KomsomoIskaya Pravda, but the article mentions only Tukha-chevsky's role in crushing the Kronstadt revolt in 1921...
...This reference might just as well have had the purpose of further discrediting the purged marshal...
...Although there is no question that discontent is rising and the regime must take this into account, it is wrong to imagine that this represents something new...
...However, neither the camp revolts nor the student disturbances represent a. movement of the popular masses "as a whole...
...Gruenbach reproaches me because, as "? veteran of the Marx-Engels Institute and biographer of Marx," I failed to notice the mast important distinguishing feature of the post-Stalin era, that is, the "pressures from below*' which "the Soviet people as a whole" have now, allegedly "for the first time since the 1920s," begun to exert on the Kremlin...
...They all wanted to make only those concessions which would enable them to keep power, but some of them felt it necessary to go farther than others...
...3) It could employ force and wipe out the most dangerous spokesmen of discontent...
...May I recall that Stalin was for years treated in a. semi-contemptuous manner by many authoritative writers and by political figures like Trotsky...
...One should not conclude from this that the Soviet people are not an important factor— indeed, the most important factor—in the struggle against the regime...
...it should not make the same mistake in regard to Khrushchev...
...Even in introducing the New Economic Policy in 1921, Lenin's basic purpose was to preserve the regime so that it could later return to the original experiments...
...Gruenbach also accuses me of underestimating the role of Marshal Zhukov, whom I did not mention in my series...
...The Khrushchev group favored and still favors the fewest possible concessions and the greatest possible deceit...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 40
