Khrushchev's New Party History
LABEDZ, LEOPOLD
KHRUSHCHEV'S NEW PARTY HISTORY Recent Soviet textbook treats the record as 'today's politics projected into the past' By Leopold Labedz THE MOST extensive dumping operation in publishing history...
...The Marshal's name is not mentioned in connection with World War II, and it is only toward the end of the chapter on the war that he appears, once, in the list of "great commanders...
...The names of Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, with two exceptions, are deleted from the new text, until it comes to the defeat of the "anti-Party group'' at the June 1957 Plenum...
...The "rehabilitation" was short...
...The same curious double treatment is applied to all the postwar ideological causes celebres...
...One can only surmise what that punishment was in Yezhov's case, since it is not disclosed...
...Molotovsk has become Perm again, and all pictures and documents referring to Molotov's role in the Revolution (he was then the editor of Pravda) have been removed from Lenin's Museum of the Revolution...
...He resolutely prepared the workers for the decisive battle against autocracy...
...now it has disappeared...
...After the dismissal of Marshal Georgi Zhukov, Tukhachevsky's name disappeared from the lists of commanders selected for honorable mention in Soviet journals, and now the omission has been made official...
...They are not mentioned as the three speakers at Stalin's funeral...
...Another such myth, that of Stalin's feats on the southern front in the Civil War, is similarly abolished...
...Only now, with the consolidation of power of the new Party Secretary, has the new official version of Party history appeared...
...Just as the Short Course was launched to shape the historical myths of the "Stalin epoch," so the new textbook offers revised material to establish the historical perspective of the generation to be formed politically under Khrushchev...
...As before, Leon Trotsky's role is falsified, but in a different way...
...He has been erased entirely from the pages of the new Party history...
...The new textbook draws a curtain of silence over Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky...
...Kaganovich...
...KHRUSHCHEV'S NEW PARTY HISTORY Recent Soviet textbook treats the record as 'today's politics projected into the past' By Leopold Labedz THE MOST extensive dumping operation in publishing history has just been carried out: The Short Course of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has been replaced by a new textbook...
...Beria and Yezhov...
...Tukhachevsky's "de-rehabilitation" has probably prevented the recollection of his role in the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt...
...This is omitted...
...Not stopping at anything and exploiting the personal shortcomings of J. V. Stalin for his criminal purposes, he slandered and liquidated many honest persons devoted to the Party and the people...
...The purged Stalinist Old Guard has joined the purged Leninist Old Guard in the Communist purgatory...
...The final verdict on Stalin is nonetheless quite favorable: "The essence of the Party criticism of the personality cult consisted in the removal of the harmful consequences of this cult and in the strengthening thereby of the position of socialism, and not in the general denial of the positive role of J. V. Stalin in the life of the Party and of the country...
...Nor for that matter can one learn anything about its causes or its consequences...
...to strengthen the faith of the working class in the possibility of building a socialist society in the Soviet Union by its own efforts, without waiting for the state support of the West European proletariat...
...Thus Stalin emerges somewhat battered from this operation, but not as mauled as he was in Khrushchev's "secret speech...
...The changes in the structure of the Soviet Government made after Stalin's death are described impersonally: "It was decided to have one organ—the Presidium of the Central Committee—instead of two— the Presidium and the Bureau of the Presidium...
...The new textbook is twice as long as the Short Course...
...True, Lenin's testament, which gave a negative assessment of Stalin's character and proposed that he be replaced by somebody else, is quoted, but it is explained that the Party Congress, "taking into consideration the services rendered by J. V. Stalin, his relentless struggle with Trotskyism and other anti-Party groupings, decided to leave him in the post of General Secretary, with the proviso that J. V. Stalin should take into account the criticism of him by V. I. Lenin and draw the necessary conclusions...
...The new textbook contains no personality cult of the present Party Secretary comparable to that of the old one...
...But Volume 51 of the same Encyclopedia, published in 1958, rehabilitated him and described him as "an outstanding military leader...
...Nor is it any easier for readers without a thorough knowledge of the subject to discover the truth...
...It is no less dishonest for all that: it is just that much longer...
...Too many delicate points in the "revealed history" needed careful reinterpretation and too many of Stalin's entourage were falling by the wayside...
...Stalin's services in defeating the opposition receive full personal praise...
...However, though the members of the opposition are still attacked as enemies of the Party, they are no longer accused of being "a gang of fascist hirelings" engaged in "spying and wrecking activities...
...Since the role which Khrushchev played in the purge was conspicuous enough, his speech to the 18th Congress (which is of course not quoted) cannot be construed as an alibi: "The successful and victorious destruction of fascist agents, and of all those contemptible Trotskyites, Bukharinites and bourgeois nationalists, we owe, first of all and personally, to our leader, the great Stalin...
...This treatment no doubt counterbalances Zhukov's efforts to implant "the cult of his own personality, and to greatly exaggerate his role in the Great Patriotic War...
...All the historically important political and economic decisions are attributed to the "wise policy of the Party and the Soviet Government," and it is impossible to learn from the new textbook what the "personality cult of J. V. Stalin," which it condemns, was like...
...The Party historians have had new difficulties added to their old ones in dealing with Soviet leaders...
...he "was put at the head of the armed forces" during the war, etc...
...Tomorrow the Whole World...
...The Short Course asserted that success in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 was "frustrated by the suspicious actions" of Trotsky and Tukhachevsky...
...The "collective leadership" of the post-Stalin triumvirate is...
...His pamphlets are quoted as defending Leninism, and his book, Problems of Leninism, is described as helping "the Communists in the struggle against the perversion of Leninism...
...The name of the underground station nearest that Museum has been changed from "Lazar Kaganovich" (who was in charge of building the Moscow underground) : it is now called "Okhotony ryad...
...But he has not been reduced to a secondary role, although he is often made to appear one among many in the company of other Bolshevik leaders...
...The political significance of the new textbook can best be gauged by comparing its conclusions with those of the Short Course...
...But in a truly Solomonic fashion, "the whole work of organizing the uprising" is assigned to Lenin, who "summoned the members of the Revolutionary Military Committee...
...The Social Democratic leaders, in theory as well as in practice, proceeded and still proceed from their basic assumption that it is possible to reconcile the class interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that the revolutionary overthrow of the domination of the bourgeoisie is undesirable, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is superfluous...
...The changing distribution of glory and credit for Russian successes in the last war illustrates this very well...
...Stalin—our hope, Stalin —our desire...
...Many workers devoted to the Party...
...Khrushchev's attack on Stalin in his speech at the 20th Congress could perhaps have been used as an historical alibi, but it remains "secret...
...But the new text does not disclose this fact...
...Thus one of Stalin's personal myths is demolished, without being replaced by a truthful account of what actually happened...
...Mikhail I.] Kalinin...
...In the present work, which follows the fall of the "anti-Party group," the State Committee of Defense has disappeared altogether from the history of the "Great Patriotic War...
...This produces another embarrassing quandary for the book's editors, who quote the Stenographic Report of the 20th Congress, but cannot give any reference to the speech itself since it is not included in the Report...
...The new version was slow in coming...
...Communists and non-Party, were slandered and perished because of him...
...The treatment of other important figures is no less revealing...
...The new textbook was written with a better-educated audience in mind...
...During the Great Purge, he was already First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist party, and he was a member of the Politburo by the time of the 18th Congress...
...Stalin, who had just returned from exile, [Vyacheslav M.] Molotov and others, together with the majority of the Party, upheld a policy of non-confidence in the Provisional Government, opposed the partisans of war, and called for an active struggle against the imperialist war...
...Malenkov...
...The Lysenko affair, Stalin's contributions to linguistics, and his Economic Problems of Socialism are also referred to in a half-approving, though elliptical, way...
...He is mentioned on earlier occasions, but usually in company...
...Speaking on January 30, 1937 at a public meeting, Khrushchev had this to say about the first Moscow Trial: "These miserable nonentities wanted to destroy the unity of the Party and the Soviet State...
...The Moscow Trials...
...Stalin...
...The report made to the 19th Congress of the Party in October 1952 was delivered by Malenkov...
...Stalin's niche in history...
...Stalin conies into his own...
...J. V. Stalin did much that was beneficial to the Soviet Union, to the CPSU, and to the whole international workers movement...
...What happened to the Secretariat in March 1953 is not disclosed...
...After the condemnation of the Short Course by Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in his "secret speech" at the 20th Congress, a 10-member editorial board under B. N. Ponomarev was set up "to prepare a popular, Marxist textbook of Party history, based on historical facts...
...It was fostered assiduously in his lifetime...
...The former text read: "The history of the Party teaches us, first of all, that the victory of the proletarian revolution, the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is impossible without a revolutionary party of the proletariat, a party free from opportunism, irreconcilable toward compromisers and capitulators, and revolutionary in its attitude toward the bourgeoisie and its state power...
...The new version puts Stalin in his place, without giving back their real role to the original actors...
...Nevertheless, only one of the defendants in the Moscow Trials has been rehabilitated so far—the First Secretary of the Uzbek Communist party, Akmal Ikramov, who was shot in 1938...
...The Short Course called Trotsky, Grigori Zinoviev and Kamenev the "real and direct organizers of the murder of Kirov...
...The first edition was sold out in a few hours...
...In this period, a rogue and political adventurer, Beria, made his way into responsible state posts...
...It is Voroshilov's "heroism and bravery" that are still recalled in that connection...
...While it has ceased to be a fictionalized autobiography of Stalin, it has by no means turned into a real historical work...
...Molotov...
...Stalin—the light of advanced and progressive humanity, Stalin—our will, Stalin—our victory...
...These "discussions, conducted on Party initiative in various scientific disciplines, contributed to the overcoming of a series of ideological errors, strengthened the principle of partiinost [Party spirit] in science and helped to raise the level of scientific investigations...
...But this anonymity ends in the next sentence, which says that "it was considered expedient to set up the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee...
...It was obviously decided that the legitimacy of the regime left by Stalin to his heirs might be seriously undermined if he were to be classed with the powers of darkness...
...it maintains that "the main force that defended Tsaritsyn was made up of the workers' units led by K. E. Voroshilov...
...Not infrequently, he is presented as the spokesman of the Party, at a discreet distance behind Lenin, but unmistakably the most important among Lenin's followers...
...The new book refers to "the struggle of the working class for the victory of Socialism and Communism in the whole world" and assures us that the Communist party "is not sparing its strength for the solution of the great historical task of strengthening and developing the world system of Socialism...
...In September 1953, N. S. Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU...
...Stalin's role in the Revolution and Civil War is deflated, and several historical falsifications of it are now dismissed...
...In dealing with the Moscow battle, the textbook refers to the soldierly exploits of General Panfilov and the polituk Klochkov-Dnevy...
...Two of his co-defendants in the 1937 trial, I. P. Uborevich and I. Y. Yakir, who had also been "rehabilitated," are missing from the newly-constellated galaxy of the military heroes of the Civil War, some of whom, such as Marshal V. K. Blue-cher, had also only recently been recalled from the house of the dead...
...It was to be ready within a year, but the vicissitudes of history, the struggle for power among Stalin's heirs, and the 1956 upheaval in Eastern Europe delayed its completion...
...The Short Course was, of course, one of the instruments of Stalin's self-aggrandizement, where he attributed to himself deeds performed by other actors...
...D. Z. Manuilski, N. S. Khrushchev, and A. S. Shvernik were directed to leading work in the Army...
...He is mentioned only occasionally and is then presented as subordinate to some sort of collective polity: He published his article, "Dizzy with Success," "according to the decision of the Central Committee...
...it concludes: "The study of the Party's history helps us to master the theory of Marxism-Leninism, and to learn from the experience gained in the struggle to overthrow the exploiters' yoke and build Communism...
...Thus Molotov, Malenkov and Beria make their exit from the pages of history...
...Cult without a personality...
...Nor is the failure of the Red Army in the battle of Warsaw in 1920 attributed this time to "the wrecker's order issued by Trotsky," but simply to "the errors of Soviet command...
...Beria, who replaced Nikolai Yezhov at the end of the Purge, is made to precede him...
...It was in this last body that Trotsky played such an important role in the preparation of the Bolshevik Revolution...
...Now, though the textbook states that "the military council of the North Caucasus region was headed by J. V. Stalin...
...In the study of contemporary Soviet history, the flashbacks into the recent past provided by earlier printed sources can give us some insight into the simple working rules that govern its compilers...
...The defense of Tsaritsyn and his plan to defeat General Denikin (which, according to the previous version, replaced the suspicious strategic proposals of Trotsky) were the two artificial props used to establish Stalin's title to glory in the Civil War...
...The new textbook diplomatically announces that the murderer was an "angry renegade" (with a Party card) who "associated with the former members of the Zinovie-vist anti-Party group...
...The anonymity of the period is otherwise striking: No names of other Party leaders active at the time are mentioned...
...This despite the fact that they were partly rescinded afterwards, having allegedly resulted from the harmful influence exercised by the late Secret Police Chief Lavrenti P. Beria and former Premier Georgi Malenkov on Stalin...
...Their formulation may be milder and more circumscribed, but the old Leninist message gets through in its Khrushchevian, as it did in its Stalinist, form...
...Now the list of the architects of victory no longer includes Molotov or Kaganovich...
...All political decisions then taken that are specifically mentioned are praised unreservedly...
...But the necessity to conceal the collective guilt of the Stalinist Politburo during the "infringements of the principle of collective leadership," as well as the erasure of the names of Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, apparently contributed to the decision to start Khrushchev's historical career at a date later than that at which it really began...
...This is understandable...
...The Orwellian "memory hole" technique is applied to some, but with the others it is the evaporated memory of their deeds that the authors rely upon...
...The funeral itself is not even mentioned, even though it was prepared by Khrushchev as the Chairman of the Funeral Arrangements Committee...
...He remains a "positive hero" of our time, despite "the serious mistakes committed by him in the last period of his life...
...Yezhov, who was mentioned favorably in the first edition of the Short Course, but disappeared from the second, has now reappeared, but in a different role...
...As before, current considerations determine the treatment of events...
...The old one, which ran into 50 million copies, has now been thrown into the "dustbin of history...
...Under the leadership of the Communist party and its Central Committee, in which J. V. Stalin played a leading role, the Soviet Union achieved enormous world-wide successes...
...He is no longer accused of having "blabbed the date of the uprising to the enemy" (as is still alleged in the present introduction to John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World...
...It would perhaps not be a bad idea if it were to become required reading (together with the Short Course) for Western statesmen and politicians...
...It is significant not only because it reflects the recent changes LEOPOLD LABEDZ, associate editor of Soviet Survey in London, is a close student of Soviet, political history...
...Molotov and Kaganovich...
...In comparison with the period of Stalin's struggle for power, his personal rule in the subsequent two decades is heavily played down...
...It is quite up to date and even includes a chapter on the 21st Congress and the Seven-Year Plan...
...The Short Course affirmed that "the Red Army was victorious...
...with which he is charged, and which, according to the textbook, caused his dismissal...
...The Short Course claimed that the Bolshevik uprising in October 1917 was directed by a Party Center headed by Stalin...
...E. Voroshilov, A. A. Zhdanov...
...The new text attributes the organization of the uprising to the Revolutionary Military Center of the Central Committee, which formed a part of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet...
...In the Short Course, there was a reference to the struggle against the "anti-Party groupings" at the time of the 10th Congress...
...In a later volume, published after Stalin's death and Beria's fall, there are only four names left: Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Malenkov...
...All the important decisions and achievements of the post-Stalin era are attributed to his personal initiative, starting with his condemnation of the personality cult...
...Having liquidated them, he either retrospectively ascribed treacherous actions to them or erased their names altogether from the history of the Revolution...
...Similarly, although it refers to the change in "the previous plan of directing the main blow from Tsaritsyn, which no longer corresponded to the tasks of the moment" and to its replacement by another plan, it does not mention Stalin as its author...
...In Volume VII of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, the State Committee of Defense, set up on June 30, 1941, is said to have consisted of Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Malenkov and Beria...
...When this particular volume was published, Malenkov was still head of the Government, and Molotov the Foreign Minister, but Beria had already become an "un-person...
...Yezhov and Beria were justly punished for their criminal activity...
...The new textbook repeats that "Kamenev took up a semi-Menshevik position" toward the Provisional Government, but adds that "an incorrect position for pressure on the Provisional Government, with a demand to open peace negotiations, was taken up by J. V. Stalin, who soon renounced it, however, and accepted Lenin's platform...
...The Great Purge is described obliquely, the chronology of events being deliberately confused...
...The old book stressed that "the study of the history of the CPSU strengthens our certainty of the ultimate victory of the great cause of the Party of Lenin-Stalin, the victory of Communism throughout the world...
...In the description of the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, and of the fall of Berlin, the name of Marshal Zhukov does not appear...
...The Short Course stated: "[Leo] Kamenev and several workers of the Moscow organization, for example, [Alexei I.] Rykov, [Andrei] Bubnov and [Victor] Nogin, held a semi-Menshevik position of conditionally supporting the Provisional Government and the policy of the partisans of war...
...It is clear that the new Party history will be required reading for Party members and will be the basis of Communist political indoctrination for years to come...
...and] in Central Asia, the fight against the anti-Party groupings was headed by Comrade L. Kaganovich...
...Tukhachevsky...
...Yet the nearer it comes to the present, the more frequently its pages are sprinkled with Khrushchev's name...
...The Moscow Trials of 1936-38 are simply not mentioned in the new "history...
...The crude lies of the Short Course have been replaced by a more sophisticated method of circumventing the truth...
...and as for Berlin, only the names of Sergeants Egorov and Kantariya (who put up the Soviet flag over the Reichstag) are given...
...His rehabilitation was disclosed in Volume III of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia...
...The allusion to the Great Purge is almost explicit: "Many innocent and honest Communist and non-Party people became victims of repression...
...because the political education of the Red Army was in the hands of men like Lenin...
...Writing about our epoch as that "of the transition of human society from capitalism to Communism...
...as in the Short Course, history is still today's politics projected into the past...
...Zhukov...
...Instead, we are told that "K...
...The new textbook refers to "the infringements of Party and Soviet democracy" and of "the principle of collective leadership": "Many important problems were decided by Stalin personally...
...Khrushchev...
...The taboo put on Stalin's victims in the Short Course has now been extended to some of his "closest counsellors...
...They raised their treacherous hands against Comrade Stalin...
...Not only has the biography of Beria been replaced by an article on the Bering Straits in the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, but the ship called Molotov has been renamed Baltik...
...The latest edition of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia accused Tukhachevsky of "collusion with the enemy...
...The shifts in the composition of these bodies are not described...
...The resolutions of the Central Committee of 1946 and 1948, which led to the persecution of writers and artists, are mentioned favorably...
...As could be expected, the most striking difference between the old and the new presentation of the "historical facts" is the role attributed to Stalin...
...These and many other references, often joining Stalin's activity to that of Lenin before, during and after the 1917 Revolution, are now omitted...
...in the USSR, being the most authoritative statement of the present Party line, but also because it is to be the new Soviet Bible of the post-Stalin era...
...But we are not told what these problems were...
...Stalin's role in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, though not made negligible, is definitely diminished...
...The differences among the Bolshevik leaders after the February revolution and before Lenin's return from exile receive new treatment...
...Yakov M.] Sverdlov...
...of course, also passed over in silence...
...The new text emphasizes that "a whole half-century of experience of social development has shown that the Communist party of the Soviet Union was right in its historical dispute and struggle with the parties of the Second International, with the ideology and politics of social democracy...
...The new textbook does not refer to it and glosses over the Moscow Trials and all their victims...
...However, in the chapters devoted to the struggle with the opposition, he comes into his own...
...in connection with Stalingrad the names of Generals Chuikov, Rodimtsev, Gurtev and Gorokhov are enumerated...
...In the same period, Yezhov, who had been Commissar of Internal Affairs, played an infamous role...
...In the Short Course, Stalin was first mentioned in connection with his pronouncement on the Baku strike of 1904, and it was stressed that before the 1905 Revolution he "was carrying on tremendous revolutionary work in Transcaucasia...
...No wonder, for it maintained that in the Ukraine the struggle was "led by Comrade Molotov...
...Someone else who spoke on that occasion is mentioned instead: "The 19th Congress discussed the report on the changes in the Party statute made by N. S. Khrushchev...
...However, under the influence of the personality cult of J. V. Stalin, these discussions also had harmful consequences...
...Khrushchev comes into prominence in the new textbook only with the war and, of course, in the post-Stalin period...
Vol. 42 • October 1959 • No. 37
