Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR KHRUSHCHEV "Politics and Planning in the Soviet Empire —2," by Fritz Schenk and Richard Lowenthal (NL, January 12), relates facts previously unknown in the West to the significant...
...dealt with Stalin's war record and postwar diplomacy, and described in some detail the internal situation which faced the collective leadership when it took over after Stalin's death...
...Moreover, in the days before the Congress the Soviet press strongly intimated that the "cult of Stalin" was under attack...
...Tuskegee, Ala...
...At the next session Khrushchev discussed the ideological setting of the dispute and went on to deal with the collapse of 'Leninist practice' under Stalin...
...the full Central Committee, the members of the Government, senior officials in Government departments and agencies, and senior Government and party officials from the regions...
...Imported Labor Hits U.S...
...who once said that he wrote 'to strengthen the hearts of Poles...
...IMPORTED WORKERS As a member of the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, I express appreciation to you for publishing Fay Bennett's article...
...But if this were really Khrushchev's motive, did it require him to reveal that Stalin used "violence, mass repressions and terror," and executed 70 per cent of the Central Committee elected in 1934...
...I part company with Rush when he assumes that the need for such a "guarantee" was only borne in on a reluctant Khrushchev during the Congress itself...
...According to Khrushchev, Voznesensky went to Khrushchev, Malenkov and Molotov, saying that he had spent a long session with Stalin explaining his draft for the new five-year plan...
...That, however, is speculation...
...There was nothing we could do while Stalin lived.' "This passage was noted verbatim at the time...
...Khrushchev's chief motive in delivering the secret speech, I believe, was to offer the Congress a pledge and a guarantee that they would not suffer the fate of Stalin's early supporters, nor would the country experience a new terror, if they permitted him to aggrandize his already predominant power...
...My purpose here is to set down publicly what was privately and verbally reported in London in the middle of 1955...
...Subsequent events, I think, have tended to confirm the hypothesis that the secret speech was an important tactical maneuver in Khrushchev's rise to dictatorship...
...There was no reason to fear a personal dictator, Khrushchev in effect told the assembled Congress, unless he were mad...
...The authors argue that Khrushchev "rehearsed" part of the secret speech at a meeting of top satellite leaders some months before the Congress, believing it necessary to "shock the Party bureaucracy out of its fear that any deviation from Stalinist doctrine was dangerous...
...The new evidence, that Khrushchev revealed Stalin's crimes to satellite leaders in mid-1955, while extremely interesting does not affect the argument...
...In the morning session the meeting was addressed by Bulganin, who gave a long report on the international setting of the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute, reviewed its course at the level of state relations, and explained why the diplomatic posture of the Communist bloc toward Yugoslavia had to be altered...
...plead guilty to supporting the restoration of capitalism in Russia.' We began to argue that this was ridiculous...
...The three of us asked for an interview with Stalin, and were received by him at noon...
...Stalin had then said: 'You are seeking to restore capitalism in Russia.' This, said Khrushchev, 'was enough to cause Comrade Voznesensky serious concern, and he came to us asking us to intercede with Stalin...
...In terms very similar to those used several months later in the secret speech at the 20th Congress, he traced the course of the terror from the 1934 Party Congress...
...Khrushchev, then, was willing to reveal Stalin's terrible crimes to a small circle of leaders, just as he was willing to deflate the "miracle-working hero" in his opening address to the Congress...
...It is not the truth of the story that is relevant here, but the use that Khrushchev made of it to answer the awkward question: it is almost precisely the same account as that given to the 20th Congress for the same purpose...
...In the subsequent discussion the question was asked: 'Why was nothing done to prevent these crimes?' Khrushchev then explained at length what had happened to Voznesensky...
...The bloody contents of the secret speech seem grossly disproportionate to the pale motives which Schenk and Lowenthal say led to its delivery...
...MYRON RUSH Richard Lowenthal replies: In our articles, Fritz Schenk and I claimed no more than that the need to destroy the myth of Stalin's infallibility by a shock in order to revive the ruling Party was "one of his [Khrushchev's] motives" for making the secret speech...
...The problems of farm workers in this country are very grave, and public concern is needed...
...He made specific mention of the liquidation of Party leaders (only those rehabilitated at the 20th Congress, not the Trotskyites) and stated that a full examination of their cases was now being made and that a report would be made to the Soviet Party Congress when it assembled...
...The source, who was present throughout the meeting, added that the reason given for this special briefing was that the Bulgarian Party 'had special responsibilities in regard to the Yugoslav question,' and that this background account would 'enable the Bulgarian comrades to take the necessary steps to deal with these responsibilities.' It may be, of course, that Khrushchev took the opportunity of using the Bulgarian Party, which is one of the best-organized and most firmly-seated, to stage a dress rehearsal of the anti-Stalinist drama...
...A man is prepared to be a martyr, but what use is it to die like a dog in the gutter...
...I tried to reconstruct these maneuvers in my book, The Rise of Khrushchev, from the substantial evidence of uncertainty and contention regarding Stalin's rate in the weeks before the Congress and at the Congress itself...
...I am on record as having expressed the same view when the speech first became known...
...DEAR EDITOR KHRUSHCHEV "Politics and Planning in the Soviet Empire —2," by Fritz Schenk and Richard Lowenthal (NL, January 12), relates facts previously unknown in the West to the significant problems of Soviet politics with the incisiveness which we have come to expect in Lowenthal's writings...
...I believe the following statement, however, is incorrect: "The view that the 'secret speech' was forced on a reluctant Khrushchev by some last minute maneuvers at the [Twentieth Party] Congress is untenable in the light of the facts"—presumably Schenk's new facts as well as those previously known...
...The audience at this meeting consisted of about 300 people...
...What could you do...
...Surely it was not necessary to portray Stalin as one of history's worst monsters to prove that he was sometimes wrong...
...Stalin held up his hand and added: 'Before you continue, you should know that Voznesensky was shot this morning.' There you are...
...The details of his account seem to have been tailored to the particular balance of the moment within the collective leadership...
...Revisionism' In Poland" by K. A. Jelenski (NL, February 2), reference is made (page 12) to ". . . the great Polish writer, Adam Sienkiewicz...
...You have assisted the efforts of many individuals and organizations, including the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, in bringing these problems to the attention of your readers...
...But he has now authorized me to publish the following full account of what he was told: "On the way back from Belgrade, in 1955, Khrushchev and Bulganin stopped in Sofia, where they addressed a day-long meeting of THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Farm Workers" (NL...
...and then said: 'So you, too...
...It was written, instead, by another equally famous Polish author, Adam Mickiewicz...
...It is in the light of this account that I regard the hypothesis of the secret speech having been forced on a reluctant Khrushchev by last-minute pressure at the Congress as no longer tenable...
...The key theme of the secret speech is not Stalin's fallibility but his criminal madness: "His persecution mania reached unbelievable dimensions...
...We learn that two decades of purge and terror had their origin in Stalin's abnormal personality...
...We already knew from the secret speech that during 1955 a number of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated...
...He succeeded in purging his rivals, despite Stalin's demonstration of how terribly a leader may rule once he has eliminated countervailing powers...
...L. H. FOSTER President, Tuskegee Institute CORRECTION In the article...
...Washington, D.C...
...We stated that we had seen and approved the measures proposed by Voznesensky...
...Part of this provided for some relaxation of over-centralized planning, and for certain NEP-style measures to restore the economy...
...Whether delivery of the secret speech has deprived Khrushchev of the ultimate sanctions by which Stalin maintained his dictatorship, and whether he stands in need of such sanctions, has yet to be seen...
...I fully agree with Myron Rush's cogent arguments for thinking that another motive—quite possibly, as he thinks, the "chief motive"—was "to offer the Congress a pledge and a guarantee that they would not suffer the fate of Stalin's early supporters, nor would the country experience a new terror, if they permitted him to aggrandize his already predominant power...
...Stalin listened to us...
...Bulgarian Party functionaries...
...But he was "reluctant" to attack Stalin as a bloody tyrant before the Congress and the nation...
...This informant was unable to publish the facts at the time, and he cannot publicly give his name even now for fear of endangering his source...
...The decisive evidence on that—Khrushchev's statements to satellite Party leaders on his return from Belgrade in 1955—to which reference was made in our second article, does not come from Schenk, but from a trustworthy British informant who talked to a participant of the meeting in question shortly afterward...
...At the heart of this controversy about the circumstances attending the secret speech lies disagreement as to Khrushchev's motives in delivering it...
...December 15, 1958...
...Sienkiewicz was indeed a great Polish writer, but several students of Polish literature have called our attention to the fact that it was not he who wrote the line quoted, which is close to the hearts of all Polish intellectuals...
...this is what was "forced on [him] by some last minute maneuvers at the Congress...
Vol. 42 • February 1959 • No. 6
