The Two Faces of Khrushchev: Changing of the Guard:
WOHL, PAUL
CHANGING OF THE GUARD By Paul Wohl A CHANGING of the guard, and of generations, is now taking place in the Soviet Union. The Communist party hierarchy and, to a lesser degree, the state...
...By holding the congress in October instead of in January-February, as was the case in 1956 and 1959, or in December which is generally considered convenient for such meetings, the Premier apparently sought to immunize the debate against the possibly depressing effect of another unsatisfactory crop...
...The Party's Central Committee has also been altered: The 10-man Secretariat of last May was reduced to a triumvirate of Russians—First Secretary Khrushchev, Frol R. Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Mikhail A. Suslov, plus two non-Russian associates—the octogenarian Finn, Otto V. Kuusinen, and the 44-year-old Uzbek, Nuritdin A. Mukhitdinov...
...The changing of the guard is clearly a political operation, guided and manipulated by Khrushchev and his fellow-triumvirs of the Central Committee Secretariat...
...Otherwise, they affirm, the voters will have a limited choice...
...The Communist party hierarchy and, to a lesser degree, the state hierarchy are being overhauled...
...The motive usually given was ineffectiveness, negligence, moral failings or violations of the law...
...In the recent period, growing importance has been attached at meetings and conferences to the practice of considering the candidates on their merits," although Churayev dutifully remarks, "Communists know that real democracy does not consist in putting more candidates on the list than will be actually elected...
...If the Seven-Year Plan fails and a really serious setback in agriculture occurs, there will be trouble even with a pliant Central Committee...
...Khrushchev told the January Central Committee plenum, that frequently a man was fired for incompetence or drunkenness only to reappear very soon in another job of similar importance...
...Bureaucratic turnover within the Party is now quite rapid...
...The changes now taking place in the Party organization reflect certain new developments in the structure of Soviet society and new departures in the thinking of the war and postwar generations...
...Dmitri Shepilov and Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov...
...The change-over was made to appear businesslike and non-political...
...Meanwhile, the changing of the guard is by no means completed...
...That Khrushchev fears criticism, especially in connection with his agricultural policies, can be inferred from the setting of the date for the 22nd Congress...
...Although the turnover on the district level was greatly accelerated after the ouster of the anti-Party group in June 1957, it still cannot compare with what occurred under Stalin during the first 18 months after the end of World War II when, in Byelorussia, for example, 90 per cent of all district Party secretaries lost their jobs...
...Soviet society today is very different from what it was in Stalin's day: New social forces are making themselves felt, and just as there are stirrings of public opinion among the people at large, discussion is also going on inside the Party...
...Others point out that not infrequently the secretary of a Party committee receives two or three votes less than the other candidates, with the result that a district committee secretary enjoying prestige in the organization, is sometimes not elected...
...According to Soviet precedent, this would have been possible, but Khrushchev did not prevail...
...Along with the downgradings there were transfers to jobs not requiring executive decisions...
...Churayev thus publicly admits that younger Party members have demanded a choice among candidates, something unheard of in the past...
...Two years later, Victor M. Churayev, Yakovlev's colleague, confirmed that the apparatus of the 14 non-Russian Parties of the USSR and of the provincial Party committees of the Russian Federated Republic (RSFSR) had been reduced by 40 per cent...
...in the last five years of Stalin's rule the party hierarchy—on the district as well on the provincial level—changed less than it has under Khrushchev...
...The Party organization has been streamlined from top to bottom by cutting down the number of departments in the overall apparatus and making do with fewer secretaries...
...Even former Premier Nikolai Bulganin is still a member of the Central Committee...
...The Central Committee, in turn, has to elect a new Party Praesidium and secretaries...
...The new replacements attend the enlarged plenums of the Central Committee without actually belonging to the Committee...
...From reports of Premier Nikita Khrushchev's recent tour of eight major agricultural areas, it appears that most of the first secretaries of district and township Party committees have been replaced during the past three years and many of the second and third secretaries have moved on to other jobs...
...if the harvest is disappointing, it can be ignored and Khrushchev's general report, which he must present on behalf of the outgoing Central Committee, can withhold judgment because the full results will not yet be in...
...No position is hereditary, Khrushchev warned Party gatherings in Moscow and the provinces...
...Those who lost their jobs were given other, less responsible positions, which did not always reduce their earnings or social status outside the party...
...Khrushchev's current efforts to consolidate his position have three main objectives: 1. To appoint "cadres"—secretaries on the district level and in smaller units—who will see to it that delegates to the congress will be elected who will support his policies and choose a reliable Central Committee...
...Clearly, Khrushchev has to cope with differences inside the Party and with stirrings in the grassroots which no previous Soviet Premier has had to face...
...In the February issue of the West German monthly Osteuropa, Meissner writes of a "revival of the [internal] struggle for power...
...2. To increase efficiency both within the Party and in the country at large...
...will not necessarily be pliant...
...It is likely that political "black sheep" such as Bulganin no longer are invited to the meetings, but there are plenty of "grey sheep" —former planning chief and First Deputy Premier Maxim Z. Saburov, for example, whose presence on the Central Committee cannot be to Khrushchev's liking...
...As a result of the scandals of faked statistics which came into the open at the January plenum and which, we now know, were not limited to agriculture, Khrushchev called for the cutting of administrative deadwood and for the promotion of reliable, "businesslike" officials...
...There were no executions or large scale deportations...
...The overhauling operation has been going on for four years, hut not always has Khrushchev had his way...
...They revealed that more than one-half of the district secretaries had been replaced since 1956...
...Several provincial first secretaries were shifted to the foreign service or to the foreign trade organization...
...3. To ferret out and to replace officials suspected of "basic' criticism...
...Some of the highest officials who for years were close to the Preraier remain under a shadow...
...Instead of Matskevich others presented the reports...
...But this is not all...
...Churayev published these figures in June 1959...
...Can we consider it democracy when a few impose their will on the overwhelming majority of the delegales...
...The new Central Committee, in which the younger generation will be prominently represented, although loyal...
...In an article in the June 1959 issue of Problems of Peace and Socialism, Churayev gave some idea of what was then going on inside the Party: "Interesting phenomena are to be observed in the election of Party committees...
...There are indications that the Premier wanted the 21st Party congress of February 1959 to elect a new Central Committee...
...Boris I. Nicolaevsky and West Germany's Boris Meissner, both perceptive students of Communist Party history, believe that important differences among the Party leaders continue...
...The more recent overhaul was no purge, however...
...Young officials should be promoted more boldly," he told the 21st Party congress in 1959, criticizing those who claimed that "a man of 35 to 40 was not yet sufficiently mature for a leading position...
...talk of punishment, cleansing or ouster was conspicuously absent...
...Vladimir V. Matskevich, for example, minister of agriculture and one-time Deputy Premier of the USSR, who in December was appointed head of the new Virgin Land region in North Kazakhstan, remained silent at the farm conference in Akmolinsk, the area's capital...
...What is behind the attempt to streamline and revitalize the Party organization...
...The Central Committee, which has to approve major policy measures, has officially remained the same since February 1956, when it was elected by the 20th congress...
...Much of his difficulties are coming to a head at the present time when preparations for the new Party congress, which is to convene on October 17, are in full swing...
...Some are of the opinion that the ballot list [should] contain more candidates than are needed for the given committee...
...A certain solidarity within the hierarchy was evident...
...Matskevich, too, belongs to those officials of the pre-war generation who must either show impeccable performance or expect downgrading and gradual political eclipse...
...According to Churayev, 19.4 per cent of the district first secretaries in the RSFSR—which on January 1, 1959 had 2,473 district and 873 town Party committees— were on the job less than one year, 34.1 per cent from one year to three years and 22.5 per cent from three to five years...
...One of the major causes of the changes was Khrushchev's need for younger men...
...Not all of the changes in the country's more than 6,000 administrative districts have been made public, but an approximate estimate of their extent and importance can be made...
...The only exceptions are the ousters which the Central Committee itself has voted: Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov...
...Cases are on record when, after the results have been announced, delegates to district conferences have insisted on the vote being taken again...
...This is the atmosphere in which Khrushchev has sought to manipulate the reorganization of the Party and change its leading personnel...
...So are many former first secretaries of republics and provinces whose local jobs have been taken over by new men...
...Only in a few cases was sympathy with the anti-Party group of Georgi Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovich and V. M. Molotov mentioned as an aggravating factor...
...He sees as its purpose not the ouster of the Premier, but "rather a prelude to the struggle for Khrushchev's succession...
...The years 1945-1946 were exceptional, of course...
...In 1957 Aleksander I. Yakovlev, deputy chief of the Central Committee's department for Party organs, told the Italian party leader Luigi Longo that 6,000 of the Party's 29,000 full-time local officials would be shifted to more practical jobs in education, social services, production or distribution...
...If the crop is good, it will be known by October 17 and Khrushchev can take credit for it...
...The removal of an official was rarely attributed to political deviations...
...The Party also needs more women of the younger generation for its work, Khrushchev emphasized...
...It would seem that he and many top Party and state officials like him are headed for political limbo...
...It is no purge, but it also is not what Party ideologists claim—the emergence of Communism's "new man...
...Inside the Party today the legend of the monolith, complete with oneslate voting for candidates nominated from above, is no longer uncritically accepted...
Vol. 44 • April 1961 • No. 16
