Deadlock in the Party Presidium

...An article in the June 19 issue of Party Life by N. Gulyaev, an instructor of the Party Control Committee, proposed that the new By-Laws define the rights and duties of non-staff commissions in local organs...

...An open clash is evident between the economic and political "liberals" led by First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev—who would increase production of consumer goods and "democratize" the Party's lower levels—and the "conservatives"—who vehemently oppose these changes...

...J. B.) Not until August 31, when V. Tyukov, an economic planner, predicted an abundance of consumer goods by 1980, did Pravda offer any commentary in line with its earlier editorial...

...Writing in the journal Problems of Economics, I. Oleinik acknowledged as a "law of economic development in each Socialist country" the "preeminent growth of production of the means of production [machinery, heavy equipment, etc.].' But he maintained that "a significant part of agricultural produce falls under the category, 'means of production.' Oleinik further stated that under certain conditions a Socialist country could "develop both subdivisions of public production [i.e., capital and consumer goods sectors] at equal rates or even develop at higher rates the production of consumer goods...

...The First Secretary's economic views were not enshrined as Party dogma: Production of consumer goods, the Draft specified, must "fully satisfy," not "exceed" popular demand...

...Publication of the Draft Program on July 30 stirred fresh argument in the Soviet press which underscored the frailty of the compromise...

...The First Secretary's services in the composition of the Draft Program have been underplayed, while the Central Committee has been designated as "collective author" of the document, and the Party as "collective theoretician.' This is not a result of false modesty on the part of Premier, who only a few months ago permitted a pamphlet to label him the "eminent theoretician of Marxism...

...The relative importance of production and consumption has also been a major subject of controversy...

...In June the Central Committee plenum approved the Draft Party Program...

...Khrushchev did win one major concession from the commission...

...The Draft did not include the usual Soviet maxim about the need for preferential development of basic industry...

...Similarly, dimmer prospects for the consumer than those offered in the Draft were set forth by V. Grishnin, Presidium candidate member and head of Soviet trade unions, in Pravda of August 14...

...Yet the continuing controversy over investment policy and the proposals to amend the new documents suggest that the Party is now engaged in the sort of "general discussion" which the By-Laws authorize "if within the Central Committee there is not evident a sufficiently firm majority on the most important questions of Party policy...

...He went on to say: "We consider it expedient to reflect more thoroughly in the new Party Program the need for permanent work by Party organizations in support and development of the growing social activeness of the toilers," During the past few years...

...He attacked the "liberals' " emphasis on consumption and reaffirmed the primary role of production...

...He is therefore seeking to undermine the opposition's relative independence through the establishment of control units at the grass roots, staffed by ordinary people who would benefit most from his economic program...

...Khrushchev has assailed bureaucracatism and directed wholesale cuts in the Party's lower apparatus...

...In the August 23 Pravda, a local Party official requested that the By-Laws be amended to include mention of the control boards in factories and State farms...

...Early in May, too, a Khrushchev spokesman challenged what the 1959 Party History calls the "Leninist course toward pre-eminent growth of heavy industry...

...So we are not going to give it priority...

...It is worth noting, too, that both before and after the June plenum, the Khrushchev faction argued for the "primacy of politics over economics," implying that the Soviet economy is sufficiently developed to allow for politically motivated shifts of resources to non-basic industries...

...He disclosed that "some" Party officials regard such commissions "jealously and cautiously" because they "fear" infringement of their professional rights...

...Khrushchev has not been able to terrorize the opposition effectively (although the noisy campaign against statistical falsification launched early in 1961 may be considered a quasi-terrorist tactic to "Khrushchevize" the bureaucracy...

...On August 22, Pravda also departed from Khrushchev's formula, calling for "first and foremost a further development of heavy industry...

...Prior to the January plenum, it will be recalled, three secret meetings of regional Party leaders were held in Moscow, an indication of the importance attached to their views in presentday leadership calculations...

...The issue of Russia's internal development is closely tied up with the struggle for political power between "old-line" and Khrushchevite factions in the Party Presidium, the highest policymaking organ of the Central Committee...

...An August 2 editorial in Pravda, for example, stated that the Program's goal of overtaking United States output by 1970 is primarily a matter of producing "foodstuffs, footwear, clothing, housing and other consumer goods, especially consumer durables...

...Yet on May 24, K. Pysin, First Deputy Minister of Agriculture, repeated Khrushchev's new doctrine about the need for production of consumer goods to outstrip demand, calling it "a most important theoretical tenet of Marxist-Leninist science," and Pravda, the Party newspaper, reported this in boldface type...

...But in the August 9 issue of Kommunist, theoretical and political journal of the Central Committee, P. Yudin misrepresents the Draft as forecasting only a "sufficiency" of consumer goods by 1970, and the "total satisfaction of needs for foodstuffs and items of primary necessity [kerosene, matches, sugar, etc.] by 1980...

...For the 22nd Congress, which brings the Party's regional leaders together in Moscow, could well provide the two opposing factions with a forum for testing the USSR's elite opinion...

...Another Khrushchevite, I. Grushetsky, secretary of the Lvov (Ukraine) Province committee, stressed in Pravda on August 30 that the commissions are "one of the effective forms of Party leadership [sic] and of attracting the broad circles of Communists into Party work on a public basis...

...That body remains the same coalition of diversely oriented personalities Khrushchev first put together in June 1957 against the Georgi Malenkov-Vyacheslav M. Molotov faction, but signs of serious deadlock began to appear when the Premier urged badly needed material incentives for the masses...

...But on the same day, the editors of the Central Committee journal, Party Life, expressed doubt whether such abundance would come until after 1980, and seriously qualified other Program formulae for consumer satisfaction...

...The Draft underplays institutions of extra-legal justice such as "Comrade's Courts," the "People's Guards," a quasi-police corps which was chartered with much fanfare in 1959, and citizens' commissions attached to local Soviets—a device reflecting Khrushchev's penchant for mass consultation and grass-roots control...

...J. B.) In contrast, Izvestia, the Government newspaper edited by Khrushchev's son-in-law, A. I. Adzhubei, "adhered strictly to the more "liberal" text of the Draft in an article published on August 16...

...The same "hard" line was taken in the Economic Gazette on August 14, in the August 17 issue of Trud, organ of the Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions, and in Party Life on August 31...

...It is interesting that this contingency is provided for in the ByLaws even though a low-echelon Communist, writing in Pravda on August 23, dismissed it as implausible...

...These doctrinal formulations appear to be unacceptable to the Khrushchevites...

...His spokesman have encouraged nonstaff activity at the expense of fulltime Party work...

...Although Khrushchev headed the drafting commission, the document represented an obvious compromise between the "liberai" and "conservative" factions in the top leadership...

...This was no ordinary refreshment of the Party apparatus in connection with a forthcoming Congress, but a real token of a power struggle which has become increasingly acute during the past two years: Whereas the number of changes in these key posts averaged 14 per year in the period 1946-55, with 20 shifts in 1949, the peak year, there were 23 such changes in 1960 and 19 have occurred in the period January-September, 1961...

...a Party leader in Leningrad who has usually followed the First Secretary's line, praised Comrades' Courts, the People's Guards and Soviet commissions...

...Gulyaev held that such commissions might investigate acts of misconduct committed by Party members and perform the control functions ordinarily reserved to fulltime workers in the departments of established Party committees...

...This view was opposed in the same issue of Problems of Philosophy by the journal's deputy editor, B. Ukraintsev, a leading critic of "Yugoslav revisionism...

...Indeed, the Draft Program not only underplays these anti-bureaucratic forms but declares that the State is "the basic weapon for the Socialist transformation of society...

...Divergences of this sort usually indicate policy differences in the top leadership...

...In addition, Kochetov depicted the Central Committee plenum as an affair guided collectively by the Committee's Secretaries, and not by the First Secretary alone, as press reports and published minutes implied...

...At present the By-Laws, approved only "in the main" by the June Party plenum, merely assert that municipal and district Party organs should "create permanent or temporary commissions on various questions of Party work and use other forms to attract Communists to the activity of the Party committee on a public basis...

...And agriculture was not designated as the "most decisive" branch of the economy...

...G. Shtraks, a Khrushchev supporter, writing on July 8 for Problems of Philosophy, denigrated "conservative" notions about the immutability of social laws...

...Khrushchev continues to be represented as head of the Central Committee which, naturally enough, is "on guard against the [Party's] monolithic nature and unity...

...The new ByLaws ignore the control commissions of rank-and-file Party members which were organized in 1959 to supervise the activities of state managers...

...More than ideological disagreement is involved...

...AS THE 22ND CONGRESS MEETS Deadlock in the Party Presidium By James Biddleford The 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist party opens this week amid indications of acrimony and indecision high in the bureaucracy of the USSR...

...The resistance to Khrushchev's "democratic" views on State and Party management cannot be dissociated from opposition to his consumer goods plan...

...This idea was implicitly rejected in Kommunist's initial editorial on the Draft Program on July 29...

...Shtraks denounced "dogmatism" and reminded his readers that periods of great historical development are marked by "turning points" and "profound qualitative changes...

...In addition, Pysin declared that agriculture, Khrushchev's major domestic concern, had become the "most decisive" branch of the economy...

...Judging from the expressions of Khrushchevite displeasure with the treatment of organizational problems in the new Party documents, the bureaucrats who are resisting diminution of their authority apparently have considerable support within the Party Presidium...

...And there is no reason to believe that men like Oleinik, Shtraks, or Ukraintsev are acting as independent scholars in the Western sense...

...Moreover, commentaries on the Draft program have stressed that industry still plays the "leading" and "decisive" role in the USSR's economy...

...In recent months too: • Marshal Semen Zakharov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, has contradicted Khrushchev's estimate of the importance of surprise attack in modern war...

...Grushetsky added that "It is expedient to supplement and make more specific the proposition about the need to create in district and municipal Party committees non-staff sections...

...The 22nd Congress must hammer out the differences and reach agreement on a final Program text...

...V. Kochetov, a "conservative" writer and editor who also cited deficiencies in the MTS reform, disparaged the "utilitarian" approach to Party work for which Khrushchev is well-known...

...Italics mine...

...Grishnin was only willing to predict that "In the second decade [i.e., by 1980], our country will achieve an abundance of basic material and cultural benefits for the entire population...

...They are intimately connected with struggles for power, with the interplay of factions, with the fight for control of the Party machine.' Seton-Watson's point is illustrated by the fact that the recent "doctrinaire dispute" in the Soviet press was accompanied by the replacement of no fewer than seven first secretaries of provincial Party committees in the Russian Republic during August...

...By May he had worked out a new policy of capital investment which favored consumer-oriented sectors of the economy instead of the traditionally emphasized heavy and basic industries...

...Citing the "law of pre-eminent growth of the means of production over the means of consumption," he quoted "liberal" associates to the effect that "certain aspects of objective laws change in appearance," and noted "the special role of the subjective -factor...

...The reform of the Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS), which Khrushchev initiated in 1958, has been subjected to direct criticism...

...Bureaucratic elements in the Government evidently oppose rash experimentation with a system of economic priorities which both satisfies their own tastes for luxury and puts national power and grandeur ahead of immediate consumer satisfaction...

...Significantly, too, the debate in the Soviet press has been accompanied by sniping at Khrushchev's public image and attempts to discredit both his judgment and style of work...

...Economics, said the editors, is the "determining" factor in building Communism...

...Light industry and heavy industry will develop at the same pace.' The Premier's remarks were not publicized in the Soviet press, probably because they did not reflect a consensus in the Party Presidium...

...Professor Hugh Seton-Watson reminds us, in Neither War Nor Peace, that "doctrinaire disputes, in Communist totalitarian states, are not mere academic exercises...

...For several months now, and particularly since July 30, when the Party's Central Committee issued the extensive 1961 Draft Program, there has been pointed argument in the Russian press over the lines of future domestic policy...

...The backrooms of the 22nd Congress may thus witness another of the post-Stalin leadership's periodic returns to "Leninism," or the search for a mandate to implement one of the conflicting programs that have taken shape in the Presidium...

...This is consistent with the Draft, which calls for a "full satisfaction" of popular demand for consumer goods by 1970, and declares that by 1980 "there will be achieved an abundance of material and cultural benefits for the entire population...

...And in the same newspaper of August 29, I. Spiridonov...

...In January of this year Khrushchev told the Central Committee's plenum that "the production of consumer goods must always exceed the demands of the population [because this] has great significance for further improvement of planning and insuring balanced development of our economy...

...But the Committee is described as the "genuine personification of tie collective intelligence and will of the Party the collective leader with full rights...

...We consider our heavy industry built," he told them...

...A few days later, on May 20, Khrushchev himself endorsed these views in a talk with British businessmen...

...In any event, the new Soviet line will be determined neither openly, unilaterally nor harmoniously, but in the manner which Russian propagandists now declare characteristic of platform-making in "bourgeois" parties—namely, "in deep secrecy from the masses by means of behind-the-scenes plots and intrigues.' James Biddleford regularly follows internal developments in the USSR...

...Italics mine...

...It merely calls for "further development of heavy industry," whose "main task" is "to insure fully the needs of national defense and satisfy better and more fully the life demands of man and Soviet society...

...The texts of the Draft Program and the Party By-Laws, drawn up by the Presidium and publicized for discussion on August 5, also indicate that entrenched forces in the Soviet hierarchy are resisting Khrushchev's efforts to "liberalize" Soviet society...