Khrushchev's 'Conservative' Opposition

...Even from the Stalinist point of view, the Chinese are Left deviationist adventurers...

...Not that the latter object in the abstract to the general policies of the First Secretary (let alone shed any tears for the fallen Molotovites), but they want to prevent his attaining absolute power and to inhibit the unpredictable adventurism of his tactics...

...The Stalin-Molotov policy called for postponing the "inevitable" war as long as possible, which means indefinitely...

...In any case, Khrushchev has once again failed to force through his maximum demands...

...The dynamics of the Congress must therefore be sought in the struggle for power...

...When Stalin was alive the Chinese resented him bitterly: There is, one should remember, a record of friction between Stalin and Mao as there never was between Stalin and Khrushchev...

...At the same time, a number of neo-Khrushchevites who were very strongly opposed to the AntiParty Group have gone...

...Yet Gernadi Voronov, frequently referred to in this fashion, was a provincial Party Secretary under Stalin and a member of the Central Committee...

...The Khrushchevites have claimed, for example, that the Central Committee, by democratic methods, intervened spontaneously to oust the Anti-Party Group...

...But if that body were being chosen with a view to establishing Khrushchev's undisputed power, a noticeably different selection would have been made...

...Nikolai Shvernik, whose position is uncertain, made a powerful set of individual accusations, but he may simply have been delivering a brief as Chairman of the Party Central Committee...

...The conditions of the struggle are such that those opposed to Khrushchev must not make any defense of the AntiParty Group, while Khrushchev himself must avoid charges of Right "capitulationist" deviation (and this is perhaps where the 50 megaton bomb came in...

...In the light of this, the raising of an unprecedented number of military figures to the Central Committee almost certainly insures a block of votes in favor of further action against the Group...

...Intelligent opinion in the West, saturated in Marx, Tawney and others, has forgotten Machiavelli...

...Though in a considerably modified and safer form, Khrushchev again appears to be playing the card he used so effectively in 1957 and then felt able to do without...

...There seems no doubt that, as in the past, this represents a real division in the current leadership...

...This may seem an odd analysis...

...Then he went on to raise the Anti-Party Group issue as exemplifying the need for the "monqlithic" approach...

...True, doctrinal differences could involve major policy conflicts...

...The troubles it will run into are obvious—particularly, of course, in agriculture...

...The present attack on Kliment Y. Voroshilov may also be part of this appeal to the military...

...Interestingly, this Congress was notable for a great adulation of Khrushchev by some, though not most, of the delegates...

...If so, it is a measure of the intensity of the new struggle...

...The changes in the Draft Program were little more than window dressing to give the effect of increased Party democracy...

...Anastas Mikoyan, on the other hand, spoke in purely political terms, and Mihail Suslov, Aleksei Kosygin and Kozlov only referred generally to the repressive past of the accused...

...In fact, although there is a bitter struggle for power within today's ruling circle, it remains to the interest of all in the circle to preserve the divine right of apparatus rule...

...Insofar as they have been about tangible things, however, they have been within very narrow limits...

...It is now perfectly clear, however, that the Group's majority was broken in the Presidium before the 1957 Central Committee plenum ever started, and that it was broken by the combined pressure of the Army, the Party apparatus and the secret police...

...Kozlov emerges from the Congress as even more important than Kozygin...

...indeed, the Premier's approach to the Berlin problem strongly resembles that of 1948-9...

...The formal promotion of Kozlov is the confirmation in power of a man whose career lay entirely outside any of Khrushchev's fiefs or appenages...

...Such innuendos have always marked the early stages of Soviet power struggles, and the differences in emphasis between the speeches of Kozlov and Kosygin on the one hand, and those of Khrushchev's khvost on the other are just what would be expected if the battle lines were fairly strongly drawn between them...

...Even what appear to be matters of deepest principle, for example the dispute between Vyacheslav Molotov and Nikita Khrushchev over the inevitability of war, remain abstractly doctrinal to a large degree...

...After all, there have been some notable controversies on economic and policy themes in Moscow over the last few years...

...Since the 1956 promotions are largely to be attributed to Khrushchev's patronage, the present demotions certainly cannot be regarded as signs of his supremacy...

...But it was only supported by Khrushchev and a few of those close to him, and it gradually petered out...

...Nevertheless, in the short run (and to a lesser extent in certain fields, in the long run), the new plan is also a genuine expression of fairly concrete economic intentions...

...This was an obvious criticism of the Khrushchev cult...

...We must and will do everything in our power to insure that our Party and our society have no room for a personality cult in the future either...

...Among those who remain in office are such veterans of the Stalin and even the Malenkov apparatus as Aleksandr Mikhailov, Nikolai Patolichev and Nikolai Pegov—all pre-1953 secretaries of the Central Committee who have since had to serve in lower and, in the case of two of them, purely decorative positions...

...At the Congress the initiative was, once again, attack on the Anti-Party Group, and on Stalin as its vulnerable point...

...To have run 20 steps successfully along a tight rope does not mean that the next one will not have you hurtling down—and safety nets are not standard equipment in Soviet politics...

...This requires following the workings of the maze of cogs driven by that great mainspring...

...The concrete criminal charges were lodged mainly by Khrushchev and his most intimate associates: Dmitri Polyansky, Nikolai Podgorny, Ivan Spiridonov and Aleksandr Shelepin...

...Khrushchev's recent political behavior has been embodied in a series of crash programs, often illconsidered and inadequately prepared: the Virgin Lands in agriculture, the decentralization of industry, the initial attack on Stalin, the (temporary) reconciliation with Yugoslavia...

...The latest attacks, like the previous ones, divide fairly clearly into detailed charges of criminal behavior against the opposition, and mere political condemnation...

...The economic plan contains the usual pie-in-the-sky about keeping up with the United States on the one hand, and attaining full Communism on the other...

...And one may read in a curious attack on Malenkov for the 1949 and 1952 Leningrad purges a hint from the Khrushchevite side that Kozlov—then rising to Second Secretary of the province—was also involved...

...Kosygin, a member of Stalin's Politburo from 1948-52 who made a partial comeback in 1957 and returned to the highest positions last year, is now clearly one of the most powerful men in the Presidium...

...Thus a powerful section of the leadership clearly blocked an attempt to bring it to trial, and it did the same in 1959 when further accusations were made at the 21st Congress...

...As always in these denunciation sessions, further light (or in some cases a different type of darkness) has been cast on certain problems of Soviet history...

...Viktor Grishin was another full member of the 1952 Central Committee, and had long served in Khrushchev's Moscow apparatus...

...If the tactical nuances differ, it is because Molotov's style of diplomacy is too lacking in dynamism for the present regime...

...Kozlov's rebuff to inner-Party democracy shows that some Party members raised the possibility of going back to pre-1921 conditions and reintroducing a measure of Party democracy...

...The Marshals' fate was the reproach most frequently and most forcefully hurled at the Group throughout the Congress...

...Some commentators have spoken of the rise of "new men" in the Soviet hierarchy, as if they represented a post-Stalinist generation of anti-Stalinists...

...He said: "In the course of the discussion of the Draft Statutes the following questions were raised: Does the monolithic unity of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and the whole Soviet society not exlude the possibility of any dissenting activity within the ranks of the Party...

...The Premier is evidently seeking a political initiative which will leave a situation fluid enough for him to take advantage of it...

...Stalin used to promise both regularly: His last assurance was that full Communism would be attained in three FiveYear Plans...

...But one must distinguish, in this as in other matters, between Molotov and Mao Tse-tung...

...For it enabled special emphasis to be put on the Marshals who were executed at the time that he was Commissar for Defense...

...Though the current power struggle tends to obscure the fact, where day-to-day policy is concerned Molotov is far closer to the present Soviet leadership than he is to Peking...

...Are any formally stated guarantees against factionalism and clique formation necessary in present conditions...

...In his speech to the Congress, Mikoyan implicitly refuted the Khrushchevite story when he said, "The Presidium of the Central Committee measured up to Leninist standards, and crushed the Anti-Party Oppositionist Group...

...If it is true that Chou En-lai openly shook hands with Kozlov and Suslov, ignoring Khrushchev, and that Voroshilov, when he gatecrashed the November 7 party, also shook hands with Kozlov but not with Khrushchev, this may be a further indication of the present battle-lines...

...So we should expect things to go on much as in the last year or two in Soviet politics, both internal and foreign...

...and the main rows have been largely verbal...

...He can only try again, and his opponents can only continue their blocking maneuvers...

...In Soviet life, politics still comes first...

...In June 1957, when members of the Group were first expelled, a campaign was launched accusing them of various criminal acts...

...Those who have fallen from it include almost as many new men who were appointed in 1956 as veterans who had served since 1952 or before...

...Chinese support of Molotov and adulation of Stalin are merely links to what they conceive to be the least bad of a bad lot...

...These have run into great difficulties, but before that the First Secretary has usually been able to destroy those opposing him on a particular issue...

...And in any case Molotov and Khrushchev are both committed to a forward policy...

...Bull-headed methods do have their dangers...

...It is a Soviet poet and philosopher, Yesenin-Volpin, who now notes that "a purely political tendency toward power or authority is prevalent in the Soviet Union...

...The Russians can attach either a call for basic change of emphasis or a rousing appeal for continued heavy industry concentration to whatever economic policy they pursue...

...This may not be firm proof of the existence and nature of a power struggle, but on the basis of past experience it is safe to deduce a political contest between the Khrushchevites and an opposition for whom the best label may be "conservative...

...Robert Conquest, author of Common Sense About Russia and Power and Policy in the USSR, contributes to Encounter and other periodicals...

...The argument is much more about the label than the economy...

...When the Chinese speak of the inevitability of war, they clearly mean desirability...

...Neither the new Party Program nor the new economic plan were in any real sense important...

...The new Central Committee itself shows a fairly large turnover, though nothing out of the ordinary...

...Moreover, Kozlov and Kosygin drew conclusions about the Group that are likely to hamper rather than help a Khrushchevite drive for power...

...He made the point that the Anti-Party Group was not a present danger of any sort, and was only being attacked at the Congress "to show the Party and the people once again what the personality cult leads to...

...At least one of the motives for attacking the Group now appears to be to convince those who desire more Party democracy that nothing of the sort is feasible as long as such enemies are capable of raising their heads...

...Boris Ponomarev was a candidate member as was Leonid Ilychev, who lost that position after Stalin's death.' The results of the election of the new Presidium do not show a clear-cut victory for anyone...

...Marshal Radion Malinovsky's attack on the Anti-Party men, while not very detailed, was especially violent: He bluntly stated that the Army hated them with "particular fervor...

...As First Deputy Premier Frol R. Kozlov made clear, actual practices, which will be continued in the future, completely inhibit such liberalization...

...During the heavy versus light industry controversy of 1954-5, when Georgi Malenkov was branded as a Right deviationist for urging more attention to consumer goods, the actual budgetary stress on heavy industry went down by only a marginal percentage...

...Yes, Comrades, such guarantees are necessary...

...But after this rebuke, Khrushchev had to incorporate a passage deploring his own cult in his final speech...

...Khrushchev's 'Conservative' Opposition By Robert Conquest A review of the proceedings at the recently concluded 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist party reveals that the sensational subjects were also the serious ones...

...So far as can be determined, with the removal of Yekaterina Furtseva, Nuitdin Mukhitdinov, Averky Aristov and Nikolai Ignatov, those full Presidium members who owe their entire careers to Khrushchev can now only give him four votes against seven...

...Shelépin was a member too, and Stalin appointed him to the leadership of the Komsomol, a post notoriously filled with the dictator's most devoted and most bureaucratic followers...