Musical Chairs in the Kremlin
ADAMS, ARTHUR E.
Musical Chairs in the Kremlin By Arthur E. Adams In the aftermath of personnel reshuffling by the Supreme Soviet and other high Communist party bodies, the new chart of Soviet celestial...
...While Stalinist ideas and practices are to be rooted out and the Anti-Party Group kept isolated from power, there will be no show trials or blood purges...
...Undoubtedly, Khrushchev has been influenced in favor of the soft line by such moderates as Anastas Mikoyan, Frol Kozlov, Mikhail Suslov and Alexei Kosygin...
...Musical Chairs in the Kremlin By Arthur E. Adams In the aftermath of personnel reshuffling by the Supreme Soviet and other high Communist party bodies, the new chart of Soviet celestial circles shows three significant changes: a fallen star, Ivan Spiridonov, and two of increased magnitude, Andrei P. Kirilenko and Nikolai G. Ignatov...
...And Marshal Radion Malinovsky, Minister of Defense, who in October declared that the Army hated the Anti-Party Group with a "special fervor," now must be casting about for ways to qualify that blunt statement...
...No one before Ignatov, however, has possessed the incredibly powerful bureaucratic hierarchy that has just been organized for the task...
...After 1952, he served continuously in one or another Party position in the city and regional organizations, succeeding Frol Kozlov as First Secretary of the Regional Committee in December 1957...
...He not only forgave Voroshilov but personally "participated" in the Leningrad Party meeting which stripped Spiridonov of his position as First Secretary of the Leningrad Party Committee...
...Because this new responsibility makes extensive demands on Voronov's time, it is probable that Kirilenko, a highly competent industrial manager, has been brought in to share the load of general management of the Russian Federation and assume special responsibility for industry...
...No one before Ignatov—neither Lenin nor Stalin nor Khrushchev— has been able to master the agricultural problem...
...The first hint of his downgrading was his failure to appear at the Bolshoi Theater on April 22 for the celebration of Lenin's 92nd birthday...
...The following day, April 25, he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee Secretariat—to which he had been appointed only seven months earlier —and on May 3 he was ousted from his post as First Secretary of the immensely influential Leningrad Regional Committee...
...in April he was elected to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet...
...Spiridonov's fall from power is most important politically...
...From 1925-39 he was a factory worker there, and from 1944-52 he was Secretary of the Moscow District Party Committee in Leningrad...
...The soft line is under attack, but Khrushchev has risen to its defense...
...If organization can help—and Khrushchev is certain that it can—Ignatov may be headed for glory...
...On April 21, for example, Izvestia presented a short story (purporting, falsely, to be true) that enlarged upon Lenin's role in helping a former friend and colleague—the Menshevik Julius Martov—escape from Bolshevik Russia in 1920...
...Shortly after the Congress, too, the Premier indicated that the fate of the other members of the AntiParty Group was of concern only to their respective primary Party committees...
...Although he began by setting the pack baying against the Anti-Party Group and its supposed adulation of Stalin's personality cult, he pulled back when his multiple purposes were accomplished...
...Ignatov, who launched his Party career with eight years in the Cheka, was a member of the Central Committee Presidium from July 1957 through last November...
...It is altogether possible that he himself suffered unjustified attacks at these stages of his career that he now cannot forgive or forget...
...With this carefully selected parable, Khrushchev seemed to be saying: "Look here, Lenin himself forgave his enemies...
...The soft line has been duly projected in the ideological speeches of Leonid Ilychev, Central Committee Secretary for Propaganda and Agitation, as well as in a series of learned conferences on the social sciences...
...Late last March, G. I. Voronov, already a member of the Presidium and First Vice-Chairman of the Russian Bureau, became Chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the RSFSR...
...Can I err in following Lenin...
...While this strengthens the relative weight of the Ukrainian group vis-à-vis the "Leningraders," Kirilenko's new posts were probably given to him for other reasons...
...Khrushchev has made it clear that de-Stalinization will continue, but it must be controlled...
...He endured as well the tense months of 1952, during which Stalin prepared a second Yezhovshchina...
...The detailed evidence of Anti-Party Group's "crimes" presented to the Congress seemed to presage severe punishment for the "criminals...
...Yet in his concluding speech, Khrushchev asked that Kliment Y. Voroshilov, one of the Group's leading members, be forgiven...
...Spiridonov supported Khrushchev in 1957 against the Anti-Party Group, distinguished himself at both the 21st and 22nd Soviet Communist party Congresses with outspoken attacks on the Group, and was the man who proposed Stalin's removal from the Lenin Mausoleum...
...In each case he served Nikita Khrushchev's interests...
...Even assuming that Khrushchev intended at the start of the 22nd Congress to punish the Anti-Party Group, events during the Congress must have demonstrated to him and to other senior Party members (all of whom worked with Stalin) that they themselves might prove the ultimate victims of the processes of vengeance...
...All other members of the Party's Presidium and Secretariat attended...
...Spiridonov is a Leningrad man...
...In either event, the "hards" have been given fair warning...
...So far as is known, no member of the Group, including Vyacheslav Molotov, has to date been seriously penalized...
...A seasoned Party apparatchik, he has wide experience both in territorial and Central Party and State organizations...
...As Chairman of the Agricultural Committee, he is now the official directly responsible for curing the agricultural lag, the Soviet Union's most painful economic sore...
...Thus, Spiridonov lived through the infamous—though still obscure —Leningrad Affair of 1949, when local Party chiefs were executed and secondary Party figures simply disappeared...
...Party members who long to settle old scores or clear upward paths for themselves by labeling their superiors Stalinists are to be reined in...
...Arthur E. Adams, Professor of Russian history at Michigan State, is the author of Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, soon to be published by Yale...
...It appears, however, that he is now being punished because he insists upon adhering to his own notoriously "hard" line against former Stalinists at a time when the Premier has shifted to a "soft" fine on deStalinization...
...Flogging Molotov as a substitute for Mao, he may never have intended any further action against Molotov...
...Two days later, Izvestia announced that the Supreme Soviet had named Spiridonov Chairman of the Council of the Union—an honorary position without political power...
...at those men, in other words, who oppose his views on the development ratio of heavy and light industry, and at others who cling to Stalinist views on agriculture...
...In this case he showed mercy to a hostile old Social Democrat who in his time had greatly served the cause...
...Dmitri Polyansky, Alexandr Shelepin and Nikolai Podgomy, three members of the Central Committee who rivaled Spiridonov with the violence of their charges against the Anti-Party Group at the recent Congress, from now on may be expected to tread softly...
...To the extent that Khrushchev was concerned primarily with the Albanian-Chinese problems, he did not actually reverse himself on the de-Stalinization question...
...Whatever his reasons, it is clear that Khrushchev is now pushing the soft line...
...From the economic point of view, the most important step taken at the recent session of the Supreme Soviet was the creation of the new Union Committee on Agriculture, headed by Nikolai G. Ignatov...
...The latter appointment appears to be directly related to Khrushchev's agricultural reorganization...
...Similarly, he did not reverse himself if his charges against the Anti-Party Group—already isolated from all power—were actually aimed at the amorphous Stalinism of conservative Party-State bureaucratic elements...
...A second change in Party leadership saw one of Khrushchev's Ukrainian friends, Andrei P. Kirilenko, elevated to full membership in the Central Committee Presidium and subsequently installed as a First Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee's Bureau on the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR...
...Whether Spiridonov was the leader of those who believe Khrushchev does err, or simply a whippingboy whose punishment will silence others, is open to conjecture...
...Khrushchev changed his own position on de-Stalinization during the 22nd Congress...
...Conceivably, he has been pressured by a group of Presidium members who fear the consequences if he were free to employ the hard line against them...
Vol. 45 • May 1962 • No. 11
