What Next in the Kremlin?
CONQUEST, ROBERT
What Next in the Kremlin? By Robert Conquest London As I write, it is widely bruited that something is up in the Kremlin and first reports are arriving of a plenary session of the Central...
...But they are demonstrating the views of their representatives in the Central Committee, and of the factions to which these men are attached...
...In seven republics, including Khrushchev's personal fiefs of the Ukraine and Moldavia, the Secretaries' speeches, the Aktivs' resolutions and the letters from workers' meetings printed in the local press all called for expulsion of the Group...
...The January attack clearly lies in the former category...
...But at the Congress all factions attacked Molotov's political theories...
...Even if the Premier's adversaries, have no notion of rehabilitating Molotov, they must, remembering Stalin's rampage, still oppose the start of another purge...
...Years passed without anything further being done, and in the current History of the CPSU, published in 1959, the blame is still laid, by implication, on the "Zinoviev Anti-Party Group...
...Analysis of the reports of the 22nd Congress to the Party organizations in the republics gives a clear picture of complete disagreement...
...For example, on January 7, Pravda published a short piece on the 60th anniversary of the birthday of Ivan Tevosyan, who died three years ago...
...Yet Tevosyan was never a Presidium member, and he did not rise higher than the post of a junior Vice Premier with special responsibilities in heavy industry...
...What is certain is that this was the issue on which the present opposition chose to make a stand...
...Molotov, with amazing toughness, has refused to accept political extinction...
...Every indication at the Congress was that these cases would be used—if the Khrushchevites had their way—against Molotov, former Presidium Chairman Kliment Voroshilov and Kaganovich, with Malenkov charged mainly with the Leningrad purge of 1949...
...Georgi Malenkov (and presumably such associates as Maksim Saburov and Mikhail Pervukhin) had taken a softer line on war than that now dominant...
...Nevertheless, Khrushchev's struggle for supreme power, and his colleagues' campaign to contain him, have produced an unstable situation in the Communist hierarchy...
...It is a great propaganda advantage to Khrushchev, who is able to represent all his adversaries as Stalinists even though it seems certain that none in the current leadership, and few in the fallen AntiParty Group, are inclined (or inclined more than the Premier himself) to revert to the old methods...
...Already in his Secret Speech of February 1956 Khrushchev hinted that Stalin (and therefore not the oppositionists who were shot for it) was responsible...
...The Presidium majority, on the other hand, must seek to combat any extension of his power as a menace to their own positions...
...He has continued to submit memoranda to the Central Committee (and even an article to its theoretical journal, Kommunist...
...That a struggle is now taking place over the question of expelling Molotov and the rest of the AntiParty Group from the Party is in any case no longer in doubt...
...The circumstances of Tevosyan's fall are obscure, though he was one of the industrial bureaucrats who rose with Malenkov's victory in 1949...
...Something of this sort was presumably in Malenkov's mind during the struggle in 1957...
...But it could succeed under conditions which will take the issue out of Khrushchev's hands and perhaps even turn it against him...
...The next move would certainly seem to be an expose of the Kirov case and a trial of those concerned...
...By Robert Conquest London As I write, it is widely bruited that something is up in the Kremlin and first reports are arriving of a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party to be held March 5. Many commentators feel the Party leadership is now involved in one of the recurrent crises in the continued struggle for power...
...Thus, by Soviet standards, the issue is out in the open To be sure, the local organizations do not have any power...
...In Moscow some local papers claimed that the provincial organizations fully supported the call for expulsion, but other reports omitted this call...
...The crucial event of the moment it appears, will be a final decision to break with China, which seems close at hand for a variety of reasons...
...It indicates both the power of Khrushchev's opponents and the intensity of the struggle waged in Moscow...
...What the rest of us, and the Soviet people too, may hope for, is that the natural tides of democratization which are rising in Soviet society will penetrate the cracks in the apparatchiks' dike and, in the very long run, wash it away...
...In the first place, many of his political views— particularly those on foreign affairs —had very little support among the Anti-Party Group's original members...
...The key to the purges is the 1934 murder of Central Committee Secretary Sergei Kirov...
...and this is clearly one of the major motives of present "anti-Stalinism...
...It is worth examining Molotov's position with some care...
...Anyhow, his current anomalous rehabilitation must be seen as a demonstration against somebody, and such a demonstration is not made except in the sharpest phases of a struggle...
...In six republics none of this wide spectrum of documents did so...
...It is unlikely, however, that an imminent major showdown would have permitted Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan's trip to Guinea or even Premier Khrushchev's appearance in Minsk...
...This is an honor reserved for very important figures indeed...
...There is no reason to think a "Chinese" faction exists in the Soviet Central Committee...
...Today the political evolution of Russia depends very much on the skill shown in the use of long knives by half a dozen denizens of the Kremlin...
...Hence, Molotov is extremely vulnerable politically and Kozlov would have no thought of defending him...
...The other element of the purge most powerfully brought up was the shooting of the Marshals in 1937...
...It may be that the Kozlov faction will have to concede a Molotov trial, or at least his expulsion from the Party...
...otherwise, a spectacular failure of one of his policies would lead to his ruin...
...The essential division was between those who went no further and those who went on to accuse him of specific crimes...
...At the 22nd Congress in November Khrushchev again raised the case, adducing one or two further suspicious points and hinting even more strongly than before that Stalin was to blame...
...He again called for an inquiry...
...and he called for "a most careful examination...
...In the 1955 rapprochement with Yugoslavia, Molotov was totally isolated...
...The crisis is accompanied by those curious pieces of Soviet evidence which are extremely refractory to precise interpretation yet signify that something is in the air...
...In the great organizations of Leningrad and Moscow there were similar signs...
...A Khrushchev who had established his right to try opponents for the crimes of the past (while retaining his own immunity for similar actions) would be a dangerous phenomenon to any opposition...
...It is extremely difficult to imagine circumstances in which he could return to power—but even that is not impossible...
...But the struggle continues...
...The Congress ended with a certain back-pedaling, and an appeal by Khrushchev (contradicting his earlier stand, and presumably imposed on him by the Presidium majority) for clemency for Voroshilov...
...The logic of his position is that he must try to fill the Presidium with devoted clients...
...He was removed from that job in December 1956 and radically demoted to Ambassador in Tokyo, where he died...
...It is notable, too, that he was one of the few members of the Central Committee not recalled to vote down Malenkov and Company in June 1957...
...Whatever is decided at the top will be imposed on them, with purges if necessary...
...Here the weak point of the AntiParty Group is the responsibility that it can be made to appear to have for the great purges...
...Khrushchev can scarcely be wholly sanguine about the situation...
...They show, at least, that there is no landslide in the Party to one view or the other...
...In fact, the main insurance against such a development seems to be the Army, whose acquiescience would be most unlikely...
...Although its being made at all is presumably some slight advantage to the Khrushchevite wing, its substance is the line of the faction, led by Central Committee Secretary Frol R. Kozlov...
...In one republic only (Lithuania) was there a certain ambiguity, with speeches calling for the expulsion and the resolution not mentioning it...
...Of course, the China issue may be used to smear Vyacheslav Molotov and other opponents of the First Secretary...
...Robert Conquest, author of Common Sense About Russia and Power and Policy in the USSR, contributes to Encounter and other periodicals...
...The attack on Molotov's foreign policy views in Pravda of January 17 was taken by Western commentators as a sign of his final downfall...
...Dimitri Shepilov, another prominent member of the Group, was considerably more "liberal" than Khrushchev...
...The 22nd Congress did not strengthen the First Secretary...
...On the other hand, if the conservatives could harness Molotov's prestige and strength of will without allowing him freedom of action, his very political isolation might in certain circumstances render him easier to control than Khrushchev...
...Letters demanding expulsion were published in Leningrad, but the Party aktiv's resolutions did not mention it...
...even Lazar Kaganovich heartily accepted Khrushchev's tactical flexibility...
Vol. 45 • February 1962 • No. 3
