Coup in the Kremlin-Two Articles

...Undoubtedly the antiKhrushchev elements on the Presidium, remembering that a similar move boomeranged in 1957, did their mathematics homework carefully before they dared submit their decision to the Central Committee...

...But even if it was not unanimous, it probably was far short of the three-quarters needed to re-elect Khrushchev and countermand the Presidium's decision...

...And accompanying this belligerent stance toward China there are likely to be continued but guarded overtures toward the U.S., a policy which is no less cherished in the present "transitional period" by Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny, Mikoyan, et...

...The question, however, is bound to be raised again with regard to his successors and it will be answered with less and less confidence...

...Liberman's views, previously given widespread circulation, were no longer discussed...

...This reform placed a large share of the supervision over the economy in the hands of Party secretaries located at the bureaucratic center in Moscow...

...for he had no effective power to restore Moscow's supremacy...

...If a blood-stained tyrant could rule supreme for 20 years in the guise of Marxist legitimacy, how trustworthy was the test by which the successors of Marx and Lenin were chosen...

...That is to say, he will go down in history as a truly tragic figure...

...This tide against Libermanism and liberalism was stemmed almost as suddenly as it had begun, in the late spring of 1963, with the sudden disappearance of Frol Kozlov, the "Second Secretary" of the Party...

...That question was raised implicitly in 1956 by the revolts in Poland and Hungary with regard to the legitimacy of their regimes, and explicitly by Khrushchev with regard to Stalin—but it was bound to be raised with regard to Khrushchev as well...

...Yet Lenin could explain the isolated character of the Bolshevist Revolution, incompatible with the Marxist concept of world revolution, as a kind of temporary interlude due to the remaining strength of reactionary forces and of a treasonous proletarian leadership...

...Thus, sometime near the end of 1964, Khrushchev's continued tenure in the Presidium was, presumably, subject to such a vote of confidence...

...As for the Chinese, whose interests are irretrievably at odds with those of the Soviet Union, he was reduced to vituperation...

...al., than it was by Khrushchev...

...But Marxism as a living political philosophy could not survive the revelation of its inner contradictions, and it has been Khrushchev's historic mission to reveal two of them...

...They called for the following: 1. Using the nation's resources and investments for a concerted effort to increase production of consumer goods and, above all, food...

...The Marxist rulers have risen to their position by a process of selection which has tested their understanding of Marxism against the practical tasks at hand...

...CLOSE EXAMINATION of the long paraphrases from Khrushchev's report in Pravda reveals the contours of the ex-Premier's pyramid-shaking proposals...

...Khrushchev was clearly for the first, more "economical" type of pushbutton strategy...

...And it is characteristic of the ineluctable character of that process of disintegration that it is taking place even in Hungary, where less than 10 years ago Soviet supremacy had most drastically been restored...

...Finally, the persistent inability of Communist economics to solve the problem of agricultural production and to produce consumer goods in sufficient quantity and quality does not need to be laid at the door of Communism as a system of economic management, any more than the American economic system needs to be blamed for its persistent failure to solve the problem of agricultural over-production...

...The two great contradictions which have shattered Communism since 1956, and of which Khrushchev has been both the instrument and the victim, differ fundamentally from those discussed thus far...

...in fact, some half-dozen new Secretariat posts were created at that time...

...Whether the Central Committee voted unanimously against Khrushchev remains a mystery...

...Yet Lenin could plausibly defend the integrity of Marxist teaching by branding the leaders of the European proletariat as "social-patriotic" traitors...

...The testimony of the members of the Communist spy ring operating in Canada and the United States during World War II, as reported by the Canadian Royal Commission on the Gouzenko case, conveys a vivid impression of the strength with which that duty was felt...

...THE DETHRONEMENT of Stalin prompted within the Soviet Union and the other Communist countries and parties the same doubts and questions about the legitimacy of Marxist rule we have encountered in the relations between the Soviet Union and other Communist nations and parties...

...It would have consisted of: Leonid I. Brezhnev, Aleksei N. Kosygin, Mikhail A. Suslov, Nikolai V. Podgorny, and Frol R. Kozlov...

...It would be an illusion to expect that the successors of Khrushchev can escape the dilemmas to which he fell victim...

...the latter, by China...

...Besides Marshal Sokolovsky, a strong Khrushchev opponent, it is clear that Marshal Zhukov also opposed (and opposes) the Khrushchev concept of military strategy and was purged in 1957—within a few days of the successful rocketlaunching of Sputnik—precisely because he adhered to the traditional view...

...This was not only because the exposure of Stalin had drastically weakened Marxist legitimacy, but also for two additional reasons stemming from that weakening...

...If only four Presidium members voted against his re-election, he could have been dismissed, as far as that body alone was concerned...

...Thus Khrushchev was reduced to arguing with Communist governments and parties and, more particularly, with the Chinese, but he could no longer command...

...Kozlov, however, was pronounced "ill" and was no longer seen or heard from, although his name has cropped up recently in the Otto Kuusinen obituary, which listed the names of all members of the Party Presidium...

...It is possible, moreover, that the centralist opposition invoked a statute in the Party rules adopted in 1961—the two-stage voting process, clearly prescribed in Rule III (25) —as its principal means for effecting the ouster of its reigning First Secretary...

...Much of the military, however, obviously favored the more traditional strategy...

...They may mitigate or aggravate them by their policies, but they cannot escape them...

...Was it perhaps an ominous sign for the Premier that Zhukov had been in Moscow recently at a performance of the opera at the Bolshoi...

...This would have increased authority for individual plant managers and reduced authority for both the central bureaucrats and their branch offices in the economic regions of the USSR...

...The Communists of the '30s identified fascism with the last stage of a decaying capitalism which would of necessity be followed by Communism...

...It was he who had ordered the Yugoslav May Day slogan run in the Soviet press in mid-April 1963 with the word "Socialist" omitted from the official name of Tito's Communist state...

...Reality has inflicted upon Marxism in this century four major contradictions...

...They do not only put into question the correctness of one or the other of the Marxist dogmas, they deny the truth of Marxism itself as a scientific system of political thought...

...It is now evident that Khrushchev's ouster was engineered by a group of conservative "centralists" within this hierarchy of Party apparatchiks and high government functionaries...

...As to where the 45 or so antiKhrushchev votes may have come from in the Central Committee, several possible combined interests could have produced them—e.g., a bloc of military and central-government bureaucrats joined by only a few central Party opponents could have easily prevented the threequarters' vote...

...A second disavowal of Marxism by reality occurred at the end and in the immediate aftermath of World War I, when the Russian October Revolution was not followed by proletarian revolution in the most advanced capitalistic countries...

...The monolithic character of the Communist camp under Stalin rested upon the moral foundation of the Marxist infallibility of the Soviet Union as incarnated by Stalin...

...The dream for the distant future —for Brezhnev and Kosygin and the rest—is doubtlessly still a world ruled by Communism...

...The successors may patch up the conflict with China and prevent it from degenerating into an open break...

...In the second instance, Khrushchev really had no choice...

...The purpose of these overtures, as before, is to provide assurance to the USSR that its Western borders are secure and that tacit cooperation (if not more) by the U.S...

...In the case of the three-quarters' vote in the Central Committee, some 45 members would have been needed to block Khrushchev there...

...2. A complete commitment to Libermanism—that is, adoption of the partially capitalist methods of production and measuring profit as suggested by the Soviet economist Yevsey G. Liberman...

...for here he had effective power...

...The shock to the Communist faith which the staying power of fascism and, more particularly, the Communist alliance with it in the form of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 constituted, was mitigated and in good measure obliterated by the transformation of World War II in June 1941 from an imperialist struggle into the "Great Patriotic War...

...It is in the nature of Communist totalitarianism that he could not help being guilty of it...

...Coup in the Kremlin - Two Articles The Myth of Soviet Politics By Hans J. Morgenthau Even if one were to assume that he was retired from supreme power for reasons of ill health— an assumption obviously rendered untenable by the humiliating circumstances of his retirement— Nikita Khrushchev would go down in history both as the liberalizer of Communist totalitarianism and as the victim of that liberalization...

...Khrushchev was guilty of that crime...

...Those who rule in the name of Marxism do so by virtue of their monopolistic possession of the Marxist truth...

...When the Chinese challenged the supremacy of Moscow, he could rant against them as heretics, and when the Rumanians went their own independent way, he could do nothing at all...

...Within the Soviet Union, however, he had a choice...

...The former manifestation is typically represented by Rumania and the Italian Communist party...

...Yet Khrushchev's personal tragedy is but a reflection of the contradictions which in the course of the 20th century have shattered one after another of the foundation stones of Communist philosophy...

...What Khrushchev did when he denounced Stalin in 1956 was not only to destroy the legitimacy of Stalin's rule but to cast doubt upon Marxist legitimacy as such...

...He could not escape the logic of the rule by which Lenin and Stalin had governed...

...Nevertheless, all the while Khrushchev had to maintain the claim that Moscow was the sole repository of Marxist truth...

...Polycentrism manifests itself in two different ways: as independence from the Soviet Union pure and simple, and as rivalry with the Soviet Union for leadership of the world Communist movement...

...a strategy based on the traditional infantry and artillery—i.e., the old-fashioned "metal-eaters...

...To begin with, we can expect a tightening up of the central bureaucracy (First Deputy Premier Dmitri Ustinov will play a large role in this), which will increase its control over the whole economy and table the Liberman proposals...

...He had to vacillate between giving in to popular pressures with small concessions, and taking them back in part or in whole when the pressure subsided or became so strong as to endanger his regime...

...Disagreements between Khrushchev and the other members of the power pyramid might, then, have forced a vote and prevented him from obtaining the requisite support in both Party groups...

...As a result, Khrushchev was forced by the very logic of his position to take the stand of a modified and moderate, yet uncertain Stalinism...

...There are some 35 central-government bureaucrats and 13 military brass-hats, and some 31 central Party officials on the Central Committee...

...The restoration of Soviet rule in Hungary in 1956 in the face of the threat of complete disintegration could not be repeated elsewhere in the face of much more gradual and insidious threats...

...A. L. Weeks is a former State Department analyst of Soviet affairs...

...But the new regime seems to realize, in actually using the term "transitional period" as Soviet officials have done recently (e.g., Podgorny and Mikoyan), that a protracted period of holding the line and of making concessions to the West is in store for the USSR...

...How could Khrushchev meet that Chinese challenge...

...If Marxist selection could produce a Stalin and Khrushchev in succession, why should we trust it to produce a good ruler for a change, and how shall we know whether or not the ruler is good...

...Once it became apparent that the required three-quarter supporting vote would not materialize in the Central Committee, the Presidium would have felt secure in going on to vote unanimously to bounce Khrushchev...

...Marxists could take the former in their stride even though their cumulative effect could not fail to put into question the credibility of Marxism per se...

...The dilemma with which Khrushchev had to cope here is different from that posed by the challenge of China and the assertion of independence on the part of the other Communist governments and parties...

...There is, then, deep historic significance and also poetic justice in Mikhail Suslov's indictment of Khrushchev (according to the New York Times of October 17) before the Central Committee for the same crime Khrushchev had accused Stalin of: the "cult of personality...

...Here was one of Khrushchev's dilemmas...

...The former prove Marxism to be untrue in one or the other respect...

...The accidents of economic backwardness, mismanagement, sabotage, and war have taken the blame for economic failure in the Soviet Union...

...When Khrushchev stripped Stalin of his Marxist infallibility, he also deprived the Soviet Union of its moral claim to lead the Communist camp...

...This obviously reflected Khrushchev's desire for the Soviet Union to learn all it could from the West (a policy strongly proclaimed, incidentally, by his daughter Rada's journal, Science and Life), so that it could eventually become "the model" state for Socialist planning in developing as well as industrialized countries...

...In addition, Brezhnev went out of his way to advertise his own newly-won influence and authority within the upper councils of the CPSU by frequently using the pronoun "I" and the phrase "I can assure you, dear comrades, that " Finally, Brezhnev's speech was unusually eloquent, by Soviet standards, and displayed that same bravado and seductive demagogy once observed in the speeches of Georgi Malenkov...

...but for both the short-run upcoming Five-Year-Plan period and the long-run 15-year period to 1980, the budget will be readjusted to give the military a bigger portion than it has been receiving...

...The first occurred in August 1914, when the proletarians of the world started to kill each other on behalf of their respective nations, thereby disproving the Marxist dogma of the international solidarity of the proletariat...

...Almost simultaneously, too, there was a general silencing of the "pacifist" and "bourgeois apologist" novelists, playwrights, and movie scenarists...

...He had to relax the totalitarian rule he had inherited from Stalin...

...the latter prove Marxism to be absurd altogether...

...He could make concessions to the doubters and questioners or he could refuse to make them or, once made, he could take them back completely or in part...

...S. Khrushchev...

...He could reassert Lenin's and Stalin's claim that Moscow was in monopolistic possession of the Marxist truth...

...We may also expect a continued hostility, perhaps even stepped-up animosity, toward Peking—possibly including a propaganda device not as yet resorted to by the CPSU Agitprop and Press Department: anti-Chinese cartoons depicting a slant-eyed Buddha-like Mao Tsetung (a type of vituperation which was a little dangerous as long as the vulnerable "Buffoon" Khrushchev, as Peking called him, remained in power in Moscow...

...3. A return to the timid measures begun in 1957 under the slogan of "de-centralization...

...It made him a comic figure in the tragic sense...

...Only much later can the possibility arise of reorganizing and regrouping their forces toward achieving the Communist world revolution...

...But that claim had lost its plausibility...

...According to reports from Moscow at that time, Khrushchev ordered the offending slogan rewritten and had a "correction" published in the Soviet press...

...What do all these developments add tip to where Brezhnev and Kosygin are concerned...

...Struggle at the Top By A. L. Weeks The fall of Nikita Khrushchev came almost immediately after the First Secretary had delivered a major report to an enlarged joint session of the Communist Party Presidium and the USSR Council of Ministers...

...It now looks as if the November 1962 Central Committee plenum and administrative reform was forced upon Khrushchev, perhaps in the wake of the Cuban fiasco...

...Otherwise, he had to swallow the intransigence of the Rumanians and accept in silence the challenge of Togliatti's political testament...

...But the outer limits to the concessions Khrushchev could afford to make were prescribed by the need of his own rule to survive...

...Clearly, though, it is the controversy over re-centralization that has been uppermost in the minds of the new ruling group...

...In the process of trying to reconcile claim and reality, Khrushchev had to weaken the substance of the claim itself...

...they may make more or fewer concessions at home...

...Although the full text of Khrushchev's report has not been published, its major proposals were outlined at some length in Pravdm on October 2. These proposals must have stimulated a groundswell of opposition precisely in those circles most likely to have lost their influence, if not their positions, had Khrushchev's program become the fixed plan of the future...

...One last possibility: Khrushchev may yet be implicated in the deStalinization campaign in a way he perhaps never expected he would be...

...First hints that Khrushchev was meeting resistance appeared in Brezhnev's East Berlin address on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the East German Communist regime...

...The political arithmetic of the Situation suggests that if a vote of this kind took place (and Khrushchev himself once told foreign journalists that voting surely does take place in the Presidium), a bloc of at least four or five anti-Khrushchev members would probably have emerged...

...Another hint of approaching trouble for Khrushchev could be found in various Soviet military organs...

...Thus the destroyer of Stalinism became its victim...

...Precluded from invoking the grace of God or the will of the people to legitimize his rule, he could only fall back upon the claim to monopolistic possession of the Marxist truth, which he himself had discredited by his attack upon Stalin...

...Since the Soviet Union was the "Fatherland of Socialism," the most advanced Communist nation guided by the genius of Stalin, the duty of Communists everywhere to put the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of their respective nations was clear...

...But they are caught in the same contradictions which were the undoing of Khrushchev...

...Here is indeed the element of tragedy in classic terms as well as in terms of Hegelian-Marxian irony: The hero trying to master fate only hastens its consummation, the political leader seeking to arrest the historic process on behalf of the interests of a particular class or nation only pushes the historic process forward toward the destruction of those interests...

...Counting from 1953, when Khrushchev became First Secretary, his three consecutive terms (a total of 12 years) would be up by 1965...

...This, too, was a result of the erosion of Marxist legitimacy...

...According to this statute, no member of the Party's supreme policy organ, the Presidium, may continue in the body for more than three consecutive terms of four years each without a three-quarters' vote of confidence from both the Presidium and the Party Central Committee...

...It was only after the destruction of this claim that the divergent interests of different Communist nations and parties could assert themselves...

...Both of these contradictions stem from Khrushchev's revelation of Stalin's crimes in 1956: the polycentric replacement of Moscow's leadership of the world Communist movement and the internal challenge to Communist totalitarianism...

...Third, there will probably continue to be a propaganda emphasis, at least, upon consumer goods production, improved housing and food...

...The newspaper, Red Star, among others, had been conducting an unprecedented discussion on the pros and cons of a military strategy resting on thermonuclear weapons vs...

...They therefore first helped fascism destroy liberal democracy and then opposed it as a necessary evil...

...and they may be more or less intransigent in their dealings with other nations...

...It is significant that the Soviet press has reported the role of the Central Committee in deciding Khrushchev's fate without saying whether its vote was unanimous...

...It was then left to Stalin to extend that interlude ad infinitum by proclaiming "Socialism in One Country...

...Brezhnev and Kosygin might desire to appear in the best possible light, as they begin their duumvirate, by implicating Khrushchev (whose hands are dirty) in Stalin's Great Purge...

...4. A continued liberalization in the arts, including increased encounters with foreign scientists, intellectuals, etc...

...The claim of Soviet infallibility and, hence, supremacy could no longer be enforced against recalcitrant Communist governments and parties...

...Thus political life in the Soviet Union is likely to continue "nasty, brutish, and short...

...This inevitable contrast between claim and reality constituted one of the ironies of Khrushchev's position...

...The disintegration of the Communist camp will continue and so will the oscillation between harsh and moderate rule at home and abroad...

...He could not answer the question he was asked without putting in jeopardy the very foundation of his power, and he allowed it to be raised but intermittently and surreptitiously...

...Only if his arguments carried conviction and, more particularly, if his conclusions coincided with the interests of other Communist governments and parties could the Soviet position prevail...

...This meeting included leading officials of the Party, the central government apparatus, Gosplan, and the national economic councils...

...Published in the Soviet Union on October 7, the speech referred to the Premier exactly once and in a most unprecedented fashion—without the usual "comrade" or the familiar "Nikita Sergeyevich," referring to him only as "N...

...To appreciate fully the enormous and lasting destructive impact of Khrushchev's revelation of Stalin's crimes, one must remember that Marxism claims to be a body of scientific truths, the only science of society worthy of the name...

...Second, we will undoubtedly witness an official posture which is less tolerant (but not completely intolerant, a la Stalin) of experimentation in the arts—perhaps even a return to the vituperation we saw in the period from November 1962 to summer 1963...

...It is only if and when the objective conditions of Soviet politics have radically changed or a statesman of genius has transcended and thereby transformed them that the rulers of the Soviet Union will be able to rule without being stifled and in the end ruined by the inner contradictions of Communism...

...Hans J. Morgenthau is Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Modern History, University of Chicago...

...He was less lucky in October 1964...

...Similarly, Stalin was praised in the Soviet Union until 1956— and still is praised to a certain extent in China—as the incomparable genius who followed in the footsteps of Lenin and, hence, had the right to rule supreme...

...In the realm of practical politics, two sets of consequences have ensued from the erosion of Marxist legitimacy, set in motion by Khrushchev: the polycentric disintegration of the Soviet camp, and the relaxation of totalitarian rule within the Soviet Union and elsewhere...

...Lenin is venerated as the authentic disciple of Marx who developed and applied the master's teaching, thereby becoming a master himself and earning the right to supreme rule...

...And it was raised in 1957 by a majority of the Presidium of the Central Committee, although Khrushchev managed through the plenum of the Central Committee to give a successful answer...

...Thus the legitimacy of Communist rule derives from the monopolistic relationship between the ruler and the Marxist truth...

...Yugoslavia, the revisionist ex-satellite, was returned to its proper status as a Socialist camp dweller...

...This was interrupted by the U-2 affair in 1960, and was all but killed by the administrative reforms enacted in November 1962—reforms which resulted in the anti-Khrushchev trend of recentralization...

...Marxism as a living political philosophy, that is, a rational guide to political action, has been undermined by two sets of contradictions: contradictions with historic reality and contradictions within itself...

...And is the Zhukov-Sokolovsky concern over a protracted land war perhaps made more realistic in the light of Sino-Soviet territorial disputes and Peking's seemingly unlimited ambitions...

...could be expected in case of an eventual settling of accounts with Red China, the revanchist and ambitious neighbor—for the USSR, an increasingly dangerous prospect...

...And it has been the ex-Premier's historic mission to push that process of destruction a mighty step forward while trying to arrest it...

...China, by denying Khrushchev's claim to Marxist legitimacy, has invoked the authority of Marx, Lenin, and even Stalin...

...This is another way of saying that these limits were bound to be narrowly circumscribed and that they were unsatisfactory to the doubters and questioners...

...For the latter had raised, always implicitly and sometimes explicitly, the very legitimacy of Khrushchev's rule, which Khrushchev could not afford to have questioned...

...Both Brezhnev and Kosygin (whose hands are clean in this regard) could make good use of such a campaign to underline their anti-Stalinist posture with respect to China...