Another view of Stalin (55 page)

 .

Ibid. , p. 124.

`An unscrupulous and irresponsible attitude towards the carrying out of the directives of leading bodies is the most dangerous and vicious manifestation of bureaucracy.'

 .

Ibid. , p. 122.

`(T)he primary purpose of verification of fulfilment is to disclose shortcomings, to expose infringement of law, to help honest executives with advice, to punish the incorrigible'.

 .

Ibid. , pp. 125--126.

Under Khrushchev,  cadres would no longer be chosen for having the best political qualities. On the contrary, those would be `purged' for being `Stalinist'. Bourgeois circles would form around Beria,  Khrushchev,  Mikoyan  and Brezhnev,  circles completely estranged from revolutionary, popular action, exactly as Malenkov  described. Stalin would no longer be there to `punish the unrepentant', but the unrepentant would now punish the real Communists.

Finally, Malenkov  criticized the cadres that neglected their ideological work, allowing bourgeois tendencies to emerge once again and become the dominant ideologies:

`Many Party organizations underrate the importance of ideological work, with the result that it falls short of the Party's requirements, and in many organizations is in a state of neglect ....

`(I)f the influence of socialist ideology is weakened the effect is to strengthen the influence of the bourgeois ideology ....

`(W)e still have vestiges of the bourgeois ideology, relics of the private-property mentality and morality. These relics ... are very tenacious and may strengthen their hold, and a determined struggle must be waged against them. Nor are we guaranteed against the infiltration of alien views, ideas and sentiments from outside, from the capitalist countries, or from inside, from the relics of groups hostile to the Soviet state ....'

 .

Ibid. , pp. 126--127.

`Whoever ... relies upon formulas learned by rote, and has no feeling for the new, is incapable of understanding home and foreign affairs'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 128.

`Some of our Party organizations tend to devote all their attention to economic affairs and to forget ideological matters .... Whenever attention to ideological questions is relaxed, a favourable soil is created for the revival of views and ideas hostile to us. If there are sectors of ideological work which for any reason fall out of the purview of Party organizations, if there are sectors in which Party leadership and influence have slackened, alien elements, the remnants of anti-Leninist  groups smashed by the Party, will try to get hold of these sectors'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 127.

Khrushchev  would empty Leninism  of its content, transforming it into a series of slogans with no revolutionary spirit. The resulting vacuum drew in all the old social-democratic and bourgeois ideologies, that would be taken up by the youth. Furthermore, Khrushchev  would falsify or simply eliminate the essential notions of Marxism-Leninism:   anti-imperialist struggle, socialist revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, continuing the class struggle, basic concepts of a Leninist  Party, etc. When he spoke of `Marxist  education', he proposed the opposite to Malenkov: 

`It must be admitted that for many years our Party cadres were insufficiently indoctrinated in the ... practical problems of economic construction.'

 .

Khrushchev,  `Central Committee Report', op. cit. , p. 57.

By rehabilitating opportunists and enemies who had been purged, Khrushchev  allowed the resurrection of social-democratic, bourgeois and Tsarist ideological currents.

During the plenum that followed the Nineteenth Congress, Stalin was even harsher in his criticisms of Mikoyan,  Molotov  and Voroshilov;  he almost openly clashed with Beria.  All the leaders understood perfectly well that Stalin insisted upon a radical change of course. Khrushchev  clearly understood the message and, like the others, made himself very scarce:

`Stalin evidently had plans to finish off the old members of the Political Bureau. He often stated that the Political Bureau members should be replaced by new ones.

`His proposal, after the 19th Congress, concerning the election of 25 persons to the Central Committee Presidium, was aimed at the removal of the old Political Bureau members and the bringing in of less experienced persons ....

`We can assume that this was also a design for the future annihilation of the old Political Bureau members and, in this way, a cover for all shameful acts of Stalin.'

 .

Khrushchev,  `Secret Report', op. cit. , p. S63.

At the time, Stalin was a old man, tired and sick. He acted with caution. Having made the conclusion that the members of the Politburo were no longer trustworthy, he introduced more revolutionary minded youth to the presidium, in order to temper and test them. The revisionists and plotters like Khrushchev,  Beria  and Mikoyan  knew that they would soon lose their positions.

Still according to Khrushchev,  Stalin is to have said to the members of the Politburo, after the Doctor's Plot in the end of 1952:

`You are blind like young kittens; what will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies.'

 .

Ibid. , p. S49.

Khrushchev  put forward that statement as proof of Stalin's folly and paranoia. But history has shown that the comment was correct.

Khrushchev's coup d'йtat

Beria's intrigues

Zhdanov,  Stalin's probable successor, died in August 1948. Even before his death, a woman doctor, Lydia Timashuk,  accused Stalin's doctors of having applied an inappropriate treatment to accelerate his death. She would repeat these accusations later on.

During the year 1949, almost all of Zhdanov's  entourage was arrested and executed. Kuznetsov,  Secretary of the Central Committee and Zhdanov's  right hand man; Rodionov,  Prime Minister of the Russian Republic; and Voznesensky,  President of the Plan, were the main victims. They were among the most influential new cadres. Khrushchev  claims that their elimination was due to Beria's  intrigues.

Stalin had criticized some of Voznesensky's  theories, according to which the law of value should be used to determine the distribution of capital and labor among the different sectors. In that case, replied Stalin, capital and labor forces would migrate to light industry, which is more profitable, and hinder heavy industry:

`(T)he sphere of operation of the law of value is severely restricted and strictly delimited in our economic system (by) ... the law of planned (balanced) development of the national economy'.

 .

Stalin, `Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.', The Documentary Record of the 19th Communist Party Congress and the Reorganization After Stalin's Death (New York: Frederick A. Praeger), p. 5.

However, in his text, Stalin refuted these opportunist points of view without treating their authors as traitors. According to Khrushchev,  Stalin intervened several times for Voznesensky's  liberation and appointment as head of the State Bank.

 .

Khrushchev,  Khrushchev  Remembers, op. cit. , p.`251.

As for Timashuk's  accusations against Zhdanov's  doctors, Stalin's daughter, Svetlana,  recalled that her father, at first, `did not believe the doctors were `dishonest' '.

 .

S. Alliluyeva, p. 215; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 4.

Abakumov,  Minister of State Security, close to Beria,  was then leading the inquiry. But in the end of 1951, Ignatiev,  a Party man with no experience in security, replaced Abakumov,  who was arrested for lack of vigilance. Had Abakumov  protected his boss, Beria? 

The inquiry was then led by Ryumin,  the man formerly responsible for Security in Stalin's personal secretariat. Nine doctors were arrested, accused of being `connected with the international Jewish bourgeois nationalist organisation `JOINT' (American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), established by American intelligence'.

 .

Pravda, 13 January 1953, p. 4; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 18.

This affair was understood as Stalin's first attack against Beria.  The second attack took place simultaneously. In November 1951, leaders of the Communist Party of Georgia were arrested for redirecting public funds and for theft of State property and were accused of being bourgeois nationalist forces with links to Anglo-American imperialism. In the ensuing purge, more than half of the Central Committee members, known as Beria's  men, lost their position.

 .

J. Ducoli,  `The Georgian Purges (1951--1953)', Caucasian Review, vol. 6, pp. 55, 1958; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 11--13.

The new First Secretary stated in his report that the purge was undertaken `upon Comrade Stalin's personal instructions'.

 .

A. Mgdelaze,  Report to Congress of Georgian Communist Party, Sept. 1952; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 24.

Stalin's death

A few months before Stalin's death, the entire security system that protected him was dismantled. Alexandr Proskrebychev,  his personal secretary, who had assisted him since 1928 with remarkable efficiency, was fired and placed under house arrest. He had allegedly redirected secret documents. Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolay Vlasik,  Chief of Stalin's personal security for the previous 25 years, was arrested on December 16, 1952 and died several weeks later in prison.

 .

P. Deriabin,  Watchdogs of Terror: Russian Bodyguards from the Tsars to the Commissars (1984), p. 321; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 24.

Major-General Petr Kosynkin,  Vice-Commander of the Kremlin Guard, responsible for Stalin's security, died of a `heart attack' on February 17, 1953. Deriabin  wrote:

`(This) process of stripping Stalin of all his personal security (was) a studied and very ably handled business'.

 .

Deriabin,  op. cit. , p. 209; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 27.

Only Beria  was capable of preparing such a plot.

On March 1, at 23:00, Stalin's guards found him on the floor in his room, unconscious. They reached the members of the Politburo by telephone. Khrushchev  claimed that he also arrived, and that each went back home.

 .

Deriabin,  op. cit. , p. 300.

No-one called a doctor. Twelve hours after his attack, Stalin received first aid. He died on March 5. Lewis  and Whitehead  write:

`Some historians see evidence of premeditated murder. Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov  sees the cause in Stalin's visible preparation of a purge to rival those of the thirties'.

 .

J. Lewis  and P. Whitehead,  Stalin: A Time for Judgment (London, 1990), p. 279; cited in Bland,  op. cit. , p. 34.

Immediately after Stalin's death, a meeting of the presidium was convened. Beria  proposed that Malenkov  be President of the Council of Ministers and Malenkov  proposed that Beria  be named Vice-President and Minister of Internal Affairs and State Security.

 .

Khrushchev,  Khrushchev  Remembers, op. cit. , p. 324.

During the following months, Beria  dominated the political scene. `We were going through a very dangerous period', wrote Khrushchev. 

 .

Ibid. , p. 331.

Once installed as head of Security, Beria  had Proskrebychev,  Stalin's secretary, arrested; then Ryumin,  who had led the inquiry into Zhdanov's  suspicious death. Ignatiev,  Ryumin's  boss, was denounced for his rфle in the same affair. On April 3, the doctors accused of having killed Zhdanov  were liberated. The Zionist author Wittlin  claimed that by rehabilitating the Jewish doctors, Beria  wanted to `denigrate ... Stalin's aggressive foreign policy against the West, the United States and Great Britain primarily'.

 .

Wittlin,  op. cit. , p. 388.

Still in April, Beria  organized a counter-coup in his native region, Georgia. Once again he placed his men at the top of the Party and the State. Dekanozov,  later shot along with Beria,  became Minister of State Security, replacing Rukhadze,  arrested as `enemy of the people'.

 .

Bland,  op. cit. , p. 46.

Khrushchev's intrigues against Beria

Meanwhile, Khrushchev  was plotting against Beria.  He first acquired the support from Beria's  `protйgй, Malenkov,  then talked with the others, individually. The last to be contacted was Mikoyan,  Beria's  best friend. On June 24, the presidium was convened so that Beria  could be arrested. Mikoyan  stated that Beria  `would take our criticisms to heart and reform himself'.

 .

Khrushchev,  Khrushchev  Remembers, op. cit. , p. 337.

On a prearranged signal, eleven marshals and generals, led by Zhukov,  entered the room and arrested Beria,  who would be shot along with his collaborators on December 23, 1953.

On July 14, 1953, General Alexei Antonov  and Major-General Efimov organized a `coup d'йtat' in the Georgian Communist Party and pushed out Beria's  men. Mzhavanadze,  former Lieutenant-General, became the Party's Prime Minister.