the dictator's entourage especially close to him disappeared at the same time.
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One of the fundamental principles of party leadership is collectivity in deciding all important problems of party work. It is impossible to provide genuine leadership if inner party democracy is violated in the party organization, if genuine collective leadership and widely developed criticism and self-criticism are lacking. Collectiveness and the collegium principle represent a very great force in party leadership…
As long as we confine ourselves, in substance, to denouncing the personal faults of Stalin as the cause of everything we remain within the realm of the 'personality cult.' First, all that was good was attributed to the superhuman, positive qualities of one man: now all that is evil is attributed to his equally exceptional and even astonishing faults. In the one case, as well as in the other, we are outside the criterion of judgment intrinsic in Marxism. The true problems are evaded, which are why and how Soviet society could reach and did reach certain forms alien to the democratic way and to the legality which it had set for itself, even to the point of degeneration…
It is difficult to exaggerate the historical significance of the Sino-Soviet conflict. It has influenced every facet of international life, not to speak of the Soviet block itself. No analysis of the relationship between Washington and Moscow, of the problem of nuclear proliferation, or the orientation of Indian nationalism, of the thrust of revolutionary movements in the Third World would be complete without taking into account the impact of the increasingly bitter dispute between the two onetime seemingly close allies. For the international Communist movement, it has been a tragic disaster, comparable in some respects to the split in Christianity several centuries ago. The Communist and Christian experience both showed that in theologically or ideologically oriented movements disagreements even only about means and immediate tactical concerns can escalate into basic organizational and doctrinal, indeed, even into national conflicts, fundamentally destructive of the movement's unity.
Stalin's stroke - if its official date is to be believed - was followed by three days of silence from the Kremlin and, in all probability, by hard bargaining among top Soviet leaders. When the dictator's demise was an-
nounced, the new leadership proclaimed itself ready to govern the country, emphasizing the solidarity of its members as well as its unity with the people. The shrill tone and the constant repetition of both assertions must have covered many suspicions and fears. Malenkov emerged clearly in the chief role, for he became presumably both the senior Party secretary, which had been Stalin's most important office, and prime minister. Beria and Molotov stood next to Malenkov, forming a triumvirate of successors to the dictator. The three, in that order, were the key living figures during the burial of Stalin in the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square on the ninth of March, making appropriate speeches on the occasion.
As early as the middle of March, however, it was announced that Malenkov had resigned as the Party secretary, although he remained prime minister and continued to be treated as the top personage in the Soviet Union. The new Presidium of the Party was reduced to ten members. Later it was announced that Khrushchev had been promoted to the position of first Party secretary, the title used instead of that of general secretary associated with Stalin. In the summer of 1953, Beria was arrested and then executed in secret, with a number of his followers, on charges of treason and conspiracy; or, as Khrushchev related to some visitors, Beria was killed at the Presidium meeting at which he had expected to assume full power. In any case, it would seem that in the race to dispose of one another Beria had narrowly lost out. Beria's fall marked a certain weakening in the power of the political police. In February 1955, Malenkov resigned as prime minister, saying that he was guilty of mistakes made in the management of Soviet agriculture and of having incorrectly emphasized the production of consumer goods at the expense of heavy industry. Nicholas Bulganin, a prominent Communist leader who had been a member of the Politburo since 1948, replaced Malenkov as head of the government. Bulganin and Khrushchev, the chief of the government and the chief of the Party, then occupied the center of the Soviet stage and also held the limelight in international affairs, suggesting to some observers the existence of something resembling a diarchy in the U.S.S.R. Marshal Zhukov, a great hero of the Second World War who had been reduced by Stalin to provincial commands and had returned to prominence after Stalin's death, took over Bulganin's former office of minister of defense. Zhukov's rise marked the first appearance of an essentially military, rather than Party, figure in high governing circles in Soviet Russia.
The struggle in the Kremlin continued. Probably its most astounding event was Khrushchev's speech to a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956, in which the new first secretary denounced his
predecessor, Stalin, as a cruel, irrational, and bloodthirsty tyrant, who had destroyed many innocent with the guilty in his great purge oi the Party and the army in the thirties and at other times. In fact, Stalin and the 'cult of personality' he had fostered were blamed also for military unpreparedness and defeats in the Second World War as well as for other Soviet mistakes and weaknesses. At the same time, paradoxically, Khrushchev presented Stalin's colossal aberrations as mere deviations of an essentially correct policy, entirely rectified by the collective leadership that replaced the despot. Khrushchev's explosive speech remains difficult to explain: after all, it was certain to produce an enormous shock among Communists and do great damage to the Communist cause - to say the least, the transition from years of endless adulation of Stalin to Khrushchev's revelations was bound to be breathtaking; besides, Khrushchev could not help but implicate himself and his associates, at least indirectly, in Stalin's crimes and errors. The answer to the riddle of the speech lies probably in the exigencies of the struggle for power among Soviet leaders. Khrushchev's sensational denunciation of Stalin struck apparently at some 'old Stalinists,' his main competitors. Besides, it would seem that Khrushchev tried both to put the blame for many of the worst aspects of the Soviet past on Stalin, implying that these evils could not happen again, and to set the correct line of policy for the future.
The conflict at the top reached its culmination in the spring and early summer of 1957, after the Hungarian rebellion of the preceding autumn and certain other events at home and abroad had raised grave questions concerning the orientation and activities of the new Soviet administration and indeed concerning the stability of the whole Soviet system. Defeated in the Presidium of the Party, Khrushchev took his case to its entire Central Committee, successfully reversing the unfavorable decision and obtaining the ouster from the Presidium and other positions of power of the 'anti-Party group' of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Dmitrii Shepilov, a recent addition to the Soviet front ranks. While Khrushchev's enemies were dropped from the Presidium, its membership was increased to fifteen, giving the general secretary further opportunities to bring his supporters into that extremely important body. Marshal Zhukov, who, it would seem, had provided valuable assistance to Khrushchev in the latter's bid for power, again fell into disgrace several months later. Finally in March 1958, Bulganin, who had been disloyal to Khrushchev the preceding year, resigned as head of the government. Khrushchev himself replaced Bulganin, thus combining the supreme effective authority of the Party and of the state. Clearly that self-made man of peasant background and limited education no longer had any equals within the collective leadership or elsewhere in the U.S.S.R.
The remarkable Twenty-second Party Congress held in the second half
