Russia After Stalin

variants of development possible in Russia.

Relapse into Stalinism

An attempt by the political police to regain its former position cannot be ruled out. The decree of amnesty and the exposure of the ‘doctors' plot’ have been major moves in an intense struggle which is still in progress. As these lines are written a new indication of its scope becomes apparent. The former Minister of State Security in Soviet Georgia and several high officials of the Ministry have been arrested and charged with violation of constitutional rights of citizens and extortion of confessions. The local leaders of the party have been deposed for connivance.

The arrested Georgians have obviously been allies and subordinates of the die-hards of Stalinism defeated in Moscow. But the defeated faction has its allies and subordinates in each of the sixteen Soviet Republics. Each provincial capital has had its Ignatievs and Riumins who are now being removed from office, transferred to prison, and charged not as terrorists or spies, but as men guilty of violating the constitutional rights of citizens. Thus, the transition from one regime to another is being carried out by a series of moves amounting to rather more than a mere palace revolt and less than a real revolution.

In the 1930's Trotsky advocated a ‘limited political revolution’ against Stalinism. He saw it not as a fully fledged social upheaval but as an ‘administrative operation’ directed against the chiefs of the political police and a small clique terrorizing the nation. As so often, Trotsky was tragically ahead of his time and prophetic in his vision of the future, although he could not imagine that Stalin's dosest associates would act in accordance with his scheme. What Malenkov's government is carrying out now is precisely the ‘limited revolution’ envisaged by Trotsky.

The die-hards of the security police may still try to rally and fight to save their skins. They may fight back from the provinces and they may try to regain the ground lost in Moscow. They may have influential associates and accomplices inside the Kremlin. They may try to remove Malenkov and his associates, denouncing them as apostates, secret Trotskyite-Bukharinites, and imperialist agents and presenting themselves as Stalin's only true and orthodox heirs.

Even if such a coup were successful, which is improbable, the restoration of Stalinism could be only a brief episode. The motives that caused men of Stalin's entourage to initiate a break with his era would continue to operate. Those motives spring from the present State and needs of the nation and are certainly shared by too many people to be defeated by the removal of a few personalities. Even if Malenkov were to be assassinated, others would fill his place. The political police is morally isolated. It has always been hated and feared. It is now hated more and feared less than ever. It has no chance of asserting itself against the combined strength of people, government, and party.

The diehards of the security police may, of course, join hands with the army. Signs of an ambiguous alliance between them and some military leaders were clearly visible in the incident of the Kremlin physicians in January 1953. But there have also been indications of a division among the army leaders. Not enough military support may therefore be available for a joint coup. But even if such a coup were to succeed, its result would be the establishment of a military dictatorship, not the restoration of the orthodox Stalinist regime. The prestige of the army stands high and is intact, while that of the police has been irreparably damaged. The police could be only the army's junior partner, and perhaps not even that—it might only be able to hold the stirrup for a Russian Bonaparte.

Military dictatorship

We have already mentioned the important part that some army leaders played in the political events of the last period. This emerges from the official, and now disavowed, statement about the plot of the Kremlin physicians, published on 13 January 1953. The Statement contained the following curious passage:

‘The criminal doctors tried in the first instance to undermine the health of the leading Soviet military personnel, to put them out of action and thereby to weaken the country's defences. They tried to put out of action Marshal A. M. Vassilevsky, Marshal L. A. Govorov, Marshal E. S. Koniev, General of the Army S. M. Shtemenko, Admiral G. E. Levchenko, and others. However, the arrest has upset the evil designs and the criminals have not succeeded in achieving their aim.’ (My italics — I.D.)

The communique also claimed that the doctors had brought about the premature death of Zhdanov and Shcherbakov. Only these two dead party leaders figured as victims of the conspiracy. Not a single living party leader was mentioned as a prospective victim.

This omission was not accidental. Its significance becomes clear when this indictment is compared with accusations made in previous comparable cases. In every purge trial it was alleged that the ‘terrorists’ prepared to assassinate in the first instance the party leaders: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and others. The accusation levelled against the Kremlin doctors created a startlingly novel pattern. Not only did it not contain so much as a hint at a conspiracy against living civilian leaders — it stressed most emphatically that the ‘conspirators’ worked primarily or, rather, exclusively against the military.

After the official disavowal of the accusation, this last circumstance appears all the more significant. What — it must be asked — were the motives of the Ministry of State Security when it singled out military leaders as the sole targets of the imaginary conspiracy?

The Ministry clearly intended to build up the prestige of the marshals and generals and to play down the importance of party leaders. The assassination motif had a definite function in all the purge trials. It had been calculated to enhance the authority of the wouldbe victims of conspiracy. Prosecutor, judges, and Press had told the nation: ‘These are our irreplaceable leaders. Their lives are most precious to our cause. Even the enemy knows this: and it is at them he aims. To their defence we ought to rally.’ In the ‘doctors' plot’ the tale of assassination was intended to point the same moral. The Ministry of State Security was out to place the marshals and the generals on a pedestal and, by implication, to disparage the party leaders.[20]

Did the heads of the security police act on their own initiative when they accorded the marshals and generals the honour of being the only prospective victims of conspiracy? Or were perhaps some of the military chiefs not averse to being hailed as the nation's heroes and indispensable leaders? The security police had no special reason to render this disinterested service to the marshals and to exclude the party chiefs, unless it acted against the latter with the complicity or on the instigation of the former. The glory of martyrdom has more than once enhanced a claim to power; and a bid for power was implicit in the original story of the ‘doctors' plot’. We need not necessarily attribute personal political ambition to any of the army leaders. They may have made an initial move towards seizure of power from the conviction that it was their duty to frustrate the reforms and the peace overtures contemplated by Malenkov. They may have acted on the belief that the new policy will weaken Russia militarily.

We have said that the tale about the ‘doctors' plot’, the cry for vigilance, and the campaign against the Jews were calculated to create an atmosphere of nationalist and war-like hysteria, which would have ruled out the possibility of any domestic reform and conciliatory foreign policy. It should perhaps be added that the extreme demonstrations of Russian nationalism have as a rule been initiated or encouraged by the army, while the party only connived at them willingly or reluctantly. It was the army that fostered the cult of Kutuzov, Suvorov, and the other traditional heroes of Russian nationalism; and the army's influence was discernible in the campaign against aliens, ‘rootless cosmopolitans’, and other ‘security risks’.

Between January and March 1953 a Russian Bonaparte cast his shadow ahead. He has been compelled to with-draw. He may now be standing in the background and watching the scene. Should Malenkov's government not be able to master the situation, should discontent be rife, should social discipline break down in consequence of the reforms, and should danger from abroad coincide with internal disorder, then the war-lord will step forward again and seize power, with or without the aid of the embittered die-hards of Stalinism.

A military dictatorship would signify neither a counterrevolution, in the Marxist sense, nor the restoration of Stalinism. Russia's military interest demands that the present economic order be conserved; and no military leader can or will do anything to change it fundamentally. His attitude towards the legacy of Bolshevism would hardly be very different from Napoleon's attitude towards the legacy of Jacobinism. He would not feel tied to any party tradition, and he would fill with his own martial splendour the vacuum left by the defunct Stalin cult. He, too, would be compelled to rationalize and modernize the system of government, but he would do so on a strictly authoritarian basis. If the internal tensions were to grow acute he would seek to relieve them by military adventure abroad. He might then out-Napoleon Napoleon and, before his own destruction, place Europe and Asia at Russia's