Khrushchev's coup d'état
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.
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' '.
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'.
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'.
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 rôle 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 `protégé, 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'état' in the Georgian Communist Party and pushed out Beria's men. Mzhavanadze, former Lieutenant-General, became the Party's Prime Minister.
Bland, op. cit. , pp. 55--57.
Ryumin was arrested by Beria on April 5, 1953. Fifteen months later, the Khrushchevites would condemn him for his rôle in the `Doctors' Plot'. On July 23, he was shot. But his boss Ignatiev, protected by Khrushchev, was named First Secretary of the Bashkir Republik.
Ibid. , pp. 67--70.
At the end of December 1954, Abakumov , former Minister of State Security, and his associates, were condemned to death for having fabricated, on Beria's orders, the `Leningrad Affair' against Voznesensky and his friends.
In September 1955, Nikolay Rukhadze, responsible for Security in Georgia, who had led the purge of Beria's men in 1951, was condemned and shot as `Beria's accomplice'.
Ibid. , p. 73.
So, from 1950 to 1955, different revisionist groups lashed out with at each other with their fangs, taking advantage of the situation to eliminate Stalin's supporters.
The `rehabilitated' enemies
After Stalin's death, under Khrushchev, opportunists and enemies of Leninism, sent, justifiably, to Siberia under Stalin, were rehabilitated and placed in key positions. Khrushchev's son, Sergei, gives an example. During the thirties, Khrushchev and Mikoyan had been close to a man named Snegov, condemned in 1938, as an enemy of the people, to twenty-five years of prison. In 1956, Khrushchev brought him out of prison so that he could testify against the `Stalinist crimes'. But, Snegov `proved' to Khrushchev's son that `the issue was not Stalin's mistakes or delusions, but that everything was the fruit of his criminal policy. The monstrous results had not appeared all of a sudden in the thirties. Their roots, Snegov said, went back to the October Revolution and the Civil War.'
Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev: An Inside Account of the Man and His Era (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990), p. 8.
This individual, an open opponent of the October Revolution, was chosen by Khrushchev as Commissar of the Ministry of the Interior, where he was responsible for the rehabilitation of the `victims of Stalinism'!
Ibid. , p. 13.
Khrushchev also fished Solzhenitsyn out from a work camp. So, the revisionist leader who wanted to `return to Leninism' made an alliance with a Tsarist reactionary to combat `Stalinism'. The two scum got along perfectly. In a burst of warmth for his `Marxist' partner, Solzhenitsyn would later write:
`It was impossible to foresee the sudden, thundering and furious attack that Khrushchev had reserved for Stalin during the Twenty-Second Congress! I cannot remember in a long time having read something so interesting.'
Solzhenitsyn, Le chêne et le veau; cited in Branko Lazitch, Le rapport Khrouchtchev et son histoire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1976), p. 77.
Khrushchev and the pacific counter-revolution
After Beria's execution, Khrushchev became the most important figure in the Presidium. At the Twentieth Congress, in February 1956, he completely reversed the ideological and political line of the Party. He noisily announced that `Leninist democracy' and `collective leadership' were re-restablished, but he more or less imposed his Secret Report about Stalin on the other members of the Presidium. According to Molotov:
`When Khrushchev read his report to the Twentieth Congress, I had already been maneuvered into a dead-end. I have often been asked, why, during the Twentieth Congress, did you not speak out against Khrushchev? The Party was not ready for that. By staying in the Party, I hoped that we could partially redress the situation'.
Chueva, op. cit. , p. 350.
The struggle between the two lines, between Marxism-Leninism and bourgeois tendencies, never ceased, right from October 25, 1917. With Khrushchev, the power relationship was reversed and opportunism, fought and repressed up to then, took over the leadership of the Party. Revisionism took advantage of this position to liquidate, bit by bit, the Marxist-Leninist forces. Upon Stalin's death, there were ten in the Presidium: Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev, Mikoyan, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Bulganin, Saburov and Pervukhin.
R. A. Medvedev and Zh. .A. Medvedev, op. cit. , p. 4.
After Beria's elimination, Mikoyan stated in 1956 that in `the Central Committee and its Presidium in the last three years ... after a long interval collective leadership has been established'.
A. I. Mikoyan, Discussion of Khrushchev--Moskatov Reports, 20th Communist Party Congress, op. cit. , p. 80.
But the following year, Khrushchev and Mikoyan fired the rest, using the argument that `the anti-Party factionalist group' `wanted a return to the days, so painful fo our party and country, when the reprehensible methods and actions spawned by the cult of the individual held sway'.
Kozlov, `Report on the Party Statutes', The Documentary Record of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), p. 206.
Eliminating the Marxist-Leninist majority in the Presidium was possible thanks to the army, particularly Zhukov, and regional secretaries who came to support Khrushchev when he was in the minority. Molotov's, Malenkov's and Kaganovich's hesitations, lack of political acumen and conciliatory attitude caused their defeat.
In international politics, Stalin's line from 1945 to 1953 was completely dismantled. Khrushchev capitulated to the world bourgeoisie. He addressed the Party at the Twentieth Congress: `(T)he Party ... smashed obsolete ideas'. `We want to be friends with the United States'. `There are also substantial achievements in the building of socialism in Yugoslavia.' `(T)he working class ... has an opportunity to ... win a firm majority in parliament and to turn the parliament from an agency of bourgeois democracy into an instrument of genuinely popular will'.
Khrushchev, `Central Committee Report', op. cit. , pp. 29, 35, 30, 38.
Khrushchev began the dismantling of Stalin's work with all sorts of wonderful promises. Hearing them today, we can see that Khrushchev was simply a clown.
According to Khrushchev, `In the conditions of the cult of the individual .... People who usurp power ... escape from under (the Party's) control'.
Khrushchev, `Concluding Remarks' 22nd Congress, op. cit. , p. 198.
These sycophants and magicians obviously disappeared along with Stalin. And Khrushchev continued:
`In the current decade (1961--1970) the Soviet Union, creating the material and technical base of communism, will surpass the strongest and richest capitalist country, the U.S.A.'
Khrushchev, `The Party Program', 22nd Congress, op. cit. , p. 15.
Twenty years after the `beginning of Communism' promised by Khrushchev for 1970, the Soviet Union exploded under the blows of U.S. imperialism; its republics are now controlled by maffiosi and rapacious capitalists; the people live in profound misery, unemployed; crime reigns supreme; nationalism and fascism have provoked horrible civil wars; there are tens of thousands dead and millions of refugees.
As for Stalin, he also looked at the uncertain future. The conclusions of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, whose writing he supervised in 1938, are worth re-examining, given recent events. They contain six fundamental lessons, drawn from the Bolshevik Party's experience. The fourth reads:
`Sceptics, opportunists, capitulators and traitors cannot be tolerated on the directing staff of the working class.
`It cannot be regarded as an accident that the Trotskyites, Bukharinites and nationalist deviators ... ended ... by becoming agents of fascist espionage services.
`The easiest way to capture a fortress is from within.'
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), editor. History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (Toronto: Francis White Publishers, 1939), p. 360.
Stalin predicted correctly what would happen in the Soviet Union if a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin ever entered the Politburo.
At the end of the twentieth century, humanity has sort of returned to the start state, to the years 1900--1914, where the imperialist powers thought that they could run the world among themselves. In the years to come, as the criminal, barbaric and inhuman character of imperialism shows itself more and more clearly, new generations who never knew Stalin will pay homage to him. They will follow the words of Mao Zedong who, on December 21, 1939, in the distant caves of that huge China, toasted Stalin's sixtieth birthday:
`Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.'
Mao Tse-Tung, `Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People', Works, vol. 2, p. 335.
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