Let us now pursue our investigation of the country’s problems and woes through a different optic: that of the men at its head or in charge of a key sector. The figures selected here are not typical Politburo members – Brezhnev, Kirilenko, Suslov, Chernenko, and their ilk – some of whom were skilful operators, but political and intellectual mediocrities who ultimately prevailed. They can be tagged as ‘the swamp’, and the very fact that they held power is a symptom of the system’s decay. We have instead singled out personalities who proved capable of reflecting on the system – or their own domain, at any rate – and who were ready to attempt change. Many of them may have shared our opinion of the ‘swamp’ that was primarily responsible for the period of ‘stagnation’.
We only have space here to discuss a few figures – in particular, Khrushchev, with whom our period opens, and Andropov, with whom it closes.
Andrei Gromyko was a figure of considerable stature, but with a seemingly unimpressive personality – an unusual combination of incompatible characteristics. He was at the helm of Soviet foreign affairs for twenty-eight years. Although not known to have been involved in reformist initiatives, he was nevertheless a pillar of the system in this crucial sphere. Many found him utterly boring and sour-faced, but if we turn to the Western diplomats who dealt with him, like Henry Kissinger, we are given to understand that he was probably the ‘number one’ of international diplomacy, renowned among his peers as a glutton for work: ‘If you can face Gromyko for an hour and survive, then you can begin to call yourself a diplomat’, said Kissinger. One of the ‘survivors’ was President Reagan. Having spent an hour with Gromyko, he returned all excited to the White House, where the event was duly celebrated: the meeting was in a sense his graduation. What he did not know was that Dobrynin had briefed Gromyko on Reagan and advised him to go easy on him for diplomatic reasons. The heads of the Israeli UN delegation (including David Horowitz) never said anything in their memoirs about Gromyko’s ‘sour’ face at the time when he was Soviet ambassador there and the creation of the state of Israel was on the agenda. Each day he would ask them: ‘What can I do for you today?’ Times change.
Whatever one’s assessment of Gromyko’s personality, Soviet diplomacy and the performance of its experts and senior ambassadors were mostly of a high quality under his intendancy; and this was largely attributable to his own perfectionism. A reading of his briefs, analyses and recommendations on the world situation confirm his in-depth knowledge. Whether his Politburo colleagues listened is another matter. But the general quality of the information available to the leadership was constantly improving – and not only in the diplomatic sphere – which was no doubt testimony to the system’s ‘modernizing’ aspect. It is sufficient today to meet any Russian diplomat formed in this school – he will invariably speak several foreign languages well – to see how proud he is of his alma mater. The Soviet ambassadors to key countries were always highly respected – particularly their doyen, Dobrynin, or the special envoy Kvetsinsky, famous for making progress in negotiations during his ‘walk in the woods’ with his American counterpart, Paul Nitze.
Gromyko’s main characteristics were his complete identification with the interests of the state and his faithful service to it. They explain his personal self-effacement and mastery of his ego – things extremely rare for someone who was the linchpin of international diplomacy for twenty-eight years. The West German politician Egon Bahr, who was in charge of foreign affairs from 1968 to 1972, does not conceal his critical admiration for Gromyko. Commenting on the latter’s memoirs, which disclosed so little about his life and work, Bahr remarked:
He has concealed a veritable treasure-trove from future generations and taken to the grave with him an inestimable knowledge of the inter-connection between the historical events and major figures of his time, which only he could offer. What a pity that this extraordinary man proved incapable to the very end of evoking his experience. As a faithful servant of the state, he believed that he should restrict himself to sober, concise presentation of the bare essentials.1
We can round off this rapid sketch of Gromyko with reference to a decisive political intervention of his. Having been one of the senior statesmen in the Politburo under Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, he played a crucial role in the election of Gorbachev to the post of general-secretary, knowing full well that it would entail a reformist course, probably in the direction mapped out by Andropov. As Ligachev intimated, the outcome of that Politburo meeting might have been very different.
Nikita Khrushchev was endowed with a unique mixture of character traits. I still do not know how he survived Stalin and whether he ever entertained doubts about him when making his career under him. His folksy side, and his ability to perform a gopak (a popular Ukrainian dance) during one of Stalin’s banquets (‘when Stalin says dance, you dance!’, he reminisced), may have fooled the chief as to the ambitions and intentions of this ‘simpleton’. One cannot imagine two more utterly contrasting characters.
He certainly became a sensation on the world stage, and not only as a result of such behaviour as banging on his lectern with his shoe during a session of the UN (not terribly diplomatic!), or exclaiming ‘We shall bury you’ to the Americans – a statement that was in fact distorted by a poor translation (My vas pokhoronim also means ‘We shall outlive you’). He knew how to take enormous risks, especially in 1962 during the Cuban episode, when he neither won nor lost. He was also a genuine supporter of peace on the international scene. Those who dealt with him directly in international summits never claimed that he was not master of his brief. But he had a tendency to talk too much, to the point of sometimes disclosing state secrets even when sober – much to the despair of the KGB. Khrushchev was a reformer, not a state-builder; an impatient, impetuous leader with a propensity for large-scale – and sometimes risky – panaceas. On occasion, he could be truly bold. The ‘secret speech’ against Stalin at the Twentieth Congress was his own initiative; he stuck with it and imposed it on recalcitrant colleagues without regard for the rules or niceties. And thus the Congress suddenly learnt that the icon, the idol, the glorious symbol of the country’s superpower status was a bloody mass murderer. For the anti-Stalinists, it was a shocking revelation. As for the Stalinists of various hues, they were more than embarrassed and claimed that the picture was exaggerated, when in fact it was very incomplete. For inveterate Stalinists, the most embarrassing thing was to see so many high-ranking leaders evince their astonishment: how could they pretend that they knew nothing about the scale of the atrocities? In fact, only a few insiders were aware of the true scale of things: Stalin’s personal secretariat, a handful of Politburo members, and the MVD chiefs who had conducted the operations.
The denunciation of Stalin and his cult was preceded by a wave of rehabilitation of innocent victims, who were subsequently restored to party membership. This made the Stalinist terror a crucial issue for the first congress to be convened after his death.2 Even before the ‘secret speech’, by a Central Committee decision of 31 December 1953 the Presidium created a committee of inquiry, including Pospelov, Komarov, Aristov and Shvernik (it became known by the name of its chairman, Pospelov). Its brief was to determine how the mass repression had struck members and candidate members of the Central Committee elected by the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934. It was assisted in its work by KGB chief Serov and by a group of departmental heads from the same body: secretariat, personnel, archives and special inspection. The Prosecutor’s Office was represented by the deputy of the chief military prosecutor. Naturally, all of these were party members. On the eve of the Congress the Presidium of the Central Committee heard the testimony of the prisoner Boris Rodos, who had been the investigator in some highly sensitive cases and a key figure in the political trials of the late 1940s. In his affidavit he testified that Stalin had directed matters personally. He (Rodos) had interrogated victims and constantly demanded higher execution quotas. Khrushchev insisted on foregrounding Stalin’s personal responsibility and demanded that the issue be raised during a session of the Twentieth Congress. During the debates in Presidium meetings, Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich argued for stressing Stalin’s greatness despite his crimes. But Mikoyan and Saburov argued against this: ‘If all this is true, it cannot be pardoned’ (Saburov). On 8 February 1956, the committee presented to the Presidium a terrifying picture of the systematic extermination of countless party and state cadres by Stalin.
With the eviction of Khrushchev in 1964, a more conservative line re-emerged. Reformist circles were anxious lest Stalin’s rehabilitation was envisaged. But notwithstanding some efforts in this direction by members of the new team, neither the spirit of Stalin nor Stalinism ever returned. Following Khrushchev’s bold moves, the term ‘Stalinism’ ceased to apply to the Soviet system. His decision to remove Stalin’s body from the mausoleum and rebury it elsewhere did prevent the evil spirit from returning – proof that popular beliefs sometimes count. Even if there were still Stalinists at the summit of power harbouring secret hopes, and even if some pernicious features of the old system endured, Stalinism as such belonged to the past.
The shock therapy applied by Khrushchev cost him dearly politically. But he survived the various after-shocks of de-Stalinization, if not without difficulty and even if it may be that he had second thoughts about the whole enterprise. In any event, the denunciation of Stalin was not restricted to words, but was preceded and succeeded by deeds: a large-scale process of ‘rehabilitation’ and the dismantling of the MVD’s industrial complex which, as we have seen, was the core of the Stalinist machinery of repression.
Khrushchev’s style and passion can be explained by the authenticity of his populism, but also by an emotionalism he did not always control. But over and above the joke about his ‘goulash socialism’ (he actually did say that goulash was preferable to empty phrases about popular well-being), he was convinced that an improvement in living standards was more than a political imperative: it was a matter of justice and ‘socialism’. His folksiness was authentic. He was proud of his working-class origins and even his rural roots. He had been a shepherd’s apprentice prior to his industrial career as a metal-worker and miner. There was a direct connection between this past and his language, his aversion for the military, his loathing of bureaucrats, and his preference for production-oriented secondary schools. If he tried to promote such a reform, it was (he said) because the existing secondary schools were educating wimps who knew nothing about physical labour in factories or fields. The reform was abandoned under pressure from public opinion – that is to say, from the better off, the better educated, and bureaucrats, who were indignant and lobbied against this ‘industrialization’ of secondary schools. As it happened, they were right. But we may assume that this was a crowd of people for whom Nikita had no time: they had never held a pick in their hand!
The same mentality was at work in his turbulent relations with the creative artists. He liked The House of Matrena and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and allowed their publication. Both novels depicted profoundly moral characters from the countryside: Matrena, a peasant woman, has a strong, impressive personality; Ivan, also a peasant, preserves his human dignity despite the humiliating reality of the camps.
Here we must once again mention Tvardovsky, the editor of literary journal Novyi Mir, who had published Solzhenitsyn’s first two novels and fought to publish more. The friendly relations between Khrushchev and Tvardovsky were literally based on common ground. Tvardosvky was the son of a dispossessed, persecuted kulak. He knew the rural world well and had remained in touch with rural realities despite his elevated position in Moscow’s intellectual elite. It is likely that Khrushchev could accept political criticism if it was presented in a down-to-earth manner by people of popular extraction – but not when urban intellectuals said the same thing in their sophisticated idiom. He was also capable of crude, even indecent outbursts against works he did not understand or artists whom he suspected of being hostile to the regime.
Tvardovsky was different in Khrushchev’s view. During the war, he had written a long poem about the adventures of a soldier of popular extraction, Vasilii Terkin. After the war, he returned to his now demobilized hero in a poem entitled ‘Terkin in Heaven’. In it, Terkin is sent to heaven, where he observes (and endures) the celestial bureaucracy, before deciding to return to earth: at least the bureaucracy down there is breathing. As soon as he learnt of the existence of this scathing satire of the Soviet bureaucracy and hence of the system, which was also turned into a play, Nikita called his son-in-law, who was editor of Izvestiia, to tell him to publish it forthwith. Had it been written by a modish intellectual, he would probably have dialled a different number.
Here we might insert a symptomatic detail. The famous film director Mikhail Romm and the no less celebrated sculptor Ernst Neizvestny had both been subject to Khrushchev’s irascible outbursts; and both had reacted sharply and uncompromisingly. Later, however, they both referred to him fondly, defending his historical role. Khrushchev’s tombstone was sculpted (free of charge) by Neizvestny – against the will of those in power. Romm’s later assessment was likewise warm. Manifestly, Khrushchev emitted contradictory signals, but both these artists accentuated the positive ones. Similarly, as we shall see, Anastas Mikoyan, after weighing up the pros and cons, ended up judging Khrushchev ‘a somebody’.
Here we must restate two important historical facts discussed in Part One. First, in 1945 Soviet Russia was a mighty state, but in reality a shaky one. It was hungry, devastated, exhausted, terrorized, ruled by a decaying power complex: a needy, ailing superpower. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union experienced dramatic improvements in the 1950s and early 1960s. Whatever experts might say about not exaggerating the results given the low starting point, Soviet citizens felt the difference in their lives. Russia succeeded in recovering its great power status, while healing the wounds of the Second World War and overcoming the ravages of Stalinism. It found the reserves to ensure its future growth and the functioning of its institutions at all levels. Thus the regime possessed reserves and muscle: to recover from such ruination demanded enormous vitality.
The second fact is that, while undoubtedly talented, shrewd, and capable of learning, Khrushchev was still a ‘non-modern’ leader – a new version of the khoziain (‘master’), rather than a contemporary statesman and political strategist. The khoziain model was still widespread among the leadership, with its sense of owning the state in rather the same way that one owns a farm, meddling in every detail. Khrushchev and most of the other leaders were products of a deeply ingrained patriarchalism – as is indicated, for example, by their impatience with other people’s opinions. This is confirmed by observers like F. M. Burlatsky, who spent many years in the Soviet press and apparatus. Although the impetuous populist ruler was no despot by comparison with Stalin, he too had a tendency to want to run everything personally – institutions and people alike. After all, Stalin was the only big chief Khrushchev (and others) had known; and he must have served as a model, even if Khrushchev rejected many of his practices. Unlike the generalissimo, for example, he deeply disliked the military and their pompous uniforms. He enraged them, and especially the KGB’s top brass, who were so attached to their uniforms and titles, with his ‘We are going to tear off their epaulettes and trouser stripes’ – a threat he actually began to implement in the case of KGB generals. Some of his ideas were very dangerous for the apparatchiks, especially the proposal to introduce mandatory rotation of officials at all levels after a certain age. Some say that the Brezhnevites ousted him on account of this. For others, the ‘conservatives’ never forgave him for ‘de-Stalinization’, and the loss of prestige and disorientation it occasioned in the communist world and elsewhere. Both these factors were at work, together with others – particularly the new ‘hare-brained’ ideas he was entertaining, and which the 1964 plotters nipped in the bud.
Anastas Mikoyan was a quite remarkable personality – a veritable résumé of the Soviet regime, or rather of its leadership. A Politburo member for something approaching forty years, he was known for being ‘unsinkable’. A master in the art of survival, he proved capable of retaining a degree of humanity and a sense of reality, despite his participation in many atrocities that were not necessarily down to his initiative. In his memoirs he emerges as a Stalinist from the very beginning. His reflections on his early years as a leader are deeply and naively indulgent towards Stalin, hostile to all the anti-Stalinist oppositions, and utterly ignorant of what was really at stake.
As a member of the Politburo, Mikoyan would not have survived had he not signed the death sentences circulated by Stalin or made the requisite speeches about ‘counter-revolutionary traitors’. In his memoirs he claims that he was once forced to co-sign arrests and death sentences because convincing ‘proof’ had been presented. In charge of trade issues in the Politburo, in a country suffering constant shortages, he accomplished remarkable feats in a domain which, though vital, was not a real priority for the regime most of the time. His talent as an organizer is beyond dispute, but he was also a skilful politician. While considerable flexibility on his part was to be expected, his steadfast support for Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization comes as a surprise. He even claims to have initiated it. At any rate, it was he who supervised the work of the rehabilitation commission in his capacity as President of the Supreme Soviet. He was also the only person to support Khrushchev during the Central Committee session that deposed him: a lone voice among the howling pack. Reading his personal file reveals that the conservatives resented him well into the 1970s. But he was too strong for them.
Mikoyan’s book has a wealth of detail on Stalin’s final days. Stalin had decided to eliminate – and probably execute – Molotov and Mikoyan: both were sure of it. This might help explain the anti-Stalinist ardour of the post-Stalinist Mikoyan. While Stalin was dying in March 1953, the Politburo’s main players were almost permanently in touch, meeting in the Kremlin or in attendance every day at Stalin’s home. Discussions occurred and alliances began to take shape. Initially, Mikoyan was not a prime mover. The Malenkov-Beria-Khrushchev trio took the lead. Mikoyan’s sketch of how things played out in the room used for Politburo meetings is worthy of Ionesco. The whole Politburo was present, but the heavyweights – Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria, who were respectively General-Secretary, Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister (Beria was also head of the secret police and a massive industrial-military production complex) – huddled together in a corner of the room to discuss the agenda for the meeting that was due to be held. The lesser figures were reduced to observing, not without some disquiet, the formation of a new clique that would decide their fate. The suspense was to continue for some time, because the clique did not last: Malenkov and Khrushchev allied with Molotov to remove Beria. And that was only the beginning. Shifting alliances were endemic and manifestly inherited from Stalin’s modus operandi.
Mikoyan describes Khrushchev’s turn against Beria approvingly, as well as other alliances, realignments and coalitions. His narrative illuminates a further feature of the way the Politburo functioned: its inability to establish fixed rules, with genuine debates in which disagreement could be expressed, followed by a majority decision, before proceeding to the next item on the agenda. Once again, this was part of Stalin’s legacy. Engaging in an argument and losing it could be lethal under Stalin, who deliberately kept everyone in a state of permanent insecurity. When the Politburo finally found itself liberated from his sinister tutelage, it had no idea how to construct a working arrangement – i.e. the very ‘collective leadership’ it proclaimed. Everything continued to revolve around the general-secretary (still called chairman of the Presidium of the Politburo), and no political measure could be adopted without the approval of the general-secretary and his followers. Before Stalin, leadership bodies – and especially the Politburo – definitely did have a constitution (written and unwritten). Depending on the issue, majorities could switch. The then leader (Lenin) was used to being in a minority and yet pursuing the business in hand: an altogether different set-up. We shall return to the absence of any constitution for the Politburo.
The main problem posed by Mikoyan’s memoirs lies in his argument about Stalin and Stalinism. He was a staunch supporter of the man, his ideology and policy. He was on good terms with him, deemed him a highly able leader, and often argued with him (mostly on economic policy). But when Stalin began to eliminate the people around him, and particularly after Kirov’s unexplained death, he began to ask himself questions. He pleaded with Stalin on behalf of arrested people whom he knew personally, or would say to him: ‘But you know very well that he couldn’t have been a spy.’ Stalin would then show him alleged ‘confessions’ or sometimes accede to his plea for clemency. When it comes to the great terror of 1937–8, Mikoyan’s text strikes a disingenuous note: ‘We other members of Politburo did not know the truth [they were always shown the documents adduced as “proof’], or the scale of the repression.’ He claims to have learned the true facts only from the rehabilitations commission he supervised. Even more troubling is that Mikoyan proceeds to no critical reflection on this type of rule or ‘party’ (which had actually ceased to be one). He argues that Stalin had displayed rationality and greatness during the war, but had become ‘unpredictable’ again thereafter, refusing the democratization expected by a victorious people. Without pressing his critique any further, he merely declares that after Stalin’s death he constantly hoped for a democratization that never occurred.
It may be that such criticism is misplaced in the case of a politician who was no political thinker. It may be more relevant to identify character traits that serve to distinguish one type of Stalinist from another. In other words, ‘structural’ Stalinism was not common to all Stalinists. Thanks to the high position he had attained, the young Mikoyan adapted to the system well before the definitive triumph of Stalinism. Subsequently, he had no difficulty shedding Stalinist practices and attitudes and genuinely adopting a different perspective, even a different world-view. ‘Structural’ Stalinists like Molotov and Kaganovich were completely identified with the Stalinist model and Stalin personally, and they never reneged on their commitment. A third breed of Stalinist might change – or pretend to have changed – allegiances, while remaining Stalinist in their make-up and behaviour. Dogmatism and the habit of exclusion, absolute condemnation, rigid argumentation and the perception of conspiracies everywhere were integral parts of their personality. Mikoyan was not of this stamp.
What Mikoyan has to say about Khrushchev is revealing (we shall pass over his all too predictable assessment of Brezhnev). Reviewing the changes introduced by Khrushchev after his assumption of power, he endorses some of them but criticizes many others. Naturally, he also challenges what Khrushchev had to say about him in his memoirs, where Mikoyan’s merits are ignored and he is even attacked. Even so, Mikoyan’s appraisal of Khrushchev’s personality and activity is measured, offering a veritable balance sheet of his qualities and faults. Khrushchev often irritated Mikoyan, who lists his errors meticulously. But he ends up with a positive assessment. In fact, Mikoyan supported Khrushchev on many crucial issues and in difficult situations. But he draws a portrait of an inconsistent, disloyal character who more than once lost his sense of reality. As other witnesses have also testified, his rule was a story of reckless initiatives and an incomparable capacity for turning everything upside down. Mikoyan offers a good inventory of Khrushchev’s zigzags. He understood full well that Khrushchev had antagonized just about everyone and was heading for a fall. And yet he defended this chaotic general-secretary because he had numerous things to his credit and the alternative was unappealing. His conclusion is that the irascible Nikita was ‘someone’ and that after he had been sacked his abilities should have been utilized in a different post. This judgement relates to a little-known episode. Some time before his removal, Khrushchev, who had become disillusioned with the party, had mused about revitalizing the Supreme Soviet, transforming it into something like an effective parliament. The first step would have been for Mikoyan to become President (not merely Chairman) of the Supreme Soviet and then seriously to empower this body. Khrushchev had made some initial moves in this direction and the prospect enthused Mikoyan, but Khrushchev’s fall signalled the burial of the project. This episode clarifies Mikoyan’s closing remarks. At all events, if this final initiative petered out, other irreversible changes had been introduced thanks to Khrushchev.
One point in Mikoyan’s critique merits separate examination. He criticizes Khrushchev for having yielded to the conservatives (or his own misgivings) by abruptly terminating the policy of rehabilitating the victims of Stalinism, which Mikoyan supervised by virtue of his position in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Mikoyan and liberal public opinion wanted to cap the process by rehabilitating the victims of the show trials: Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and so on. But Khrushchev balked, despite Mikoyan’s insistence. For the latter, all the accusations were false and the executions belonged in the category of Stalin’s crimes. However, for as yet minimally de-Stalinized party stalwarts, those accused, even if it was on the basis of false charges, were the leaders of an ‘anti-party’ opposition. In an earlier chapter of his book, Mikoyan himself refers to them scornfully and does not conceal the fact that he supported Stalin’s moves against them. In his fervour for de-Stalinization, Mikoyan seems not to appreciate that to have rehabilitated the victims would have been to restore these oppositionists – erstwhile ‘Trotskyists-rightists’ – to the status of critics of Stalin and Stalinism.
Here we can ‘sympathize’ with Khrushchev. He had encountered enough problems with the de-Stalinization he had launched. Reviewing the show trials would have been too much for him. After all, he never envisaged the possibility of open factions and debates within the party.