Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The Iron Grip

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • The Iron Grip

    The Moscow Times
    Arts & Ideas
    July 23 - 29, 2004

    The Iron Grip

    Even Stalin's most fearsome henchmen were putty in the dictator's hands, a
    new study by Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk maintains.

    By Sam Thorne
    Published: July 23, 2004

    Of the numerous books that have been written about Josef Stalin, relatively
    few have focused on the twilight years of his dictatorship, from the end of
    World War II to his death in March 1953. Those works that do address this
    period tend to depict Stalin as an increasingly paranoid figure, struggling
    to cling to health and power as his deputies jockey for position to succeed
    him. In "Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953,"
    historians Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk challenge the prevailing
    version, using formerly unavailable archive material to shed light on the
    internal workings of the top Soviet leadership during Stalin's final years.
    They attempt to show a clear political logic to Stalin's behavior, however
    irrational it may seem, and dispel the notion that there were ever any
    serious contenders to usurp him (or even conspirators to kill him).


    Following the war, Gorlizki and Khlevniuk contend, Stalin's consistent aim
    was to consolidate the Soviet Union's status as a superpower, and, in the
    face of growing decrepitude, to maintain his hold as leader of that power.
    The authors describe how Stalin created a dual political order: informal and
    personalized in some spheres, orderly and institutionalized in others.
    Realizing, for example, that he no longer had the energy to oversee many
    aspects of government, Stalin initiated key organizational changes, setting
    up a Council of Ministers to manage the economy, while he and his inner
    circle in the Politburo concentrated on a smaller set of policy issues,
    among them state security, ideology and foreign affairs. Unlike the
    Politburo, the Council of Ministers met regularly, worked to deadlines on
    individual assignments with a clear division of labor and suffered minimal
    interference from Stalin -- except when economic issues touched on matters
    of state.

    The other side of this arrangement was a Politburo entirely obedient to
    Stalin's whims, comprising five members in 1945 and 10 by 1953, including
    Stalin himself, two long-standing colleagues in Vyacheslav Molotov and
    Anastas Mikoyan, and younger members, such as Lavrenty Beria and Nikita
    Khrushchev. In contrast to the Council of Ministers, Stalin personally
    selected the Politburo's membership, set its agendas, fashioned its
    procedures and organized the locations and timings of its meetings to suit
    himself. Often, meetings would take place in the dining room of Stalin's
    dacha in the early hours of the morning -- and when not dining with the
    leader, Politburo members were often phoned by Stalin's secretary as late as
    4 or 5 a.m. to be told that Stalin had gone to bed and that they, too, could
    leave their desks and go home. A Yugoslav envoy who visited Stalin during
    this period described how a significant part of Soviet policy was shaped at
    these dinners. "It all resembled," he wrote, "a patriarchal family with a
    crotchety head who made his kinsfolk apprehensive." Gorlizki and Khlevniuk
    term Stalin's style of leadership "neo-patrimonial" in that he attempted to
    combine a modern, committee-based system of administration with a more
    primitive method of rule based on personal fealty.

    After World War II, Stalin moved quickly to reassert his authority over his
    deputies, who had come to enjoy a measure of autonomy in their respective
    fields as the war took its toll on the dictator's health and stamina. Within
    a year, Stalin launched a series of savage attacks on every member of the
    Politburo, using a variety of methods to intimidate them, including
    face-to-face confrontations, demotions, assaults on allies and the threat of
    physical repression. In each case, the victim was required to apologize
    speedily and abjectly, usually in writing. Mikoyan, for example, after being
    blamed by Stalin for grain shortages that crippled the country in 1946,
    issued this cringing statement: "Of course, neither I nor others can frame
    questions quite like you [Stalin]. I shall devote all my energy so that I
    may learn from you how to work correctly. I shall do all I can to draw the
    lessons from your stern criticism, so that it is turned to good use in my
    further work under your fatherly guidance."

    In the years that followed, Stalin continued to exert fierce psychological
    pressure on his deputies. Whenever they showed signs of independence, he
    slapped them down ruthlessly. Molotov was even forced to divorce his wife,
    who was subsequently arrested on trumped-up charges that she was linked to
    "Jewish nationalists." The lesson was that nobody, not even a spouse, could
    get in the way of a Politburo member's primary allegiance to Stalin. More
    important still was the demand that personal devotion to Stalin should
    supersede any loyalty to an "office." At the drop of a hat, Stalin could
    create or destroy institutional positions and all the personal incentives
    and authority that came with them.

    AP
    Stalin established a dual political order -- part informal, part unyielding
    -- to maintain a hold over his subordinates.

    Although Stalin sought to inspire in the last years of his dictatorship the
    submissive attitude that the Politburo had displayed toward him immediately
    after the Great Terror, he did not plumb the same depths of brutality to
    achieve it. There were none of the large-scale purges of the political elite
    seen in the 1930s; instead, Stalin appeared to value order and continuity
    within his entourage. When he denounced his closest colleagues, the ensuing
    charade of repentance and chastisement was usually played out in front of
    only a small audience. If the victim was less important, Stalin's criticism
    might leak out into wider circles or appear in the papers.

    At the same time, members of the Politburo learned not to rock the boat,
    knowing that any advantage they might gain from having a rival removed could
    not make up for the lethal climate of uncertainty and suspicion that
    inevitably followed. If they needed reminding of this, it came in 1950 when
    Stalin executed the head of the state planning agency, Nikolai Voznesensky,
    for allowing a trade fair to go ahead in Leningrad without permission from a
    high enough authority: As ever, Stalin hated any sign of autonomy in others.

    Gorlizki and Khlevniuk write persuasively of how fear of Stalin's
    unpredictable behavior united members of the Politburo in a tacit alliance,
    and how their experience of working together laid the foundations of
    collective leadership after Stalin's death. Whereas earlier historians of
    this period have relied largely on newspaper articles, leaked reports and
    memoirs -- many colored to show Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, in
    a positive light -- Gorlizki and Khlevniuk have trawled through piles of
    newly available Central Committee paperwork and personal correspondence to
    create an admirably objective and balanced account of Stalin's relationship
    with his ruling circle, backed up with copious notes.

    For the lay reader there is, if anything, too much detail, and the book
    sometimes becomes bogged down in tracking the constant reorganizations and
    personnel changes that Stalin made to keep his subordinates on their toes.
    Even the personalities of the main actors become submerged eventually in
    this morass of intrigue, although perhaps this is how things really were:
    Certainly the underlying banality of Stalin's dying regime comes through
    strongly. Ultimately, the "cold peace" alluded to in the title is perhaps a
    bit too glacial to appeal to a popular readership, but for scholars seeking
    a hard-nosed analysis of high-level Soviet politics after the war, this book
    could hardly be bettered.

    A former editor at The Moscow Times, Sam Thorne now free-lances from
    Britain.

    Copyright © 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved
Working...
X