A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  servers noted that although the Twenty-second Party Congress confirmed and extended Khrushchev's victory over the "anti-Party group" these enemies of the leader were not even expelled from the Party. New fissures and problems appeared in the ensuing months and years. It would seem that during this time Khrushchev made the mistake of acting in an increasingly autocratic and arbitrary manner even though his power was not nearly as great as Stalin's had been.

  On October 15, 1964, it was announced in Moscow that Nikita Ser-geevich Khrushchev had been "released" from both his Party and his government positions, because of "advanced age and deterioration of his health."

  Brezhnev and Kosygin

  The ten years or so of Khrushchev's rule of the Soviet Union have often been described as a transitional period, but they also marked a culmination. When Khrushchev assumed power in the Kremlin he became both the head of the U.S.S.R. and the leader of an essentially united, ever-victorious, and ever-expanding world communism. He could still believe in the identity of interests of the state and the movement. Indeed he delighted in counting the years, twenty or fifteen, at the end of which the Soviet Union would enter full communism, and additional years, perhaps to the time of "our grandchildren," which would establish communism all over the globe. Khrushchev's own rags-to-riches story was about to be repeated on a universal scale. By the time the enthusiastic leader "retired," communism was hopelessly split between the antagonistic centers of Moscow and Peking, while the Cuban confrontation and defeat spelled out to the Soviet leaders in an unforgettable manner the realities of the atomic age, of which Marx and Engels and even Lenin had had no inkling. At home de-Stalinization kept releasing new furies, and the economic situation called for emergency measures to improve productivity, distribution, and services rather than for blueprints of a communist Utopia. All these, and many other problems, fell upon the shoulders of Khrushchev's successors, and in particular on Leonid Brezhnev, who obtained the top position in the Party, and Alexis Kosygin, who as prime minister became the effective head of the government.

  The new leaders had the usual record of Party and government service, and their views could not be easily distinguished from those of Khrushchev. In fact, Khrushchev apparently had thought of Brezhnev as his eventual successor. The Chinese and certain others who expected Soviet policy to be transformed by the fall of Khrushchev were quickly disappointed. Instead of challenging Khrushchev on fundamentals, the new leadership assailed his personal performance and style of work, accusing him of "subjectivism," authoritarianism, ignorance, "hare-brained schemes," and "mad

  improvisations." Khrushchev's sweeping reorganizational reforms were repealed, some promptly and some after a period of time. It was a certain businesslike, low-key quality of the new administration that presented a striking contrast to the flamboyancy and bombast of the deposed leader. The overturn of October 1964 could also be considered a reassertion of collective leadership, eliminating as it did the latest cult of personality.

  Although the fall of Khrushchev strengthened the forces opposed to de-Stalinization, they proved unable to gain the upper hand. Instead the leadership resorted to compromise which found its characteristic expression in the mammoth Twenty-third Party Congress held in the spring of 1966. There were 4,942 delegates and additional representatives of 86 foreign communist parties and sympathizing organizations - the number announced was 86, but there were actually somewhat fewer. The Congress avoided mention of such crucial issues as China, Stalin, or, for that matter, Khrushchev. With the Vietnam war in full swing, it adopted doctrinaire, anti-imperialistic planks in foreign policy and expounded a hard line in matters of ideology and culture. On the other hand, it upheld a certain economic "liberalization" and took a more realistic view of the economic and social development and potentialities of the Soviet Union than had been customary under Khrushchev. In the words of critical commentators, the Soviet authorities opted for economic development without its consequences. It was by the decision of the Twenty-third Congress that the Presidium became again, as in the days of Stalin, the Politburo, and the first secretary of the Party became again the general secretary.

  Brezhnev was also the central figure and delivered the main address at the Twenty-fourth Party Congress in March and April 1971, the Twenty-fifth Party Congress in late February 1976, and the Twenty-sixth Party Congress in February and March 1981. His authority grew with the years, and one could speak even of a cult of Brezhnev, especially after the general secretary of the Party also became, in 1976, a Marshal of the Soviet Union and his autobiographical writings were given tremendous prominence. Yet he continued, apparently, to work closely with other leaders of the Politburo; besides, Brezhnev, born in 1906, was becoming increasingly an old and sick man. His name and efforts came to be associated with the policy of detente, which the Soviet propaganda machine preferred to call "irreversible," with the great strengthening of the Soviet military might vis-a-vis the United States, and also with economic policies emphasizing such crucial sectors as agriculture and energy. Living standards rose markedly, and some commentators began to write of a Soviet version of consumer attitudes and a consumer society. The Party and government elite in particular came to enjoy high living, although, not surprisingly, it has remained touchy on that subject. In the anecdotal words of Brezhnev's uneducated mother, at the sight of her son's splendid collection of motor

  cars: "That is fine, my dear son, but what if the Bolsheviks return?" Yet, as the Soviet economic situation became more difficult in the late 1970's and early 1980's, the Brezhnev government attempted essentially palliatives rather than fundamental reform: "the decision has been made 'to settle for short-run solutions to long-term problems.' " Certain observers concluded that, although Brezhnev did not have complete control of the Soviet Union, he had full veto power of any reforms and that, therefore, no real change could be expected as long as he remained at the helm.

  When Brezhnev died, finally, on November 10, 1982, at the age of seventy-five, he had outlived such near-peers as Kosygin, by about two years, and the chief Party ideologist, Michael Suslov, by less than a year; Nicholas Podgorny had been ousted from the leadership in 1977; Brezhnev's long-time lieutenant, Andrew Kirilenko, slightly older than his patron, lost his Politburo position in 1982, whether for political or medical reasons. Yet the remaining leaders still belonged to the same well-established group and were of comparable age and, as far as one could tell, orientation. Nicholas Tikhonov, who replaced Kosygin as prime minister, was born, like Brezhnev, in 1906; Constantine Chernenko, probably closest to Brezhnev at the time of the latter's death, was only five years younger; Dmitrii Ustinov, the man in charge of what may be described as the Soviet military-industrial complex, was born in 1908. That the General Secretaryship of the Party went to Iurii Vladimirovich Andropov, sixty-eight, was not unexpected, although some observers were surprised by the rapidity and smoothness of the transition. Credited with uncommon intelligence and general ability, as well as a certain sophistication, Andropov became well-known as the head of the K.G.B., the political police, for the fifteen years before he switched in May 1982 to work in the Party secretariat. He had also been a prominent Politburo member from 1973. Andropov's earlier service included the position of ambassador to Hungary in 1954-57, when he became linked, apparently, both to the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolt and to the institution of a liberal economic policy in Hungary in its wake. A sharp critic of the stagnation and corruption under Brezhnev and, apparently, a determined reformer of sorts, Andropov addressed himself immediately to purging the administrative apparatus and to strengthening labor discipline by such spectacular measures as police searches in public places for absentee workers. But his activity was cut short by kidney failure, and he died after only about a year and three months in office. Andropov was replaced by Chernenko, Brezhnev's intended heir and already a sick man, who lived for barely another year. Then, on March 11, 1985, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, Andropov's fifty-four-year-old protege, was elec
ted by the Politburo to the general secretaryship of the Party.

  Economic Development

  When Stalin died, the Fifth Five-Year Plan was in full swing. It was duly completed in 1955, yielding the usual result of accomplishment in industry - checkered, to be sure, with huge overfulfillments and under-fulfillments - based on great exertion and privation. The Sixth Five-Year Plan, scheduled to run from 1956 to 1960, promptly succeeded the fifth. Its period was truncated in 1958, however, and a Seven-Year Plan to last from 1959 through 1965 was proclaimed instead. The official explanation for the change, which stressed the discovery of vast new natural resources that altered Soviet economic prospects, was not convincing. Apparently, the Sixth Five-Year Plan had fallen considerably behind its assigned norms of production and the Soviet leadership decided to try a fresh start.

  Another change in Soviet economic life occurred in 1957, when Khrushchev, in a move aimed at a geographic dispersion, or deconcentration - although not organizational decentralization - of authority, transferred the direction of a good proportion of industry from the ministries in Moscow to regional Economic Councils. Reflecting the constant Soviet search for the most effective and efficient economic organization, this reform was nevertheless considered by many observers as primarily political in motivation: it removed from Moscow large economic managerial staffs which, it would seem, had supported Malenkov in the struggle for power within the Kremlin. Another aim might have been to give the local Party bosses more authority in economic matters.

  The industrial goals of the Seven-Year Plan were pronounced reallistic by such Western economists as Campbell and Jasny. While concentrating as usual on heavy industry, with special attention paid to, for example, further electrification and development of the chemical industry, the plan called for a rate of industrial growth approximately 20 per cent slower than that achieved during the Fifth Five-Year Plan. In this sense it was also less ambitious than the abortive Sixth Five-Year Plan. In evaluating the Seven-Year Plan, Campbell made the following comparison between the Soviet and the U.S. economies:

  If it is assumed that industry in the United States will continue to expand at the rate of about 4 per cent that has characterized the postwar period, and that the rate of growth planned by the Russians for their industry is actually achieved, their industrial output will rise from about 45 per cent of ours at the beginning of the seven-year period to about 61 per cent at the end. In other words they will still be a long way behind us (and even further behind in terms of per capita output, it may be added), though they will certainly have made a remarkable gain on us.

  In fact, Campbell's prediction proved to be generally intelligent, although impossible to evaluate definitively with any degree of precision - incidentally, such comparisons give vastly different results depending on whether they are made in rubles or in dollars. After Khrushchev too, it might be added, the Soviet economy continued to gain in relative output on the American economy, helped by such developments as the recession in the United States and the Western world in general in the 1970's and 1980's.

  Although concentrating on capital goods, the Seven-Year Plan allowed somewhat more for the everyday needs of the people than had generally been true of previous Soviet industrialization. Especially interesting was the ambitious housing and general building program of the plan, which aimed to increase the total Soviet building investment by 83 per cent. Even when executed not in its entirety and with buildings of inferior quality, this aspect of the Seven-Year Plan constituted a major contribution to the improvement of the Soviet standard of living. Superior quality and unflagging attention were devoted, by contrast, to such advanced technical fields as atomic energy, rockets, missiles, and space travel. From the launching of the first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik I, in October 1957, the U.S.S.R. has achieved a remarkable series of pioneer successes in rockets and space travel.

  Important developments took place in Soviet agriculture during the Khrushchev years. Indeed, frantic efforts to raise agricultural production constituted, together with certain concessions to the consumer, the salient new features of Soviet economic policy. The magnitude of the Soviet farm problem can be seen from the fact that, by contrast with industrial achievements, the gross output of agriculture in 1952 was only some 6 per cent above 1928. In 1954 Khrushchev set into full operation his sweeping "virgin lands" project: huge areas of arid lands in Asiatic Russia, eventually totaling some seventy million acres, were to be brought under cultivation. The undertaking, supported by great exertion as well as by a mighty propaganda effort, gave remarkably mixed results from year to year, depending in large part on weather conditions, but did not live up to expectations. The new first secretary also started a huge corn-planting program. He further decided to boost drastically the production of such foods as meat, milk, and butter. These items came to rival electric power and steel in Soviet propaganda and to serve as significant gauges in "surpassing America."

  Yet the condition of Soviet agriculture remained bad. Official claims and promises, especially the latter, differed sharply from reality. Indeed, the mass planting of corn, often in unsuitable conditions, and even the huge gamble on the virgin lands, which are difficult to cultivate, might have been unwise. To increase production Soviet authorities resorted to

  the old method of further socialization. Between 1953 and 1957 the number of sovkhozes increased from 4,857 to 6,000, while the number of kolkhozes declined at the same time from 91,000 to 78,900, reducing the kolkhoz share of land under cultivation from 84 to 72 per cent. By 1961 the number of collective farms had fallen to 44,000 - and by the end of the decade they were to be reduced further, through amalgamation, and absorptions by the sovkhozes, to under 35,000; by 1974, there was in the Soviet Union slightly more land under sovkhoz than under kolkhoz cultivation, with only some 30,000 collective farms still in operation. As late as September 1958, Khrushchev, other leaders, and the propaganda machine still spoke of the more truly socialist nature, as well as of the technical superiority, of the sovkhoz system of agriculture over that of the kolkhoz. Yet, apparently because of the strength of peasant resistance, especially of the passive kind, the first secretary stopped the attack on kolkhozes in early 1959 at the Twenty-first Party Congress.

  The official policy toward the collective farms continued to be ambivalent. There is a consensus among experts that the income of the members of the kolkhozes, extremely low at the time of Stalin's death, increased markedly in subsequent years. The set prices paid by the state for compulsory deliveries of collective farm produce were raised to more realistic levels in 1956 and immediately afterward, enlarging the income of individual kolkhoz members by as much as 75 per cent, according to Marchenko's calculations. The collectives themselves also gained in strength. In 1958, in an abrupt reversal of previous policy, the government enacted measures to disband the Machine Tractor Stations, enabling the kolkhozes to obtain in ownership all the agricultural equipment which they needed. And, as already mentioned, early in 1959 attacks on the collectives ceased and they were again recognized as the proper form of agricultural organization at the given stage of development of the Soviet economy and society.

  But, on the other hand, state and Party pressure on the kolkhozes continued and in certain respects even gained momentum. The years witnessed a great stress on increasing the "indivisible fund" of a collective - that is, that part of its revenue which belongs to the entire kolkhoz and is not parceled out among individual members - and on using this fund for such "socially valuable" undertakings as building schools and roads in the locality. The purchase of M.T.S. machinery by the collectives in itself necessitated heavy expenditure. Also, Khrushchev and other leaders returned to the theme that the private plots of the members of a kolkhoz are meant merely to augment a family's food supply rather than to produce for the market and that they should become entirely unnecessary with further successes of socialist agriculture.

  Moreover, the Seven-Year Plan goals of increasing agricultural produc- />
  tion by 70 per cent and raising labor productivity in the kolkhozes by 100 per cent and in the sovkhozes by 60 to 65 per cent proved to be impossible to attain. Perhaps they had been predicated on a further drastic socialization of Soviet agriculture, and in particular the elimination or near elimination of the twenty million small private plots of the members of the collectives, which the leadership did not dare carry out.

  Again, in the opinion of Bergson and other Western observers, the agricultural goals adopted by the Twenty-second Party Congress as part of the program of creating a "material basis" for communism by 1980 seemed fantastically optimistic and quite unreal - an estimate that did not apply to nearly the same extent to the industrial goals. Khrushchev's frantic efforts after the Congress to bolster farm production - this time demanding the abolition of the grass rotation system in favor of planting feed crops such as sugar beets, corn, peas, and beans - served to emphasize further the crisis of Soviet agriculture. It is also probably in connection with the economic, especially the agricultural, crisis that Khrushchev enacted, in 1962, his strangest reorganizational measure: the across-the-board division of the hitherto monolithic Communist party into two party hierarchies, one to deal with industry and the other with agriculture.