Russia After Stalin

by Isaac Deutscher

  Altogether the implications of the decree of March 28th were so far-reaching as to permit us to describe that day as the birth date of a new regime.

  Another week had scarcely passed before, on April 3rd and 4th, the political police was subjected to devastating humiliation. Its latest feat of vigilance, the ‘discovery’ of the ‘doctors' plot’, was exposed before Russia and the whole world as a criminal fraud. A certain Riumin, chief of the Investigation Department in the former Ministry of State Security, was named as the official responsible for the concoction. He was arrested. A woman informer, Doctor Timashuk, who had helped to arraign the Kremlin physicians and had been awarded for this the Order of Lenin and been celebrated as a national heroine, was deprived of the Order and disgraced.

  Three days later, on April 6th, Ignatiev, the former Minister of State Security, so recently elected to the General Secretariat of the Party, was dismissed with ignominy from his new post. At the same time the government firmly disavowed the campaign of anti-Semitic insinuation and incitement which had been waged since the alleged discovery of the doctors' conspiracy.

  If this had been all, the event would have been startling, but it would not necessarily have signified a dramatic break with the Stalin era. Under Stalin too, Russia had seen chiefs of the G.P.U. or N.K.V.D., masters of life and death, suddenly dismissed in disgrace. One of them, Yagoda, was even tried and executed as a ‘traitor’ and ‘enemy of the people’. But such occurrences were merely incidents in the great purges; and we now know that Yagoda was victimized because he had shown himself reluctant and half-hearted in arraigning the old Bolsheviks. Up to 1939 the political police was purged only in order to force it to intensify the purges. This was obviously not the motive behind the dismissal of Ignatiev and Riumin. The political police was now ‘purged’ in order to prevent it from starting a new series of frame-ups.

  This was shown clearly by the manner in which the Kremlin physicians were rehabilitated. The government declared that the political police had extorted the evidence against them ‘by methods which were inadmissible and strictly forbidden by Soviet law’. In other words, the police had forced the doctors to make confessions in line with those that had figured so strangely and prominently in every purge trial and invariably had provided the only ‘evidence’ for the prosecution.

  It should be pointed out that in 1939, when Beria was winding up the purges, many of the victims were also released and even rehabilitated. This was done on the ground that the accusations had been ‘based on a deplorable misunderstanding’ — these words became a routine formula at the time. Never during the Stalin era was the political police charged with illegal extortion of evidence. Never was the secret of the ‘confessions’ officially and publicly exposed.

  It was on those ‘confessions’ that the omnipotence of the police rested. Their regularity, their inevitability, and their nightmarish character had invested the political police with a mysterious power, a basilisk look, which no Soviet citizen could hope to withstand or elude. No matter how innocent he might be of the crimes attributed to him, the citizen knew that he was helpless and would not be allowed to prove his innocence. Subjected to ceaseless day-and-night ‘interrogation’ over weeks and months he was sure to reach the limits of endurance, to collapse and confess, and thus supply his persecutors with the ‘evidence’ they needed. In recent years this technique was not frequently applied in Russia, although it was readily exported to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. But as long as the technique was not officially and publicly exposed the mainspring of the machinery of terror remained intact.

  At that mainspring Malenkov's government struck a telling blow when it ordered the arrest of the officials who had been in charge of the investigation into the ‘doctors' plot’, and when it publicly exposed the criminal manner in which they had extorted their ‘evidence’.

  Officials who had the extraction of ‘confessions’ on their conscience must have read with a shudder the communique about the release of the Kremlin physicians. The shudder must have been felt in every dark office of the political police throughout Russia. Every man, high and low, in the service must have wondered whether, if he ever again tried to extort confessions, he would not be made to pay for it with his head or at least his freedom. The masters of terror were themselves terrified, and the mass of the Soviet people must have been thrilled by the mere thought that henceforth they might be free to defend their rights against their persecutors. Malenkov's government explicitly assured them of this.

  It was as if a long, severe, cruel political winter was over, a Siberian winter which had lasted for more than two decades. Spring was in the air; and, politically, the whole of Russia seemed to be clearing the snow from her doorsteps in those memorable April days.

  Great historical changes in the climate of a country sometimes show themselves more directly in ordinary scenes of daily life than in the official documents, public statements and pompous editorials, from which an unimaginative historian will one day construe a dead picture of those days. The official documents and even — who would have supposed it? — the editorials of Pravda made exciting reading. But they conveyed little in comparison, for instance, with this description of a seemingly trivial street incident given by Mr. Knudson, one of a group of American journalists who visited Moscow early in April.

  ‘To the amazement of Western nationals in Moscow and the Russians themselves, the Americans were allowed to use their cameras freely.’ Under the Stalinist obsession with secrecy this was unthinkable. Yet the ban on the use of cameras was not rescinded. Mr. Knudson himself was stopped in Moscow by a policeman when he was taking photographs and was asked to produce his passport. ‘I left my passport at the hotel, and as the policeman tried to talk to me in Russian a large crowd gathered. One of the Russians was a woman who spoke English. I told her I was one of the visiting newspaper men. "Let him go. He is an American,” she told the policeman. And he did.’ (The Manchester Guardian, 10 April 1953.)

  This little scene in which a policeman, disregarding his standing orders and instructions, did what a woman from the crowd told him to do, sums up the new mood.

  But can Malenkov's government afford to destroy the mainspring of the terror? Dare he throw out of gear the whole machinery of terror?

  Malenkov almost certainly intends to tame rather than to undo the political police. It is always difficult and dangerous for any dictatorial regime to try to liberalize itself. Popular grievances pent up in previous years may be so intense and bitter that, once the floodgates are thrown open, the grievances may overflow and threaten all groups associated with the previous regime, including the reformers.

  The reformers may then take fright, shrink from the consequences of their own liberal gestures, and surrender to the adherents of the terror.

  Up to the middle of April 1953 no sign of such a development had become visible. However, popular reaction against the old terror may assume a less direct, less political character. It may show itself in a spontaneous slackening of social discipline, in particular of labour discipline; a slackening which could disturb the national economy and the rhythm of its work. The government might then feel tempted, or be driven, to curtail the freedoms it had just granted. An inclination to show the strong arm once again would not be surprising in men trained in the Stalin school of government. Malenkov and his associates are still half sub-merged in their Stalinist past even though they attempt to escape from it.

  Nor is it certain that Malenkov's government is quite aware of the far-reaching implications of its own deeds.

  Under the amnesty civil rights have been restored to the survivors of the great purges. They may be a mere handful, but they will speak of their experiences and record them. Some may even take courage and ask for an open and formal revision of their cases. Whether they do so or not, history has in any case already begun a great revision of the purge trials. Russia's mind has been set in motion. When the people are told that the political police trumped up char
ges and forced defendants to confess imaginary crimes, disturbing questions must begin to stir in many minds:

  Was the case of the Kremlin doctors exceptional? Were the previous trials not also based on frame-ups? Were Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Radek, Tukhachevsky, Rykov, and so many other former heroes of the revolution really guilty of the crimes attributed to them? Were they spies, terrorists, traitors? Or did they die as martyrs? Should not perhaps their ashes too be interred in the Pantheon? Should not the remains of Trotsky be brought back from remote Mexico and laid to rest there? Should not the archives be thrown open to reveal the whole inner story of the past and fix the responsibility for its horrors?

  Such doubts will now inevitably, though perhaps slowly, invade the minds of the intelligentsia and the workers.

  Malenkov's government may be anxious to put an end to the misdeeds of the political police and to restore the constitutional rights of the people. But it also has a vested interest in preventing or delaying a historic revision of the old purges. It wishes to manage the present more rationally, but it can have no desire to throw a rational light on the past, in which all its members were implicated, some more and others less. (Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor in all purge trials and the detestable author of the worst frame-ups, still represents Malenkov's government at the United Nations.)

  It is even doubtful whether the government can afford to give a fair trial to the officials charged with fabricating the ‘doctors' plot’. Such a trial might lead to most embarrassing revelations. The defendants might plead mitigating circumstances and point to accomplices and instigators higher up. They might try to explain a few curious details of the fabrication and wittingly or unwittingly bring to light deeper cleavages in the State which have perhaps not yet been overcome.

  If, to avoid such embarrassing consequences, the trial were to be staged in the familiar style, with set speeches and confessions, then its result would be merely to make scapegoats of a few officials, to reduce to a mockery Malenkov's assurances about the new era of constitutional rights, and to restore the arbitrary powers of the political police. It would therefore not be surprising if, to escape the dilemma, the government either avoided a public trial altogether or under some pretext delayed it indefinitely.

  In any case it is still possible that a new gust of cold Siberian wind will nip the first shoots of reform, and that the hopeful opening of a new era will be followed by disillusionment.

  Once again the phantoms of 1855 and 1861 may return to the Russian scene.

  When Alexander II initiated the ‘liberal era’ even the most extreme opponents of Tsardom acclaimed him with enthusiasm. Herzen and Chernyshevsky, the two leaders of radical and revolutionary opinion, hailed the Emancipator. The new era was no mere wishful dream. Russian peasants were serfs no longer. Censorship practically ceased, although it was not formally abolished. Restrictions on the freedom of movement of Russian subjects, especially the ban on travelling abroad which had been enforced by Nicholas I, were declared null and void. Every kind of official abuse was exposed, and the old reactionary civil cervice was disgraced. In one of his first proclamations Alexander stated in words not very different from those that Malenkov has now used: ‘May Russia's internal welfare be established and perfected; may justice and mercy reign in her Law Courts.’

  But the system of government remained autocratic, and presently Alexander found that the leaders of opinion demanded more freedom than he was prepared to grant. He began to hesitate and to retrace his steps. And as he attempted to reimpose despotism he aroused poignant disillusionment. Chernyshevsky was convicted to hard labour and deported. Even before that Herzen had become doubtful. On the evening in 1861 when he invited friends to his London home to celebrate the emancipation of the Russian peasants, he learned about the bloody suppression of Polish demonstrations. He raised his glass to drink the Tsar's health, but interrupted himself to say: ‘Friends, our day of rejoicing is darkened by unexpected news: blood is flowing in Warsaw.’

  How far is Malenkov prepared to go on the road of reform?

  The members of the ruling group can hardly see eye to eye on this issue. There are among them the men of Stalin's Old Guard who were prominently associated with the terror of previous years; and there are also the representatives of the younger generation who are freer to promote reform. But to carry out a complete revision of the Stalin era men may be needed even younger than those for whom Malenkov speaks, men with no stake at all in Stalinist orthodoxy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FUTURE PROSPECTS:

  FOREIGN POLICY

  IN his first Statement as Prime Minister, Malenkov said:

  ‘The most correct, indispensable, and just foreign policy is a policy of peace between all peoples, a policy of mutual confidence, business-like, based on facts, and confirmed by facts.’

  Malenkov's words were an implicit criticism of Stalin's conduct of foreign affairs, although the criticism applied to the manner rather than the matter of Stalinist diplomacy.

  Stalin's foreign policy was bogged down in the irrationalism of the cult and the magic. His diplomacy did not lack a peculiar realism and shrewdness; but it was incapable of facing facts. It was obsessed with prestige. Nothing could be allowed to detract from the greatness and infallibility of the Father of the Peoples. Every Soviet success had to be fantastically exaggerated; every reverse had to be dressed up as a success. Not only propagandists, but also ambassadors and diplomatic spokesmen had to conform to this style. Consequently the hypocrisy which permeated domestic policy affected foreign policy also; and this hypocrisy accounted for the bizarre unreality and rigidity in Stalinist diplomacy.

  To be sure, in critical situations Stalin carried out sharp reversals of policy which gave the impression of great flexibility. But the need for these sudden and sharp reversals sprang also from rigidity. Quick perception of shifts in international alignments, the subtle nuance and manoeuvre, the gradual transition from one policy to another — all these were beyond Stalin's diplomacy. Instructed to pursue a certain line of conduct, Soviet Foreign Ministers followed their instructions to the point of absurdity, until Stalin himself suddenly stopped them and ordered them to turn in the opposite direction.

  At home a quotation from Stalin was supposed to resolve any doubt on any subject. Therefore the final and decisive argument produced by Vyshinsky, Malik, and Gromyko before hostile or indifferent foreign audiences was also the sacred quotation from Stalin. Even when they had a strong case to make they most often wrecked it through unbusiness-like presentation. They had to repeat ad nauseam the same abuses or protestations of friendship, regardless of the situation.

  Stalinist propaganda usually vaunted the agility of Soviet diplomacy in exploiting ‘the contradictions in the enemy camp’; and anti-Stalinists believed in this and feared it. In fact, Stalin's diplomacy frequently acted as if it were desperately anxious to eliminate all those ‘contradictions in the bourgeois camp’: it semed bent on uniting adversaries and on turning neutrals into adversaries. If it, nevertheless, benefited from divisions in the anti-communist world, this was due to the inherent force of those divisions.

  Malenkov's first preoccupation was to free Soviet foreign policy from its irrational Byzantinism and to make it more worldly and subtle. A peace policy ‘based on facts’ required that Soviet diplomacy relax its inflexible attitudes and postures. Such a policy could not be pursued by means of constant repetition of cliches dictated by requirements of domestic orthodoxy but utterly ineffective or even incomprehensible when produced at an international forum.

  Almost immediately after Stalin's funeral, the style of Soviet diplomacy became more civilized and sober. Less obsessed with prestige than its predecessor, Malenkov's

  government proceeded to free itself from some of the rigid commitments it had inherited. It dealt in a conciliatory spirit with incidents in the ‘air corridor’ from Western Germany to Berlin. It offered its services in repatriating British and French civilian prisoners f
rom Korea. It ceased to obstruct the election of a new General Secretary of the United Nations. In these gestures of conciliation there was no surrender of any vital Soviet interest. But even if only gestures, they contrasted refreshingly with the ceaseless mutual mud-slinging of the cold war.

  Soon afterwards, on March 28th, the Chinese and North Koreans — under Soviet inspiration — made new proposals for armistice negotiations in Korea. The previous protracted negotiations had reached a deadlock over one point: the repatriation of prisoners of war. With Soviet support, the North Koreans and Chinese had insisted on the unconditional repatriation of all their prisoners. Now they announced that they were willing to abandon that demand.

  The new Soviet attitude over the Korean war was no mere change in diplomatic style — it foreshadowed a new policy.

  It is evident that during Stalin's last years the ruling circles were divided over foreign policy at least as much as over domestic affairs. This division was not very different from that familiar in other countries. One faction was anxious to seek conciliation with the West, another refused to countenance ‘appeasement’. There is no need to have recourse to guesswork in order to reconstruct the broad outlines of the disagreement — Stalin himself provided the clue in his much discussed Bolshevik article on the eve of the Nineteenth Party Congress.