Surviving Stalin

Quite recently I wrote an article for TheArticle discussing the mortality of the members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I showed that of the seven members of the Politburo (the highest organ of the Party) at the time of Lenin’s death, 16 years later only one was still alive. His name was Joseph Stalin. It was a fantastic achievement, worthy of the pen of Agatha Christie.

Stalin, alas, was not a contented man. Once you get into the habit of expelling and executing members of the Politburo it is difficult to stop. However, to be able to expel members of the Politburo, first you have to elect them to the Politburo. That leads to further complications because the dates should not be too close to each other.  One cannot (and Stalin was well aware of this restriction) elect somebody to the Politburo on Monday, expel him on Wednesday, try him for treason on Friday and execute him on Sunday. Not even Stalin could do that. There must be a decent interval between these events, he accepted.

A good example is Vosnesensky, who was elected in February 1941 and arrested in October 1949, a reasonably short interval. Yezhov (also transliterated as Ezhov) had an even shorter period in office, not much more than a couple of years, before he too was arrested.

Stalin was determined to start again – from scratch. As if it was a ninepin game, he replaced all the fallen pins by new ones and started to play the same old game again. The new leading body was not exactly the same as the old Politburo. Firstly, it was given a new name. It was to be called the Presidium, a much grander title. Secondly, it was much bigger in size: more than 20 members, too large for a body that makes decisions (see C. Northcote Parkinson’s Parkinson’s law, Chapter 3, “The coefficient of inefficiency”). So, presumably the newly elected members were there only to occupy the chairs, not to open their mouths.

Let me give a partial list of those newly elected members at sessions in the late 1920s and early 1930s: Dzerdzinski, Kalinin, Kirov, Kossior, Kozlov, Kuybishev, Postishev, Rudzutak, Chubar, Eiche, Yezhov, Ordzhonikidze, Zhdanov, Baghirov, Voznesensky, Khrushchev. Some of these (Dzerzhinski, Kalinin, Kozlov, Kuybishev, Kuusinen, Zhdanov) were supposed to have died natural deaths. But one cannot be certain that any politician in Stalin’s time ever had the option to die in his own bed — a tradition that Putin seems to be very successful in reviving. It seems to be unlikely that about matters of life and death in Stalin’s Presidium we shall ever know the truth.

Ordzhonikidze, we do know, committed suicide. Kirov, we do know, was assassinated. Rudzutak, Eiche, Chubar Kossior and Postishev were happy to oversee the collectivisation of Ukrainian agriculture and the production, consumption and export of Ukrainian grain in the early 1930s that led to the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians — a genocide known as the Holodomor. Their crime was to be willing tools of Stalin, for carrying out his instructions. They were tried and executed in 1937 when they were no longer needed. Voznesensky was  elected to the Presidium in 1941 and arrested in October 1949. He was an economist. There was no obvious reason for his arrest. He was apparently caught up in the power struggle. Stalin probably found him too clever.

Yezhov was the head of the Soviet secret police for a couple of years during Stalin’s purge. He was responsible for the killing of a vast number of innocent people (called Yezhovshchina in his memory). Someone had to take responsibility. In 1938 he was arrested and executed two years later.

Baghirov’s was an unusual case. He was a citizen of Azerbaijan, terrorising everyone in the country. So much so, in fact, that the Moscow leadership had to intervene to arrest and speedily execute him.

Rianazov’s was also an unusual case, but for a different reason. He was the Head of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, keeping Marxist theory alive and trying to adapt it to new circumstances. As an Old Bolshevik he was bound to be liquidated, but in his case there was a powerful additional reason why he had to perish in the purges. Allegedly, in the middle of the 1920s, when some highfalutin Marxist arguments were discussed by the leadership and Stalin started to speak, Riazanov interrupted him: “Koba, stop it, don’t make a fool of yourself, we all know that theory is not your strong point.”

The last man on my list above was Khrushchev, Stalin’s favourite clown. He was willing to dance whenever he was called upon to lighten up the drink parties Stalin regularly had. Khrushchev went on to become one of Stalin’s successors and survived all the others on my list. He died in bed.

Then there was Beria. After Stalin’s death in March 1953 all the other party leaders, not without reason, were afraid of the power of Beria, who was in charge of the secret police. He had the means and he had the motivation to follow his master’s example. Would he get rid of all of them in true Stalinist fashion? That was the question.

It was easy for the rest of the leaders to come to an agreement. Beria was an existential threat, meaning that the life of the rest of the leadership was at risk. Khrushchev very likely took the lead. With his position in the party he could command the allegiance of the army. He managed to invite Beria to a meeting, where he was immediately arrested by trusted members of the Army and, after a brief trial within closed doors, he was shot. With Beria gone the power struggle quietened down. For a while Khrushchev and Malenkov coexisted more or less peacefully, the former as the First Secretary of the party and Malenkov dominating the government posts.

The first step to break the truce was taken by Malenkov. By 1957 Malenkov thought he was strong enough to challenge Khrushchev. In a coup within the Presidium, he demanded the resignation of Khrushchev, but the First Secretary fought back. Khrushchev called a meeting of the Central Committee where he managed to obtain a majority. He called his opponents “the Anti-Party Group”. They were named as Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, esteemed and long-standing members of the Politburo and later the Presidium. They were exiled to Siberia or, in Molotov’s case, made ambassador to Mongolia.  The accusation of being “Anti-Party” historically always implied that they were spies  at least for a country or two, with a show trial and three  death sentences closely following.

None of this happened in 1957. Surprisingly, the “Anti-Party three” were only forced to give up all political activity. While a return from Elba was never on the agenda, they lived worry-free until the age of 88 (Malenkov), 96 (Molotov) and 98 (Kaganovich). This was a great departure from Soviet practice. When in 1964 Khrushchev was forced to resign by Brezhnev, he lost his titles but not his life, nor even his freedom to publish his memoirs.

All of us interested in Soviet/Russian history hoped that “live and let live” would be the new motto. We were wrong.

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