PROBLEMS OF COMMUNISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 63
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2004
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: January 1, 1962
• Content Type: OPEN

Aplroved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
W0,b1cmxxS Of
COMMUNISM
AFTER THE CONGRESS
WHAT?
INTFANATIONAL COMMUNISM
Richard Lowenthal
KIIRUSI!CHLV AN I) STALIN
Robert Conquest
Lazar Pistrak
111t? SOVIET ECONOMY
Leonard Schapiro
Rush V. Greenslade
VOL. XI No. 1 App)ved For Release 2004/02/03: CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Jan-Feb 1962
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Problems of
COMMUNISM
Problems of Communism is a bimonthly
publication. Its purpose is to provide analyses
and significant background information on
various aspects of world communism today.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not
necessarily reflect the views or policies of the
United States Government. Any reprinted
materials in Problems of Communism have
been copyright cleared and, unless specific
restrictions are noted, may be republished in
all countries except the United States and
Canada. Subscriptions or single copies may
be obtained from the distributing sources
noted at the bottom of this page. Comments
and suggestions from readers should be
addressed to:
The Editors, Problems of Communism
United States Information Agency
1776 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington 25, D. C.
NUMBER l VOL. XI
JAN-FEB I 1962
The Congress and Its Aftermath
Schism Among the Faithful,
by Richard Lowenthal ..................... 1
The Three Funerals of Joseph Stalin,
by Robert Conquest ....................... 15
Khrushchev and the Purges,
by Lazar Pistrak .......................... 21
The Party's New Rules,
by Leonard Schapiro ..................... 28
Forward to Communism?,
by Rush V. Greenslade .................... 36
The Economics of Communist China,
by Alexander Eckstein ...................... 43
Filling Stalin's Shoes,
by Leon Goure ............................ 46
How Statistics Are Made,
by Jan S. Prybyla ........................... 50
Some Aspects of Soviet Reality,
by JUSTAN ..............................
Correspondence ........................... 58
PLEASE NOTE:
Outside the United States, Problems of Communism may be obtained from the nearest office of the United States Informa-
tion Service. For sale within the United States by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington 25, D. C. Price per copy: $.35. Subscription price: $1.50 a year. Additional $.50 for foreign mailing.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS
The Congress and Its Aftermath
EDITORS' NOTE: The 22nd Congress of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union, which at first seemed
to promise not much more than a unanimous confirma-
tion of the party's plan to achieve "full communism"
within 20 years, ended up as an affair at which passions
ran high, issues were raised, aired, but not resolved, and
decisions were taken which may yet have a profound
effect on the f uture course not only of the Soviet Union,
but of the entire Communist movement throughout the
world. This, indeed, is the opinion of Richard Lowen-
thal, who in his article traces the vicissitudes of Khru-
shchev's attempt to achieve a greater flexibility and
revolutionary elan in the policies of both the Soviet
Union and the international Communist movement,
while at the same time merging both into one cohesive
and disciplined whole. The 22nd Party Congress, says
the author, has dealt an irreversible blow to this attempt,
and henceforth we may expect to see growing discord
and even a tug-of-war within the Communist camp, and
especially a sharpening of the Sino-Soviet conflict.
That a lack of "monolithic unity" is characteristic not
only of the international Communist movement but of
the Soviet Communist Party itself is shown by Mr. Rob-
ert Conquest, who in his article depicts the shifts in
the party's image of Stalin, particularly since 1956, link-
ing the ups and downs of the Vozhd's posthumous for-
tunes to the disputes over wider policies within the
leadership of the CPSU. Mr. Pistrak's article (taken
from his book The Grand Tactician) provides further
evidence that the new "de-Stalinization" drive has been
inspired by purely political considerations, and that the
righteous wrath of Khrushchev et al. over "Stalin's
crimes"-some lurid examples of which were offered
to the delegates at the 22nd Congress-should be viewed
with a healthy dose of suspicion. Similar suspicion, as
Mr. Schapiro's article makes clear, should be exercised
with regard to the new program and by-laws of the
CPSU, for while they do reflect the desire of certain
elements of the party for a greater measure of internal
democracy, they are by and large calculated to strengthen,
rather than dilute, the party's power over the rest
of society. Finally, in "Forward to Communism?,"
Mr. Greenslade analyzes the economic program that is
to bring the Soviet people onto the threshold of the
Promised Land. As demonstrated by the author, the
program is highly questionable not only in economic
terms, but even as a propaganda document. Neverthe-
less, it sheds considerable light on the general line of
the party's economic policy, and thus, too, on the future
development of the entire Soviet system.
Schism Among the Faithful
By Richard Lowenthal
IN THE HISTORY of the Russian revolution and of
international communism, N. S. Khrushchev is emerg-
ing with increasing clarity as a figure of transition. He,
more than anyone else, has helped to destroy the Stalinist
Mr. Lowenthal, whose contributions are familiar to the
readers of this journal, is currently Visiting Professor
at the Free University of Berlin.
forms of organization and thought that were no longer
adequate to the changing character of Soviet society
and the changing international situation. Applying a
rare combination of realistic shrewdness and primitive
faith, he has striven valiantly to replace outdated dogma
with a new ideological synthesis. This synthesis has
attempted, inside the Soviet Union, to combine the
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 1
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
development of a new incentive economy with the con-
tinued monopolistic rule of the party. Beyond Russia's
frontiers it has attempted to combine the expansion of
Soviet power with the advance of independent revolu-
tionary allies in a single bid for world hegemony.
Khrushchev is now beginning to see this beatific vision
disintegrate before his eyes-to discover that while his
work of destruction will last, his synthesis is proving
much more fragile and shortlived than the dogma it
was intended to replace.
The 22nd Congress of the CPSU marks the moment
of truth when this discovery forced itself on Stalin's
successor. Already labeled the Congress of the "second
de-Stalinization," it has been widely interpreted as a
new stage in a development that began at the 20th
Congress in 1956. Certainly the great themes of post-
Stalinism were heard at both congresses: the denuncia-
tion of the regime of mass terrorism and the pledge to
avoid its return, the proclamation of the autonomy of
national parties within the Communist world move-
ment and of the equality of Communist governments
within the "socialist world system," and the vision of
worldwide victory without world war. Yet the writer
will attempt to show that behind this verbiage the con-
gresses were vastly different; that while the 20th Con-
gress saw the birth of the new synthesis described above,
the 22nd saw the beginning of its collapse.
The foundation of Khrushchev's policy for interna-
tional communism has been his belief that there could
be no major contradiction between the interests of
Soviet power and the interests of revolutionary expansion
by independent Communist states and movements. The
collapse of this assumption became manifest at the 22nd
Congress with the breakdown of the Soviet-Chinese
show of formal unity, ending the compromise negotiated
after prolonged debate at the 1960 Communist world
conference. This breakdown forced Khrushchev's hand.
In contrast to the 20th Congress-where the dramatic
form Khrushchev chose for "de-Stalinization" (his
notorious "secret speech") was mainly impelled by do-
mestic resistance within the party and government
leadership to his political innovations-the dramatic
events at the 22nd Congress were prompted by the
international crisis. It was the open Chinese challenge
to the authority of Khrush.chev and his team, expressed
in persistent and even provocative backing for the de-
feated Stalinist remnants in the USSR and the Soviet
bloc, that forced the Soviet leaders publicly to destroy
the last shreds of the Stalin legend and to remove the
body of their teacher from Lenin's side-going far
beyond the formal ideological resume of the process of
de-Stalinization for which the CPSU and the Russian
people had been prepared.
The prospect of open and insoluble ideological quarrel
between the two principal Communist powers leaves
the international Communist movement bewildered and
divided, without a recognized organizational center or
ideological authority. In the babble of voices that has
replaced the traditional unisono, some of the leaders can
be overheard repeating lines familiar from the ideo-
logical crisis of 1956-57-the crisis that followed the
first de-Stalinization. But that first crisis was overcome
with the help of Chinese support for Soviet leadership.
The new crisis is likely to prove more lasting-not only
because the same solution is no longer open, but be-
cause the developments that have led to the crisis have
also proven that the assumptions underlying Khru-
shchev's version of "proletarian internationalism" were
hopelessly wrong.
Some Basic Differences
To grasp the depth of the new crisis in relations be-
tween the Soviet Union and the international Communist
movement, we have to go back to a contrast between
Khrushchev's concept of these relations and Stalin's.
Stalin won and consolidated his position of total con-
trol over the Soviet Union by proclaiming the principle
that the power interests of the Soviet state-of the
"building of socialism in a single country"-must be
given clear preference over the interests of "world
revolution" whenever the two were in conflict. Recog-
nition of the possibility of such conflict, and of the
need for a clear choice, was the core of his ideological
difference with Trotsky, his first and most formidable
rival. Haunted by his vision of "capitalist encirclement"
of the isolated Soviet state, confirmed for him by the
failure of any Communist movement outside Russia to
win power by its own strength, Stalin forced his princi-
ple on the international Communist movement, using
the international centralism of the "world party" created
by Lenin to make all Communist parties accept the
complete subordination of their struggle to the interests
of the "fatherland of all toilers." In the end, such
subordination became, in the Stalinist view, the very
criterion of true "proletarian internationalism." The
annexation of the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, and
Bessarabia during World War II, and the later creation
of a Communist-governed empire by Soviet bayonets,
were offered as proof that the expansion of Soviet power
was the only realistic way to promote the advance of
the Communist system. To the believers, Stalin's choice
appeared justified by success to the point where the
interests of world revolution were wholly comprised
in, the interests of the Soviet Union.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
2
 Yet even then, the first case of an independent Com-
munist revolution, that of Yugoslavia, was beginning to
create unforeseen problems, and the victory of com-
munism in China foreshadowed much greater difficulties.
Consistent to the end, Stalin had advised against the
decisive steps towards the conquest of power in both
countries, whether from doubts about the possibility of
success or from anxiety about its consequences. Com-
munist states that had arisen by independent revolutions
clearly could not be run by remote control from Moscow
in the same way as could Soviet-created satellite states or
powerless Communist parties ; though an attempt to
establish such control was tried in Yugoslavia, it failed
so dismally that it was not even undertaken in China.
Yet Stalin remained unwilling to abandon in principle
his Soviet-centered definition of "proletarian interna-
tionalism" and his claim to the primacy of Soviet state
interests for the whole worldwide Communist movement.
This inability to adjust his outlook to the new fact of
a plurality of independent Communist states-expressed,
e.g., in the pathological hunt for "Titoist conspirators"
throughout Eastern Europe-remained a major source
of political rigidity and an element of Soviet political
weakness right to his death.
KHRUSHCHEV, ON THE CONTRARY, started from
a recognition of the new situation and from the convic-
tion that it could be turned into a decisive source of
strength. China and even Yugoslavia proved that the
age of Soviet isolation and of "capitalist encirclement"
was over. The old imperialist order had been weakened
beyond the possibility of another long-term stabilization;
it could no longer resist the revolutionary movements
of the colonial peoples; and in a world in revolutionary
flux, new independent Communist victories were possi-
ble, if only the USSR would use its own increased
strength to aid and encourage them. By recognizing the
actual independence and equality of China and Yugo-
slavia, and by giving the fictitious independence of the
satellite governments and parties some element of sub-
stance in the form of increased domestic autonomy, he
hoped to strengthen greatly both the cohesion of the
"socialist camp" and its attraction-while at the same
time preserving for outsiders the Soviet Union's leader-
ship on the bases of its historic prestige and greater
power. By proclaiming the right and duty of all Com-
munist parties to find their own roads to victory accord-
ing to national conditions, he wished to improve their
chances to ride the crest of the new revolutionary wave.
The rebirth of Leninism expressed above all Khru-
shchev's confident expectation that, after 30 years of a
steady buildup of Soviet strength and a steady accumu-
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 CIA-RDP65B00383R0(QD10024%0?I1-4
t e ime had come
erialist contra ictions
f "im
i
l
,
p
on o
at
at last when Soviet power and world revolution could
advance in step-without a major conflict of interests
and hence without subordination of the one to the
other-to bring about a Communist-dominated world.
That had been the vision underlying Khrushchev's
visit to Peking in the fall of 1954, when he negotiated
a revision of Stalin's unequal treaty of alliance with
Mao, as well as his journey to Belgrade in the spring
of 1955, when he tried to win back Tito to the bloc by
the disavowal of Stalin's policies and the recognition
of "different roads to socialism." It was made explicit
in Khrushchev's public report to the 20th Congress,
when he advanced his concept of the "socialist world
system" as a commonwealth of equals, with scope for a
diversity of institutional means in the pursuit of com-
mon aims on the basis of common principles. The
position of the Soviet Union "at the head of the camp"
was not even explicitly mentioned on this occasion, not
because it had been abandoned but because, as simul-
taneous party documents showed, it was taken as assured
by the Soviet party's uncontested ideological authority
and its unique role as the historically first and most
powerful member of the system. The belief that the
h
Soviet position did not require enforcement throug
organizational means was further underlined when the
Cominform, once a key instrument of Stalinist discipline
in the international Communist movement, was dissolved
two months later.
The Ensuing Crisis
In its essentials, this Khrushchevian vision was main-
tained even after the October crisis of 1956, and after
subsequent discussion revealed serious confusion in the
international Communist movement.
The October events were not, in fact, a simple conse-
quence of Khrushchev's belief in a harmonious alliance
of independent revolutionary powers, or even of the
loosened grip on the satellite empire. They occurred
rather because this loosening coincided with a triple
crisis of authority caused by the disclosure and disavowal
of Stalin's crimes, by the involvement of many East
European Communist leaders in the "anti-Titoist" phase
of those crimes, and of general uncertainty about the
ultimate outcome of the succession struggle in the Soviet
Union. This crisis of authority led to bitter and pro-
longed struggles within the leadership of a number of
East European Communist parties (struggles in which
the Yugoslavs intervened to some extent). The conse-
quence was an atmosphere of uncertainty at the top-
without which the phenomena of public criticism and
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
finally of mass opposition could not have developed in if organized relations among autonomous Communist
Poland and Hungary. parties were to be confined to bilateral contacts, as the
The manner in which the Soviet leaders coped with Poles suggested, even that solution would be barred.
the crisis was still characteristically Khrushchevian and
non-Stalinist in that it allowed a considerable diversity
of solutions and did not seek to restore the type of AT THE MOSCOW international conference of No-
detailed administrative control from Moscow upon which vember 1957, the Soviet and Chinese Communist leaders,
Stalin had insisted. In Poland, the Soviets reluctantly acting in concert, succeeded in meeting these issues by
accepted a change in leadership that went beyond their defining the minimum requirements of international
wishes and made considerable concessions to the desire Communist unity without revoking the fundamental
of the new team to demonstrate its "equality" and in- innovations of the 20th Congress. The admissibility of
ternal autonomy, insisting only on maintaining the Com- different roads to Communist power and of institutional
munist party dictatorship and receiving new guarantees diversity in its use was maintained; but the need for a
for continued unity in foreign policy. In Albania, as common foreign policy of all "socialist states" was
we now know, they accepted with equal reluctance the sharply stressed, and ideological principles were fonnu-
continued power of the Stalinist team of Enver Hoxha, lated that would continue to distinguish all true Com-
after backstairs promptings had failed to bring about a munists from "revisionist" traitors. To ensure unity in
broadening of the leadership or a posthumous rehabili- the interpretation of these principles as well as in the
tation of Hoxha's executed "Titoist" opponent, Koci decision of foreign policy, the continued need for. Soviet
Xoxe. Only in Hungary, where "reformers" failed to leadership both in the "socialist camp" and in the world
gain control of the party in time to prevent a popular Communist movement was made explicit; and while no
rising, and where the Nagy government created by this new formal international organization was set up, moves
rising proved willing to abandon party dictatorship and were made to extend the national liaison machinery of
the Soviet alliance, did the Soviets use armed force to the CPSU, to create a Soviet-edited international journal,
retain the country within their empire-and even here and to recognize formally the need to hold further
they imposed a new leadership headed by "moderate international conferences from time to time.
reformers" and allowed it some degree of autonomy in This solution proved ultimately acceptable (despite
domestic policy. strong Polish and Italian misgivings) to all but the
Nevertheless, the October events posed new questions Yugoslavs and some small "revisionist" minorities in
of principle for which different answers were put for- the West. The crisis had apparently been overcome
ward by various Communist parties; thus the Soviet without a renunciation of Khrushchev's new faith in
leaders were confronted for the first time since Stalin the harmony of the interests of the Soviet empire and
with the problem of how to define and preserve the the world revolution; Soviet leadership had been re-
necessary minimum of international unity in the Com- stored without a return to the Stalinist subordination
munist movement. The issues raised were formidable, of world communism to Soviet interests, or to Stalinist
If the Budapest uprising had begun as a genuine work- methods of enforcing it.
ers' movement against a degenerate bureaucratic regime, In retrospect, it can be seen clearly that the basic
and had only later fallen into the hands of "counter- reason for this temporary success was the actual harmony
revolutionary" leaders-as not only the Yugoslavs, but of Communist power interests within the Soviet empire.
also the Polish and Italian Communists at first main- However different the national conditions and intra-
tained-then a Communist party dictatorship could no party histories of the satellite states, their leaders---
longer be regarded as the necessary form of the "dic_ whether old Stalinists or "national Communist" reforr~-
tatorship of the proletariat." If the Yugoslav Com- ers--felt ultimately dependent on Soviet backing to
maintain control over their own people, a feeling that
munists had the right to keep their "non-aligned" was strengthened by the shock of the Hungarian up-
position in foreign policy, then Imre Nagy should also rising. Their desire for national autonomy was always
have had the right to take Hungary out of the Warsaw limited by this consideration and, within this limit,
Pact. If the new autonomy meant that there was no could be satisfied by the Khrushchev type of Soviet
longer any "leading party," any single center for the leadership. The Yugoslav leaders, who had gained
Communist world movement, as Togliatti had claimed power on their own and maintained it for years in the
after the 20th Congress, then no doctrinal judgment face of Soviet hostility, were once again the only excep-
binding on all true Communists could be pronounced tion. The crisis could be solved with comparative ease
by any authority short of a unanimous world conference; because it had been caused by the temporary shock of
4 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
de-Stalinization, not by the nature of the new policy that
had taken the place of the Stalinist synthesis, and be-
cause it had broken out in an area where the basic
assumptions underlying the new policy were not put to
the test, except in the marginal case of Yugoslavia.
True, it was of symptomatic significance that Khru-
shchev's policy had failed to win back the one inde-
pendent Communist state in Europe-that Tito remained
unwilling to join the Warsaw Pact in return for his
"rehabilitation" as a good Marxist-Leninist and for a
guarantee that he could retain the peculiar institutions
he had developed in the meantime. But that failure
could be explained by the prolonged dependence on
Western aid into which the Yugoslav regime had been
driven by Stalin's intolerance, and by the consequent
weakening of its international revolutionary zeal. At
any rate, Khrushchev felt able to regard Tito's obdurate
nonalignment as no more than a minor irritant and
refused to revise his basic outlook: even after the
Yugoslavs in the spring of 1958 adopted a "revisionist"
party program in which they refused to identify the
Soviet bloc with the cause of socialism, Khrushchev had
them expelled from the fraternal community of Com-
munist parties once again, but carefully refrained from
repeating Stalin's attempt to bring them to heel by
economic, military and political pressure. On the con-
trary, after a short period of vigorous ideological de-
nunciation, he settled down to treat Yugoslavia as a
reasonably friendly neutral state, and was rewarded by
finding that the Yugoslavs this time made no sustained
attempt to propagate their heresies within his East
European empire.
The Role of China
Clearly, it was only Moscow's relations with Peking
that could provide the real major test of the policy
consensus achieved in the Communist camp. The Chinese
attitude was of infinitely greater importance for the
future of relations between the Soviet empire and world
communism than Tito's independent stance; and here
Khrushchev's new outlook at first seemed to yield ample
dividends. In 1954-55, the Chinese had been brilliant
partners and even pioneers in the effort to overcome
the rigid attitude towards the ex-colonial, uncommitted
countries, which the "socialist camp" had inherited from
Stalin; they had been helpful in this sense at the
Geneva conference on Indochina, at the signing of the
"Five Principles of Coexistence" with India, and at
Bandung. In 1956, though apparently worried by the
drastic form of Khrushchev's downgrading of Stalin,
they publicly welcomed the substance of the critique
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
of Stalin's "Great Power Chauvinism," including his
policies towards Yugoslavia-and this at a time when
Molotov was still defending those policies inside the
Soviet leadership. During the crisis later on in the year,
they actively intervened in the Soviet-Polish dispute in
favor of a compromise combining increased national
autonomy for Poland with explicit recognition of Soviet
leadership, while vigorously defending Soviet interven-
tion in Hungary against all critics. Finally, during the
Moscow conference of November 1957, Mao reacted to
the double shock of Hungary and the discovery of his
own domestic opposition in the "Hundred Flowers"
campaign by placing strong emphasis on fighting "re-
visionism" as "the principal danger"; but he also per-
sonally took the initiative to have the Soviet Union's
position "at the head of the socialist camp" embodied
in the Moscow declaration, at a moment when Khru-
shchev had clearly eliminated the Stalinist opposition
and established himself as the uncontested Soviet leader.
It may be readily assumed that not even at that time
was this Chinese zeal for reestablishing the Soviet
Union's position as a leader of the "socialist camp"
based on unqualified admiration for Khrushchev's genius
as a statesman or ideological innovator, or on general
agreement with his doctrinal approach and political
style: the whole independent historical development of
the Chinese party under Mao precluded that. But the
Chinese Communists were then vitally interested in
maintaining the cohesion of the bloc while preserving
their post-Stalin achievement of independence and direct
influence on the bloc's European members, and universal
recognition of the leading role of a CPSU headed by
Khrushchev seemed the best way to achieve both ob-
jectives. Would not Stalin's benevolent but compara-
tively inexperienced successor, once restored with Chi-
nese help to a position of international preeminence at
a moment of crisis, have to lean heavily on the advice
of the kingmaker in Peking? The expectation seemed
plausible enough, so long as one assumed that no major
conflict of interest could arise between the two main
powers of the Communist world. The outcome of the
1957 Moscow conference-the "Maoist re-construction
of the center" under Soviet leadership-was possible
only because at that moment both Khrushchev and Mao
Tse-tung still held that assumption.
By the spring of 1958, it must have been clear to the
Chinese Communist leaders that their expectation of
continued major influence on the formation of Soviet
policy had been unfounded, and that Chinese interests
had a fairly low place in Khrushchev's list of priorities.
The sharp left turn in domestic economic policy taken
by the second session of the 8th Congress of the CPC-
the "Great Leap Forward" and the first pilot schemes
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 5
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
for the creation of the People's Communes-is inex-
plicable without a sharp disappointment of Chinese
hopes for massive new Soviet capital aid; and the same
disappointment probably played its part in the Chinese
pressure for treating the Yugoslavs once again as
enemies: Why should people who take money from the
American imperialists continued to receive Soviet credits
as well? The summer brought the tentative Soviet
acceptance of a summit conference on the Middle Eastern
crisis "within the framework of the Security Council,"
showing scant regard for Peking's political prestige, and
(after the withdrawal of that acceptance) Khrushchev's
visit to Peking and the joint communique promising
"all-round consultation"; yet while full Soviet political
support was given to Peking during the subsequent
bombardment of Quemoy, the military support appears
to have been unsatisfactory at the crucial point. Most
important of all, this was the year during which the
Soviets agreed first to expert discussions on the possi-
bility of an inspected ban on nuclear tests, and then, dur-
ing political three-power negotiations on the subject, to
a moratorium on such tests. As they also consistently
refused to supply their Chinese allies with ready-made
nuclear arms, a successful test ban agreement would have
amounted to an attempt to exclude China permanently
from the circle of nuclear powers.
Conflicts and Compromises
The ground for the later Chinese charges of an op-
portunistic neglect of international revolutionary soli-
darity by the Soviet leaders must have been laid by
these successive disappointments. As in Tito's case in
1948-though there had been long-standing ideological
differences due to diversities of historical development-
this too was a clear conflict of national interest which
took ideological forms. Finding that the Soviets con-
sistently failed to give Chinese economic, political and
military objectives the same high priority as did the
Chinese themselves, Mao naturally came to doubt the
fitness of Khrushchev and his team for the role of
international leadership for which he had cast them. As
has frequently been pointed out, the claim in the Chi-
nese Central Committee's resolution on the People's
Communes that these revolutionary innovations consti-
tuted a direct shortcut to the "higher stage" of com-
munism amounted to an ideological preparation for
challenging the right of the Soviets-still halting at
the "lower stage" of socialism--to lead the world Com-
munist movement.
The Soviet response showed instant awareness of the
danger and a determination to forestall it: Moscow
promptly described the new Soviet Seven-Year Plan
as a program for laying the foundations of communism
and called an extraordinary party congress to adopt it;
on the other hand, the Soviet party press vigorously
attacked as "utopian" any attempt to reach the "higher
stage" before a high level of technical productivity had
been achieved and the conditions for material abundance
created. By December 1958, under the dual impact of
Soviet criticism and the severe practical difficulties of
the communes, the Chinese withdrew this first ideologi-
cal challenge. As the 21st Congress of the CPSU opened
in February 1959, a truce had clearly been called; Chou
En-lai explicitly recognized that Russia alone had
entered the road to the "higher stage" and a new Soviet-
Chinese economic agreement was signed.
The truce was broken in the fall of the same year,
once again for a non-ideological reason: Khrushchev's
visit to the United States and his preparations for a
summit conference revived intense Chinese fears of a
possible Soviet-American agreement at Peking's expense
-above all, presumably, in the form of a serious attempt
to close the "nuclear club." The new disagreement was
soon reflected in the failure to issue a communique on
the Khrushchev-Mao talks held in Peking on the Soviet
Premier's return trip from the United States; in Khru-
shchev's subsequent public reference to the "Trotskyite
adventurism" of a policy of "neither peace nor war" ;
in a series of warnings against illusions about the nature
of American imperialism published in the Chinese press
during the winter and repeated by the Chinese observer
at a meeting of the Warsaw Pact in February 1960; and
in Khrushchev's ostentatious detachment from Chinese
claims against India and Indonesia during his winter
visit to both countries. This time, the Chinese did not
stop at ideological forays to challenge the "leading role"
of the Soviets. They raised the charge of Soviet "oppor-
tunism" at a number of leadership meetings of inter-
national front organizations, openly seeking to recruit
allies in other Communist parties, and finally, on the
occasion of the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth in
April, they published in a series of articles what
amounted to the ideological platform for their attack.
WITH THAT, THE EXISTENCE of a Russo-Chinese
"ideological dispute" on the principal issues of inter-
national Communist strategy became public knowledge.
Its course from April to the conference of the 81 Com-
munist parties which met in Moscow in November, and
to the compromise declaration published by it in De-
cember 1960, may be assumed here as generally known.
While that declaration on balance favored the Soviet
viewpoint on the immediate matters in dispute, its most
6 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
important aspect was that it was a compromise, and
openly conceived as a starting point for further com-
promises. Moscow's monopoly of ideological authority
had been the implicit precondition for the unity of action
of independent Communist powers and autonomous
movements as conceived by Khrushchev at the time of
the 20th Congress. It had been made explicit following
the crisis in Eastern Europe at the 1957 Moscow con-
ference. Now it was explicitly denied by Khrushchev
himself; he reported that the Soviet delegation had asked
that the formula referring to the CPSU as the "leading
party" of the world movement be dropped from the
1960 declaration, because it had in fact become im-
possible to lead all Communist parties from a single
center. But without such a center, unity in both the
world movement and the "socialist camp" could hence-
forth be preserved only by a process of continuous ad-
justment leading to ever new compromises-as in any
alliance of non-ideological governments or parties.
The harmony of interests between independent Com-
munist powers and movements had supposedly been
guaranteed by a common ideology, interpreted by a gen-
erally recognized authority. The actual conflicts of inter-
est, leading to conflicting interpretations of the ideology,
had destroyed that authority. There remained, of course,
major common interests recognized by all sides as over-
riding the internecine conflicts, and it remained true
that these common interests were rooted in the common
ideological opposition of all Communist parties and
governments to the non-Communist world. But it was
the paradox of the new situation that this common
"ideological" interest could now only be made to pre-
vail over the differing national interests if the latter
were adjusted in a non-ideological, pragmatic way, and
the bitter struggle for ideological leadership abandoned.
Yet when the 1960 Moscow compromise was con-
cluded, the Chinese Communists were already deter-
mined to view it as a mere stepping-stone in a long-term
struggle to win for themselves the leading role in the
world Communist movement. The proof of this, and
the root cause of the breakdown of the compromise,
was that they persisted in supporting Khrushchev's
"Stalinist" opponents within the Soviet European em-
pire, with whom they had concluded a tactical alliance
during the previous phase of open conflict.
Allies Against Khrushchev
We have seen that, far from being genuine Stalinists
in their outlook, the Chinese Communists had warmly
supported Khrushchev during the critical period of
1956-57. Even the new "leftist" ideas which they de-
veloped during the first phase of Sino-Soviet tension in
1958-ideas of "uninterrupted revolution" at home and
unlimited support for revolutionary movements abroad-
were "Trotskyite" rather than "Stalinist" in inspiration.
Nevertheless, the common antagonism to Khrushchev
on the part of the Chinese Communists and the defeated
Russian Stalinists may have suggested a rapprochement
between them even then. Both distrusted Khrushchev's
personal diplomacy in general and his eagerness for
top-level contacts with the Americans in particular. Both
reproached him for his "softness" towards the Yugoslav
heretics and for his costly foreign aid policy benefiting
"bourgeois nationalist" rulers of uncommitted, ex-
colonial countries. Finally, both believed that the road
to the "higher stage" of communism lay through in-
creasing the importance of payments in kind-as en-
visaged, in different ways, in Stalin's last pamphlet
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR and in
the Chinese communes-whereas Khrushchev was seek-
ing to put both agricultural deliveries and kolkhoz
wages on a cash basis in order to subject costs and
returns to the yardstick of the ruble.
It is, at any rate, noteworthy that the same period
(September-December 1958) which witnessed the Soviet
ideological campaign against the utopian Chinese claims
for the communes also saw a sharp revival of attacks
on the "anti-party group," beginning with the disclosure
of Bulganin's role in it and ending with obvious prepa-
rations for the expulsion of its members from the
CPSU. (It was at the December Plenum of 1958, the
first Central Committee plenum for which minutes were
published, that Khrushchev said that "the tongue rebels
against calling these people comrades.") Conversely,
when the Soviet truce with the Chinese was sealed at
the 21st CPSU Congress in February 1959, the prepared
attacks from the floor on the "anti-party group" were
not followed up by Khrushchev, and there was even
talk at that time of sending Molotov as ambassador to
The Hague-possibly in the expectation that he would
first recant his errors. All this seems to suggest that
Khrushchev at least suspected a link between the Chi-
nese and the Russian Stalinists even then.
What must remain conjecture for the 1958 phase of
the dispute may be regarded as definitely established for
the 1960 phase. At the 22nd Congress, CC Secretary
Ilychev disclosed that in April 1960 Molotov had sub-
mitted his first ideological statement since his 1957
defeat; it had arrived in the form of an article sent to
Kommunist on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of
Lenin's birth-the date when the public Chinese attack
started. Other speakers at the Congress described the
content of Molotov's position in terms closely paralleling
the Chinese views. Such harmony in both time and
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
content could hardly be accidental; nor can it have been
accidental that within a few weeks after these moves
Molotov was recalled from Ulan Bator, President
Voroshilov (the last undisclosed member of the former
Stalinist majority in the party Presidium) was pre-
vailed upon to retire for reasons of health, and Pravda
published Tvardovsky's anti-Stalinist poem.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME, the Chinese also picked
up the support of the Albanian Stalinist leaders, who
had already enthusiastically joined in Peking's violent
anti-Yugoslav campaign in 1958 and had only reluc-
tantly been persuaded by Khrushchev to tone it down
during the 1959 lull. Up till then, Enver Hoxha and
Mehmet Shehu had steadfastly refused to "de-Stalinize"
their own regime but had never openly opposed Khru-
shchev. After the Chinese attacks, they refused to join
in the proposal, made by Bulgaria and Rumania on
Soviet instructions, for an atom-free zone in the Balkans,
and they vigorously sided with the Chinese against
Khrushchev at the Bucharest and Moscow conferences
of 1960. Here, too, Khrushchev reacted at once. By
August 1960, two months after the Bucharest clash,
pro-Soviet elements in the Albanian Central Committee
apparently tried to rally opposition to Hoxha in prepara-
tion for the forthcoming Albanian party congress. They
were promptly purged, however, and the congress was
postponed till February 1961, while a number of pro-
Soviet officials were arrested as "plotters."
Now it seems clear that by the time of the Moscow
conference Khrushchev was prepared to accept a pro-
longed period of "divergent unity" with the Chinese,
that he considered the preservation of the alliance and
of a broad outward unity of world communism worth
the price of putting up with recurrent disagreements on
diplomatic tactics and continued competition for influ-
ence among some peripheral Communist parties. Unless
he had made that judgment, he would not have accepted
a compromise renouncing the Soviet claim to a monopoly
of ideological leadership. But he could make that judg-
ment only because he was confident that his own policy,
based on the superior power of the Soviet Union and
its East European empire, would on the whole continue
to prevail in such an inter-Communist tug-of-war. And
this presupposed that the substantial achievement of
the 1957 settlement-the consolidation of his own
power in the Soviet Union and of Soviet control in
Eastern Europe-remained intact. Renunciation of sole
leadership of the world Communist movement and
acceptance of Chinese competition within it were possi-
ble for the sake of unity; renunciation of sole control
over his own empire was out of the question.
Hence Khrushchev followed up the Moscow com-
promise by quiet steps to break the Albanian opposition,
only to find that the Chinese continued to back HoxEia
in his defiance. When the Soviets refused to grant
Albania new aid agreements, the Chinese offered Tirana
substantial new credits on the eve of the Albanian party
congress, which endorsed Hoxha's policies. When the
"Mr. K.'s Nightmare"
-David Low, by arrange-
ment with The Guardian,
Manchester, England. World
copyright reserved.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Albanian show-trial of pro-Soviet officials, on charges
of plotting with Yugoslavia, Greece and the United
States to overthrow the Albanian regime, was answered
last summer by the withdrawal of Soviet submarines
and of Soviet and East European technicians from
Albania, Chinese technicians moved into the breach.
Because they were consciously embarking on a long-term
struggle for world Communist leadership, the Chinese
Communists were not prepared to abandon their first
small ally in Europe-nor do they seem to have discon-
tinued their cooperation with Molotov, whose criticism
of the draft CPSU program in a letter sent from his
Vienna sinecure to the Central Committee, as summa-
rized by Pravda editor Satyukov at the 22nd Congress,
appears to parallel closely the Chinese arguments. Yet,
for Khrushchev, Chinese willingness to respect his power
within the USSR and the Soviet empire proper must
have been the minimum test of the value of the 1960
compromise.
Point of No Return?
The breakdown of the compromise at the 22nd Con-
gress must, in this author's view, be understood in that
light. It is misleading to say that the attacks on Molotov
and Hoxha in Khrushchev's opening report were merely
diplomatically-veiled attacks on the Chinese. Khru-
shchev was really announcing his determination to liqui-
date the remnants of Stalinist opposition within the
Soviet empire and was, by implication, warning the Chi-
nese that he would do so whether they approved his
action or not. Chou En-lai, by publicly criticizing the
attack on Albania and by laying a wreath at Stalin's
tomb, issued a counter-warning that China would refuse
to sanction the expulsion of Albania from the Com-
munist camp and was ready even to go to the defense
of Stalin in order to challenge the legitimacy of Khru-
shchev's leadership of the Soviet Union. The com-
promise broke down because Khrushchev had to insist
that ideological competition within the international
Communist movement stop at the borders of the Soviet
Union's own power sphere, and because the Chinese
refused to respect these limits.
There was in these events an element of mutual sur-
prise. The Chinese seem to have expected that Khru-
shchev, for the sake of unity, would not dare bring the
Albanian quarrel into the open; hence Chou's premature
departure when Khrushchev did the contrary. The
Soviets seem to have expected that the Chinese, for the
sake of unity, would not dare go publicly to the defense
of the Albanians and even of Stalin; hence the Soviet
leadership's need, in the later stages of the Congress, to
go far beyond Khrushchev's opening reports in the
endeavor to destroy the Stalin image. Once faced with
the prospect of open conflict, neither side retreated.
The Chinese Communists have since reprinted
Hoxha's all-out attacks on the "anti-Marxist revisionism"
of "Khrushchev and his group" along with the Soviet
attacks on Hoxha, and Peking has been insisting at
every opportunity on Albania's continued membership
in the "socialist camp" and the Communist world move-
ment. More than that, Mao himself has signed the
messages conveying the CPC's congratulations to the
Albanian party under Hoxha's leadership on its "correct
policy" and particularly on its intransigent struggle
against revisionism and for world Communist unity.
Meanwhile, the Soviets, having lined up the support of
a safe majority of Communist parties (but not of a
substantial minority) for political condemnation of the
Albanians, have broken off diplomatic relations with
Tirana without awaiting the formal verdict of any inter-
national Communist conference, have induced most of
the East European states to take corresponding measures,
and did not invite the Albanians to the Warsaw meet-
ing of the intra-bloc Council for Mutual Economic Aid
in mid-December. And again, the Chinese have coun-
tered by refusing to send an observer to the CMEA
meeting, by continuing demonstratively friendly ex-
changes with Albania after the Soviet break, and by
causing the North Korean and North Vietnamese Com-
munists to send clearly friendly and fraternal-if less
demonstrative-New Year messages to the Albanian
leaders as well.
The resulting situation is unprecedented. As no inter-
national Communist conference has spoken, the Al-
banians must still be regarded even by the Soviets as
members of the international Communist movement;
indeed, an Albanian delegate has taken part in the
Moscow Congress of the World Federation of Trade
Unions in late 1961, even sitting on the committee
which drafted its resolutions, in spite of the rupture of
Soviet-Albanian diplomatic relations ! Again, at the
Stockholm session of the World Peace Council in
December 1961, an Albanian delegation actively co-
operated with the Chinese, and that session, along with
recent articles in the Chinese press, showed that the
1960 compromise has broken down as completely on
general policy as on the form of unity, with the issue
of priority for "peaceful coexistence" or for "wars of
liberation" once again the center of dispute. Thus, the
world Communist movement, while openly divided
politically, is not yet formally split in the organizational
sense. Yet, at the same time, state relations between
the Soviets and their East European followers on one
side and Albania on the other are already broken !
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 9
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
As these lines are being written, both sides are ap-
parently lining up for another international Communist
conference. The Chinese are reported to have called for
one in a circular sent to various Communist parties, and
an editorial in the Polish party monthly Nowe Drogi
indicates that the Soviets, too, regard it as the right
and duty of the international movement to pronounce
on the points at issue. But before speculating on the
probable line-up and outcome of such a conference, we
must note the crucial significance of the fact that Khru-
shchev has taken open governmental action without
waiting for an international judgment. The reason can
only have been that, after both Tirana and Peking defied
the public attack to which Khrushchev had committed
the prestige of the CPSU and the Soviet regime, he
came to view a demonstrative reassertion of Soviet im-
perial discipline as a matter of the utmost urgency-too
urgent to await action by an international conference
which might have to be deferred until Moscow had had
time to work on the waverers, and the outcome of
which might depend on Russian preparedness to force
a majority vote and Chinese willingness to submit to it.
So, Khrushchev preferred to take unilateral state action
first and thus confront an eventual international con-
ference with an accomplished fact.
This means that Khrushchev, like Stalin, has been
forced to make a hard choice between Soviet imperial
interests and the unity of the world Communist move-
ment-and that he has made the same choice as Stalin
did. But for Khrushchev the choice was more drastic.
For while Stalin was able to have Yugoslavia excom-
municated by the Cominform before he took public state
action against her, Khrushchev no longer had any such
ready machinery of excommunication at his disposal.
He had renounced that machinery in pursuit of his
belief in the cooperation of equal and independent
Communist powers and movements, and in the harmony
of interests or at least the comparative ease of compro-
mise between the Soviet empire and the forces of inter-
national revolution. Now, however, he has been forced
back to the "Stalinist" use of state power because that
belief, which was to distinguish his world role from
Stalin's, has failed.
make up its mind on the Soviet view that the Albanians,
but not the Chinese, should be read out of the com-
munity of "Marxist-Leninist parties" for refusing to
submit, and has also to consider whether such a decision
should be forced through by majority vote in the face
of Chinese opposition and even at the risk of an open
split. This second decision not only may determine
whether some loose "conciliar" unity of the type at-
tempted in the 1960 compromise can still be preserved,
but will also settle the question whether the Communist
parties siding with Khrushchev shall in the future enjoy
more or rather less autonomy than hitherto. A decision
preserving formal unity despite open political disagree-
ment would obviously mean increased autonomy forall
those Communist parties whose leaders might feel dis-
posed and able to grasp it, while a formal split would
be likely to lead to a reassertion of the "leading role
of the CPSU" over those parties which side with it.
This interconnection between the policy issue and the
organizational issue is already having a somewhat para-
doxical effect on the line-up of some of the European
parties. Those parties whose leaders have followed. the
policies of "de-Stalinization" with the greatest reluctance
and have always looked back nostalgically to firm Stalin-
ist discipline under Soviet leadership-like the French
Communists outside and the Czechs and East Germans
inside the bloc--are now the most determined in sup-
porting Khrushchev's break with the Stalinist Albanians.
Conversely, the Italian Communists, who have welcomed
the substance of de-Stalinization most cordially, have
again come out for a "polycentric" type of world move-
ment which would permit the open airing of inter-party
political differences, and have taken the view that the
toleration of such differences for a possibly prolonged
period is a precondition for preserving unity in the new
situation. As a consequence, they have promptly been
admonished by their more conservative and Soviet-
oriented opponents that such un-Leninist tolerance would
prevent a clear and firm international condemnation of
Albanian "adventurism" and might even legalize Chi-
nese factional activity in the world movement and in
individual Communist parties.
The Broadening Chasm
For the international Communist movement, the situa-
tion poses two quite distinct, though obviously con-
nected, questions. On the one hand, each Communist
Party, whether ruling or not, has to take a position in
the policy dispute between the CPSU and the Sino-
Stalinist coalition. On the other, each party has to
IT IS WITHIN the Soviet European empire that a pre-
liminary survey reveals the clearest picture of the reac-
tions of party leaders to the controversy-and also the
smallest potential for further change. Feeling that their
own power, today no less than in 1956-57, ultimately
depends on Soviet backing, both "reformers" and "con-
servatives" among the East European Communist lead-
ers have on the whole rallied to Khrushchev's colors
with equal clarity. A pro-Albanian (or rather, perhaps,
10 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
an anti-Yugoslav) minority within the Bulgarian party,
apparently looking up to the old Stalinist Chervenkov,
if not actually led by him, seems to constitute the only
exception in this area. It is particularly remarkable that
Gomulka, while fully utilizing the impact of the "second
de-Stalinization" to justify his autonomous agricultural
policy, has been the first Communist leader to revive the
formula-which he so stubbornly resisted in 1957-of
the "leading role of the Soviet Union" in bloc foreign
policy; and that the other principal "reformer," Kadar,
while also introducing new "autonomous" measures in
agriculture, has gone further than anyone else in de-
nouncing the views of the Chinese as "Trotskyite" and
"senile Leftism." In the eyes of all the Communist
leaders within Russia's European empire, the need for
a common foreign policy clearly outweighs any interest
they may have in extending their autonomy beyond the
considerable measure willingly granted by Khrushchev;
hence, all are willing to side with him on both the
political and organizational issues.
The Asian members of the "Socialist Commonwealth,"
with the exception of Outer Mongolia where the Soviets
are clearly still in control, combine hesitation on political
issues with opposition to organizational measures. Both
the North Korean and North Vietnamese parties have
avoided criticizing Albania either at the 22nd Congress
or after, and both sent warm fraternal greetings to the
Albanian leaders on their liberation anniversary (No-
vember 28) and again at New Year's, expressing hope
for further Albanian cooperation within the "socialist
camp." But neither of these parties has adopted the
Chinese formulations implicitly criticizing Soviet con-
duct, and the North Koreans have even gone out of
their way repeatedly to emphasize the role of the CPSU
as the vanguard of the world Communist movement
and leader of the socialist camp. Ruling over countries
which are geographically separated from the USSR (in
the Korean case by a corner of Chinese territory and
in the Vietnamese case by the whole of China), but
having in the past tended to accept guidance from the
Soviet Union rather than from China, these parties seem
anxious above all to avoid an open break that might
make them predominantly dependent on China. So long
as some "conciliar" unity can be preserved, they will
undoubtedly continue an effort to mediate; should an
open split materialize, the Vietnamese party at least may
have to "go Chinese."
EXCEPT FOR more or less insignificant minority groups
here and there, the Communist parties of the advanced
Western countries seem to stand solidly behind Khru-
shchev's policies of peaceful coexistence abroad and de-
DO YOU WISH TO GET
Problems of Communism?
See back inside cover for information.
Stalinization at home. The serious discussion among
them concerns the desirability of tolerating major differ-
ences in the international movement, with the corollary
of full autonomy for each party, as has been advocated
by both the Italian and Belgian party leaders, or. of
forcing a definitive split, with a reassertion of Soviet
international leadership, as clearly desired by the French.
The determining factor in this line-up is whether the
leaders of a particular party continue, as in Stalin's
time, to conceive of the party as primarily dependent for
its domestic progress on the increase of Soviet power
and prestige and therefore to regard the party's identifi-
cation with the Soviet Union as its basic political asset,
or feel on the contrary that they would have a better
chance of overcoming their isolation in domestic politics,
and ultimately advancing to power on the shoulders of
a broad left-wing coalition, if that identification were
less complete.
In practice, among the Western Communist parties
only the Italian has shown real and serious hope of
winning power via an independent "national road to
socialism." This has been the reason for the party's
unusually good relations with the Yugoslav Communists
throughout recent years. Thinking in terms of pioneer-
ing a new Communist strategy and a new style of party
life for Western Europe, the Italian CP has kept itself
politically far more alive than its Western fellow parties,
but at the price of some degree of democratic "softening
up" in its discussions. In the debates that have followed
the 22nd Congress, three main tendencies have asserted
themselves within the Italian Communist leadership. A
conservative minority, led by Scoccimarro, has warned
against ambitions for autonomy and heretical new ideas
and has tended to put allegiance to Soviet leadership in
the forefront. A strong revisionist group, led by
Amendola and Alicata, has criticized the 1957 and 1960
Moscow declarations as retrogressive compromises with
the "dogmatists," going back on the insights of the
20th Congress of 1956; it has explicitly denied that
revisionism is the main danger at the present time, has
called for open inner-party debate in preparation for the
next party congress, and has given a heretical Yugoslav
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 11
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
slant to its advocacy of "national roads to socialism" by
admitting that in some African countries, for instance,
socialism might be achieved without a Communist
Party. In the center, Togliatti has shown his familiar
maneuvering skill, seeking to contain the revisionist
pressures and keep within the limits of an orthodox
defense of the Soviet Union as the "vanguard" of inter-
national communism, while at the same time avoiding
a frontal counterattack on. the innovators and trying to
canalize their drive in order to gain increased tactical
elbow-room for his "national road" inside Italy. The
blueprint for this road, including the conquest of power
by parliamentary means and continued toleration of
non-Communist satellite parties after victory, has in fact
long been approved by Moscow. Yet it must be obvious
to Togliatti as well as to the "revisionists" that this
policy would lose much of its credibility in Italy if,
following an open international Communist split, the
party's allegiance to Moscow were to be visibly demon-
strated once again. And the possibility cannot be ex-
cluded that, in such a situation, serious pressure might
develop for keeping the Italian party outside any new
Soviet-led organization.
TURNING TO THE non-ruling Communist parties of
Asia, the revival of the dispute between Moscow and
Peking is bound to reactivate the factional conflicts that
are endemic among the Indian and Japanese Commu-
nists, although the majority of both parties will certainly
wind up on the Soviet side. In the Indian party's case,
the central leadership actually welcomes the opportunity
for taking a national Indian stand against China on the
frontier issue without violating its duties to international
communism; but the same leadership has officially
clamped down on any discussion of de-Stalinization,
knowing that this topic has little attraction in Asia and
that a broad debate of Stalin's crimes might well weaken
the party further. On the other hand, the most im-
portant non-ruling Communist party in Asia, that of
Indonesia, has been the first in the world to side clearly
and unambiguously with the Chinese. Its leader, Aidit,
not only sent New Year's greetings to the Albanian
party along with the other ruling parties of the "socialist
camp," but has demonstratively congratulated the Chinese
on their struggle to maintain the unity of the Com-
munist movement, and has publicly criticized the Soviet
use of public denunciation and state pressure before
exhausting the methods of fraternal discussion. Neither
the North Korean nor the North Vietnamese party, nor,
to the present writer's knowledge, any other Communist
party outside China, has gone so far in declaring its
stand.
The bulk of the remaining Communist parties in
Asia, the Arab world and Latin America, including
quite a few whose spokesmen abstained from mention-
ing the Albanian issue at the 22nd Congress, seem since
to have sided with the Soviets. The votes of these
parties, most of which are weak and dependent on out-
side support, may well ensure the formal. excommunica-
tion of Albania at an international conference. But it
is already clear that whether China formally submits or
walks out in such a case, that will not be the end of
the matter-for the real long-term contest between
Soviet and Chinese influence on the Communist move-
ments of the underdeveloped regions has barely begun.
In the long run, the line-up of these movements will be
decided by two issues on which their own future must
depend: the degree of risk the Communist powers
would take in supporting "colonial wars of liberation,"
and their own choice between a "peaceful road to
socialism" (whether by parliamentary means or by
gradual penetration of a pro-Soviet nationalist dictator-
ship) and Chinese-style partisan warfare.
The stand taken by the Indonesian CP, after pro-
longed wavering and despite the fact that the country
in general views the Chinese as an unpopular alien mi-
nority and the Soviets as a friendly great power, suggests
that the party is not satisfied with the fruits of the
friendly relations between Khrushchev and President
Sukarno-that it is losing confidence in its chance of
converting Soviet influence on the regime into a growing
share of Communist control without sharp conflict. In
India, the advocates of revolutionary violence within the
CP, who used to attack Mao for alleged "opportunism"
around 1950, have long constituted themselves as the
pro-Chinese faction in the present dispute. In Guate-
mala, the clear stand belatedly taken by the CP on the
Soviet side seems closely linked to its hopes for the
electoral success of a leftwing front. Again, some parties
that have been willing enough to condemn Albania in
the first place seem to have wavered when, at the Stock-
holm meeting of the World Peace Council, the Chinese
and Albanians moved to include the struggle for inde-
pendence of the colonies on the agenda of the next
world congress, and the Soviets defeated the move; the
Cubans, for instance, after duly speaking against Al-
bania in Moscow, seem to have become "neutral" in
the dispute since Stockholm.
Finally, the conflict is likely to have a quite specific
effect in tropical Africa, where hardly any Communist
parties exist as yet. Historically, all Communist parties
outside the Soviet Union, if not directly founded on
Soviet initiative, have arisen through the ideological and
organizational transformation of local groups of revolu-
12 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
tionary socialists under the influence of the Soviet model
and of Soviet emissaries. A number of African states
today clearly have the raw material for a similar trans-
formation-parties or trade union groups headed by
intellectuals with a Marxist education and a mixture
of nationalist and social-revolutionary ideas. However,
their "Bolshevization" may prove far more difficult now
that a unique, universally recognized model is lacking.
The leaders of these "Afro-Marxist" groups are inter-
ested in the Communist model above all because of its
effectiveness in securing unity of doctrine and of will ;
if it becomes instead a source for importing foreign
ideological and political splits, they may well prefer to
go ahead in consolidating their own rule with a home-
made, eclectic ideology, as the Yugoslavs have been
quietly advising them to do for some time. The recent
anti-Communist turn of Sekou Toure, the Afro-Marxist
ruler of Guinea, and the fact that he demanded the
recall of the Soviet Ambassador but made no complaint
against the behavior of the Chinese (who are at least
equally entrenched) may prove symptomatic of the way
in which African leaders may use the new schism to pre-
serve their own ideological and practical independence.
Polycentrism-Wave of the Future?
By the time of the 1960 Moscow compromise, it was
already clear that there was no road back to the cen-
tralized world party created by Lenin. There is none
now. Independent Communist powers do exist; and
experience has proved that independent Communist
powers cannot be subordinated to the ideological au-
thority and organizational discipline of a single center.
The alternative attempted by the 1960 conference
was to preserve an alliance of autonomous parties held
together by a common faith. It was implicitly admitted
that differences about the interpretation of that faith in
the light of different national interests might arise from
time to time, but it was hoped that the common basis
of ideology and interest would be strong enough for
compromises to be reached again and again in a process
of steady adjustment.
This "conciliar" model of world communism has
broken down because of the inherent difficulties of com-
promise by pragmatic adjustment among totalitarian
ideological parties and states. At least one of the two
major state parties has refused to renounce the right to
carry "ideological struggle" into the territory of the
other. Yet without some mutual respect of parochial au-
thority-or of the principle "cuius regio, eilas religio"-
ideologically independent state parties can hardly live
together in a common oecumenic organization. The
Italian Communist leaders have been quite right in
arguing that open "comradely" debate of inter-party
differences in a spirit of mutual understanding and
respect is the only way to preserve some measure of
Communist world unity in the present situation. But
they have only been able to suggest such an un-Leninist
solution because they are constantly exposed to the anti-
ideological influence of an atmosphere of "bourgeois
liberalism."
A NEW CULT?
Some Differences of Opinion
Together with my colleague-journalists I travelled
in the United States when Nikita Sergeyevich Khru-
shchev was there. These travels were a model of
the Leninist combination of firmness and flexibility
in the conduct of foreign policy... .
It may be that some of the diplomatic ladies
of the Western world found it shocking, but it
was simply magnificent when once, during one of
the provocative speeches made by a Western diplo-
mat (at the United Nations General Assembly
session] N. S. Khrushchev took off his shoe and
started banging the desk with it. (Stormy applause.
Laughter.) It immediately became clear to everyone:
we are decisively against, we do not wish to listen
to such speeches! In addition to which Nikita
Sergeyevich Khrushchev placed his shoe in such a
manner (in front of our delegation sat the delegation
of fascist Spain) as to make its tip rest-though
not completely-against the neck of the fascist
Minister of Foreign Affairs. This particular case
was a manifestation of diplomatic flexibility.
(Laughter, stormy applause.)
-From the speech of A. 1. Adzhubei at the 22nd CPSU Congress,
Izvestia, October 28, 7961.
... The present Soviet leaders . . . are frantically
conducting the Khrushchev personality cult. The
whole world can judge this, if only by the lavish
propaganda set in operation about him. We have
even reached a point where some stupidities com-
mitted by Khrushchev which bring discredit to the
Soviet Union-such as when he took off his shoes
in the UN General Assembly-are slavishly ele-
vated to theory and presented as "magnificent ex-
amples of the Marxist attitude." As amazing as
this may seem, A. Adzhubei, in his speech during
the 22nd CPSU Congress which was published in
the Soviet press, called this gesture something
"simply magnificent!" Has this also been done
within the framework of the struggle against the
personality cult?
-From "Deeper and Deeper in the Mire of Anti-Marxism," Zed I
Popullit (Tirana), January 9, 1962.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 13
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03': CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
The remaining alternative is schism, i.e., permanent
factional struggle with each Communist party forced to
take sides, whether formal mutual excommunication
takes place or not. The Chinese Communists would
probably like to preserve mutual recognition of some
ultimate community of faith as a formal basis on which
all-inclusive meetings could take place from time to
time-just as common congresses of the Russian Social
Democrats took place long after Bolsheviks and Menshe-
viks had established separate factional organizations.
Like their predecessors, these meetings would be forums
for recurrent wrangles about the recognition of man-
dates (for, say, the Albanians or Yugoslavs) and re-
current contests for the votes of factionally uncommitted
parties (such as Cuba). Such an arrangement would
enable Mao to keep the Soviets ideologically bound to
the alliance while he continued the struggle for leader-
ship. Whether the Soviets will be willing to maintain
such a fiction of unity without a minimum of submission
to "majority rule"-a relation that would be as remote
from democracy as from centralism-remains to be seen.
THE EFFECTS OF the schism on the chances of indi-
vidual Communist parties are likely to differ widely.
A few strongly entrenched and confident leaders may
use the opportunity to acquire real political independ-
ence, shake off the identification with any foreign state
and actually improve their chances of gaining power,
while remaining "national Communist" totalitarians.
Other parties, whose leadership has proved divided in
the past, may be paralyzed or split by the new factional
struggle and find their attraction altogether destroyed.
Probably the majority will at first side with Russia from
automatic habit, but will face a gradual decline in their
following as it becomes more and more evident that
their position represents merely submission to a foreign
power and no longer solidarity with a worldwide
movement.
But the most profound repercussions may well be
those on the Soviet Communist Party itself. For the
second time within five years, it will have to revise its
image of its own international role. In 1956, Khru-
shchev ordered the party to abandon the Stalinist concept
that the progress of world revolution was wholly de-
pendent on Soviet strength. Now it will have to unlearn
the Khrushchevian belief that the progress of world
revolution would invariably increase that strength. Khru-
shchev was right in facing the fact that independent
revolutions may occur outside Soviet control; Stalin was
right in thinking that such revolutions may not neces-
sarily be to the advantage of the Soviet Union. But if
the progress of revolution and the expansion of Soviet
power are distinct and sometimes mutually contradictory
processes, it follows that the Soviet Union has as little
chance to win world hegemony as any other power. This
is not going to be the Soviet Century after all.
No doubt, it will take time for these ideological impli-
cations of the schism to be generally realized by the
Soviet Communists. But as the ultimate irrelevance of
world revolution to the greatness of the USSR comes to
be understood, the disillusionment of the believers
among them is bound to be profound. It is hardly likely
that either the aggressive elan of Khrushchev's foreign
policy or the zest of his campaign for a "Leninist"
ideological revival at home can recover from this blow.
Yet the self-confidence of the more pragmatic element
among Russia's administrators, technicians and scientists
will not be impaired by the discomfiture of the ideo-
logues. The Congress of the "second de-Stalinization"
has also sown the seeds, then, of a future "de-Khru-
shchevization": in the next crisis of succession, reasser-
tion of the primacy of an ideological party may no longer
be the safest road to victory.
14 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
The Three Funerals of Joseph Stalin
By Robert Conquest
IT MUST HAVE BEEN with some quickening of per-
sonal interest that General Monk, at the time still the
most powerful man in England, viewed the preparations
for the trial and mutilation of the corpse of Oliver
Cromwell, the ruler with whom his whole career had
been associated. That operation was carried out, of
course, as part of a return to legality.
Other historical parallels, from a variety of barbarous
pasts, have occurred to many commentators in connection
with the recent downgrading of Stalin. None of these
pasts, however, seems to compare in fierceness with the
Stalin era of Soviet history. What distinguishes the latter
and makes it so difficult to place in historical perspective
is the phenomenon of a narrow-minded, suspicious man
with one or two idees fixes running a vast modern state.
We are all quite used to the idea of a Roman Empire or
an Abassid Caliphate being ruled by a man of this type.
But the notion of such a dynasty arising in a country with
industry and science is difficult to grasp. Further, Marx-
ism is, in some respects at least, a "modern" ideology
and theory of society. How can it have produced a sys-
tem of rule, and a cadre of rulers, closer in many re-
spects to the Sudanese Mahdia in the last century than
to the respectable Marxist burgomasters of Vienna or
Stockholm?
But there is no bucking the realities. This extraordi-
nary evolution did take place. Stalin's court, with its
poisoners and its buffoons, was far closer to a compro-
mise between the coarse encampments of Attila's horde
and the subtle couloirs of Byzantium than to anything
in the present-day West. Stalin himself seems to have
realized this, with his special attachment to and admira-
tion of Ivan the Terrible. It is easy to imagine that
Mr. Conquest, a British poet and student of Communist
affairs, has within the past year published Power and
Policy in the USSR (reviewed on p. 46 of this issue),
and Courage of Genius (Collins and Harvill Press,
London) -an account of Pasternak's ordeal.
such scenes as the one in which Stalin and his entourage
fell into fits of laughter at Anna Pauker's husband imi-
tating Zinoviev being shot had their tone almost con-
sciously set by recollections of Ivan roistering with his
Oprichniki.
Milovan Djilas has complained that a fault of Marx-
ism is its lack of a theory of political liberty. This is not
quite fair: Marx, with all the ambivalence that charac-
terizes his attitude towards democracy, took it for granted
that the proletarian state would have at least the liberties
of expression prevailing in the then "bourgeois" re-
publics. In particular, he condemned any restriction of
freedom of the press-a condemnation which it seems
rather odd to encounter in the Russian edition of his
W 7orks. The fact is that the Stalinists (and indeed
Lenin) simply took advantage of Marx's failure to
elaborate his views into definite instructions to his disci-
ples. It would not be regarded as a sound defense for
a maniac driver on English roads to plead that there were
no signs saying "Keep to the Left." Certain things are
understood, except by complete aliens.
The alien intruders, in the case of Marxism, have been
the power-maniacs. Marx failed to consider that it might
be possible, even for Marxists, to be motivated not just
by a desire to save people, but rather by an urge for
power. It does not seem to have occurred to him that
in a dictatorship those rising to the top might be people
who like to be dictators.
BY DECISION OF the 22nd CPSU Congress, Stalin's
body now lies in a lesser grave flanking that of Felix
Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka. Yet, when one
thinks of the still surviving heritage left by Dzerzhinsky,
one may get the feeling that Stalin, too, in spite of his
progressive demotion, still retains a position of consider-
able influence. And one would not be wrong. Even in
his new and powerful attack on the late dictator at the
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 15
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
recent Party Congress, Khrushchev again acknowledged:
"Of course, Stalin has done a great service to the party
and to the Communist movement, and we give him
his due."
This, indeed, has been the ambivalent attitude ex-
pressed by Khrushchev ever since any public criticism of
Stalin has been possible at all. While Stalin was alive,
the present First Secretary was among the heartiest adu-
lators of "our dear father, wise teacher, and genius
leading the party, the Soviet people, and the working
people of the whole world-Comrade Stalin!"' It was
only when, in the struggle for power, the darker secrets
of the Soviet past began to be dragged out that Khru-
shchev launched his most violent attack on Stalin, in his
"secret speech" at the 20th Party Congress in February
1956. The remarks he made then will be remembered
for their bitterness and for their exposure of some of
the crimes of the past. Yet, even then, Khrushchev saw
fit to acknowledge that "in the past, Stalin undoubtedly
performed great services to the party, to the working
class, and to the international workers' movement"-in-
deed, that Stalin's excesses were not "the deeds of a
giddy despot" but acts which he had considered neces-
sary "in the interests of the party."
As we shall see, every time there has been any sign
of genuine anti-Stalinism gaining influence, Khrushchev
has gone out of his way to emphasize Stalin's "positive"
role. But all this has been largely a variation of empha-
sis, whereas the essentials of the official estimate of
Stalin have varied comparatively little over the last five
or six years. It is probably true that any government
which seeks to rule the Russia of the future with reason-
able success must (unless, indeed, it reverts to 100-per-
cent Stalinism) repudiate the Stalinist past. Yet, as this
article will try to bring out, the twin and opposite pulls
of the political advantages seen, on the one hand, in
maintaining continuity and, on the other, in repudiating
responsibility must-as long as the apparatocracy lasts-
result in some sort of compromise like the present one.
No regime in Russia can really get the weight of the
Stalinist past off its back until it truly repudiates all the
repressions of the late dictator and rehabilitates all his
victims. It is not just, or even mainly, a question of the
non-oppositionists, the military men, and the writers. It
is true that "the period of mass repression" has been con-
demned, and that implicitly at least this rehabilitates
millions who were victimized after 1936 on pseudo-
political charges. Yet, when Kaganovich is accused of
shooting hundreds of railwaymen, he is accused of
nothing more nor less than a type of behavior that was
1 From an article by Khrushchev honoring Stalin's 70th birthday,
published in Pravda, December 21, 1949.
repeated in every industry, office, university, and army
unit, and under the direction of every single one of the
present leaders.
IT IS TRUE that the responsibility of those who had
minor positions in the 1930's is proportionately less than
that, let us say, of Molotov. But where we happen to
know anything of the past of these minor characters, it
is clear that their activity was just as terroristic. Of
Korotchenko, for example (until 1961 a candidate
member of the Party Presidium and still Chairman of
the Presidium of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet and a
member of the Central Committee), we happen to know
a good deal thanks to the acquisition of the Smolensk
Archives, which reveal a truly horrifying story of his
misdeeds as party secretary for Smolensk in the early part
of the Stalin epoch.2
And if the great majority of those who formed the
Central Committee of the mid-1930's were (as Khru-
shchev said in 1956) illegally shot to death, what of the
legitimacy of the present regime? Those survivors of
the Great Purge who have been rehabilitated in the last
few years may well claim that they alone stood for any-
thing resembling legal rule in the party. But, of course,
there has been no move to restore them to their old
positions.
After the 20th Party Congress, there were indeed un-
official reports (from the same sources which gave the
first intimations of Khrushchev's "secret speech") that
an attempt had been made in certain party circles to
challenge the current leadership's right to the succession.
These voices, it is understood, called for a new party
congress to elect a Central Committee untainted by the
past. That some such spontaneous movement sprang up
seems confirmed by a long article which appeared in
Pravda of April 5, 1956, severely condemning a number
of party branches and individual Communists for "derrma-
gogic statements" and "slanderous fabrications and anti-
party assertions." "Under the guise of condemning the
cult of the individual," said the article, "some rotten
elements try to cast doubt on the correctness of the
party's policy." At one branch which was cited as an
example, Pravda charged that four named members had
"used inner-party democracy to make slanderous speeches
directed against the party policy and its Leninist founda-
tions," and still had not been rebuked by the branch as
a whole.
Moreover, the present leaders labor under the ne-
cessity, like a millstone around their necks, of having to
2 See MerleFainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1958.
16 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
approve the general line which Stalin followed against
the opposition-the crash programs of industrialization
and, above all, collectivization. The actual process of
collectivization produced the worst excesses, on the larg-
est conceivable scale, against the peasantry; yet, nothing
has been, or probably can be, said against it. Moreover,
the collective-farm system, as established, has been an
enormous handicap to Soviet agriculture. Pasternak, in
Doctor Zhivago, was able to write that it was a failure
as well as a mistake, and he added that it was the refusal
to allow this to be said that produced the terror. But
such an analysis is unthinkable for the present leadership.
Collectivization remains a dogma that no one dares
dispute. In general, praise of all Stalin's major policies
has to be coupled with denunciation of the terror. And
the terror must be regarded as peripheral, as an excess
totally unrelated to the economic and social aspects of the
Stalin regime. As Togliatti pointed out in 1956, this
leads to the attribution of all excesses to the personal
faults of a single man-a notion which could not con-
ceivably be more un-Marxist. It is, in fact, a cult of
personality in reverse.
STALIN'S SUCCESSORS were not slow to see the ad-
vantages, as well as the disadvantages, of dissociating
themselves from their late master. On the one hand,
deprived of the immense prestige of the late dictator and
themselves beset by factions and unable to exert Stalin's
single-minded, unitary tyranny, they saw the attraction,
and even the necessity of a more "liberal" sort of rule-
not, indeed, in the sense of admitting the populace to
the political arena monopolized by the apparat, but
simply of moderating the methods of rule employed by
that apparat. But even this meant some sort of recon-
ciliation between the populace and the regime-and the
principle of alienation between the two was precisely the
essence of Stalin's rule and of Stalinism. Thus, as long
as the new regime accepted responsibility for the old,
it was bound to bear the burden of the memory of
twenty years of "mass repression." On the other hand,
the disadvantages of a complete repudiation of Stalin
were equally obvious. On the face of it, the new leaders'
only title to rule was as Stalin's heirs. And, of course,
they all bore a degree of responsibility for everything
done in his time.
Their first action was to repudiate the "Doctors' Plot"
-probably a gesture intended as much to mollify the
party cadres threatened by the abortive purge as to calm
the population. Then, during Beria's "Hundred Days,"
a definite campaign of silence (rather than of condemna-
tion) was launched against Stalin's name. The most
striking instances of this were Bulganin's May Day
speech and the Order of the Day commemorating the
VE-Day anniversary on May 9. The latter, in particular,
would ordinarily have been the occasion for a paean to
the Organizer of Victory, the first Generalissimus since
Suvorov. But Stalin's name was omitted entirely. Beria's
fall modified the campaign but did not bring it to a
close. Pravda, on July 13, 1953, came out powerfully
in favor of collective leadership and against decisions
taken by "individuals." Aristov later said at the 20th
Congress that the July 1953 Plenum revealed blatant
violations of the collective principle, "engendered by
the cult of the individual." This certainly seems to imply
that Malenkov at that time seized the weapon of anti-
Stalinism which had fallen from Beria's (already possibly
lifeless) hands.
Shortly thereafter, on the occasion of the 50th anni-
versary of the party, Voprosy filoso fii (No. 4, 1953,
which went to press in August) carried an article which
played down Stalin's role to something like the position
that was to enjoy official sanction between 1958 and
1961. The "Stalin Constitution" now became simply the
"New Constitution," and victory in the war was attrib-
uted only to the party. Lenin was referred to frequently,
and the party and its Central Committee were given
credit for most achievements. Stalin was mentioned only
twice, once in a quotation from Malenkov's speech at
the 19th Party Congress and once as a leader in the
struggle against Trotskyism. In keeping with this policy,
Stalin's birth anniversary on December 21, 1953, was
passed over in silence.
IT MAY WELL have been thought that these tactics
would serve to dissociate the regime from excessive at-
tachment to the Stalinist past while casting no overt slur
on its legitimacy. But the question was a live one
politically-which, in Soviet circumstances, is to say that
it was an element in the struggle for power within the
top leadership. Malenkov seems to have gained the first
advantage from the fall of Beria. But once the past was
open to investigation, there was an obvious temptation
for all the leaders to dig into it for material usable
against their rivals. For a time the fiction could be main-
tained that the evils of the past were due to Beria and
later to Yezhov, but eventually Stalin's role would be
hard to conceal.
Malenkov took the offensive in mid-54. Ryumin, the
Deputy Minister of State Security responsible for the
Doctors' Plot, was tried and shot to the accompaniment
of what amounted to assurances that the administrative
and industrial bureaucracy needed Malenkov's protection
against Stalinist methods. But in the winter of 1954-55
the anti-Malenkov combination of Khrushchev and
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 17
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Molotov prevailed. The "Leningrad Case" was brought
into the open at the Abakumov trial in December 1954;
yet, there was still no move to implicate Stalin. On the
contrary, in fact, it was precisely at this time that ad-
herents of the old regime were placated by a treatment
of Stalin's birthday notably different from that of 1953.
Pravda, in a long article, actually found it possible in
effect to praise the purges: "It was he {Stalin] who
mercilessly exposed the enemies of the people. Under the
leadership of its Central Committee and of Stalin, the
Communist Party destroyed the traitors and defeatists."
During 1955, much was written aboutthe necessity of
"collective" leadership and attacking the "cult of per-
sonality." But Stalin still remained personally immune,
and his birthday was again celebrated with enthusiasm.
In its article honoring this occasion, Kommunist even
went to the length of linking Lenin, Stalin, and Khru-
shchev-a clear indication that Khrushchev himself was
not pressing at this stage for any overt attack on his late
sponsor. The struggle against "Stalinism" was, in fact,
not so much a struggle against Stalin's principles as a
struggle by one section of his followers against another.
On the eve of the 20th Congress, the struggle centered
around the question of rehabilitations, which had already
become unavoidable.
In his secret speech to the Congress, Khrushchev
referred to several cases dating back to the pre-Beria
period, which he said had been investigated "in 1955."
He also disclosed the curious circumstance that the judge
who had been in charge of investigating the Kosior and
other cases had been questioned in person by the party
Presidium "only several days before the present Con-
gress." That the Presidium should have deemed it
necessary to have this direct confrontation presumably
signifies that its members were not disposed to content
themselves with the reports submitted by the investiga-
tive organs under Khrushchev's control. Kosior had
been Khrushchev's predecessor as party First Secretary
in the Ukraine, and among the important rehabilitation
cases his certainly was the one in which Khrushchev was
most closely involved. One may speculate that the re-
ports submitted to the Presidium left out this aspect, and
that the Presidium's personal interrogation of the judge
was designed to get it into the record. Khrushchev's
statements at the recent 22nd Congress now confirm
(or at least assert) that Molotov and Co. heartily op-
posed the raising of the past in 1956. Yet, this course
evidently had its dangers for Khrushchev, too.
STILL, WITH HIS usual penchant for any initiative
likely to loosen up the political situation, Khrushchev
seems to have been more or less determined in February
1956 to force the issue and make what use of it he
could (though it was actually Mikoyan who brought
matters into the open). Khrushchev now tells us that
he obtained the Presidium's permission to make his
secret speech only by threatening that, if permission were
denied, he would go ahead and make the speech anyway
as an ordinary Congress delegate. Of course, this may
not be true; or it may have amounted to no more than
a vague threat. In any case, the speech came too late to
affect the breakthrough in the struggle for power which
this new initiative was evidently designed to secure.
For the intrigue and haggling over the composition of
the new Presidium had without doubt already been
concluded, and the result was stalemate.
During 1956 the secret speech was circulated to the
party branches, producing signs of revolt in a number
of them where anti-Stalinism was evidently viewed as
impugning the past deeds, and hence the present posi-
tion, of the entire party leadership-a tendency which,
as noted earlier, had to be promptly denounced in
Pravda. On June 30 a Central Committee resolution
"On Overcoming the Cult of the Individual and its
Consequences" put the attack on Stalin formally before
the general public. By this time a good deal of undisci-
plined anti-Stalinism had cropped up in some of the
foreign Communist parties, and the older members of
the CPSU Presidium were doubtless pointing the moral.
The text of the June 30 resolution was far milder than
the secret speech, and more concerned with defending
Stalin himself and the legitimacy of the "Leninist core"
which had served under and succeeded him. Later in the
year, the consequences of Khrushchev's new policies in
Hungary and Poland, and among writers in Russia itself,
further strengthened the hands of those who wished to
slow down the attack on Stalin, and over the ensuing
period there was considerable backpedalling. Khru-
shchev himself went out of his way to say that "the term
Stalinist, like Stalin himself, is inseparable from the
high title of Communist." 8
Even when the "anti-party" group was defeated in
June 1957, the Khrushchevites, in publicly denouncing
the group for its crimes, seldom attacked Stalin. In fact,
Stalin seems to have been spoken of only once. This was
when Khrushchev charged that Malenkov had "not only
failed to restrain J. V. Stalin, but very adroitly exploited
Stalin's weaknesses and habits in the last years of his
life," and in many cases "egged him on to actions which
merit severe condemnation." 4 Thus, even here, Stalin
was pictured to some extent as the victim of evil court-
sellors. Similarly, when the Central Committee, in its
S Pravda, January 17, 1957.
& Pravda, August 28, 1957.
18 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
decree on music of May 28, 1958, condemned Stalin's
subjective attitude towards individual works of art, it
softened the condemnation by asserting that his attitude
was "known to have been very negatively influenced by
Molotov, Malenkov and Beria"-a complete falsehood,
of course, as Zhdanov was the true instigator.
ON THE WHOLE, it is surprising how little was said of
Stalin's "negative" side during the years between the
20th and 22nd party congresses. Though there were
passing references to it, the sort of adjective applied to
his activities was seldom any stronger than "incorrect."
Apart from rather ambiguous expressions of blame for
the terror, he was censured for certain political and eco-
nomic errors of his later years, but never for his basic
program. The secret speech already criticized him for
not having been near the countryside for years, for be-
lieving Soviet propaganda films about agricultural pros-
perity, and for opposing incentives to the peasants sug-
gested by Khrushchev; and it also censured his Economic
Problems of Socialism. In addition, though less overtly,
Stalin's policy and theories on Machine Tractor Stations
were later abandoned, his opinion of a transition to
Tovaro-Obmen contradicted, and ley-farming, on which
he had put the greatest emphasis, denounced.
The setpiece statement of the whole official attitude
over the period up to the 22nd Congress is the article on
Stalin in the latest edition of the Large Soviet Encyclo-
pedia (Volume 40). (This volume came out in 1958
after a delay of over 18 months, during which all the
following alphabetical volumes had already appeared.)
The article, only 6 pages long as against 44 in the
previous edition, may be taken as representing the con-
sidered opinions of the regime. Stalin's role in the
revolution is toned down, though not to the extent of
giving any credit to the "opposition." He.is praised for
his fight against the Trotsky and Rightest deviations and
for his role in collectivization and industrialization.
Little is said about his part in the purges, and this much
more moderate in tone than the accusations of the secret
speech. He is said to have employed unnecessary means
of repression against political opponents on the basis of
the mistaken thesis he put forward in 1937 that the class
struggle becomes more and more intense during the
achievement of socialism; but most of the responsibility
for the liquidation of honest Stalinists is placed on "the
accursed enemies of the people, Yagoda, Yezhov, and
Beria, who had wormed their way into J. V. Stalin's
confidence." He is credited with a "serious contribution
to the defense of the country" in the war, although his
faith in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and failure to prepare for
the German attack are censured, together with his over-
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
ruling of Central Committee members on the spot in
connection with operations (doubtless a reference to the
Kharkov battle in 1942). Little is said of the postwar
years, though some of his economic theories of this
period are called fallacious and the break with Yugo-
slavia is condemned.
Most interesting is the article's analysis of the "person-
ality cult," which it attributes both to negative features
in Stalin's character and to the specific difficult conditions
of the 1930's. The continuity of party democracy is
preserved by the device of asserting that it ceased to
function only at the top while the lower party branches
remained democratic. The evil effects of the cult are
deplored, but they are held irrelevant to the development
of the Soviet state. Stalin's name is called "inseparable
from Marxism-Leninism," and the article declares that
"it would be a most flagrant distortion of historical truth
to spread the mistakes made by Stalin in the last years
of his life to all his party and state activities extending
over many years.. . ... It states further that "attacks by
revisionists against so-called 'Stalinism' are also essen-
tially a form of struggle against the fundamental posi-
tions of Marxism-Leninism."
SUCH WAS THE official line right up to the 22nd
Congress. The new assault that was unleashed against
Stalin at the Congress was not preceded by any softening-
up, but came right out of the blue. It seems to have
represented a last-minute initiative by Khrushchev-
somewhat like his initiative in February 1956-designed
to gain an advantage in his current political maneuvers,
perhaps involving Kozlov, Kosygin, and others. The
main burden of the renewed attack on the Stalinist past
was not directed at Stalin himself; on the contrary, its
whole animus was clearly against Molotov, Voroshilov,
Kaganovich, and Malenkov. The official rating of Stalin
remained essentially unchanged from what it had been
over the preceding five years, but on the other hand the
charges levelled against the anti-party group were both
more vicious and more detailed than before-even
though there is -no reason to suppose that these men
represent any real political threat to Khrushchev. A
reading of the speeches at the congress shows that the
more detailed attacks on the group were made by
Khrushchev's closest adherents, while those major fig-
ures in the Presidium who do not owe their careers to
him confined themselves in the main to general denun-
ciations. Thus, there seems to be little doubt that two
main elements in the Presidium are engaged in a strug-
gle, one of them pressing the attack on the past as a
tactic in securing the elimination of the other, which
wishes to go more slowly. (There was at least a hint of
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 19
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
a personal attack on Kozlov in Shvernik's report for the
party control committee, which unexpectedly extended
the "bad" period of the Leningrad purge from 1949 to
1952, when Kozlov was secretary in charge of cadres
there.) The indications are, however, that Khrushchev's
new initiative was not wholly successful. In his final
congress speech, he had largely to withdraw the accusa-
tions he had originally made against Voroshilov, and
the newly-elected Presidum reflects no increase in the
representation of his own personal following nor any
weakening of the position of other elements.
Khrushchev, indeed, still faces a dilemma. It is easy
enough to pay lip service to "socialist legality" and to
carry out such de-Stalinization as can be accomplished
by a stroke of the pen, like changing the names of cities.
But, just as the busts of Stalin which Soviet climbers
ceremonially placed on all the highest peaks in the
USSR over past decades will take considerable time and
effort to remove, so will it be an even longer and
harder task to erase the political heritage of his regime.
For what is to succeed it?
KHRUSHCHEV'S REVIVAL of the anti-Stalinist line
has evoked some very apt comments from Communist
ranks outside the USSR--comments which may perhaps
be taken as representing ideas that already exist even
within the CPSU although they cannot yet be made
articulate. At the meeting of the Central Committee
of the Italian Communist Party in November 1961, one
of the delegates, Senator Secchia, said that the Russians
had "not come to executions without a long process
which started neither in 1937 nor in 1934, but much
earlier, a process in which minorities were first deprived
of the right of expressing their views, then were isolated
and kept under suspicion, and eventually were expelled
and imprisoned. This is why we should not be satis-
fied by the mere fact that today there are no more
opponents of the regime in prisons. This in itself' is
not sufficient."
Another comment came from Senator Terracini;, a
member of the Party Directorate, who said that responsi-
bility for the crimes of the Stalin era had now been
extended from Stalin to the whole leading group of his
epoch, and that this might eventually engulf Khrushchev
himself, since "in fact it should be said that Comrade
Khrushchev belonged to the leading group around
Stalin which shares responsibility." Terracini, however,
went on to praise Khrushchev as deserving trust for
having seen the necessity of airing the matter and facing
the risks. Another speaker, Garavini, pointed out the
contradiction presented by the existence in the USSR of
a "highly articulate and rich economic balance" with
"no corresponding political balance, that is, a similarly
developed balance of Socialist democracy."
The signs of any beginning of inner-party democracy
in the Soviet Union are as yet negligible. At the 22nd
Congress, however, Kozlov mentioned that in the dis-
cussions of the draft party statutes (presumably the pre-
congress discussions held in party branches around the
country), the question had been raised whether the
hitherto existing prohibition against factionalism and the
formation of cliques needed to be retained in the statutes
any longer. Kozlov answered that it did. Yet, the
demand for greater democracy in the party evidently
exists, and as long as the leadership is split into warring
groups (as it chronically must be), there is always the
possibility that one of them may break the rules and
seek the support of this democratic trend-just as Kadar
and the anti-Rakosi faction in the Hungarian party
apparat entered into an uneasy alliance with Nagy and
the democratizers in 1956. The Kadar wing miscalcu-
lated the strength of the new forces and in the end could
dispose of them only by calling in Soviet armor.
But from where are the tanks to come that would
enforce order in Moscow in similar circumstances?
20 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Khrushchev and the Purges
By Lazar Pistrak
KHRUSHCHEV'S CLIMB to power was an almost un-
interrupted process from his arrival in Moscow in 1929.
It was not easy for a postrevolutionary newcomer with
no ideological and a poor educational background to
gain a high position among old Bolsheviks whose revolu-
tionary zeal was born in times of persecution and anger
and strengthened by a doctrine whose standard bearers
they were believed to be. Under "normal" political
conditions Khrushchev would have been unable to make
such a swift jump toward the higher Communist hier-
archy. But the conditions were abnormal in the sense
that intellectuality was not in high demand; the totali-
tarian dictatorship whose birth coincided with Khru-
shchev's arrival in the capital needed simple-minded peo-
ple with overemphasized ambition, strong nerves, with-
out scruples, ready to follow blindly the party line drawn
by Stalin and his closest collaborators and thus to help
build the foundation for the rule of a single person.
The Great Purge of the 1930's was the touchstone by
which the fitness of the newcomers for the incoming era
had been tested. Khrushchev passed that test with dis-
tinction. When the year 1937 reached its end, the de-
cision to admit Khrushchev to the highest party body,
the Politburo, was about to be made. But this was also
the time when the bloody Purge reached its climax.
Nikolai Yezhov, the diminutive, long-eared maniac
with the shrieking voice, still enjoyed unlimited authority
to extort confessions from innocent people. The places
of detention were filled with men and women whose
bodies ached from tortures and whose minds approached
the brink of insanity. Fear and anguish stifled friendship
and sympathy. The persistent, threatening appeals for
vigilance, in which Khrushchev excelled, had brought
results. To avoid accusations of "faint-heartedness" and
"rotten liberalism," frightened men and women pro-
duced false reports charging others with spying, wreck-
ing, and counterrevolutionary acts. In one district in
Kiev one man wrote 69,1, another over 100 false re-
ports; 2 in Odessa a man fabricated 230 reports,8 and
in Poltava province one Communist accused the entire
membership of the party organization to which he be-
longed of being "enemies of the people." 4
Yezhov was the hero of the day. On December 20,
1937, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the
Cheka, the Bolshoi Theatre was crowded with Stalin's
supporters, and Anastas Mikoyan, one of the present
rulers, paid tribute to Comrade Yezhov as a "talented,
faithful pupil of Stalin, [a man who] is beloved by the
Soviet people, [and who] has achieved the greatest
victory in the history of the party, a victory we will never
forget." Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and
Molotov presided over this meeting and applauded
warmly when Mikoyan cried out: "Learn the Stalinist
style of work from Comrade Yezhov, as he learned it
from Comrade Stalin." 5 The same day, Pravda edi-
torially greeted Yezhov with a "Long live the faithful
son of the people, the Stalinist People's Commissar,
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov!" It was around this time
that Stalin chose Khrushchev to become his vicar in the
Ukraine.
Attacking Beria, Khrushchev said in his February,
1956 speech: "It has now been established that the
villain had climbed up the government ladder over an
untold number of corpses." 6
This was certainly so. Beria's Chekist record in Trans-
caucasia probably surpassed many other records of the
kind as far as brutality was concerned. This was the
Mr. Pistrak is a specialist on Soviet affairs and author of
The Grand Tactician, a biography of Khrushchev, from
which this article is excerpted with the permission of
the publishers (Frederick Praeger Inc., New York,
1961).
' Bilshovik Ukrainy (Kiev), No. 1, 1938, p. 53.
2 Visti VTsVK (Kiev), May 23, 1938.
8Ibid., June 17, 1938.
4Ibid., February 14, 1938.
Pravda, December 21, 1937.
8 See The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism,
Columbia University Press, New York, 1956, p. 65.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 21
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
main reason for his advancement. But reading Khru-
shchev's statement one cannot help remembering that
Khrushchev's appointment to the Ukraine in January
1938, which really launched him on his career, was
closely related to the annihilation of Pavel P. Postyshev
and Stanislav V. Kosior, Politburo members and First
and Second Secretaries of the Ukrainian Communist
Party. In view of this relation, a brief look at the cir-
cumstances under which they were purged is required.
POSTYSHEV'S DARING BEHAVIOR at the February-
March plenary session of the Central Committee in 1937
is all the more remarkable because he was aware of the
fact that he was approaching his end; 7 at the 13th
Ukrainian Party Congress (May-June, 1937) one of
Postyshev's former "friends," a member of the Kiev
Province Party Committee, M. S. Vasilenko, had revealed
Postyshev's resentment at the criticism which the All-
Union Party Central Committee in Moscow had leveled
against "mistakes" of the Kiev party organization on
January 13, 1937.8 This was why Kaganovich was im-
mediately dispatched to Kiev to straighten out the
situation. A plenary session of the Kiev Province Party
Committee was urgently convoked for January 17 with
the participation of Kaganovich in his capacity of Secre-
tary of the Party Central Committee. At this session,
Postyshev was relieved from his post of First Secretary
of the Kiev Committee "because of the impossibility of
combining" this position with that of the Second Secre-
tary of the Ukranian Central Committees The actual
reason for Postyshev's dismissal was, of course, not the
duality of offices held by him. From 1930 to 1935,
Kaganovich himself simultaneously controlled three
party offices in Moscow, and Khrushchev repeated this
performance in Kiev in 1938, when he managed to carry
the burden of first secretaryship in the Central, Kiev
Province, and Kiev City Party Committees.
Postyshev was to be reduced, but his popularity among
the party workers in Kiev and the Ukraine was the rea-
son for camouflaging the first blow Stalin dealt him
through Kaganovich. The second indirect attack on
Postyshev came at the beginning of February when the
name of Karpov, Postyshev's protege, appeared in the
Ukrainian press with the epithets "enemy of the party,
loathsome Trotskyite." 10 For more than two weeks after
7 P. I. Postyshev, an Old Bolshevik, openly questioned Stalin's
demand that the purges be intensified; this incident is described
in Chanter 10 of Mr. Pistrak's book-Ed.
that about sixty prominent Kiev party workers in po-
litical, educational, economic, and other fields, including
a large number of people who had worked under Posty-
shev, were labeled as enemies of the people, Trotskyites,,
and the like. On March 17, twelve days after the plenary
session in Moscow, Postyshev was officially relieved of
his post of Second Secretary of the Ukrainian Party
Central Committee "in connection with his transfer to
another job." 11 The other job was the secretaryship in
the Kuibyshev Province Party Committee. On Janu-
ary 20, 1938, Postyshev was expelled from the Politburo,
to which he had belonged as an alternate member for
four years, and Khrushchev was nominated to that posi-
tion instead. Although the official announcement still
called Postyshev "comrade," there can be no doubt that
he already was under arrest, since his name entirely
disappeared from the Soviet press after November 17,
1937.
The same issue of the Kiev Visti which reported
Postyshev's dismissal from his post in the Ukrainian
Party Central Committee (March 18, 1937) and edi-
torially accused him of "political blindness" devoted
half a page to Khrushchev's report on the results of the
February-March plenary session which he had delivered
two days earlier in Moscow. His speech was prominently
displayed on page two, while the report on the same
subject made by the Ukrainian leaders was not carried.
Two days later, in an editorial, Visti repeated a motto
from Khrushchev's speech. This was certainly not acci-
dental: It seems that as early as March 1937 Khru-
shchev was considered a man of influence in Kiev. It had
not taken long before Khrushchev, who left Kiev in
1929 as a low-echelon worker, returned there as a ruler.
Following Postyshev's dismissal and arrest, Kosior
still remained party boss in the Ukraine, but his position
was considerably weakened. On January 18, 1938, the
newspapers announced that Kosior had been appointed
deputy chairman of the Soviet Control Commission. This
was not a favorable appointment; it was Stalin's kiss of
death. Three months later, probably around the end of
April, Kosior was arrested. The investigating judge,
Rodos, testified in February, 1956: "I was told that
Kosior and Chubar {Politburo member, arrested in
1938) were people's enemies and for this reason, I, as
an investigative judge, had to make them confess." 12
It was Khrushchev who informed the 20th Party Con-
gress about Rodos' shocking testimony, but it was also
Khrushchev who, in June 1938, addressing the 14th
Ukrainian Party Congress in Kiev, said:
8 Visti VTs VK, June 1, 1937. 11 Ibid., March 18, 1937.
9Ibid., January 18, 1937. 12 The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism, p.
10 Ibid., February 1, 1937. 42.
22 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
The enemies of the people who sat in the leadership of the whim of a Yezhov or even a Stalin. Finally, the last
Central Committee of the Communist Party [Bolshevik] of
the Ukraine and in the [Kiev] Provincial Party Committee
knew very well that the stronger the party organization, the
more dangerous it is to the enemies of the working class and,
first of all, to the Polish landlords and the German barons.
And therefore they-the Polish agents, the Pilsudchiks-did
everything in order to weaken the Bolshevik discipline, to
corrupt the party organization. 18
It is evident that in his diatribe against the "enemies
of the people who sat in the leadership of the Ukrainian
Central Committee and in the Kiev obkom," Khru-
shchev had in mind Kosior and Postyshev. At the same
time that Khrushchev assailed Kosior, Rodos "made him
confess," and it was not long afterward that Khrushchev
filled the vacancy of full-fledged member in the Polit-
buro vacated by Kosior's removal.
THERE ARE SEVERAL reasons why such leading old
Bolsheviks as Postyshev and Kosior had to make way
for the intellectual low-brow, Khrushchev. One of the
reasons was their intellectual superiority and more inde-
pendent thinking-a quality for which there is no place
in a totalitarian dictatorship. Another reason was, as
stated above, that in spite of their brutality, Postyshev
and Kosior, like Kirov and Ordzhonikidze, possessed
a spark of honesty in their hearts; it seems that they
showed insufficient readiness to go along in putting the
label of "enemy of the people" on just anybody at the
Today and forever, oh, Stalin, be praised
For the light that the plants and the fields do emit!
You are the heart of the people, the truth and the faith!
We're thankful to you for the sun you have lit!
Kiev is free, will remain so for ages,
Our land, our Mother, salutes it with cheer,
Khrushchev and Vatutin,* brave and courageous,
Lead forward the armies who fight without fear.
We're united and solid, and no one will dare
To touch our young land-clean as first love,
As fresh and as young with his silver-gray hair
Is Stalin's companion, Nikita Khrushchev.
Front, died in 1944.
-From the poem, "To the Great Stalin from the Ukrain-
ian People," published under the signatures of thir-
teen Ukrainian poets In Pravda, December 14, 1944; as
translated In Lazar Pistrak's The Grand Tactician, p. 165.
but not least reason for their downfall was their popu-
larity among the Ukrainian party workers and, in the
case of Postyshev, among the younger generation (Pio-
neers and Komsomol). Stalin could not permit Kosior,
Postyshev, and others to be called "vozhds of the
Ukrainian people," which had been the case on several
occasions. In Stalin's time, this planet could have only
one vozhd (leader). That Postyshev's fall was in part
caused by the violation of this rule is evident from a
statement made by one of his former "friends," N. N.
Popov, who recanted but was nevertheless liquidated.
Popov said: "One of the reasons why Comrade Posty-
shev became so quickly susceptible to intoxication with
success was the noise which our press made around his
name." 14
Khrushchev was aware of the danger of self-promo-
tion, and thus at the first appropriate occasion "pro-
moted" Stalin instead to the status of "vozhd of the
Ukrainian people." This was done in a resolution
passed at the 14th Ukrainian Party Congress. Further-
more, Khrushchev demonstrated his modesty by allow-
ing himself to be called only "glorious son of the prole-
tarian Donbas," "best son of our people." 16 These
appellations, however, were used less frequently than
those describing Khrushchev's closeness to Stalin: "faith-
ful pupil of Stalin," "friend and comrade-in-arms of
J. V. Stalin," "Stalin's closest pupil and comrade-in-
arms," "Stalinist leader of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks,"
"closest companion-in-arms of the great Stalin, militant
leader of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks." 16
"Modesty" was not the only advantage Khrushchev
had over his predecessors. Another more important ad-
vantage was his greater ruthlessness and readiness in
exposing and liquidating the "enemies of the people."
Actually the purge in the Ukraine had not been greatly
hampered by Postyshev and Kosior. As everywhere else,
Yezhov's terror machine worked well enough in the
Ukraine even before Khrushchev's arrival, but Stalin
and Yezhov were perfectionists, and the slightest ob-
struction capable of slowing down the speed or im-
pairing the smooth functioning of the machine was not
tolerated by them. They expected Khrushchev to do a
better job than his predecessors. In a speech before the
14th Party Congress, Demyan S. Korotchenko, at the
time Chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People's
Commissars, stated that Khrushchev, "the best son of
our [Ukrainian} people, the excellent Bolshevik, the
14 Visti VTs VK, June 2, 1937.
18 ibid., May 22 and June 21, 1938, respectively.
16Ibid., May 23, 1938, June 18, 1938, June 9, 1939, and No-
vember 24, 1940, respectively.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 23
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
deal the final blow at all this Trotskyite, Bukharinite,
and bourgeois-nationalist gang in the Ukraine." 17
The purge of top local party officials was carried out
by Khrushchev with remarkable speed. S. A. Kudryavt-
sev, who had become First Secretary of the Kiev Prov-
ince Party Committee after Postyshev's dismissal in
January 1937, and Politburo member of the Ukrainian
Party in June of the same year, was purged at the end of
that year and arrested as an "enemy of the people."
On April 17, 1938, Khrushchev purged Kudryavtsev's
successor and member of the Ukrainian Central Com-
mittee, D. M. Yevtushenko, and took over his position.
The same procedure was repeated with regard to the
Kiev City Party Committee, of which Khrushchev also
became First Secretary. With the helping hand of Mi-
khail Alekseevich Burmistenko, whom Moscow had dis-
patched to the Ukraine together with Khrushchev to
become Second Secretary of the Ukrainian Central Com-
mittee, Khrushchev, appearing in many cases in per-
son, purged practically all top party and government
officials in the Ukrainian provinces.
KHRUSHCHEV'S ASSIGNMENT called not only for
full cooperation with Yezhov's henchmen in the Ukraine
but also for initiative in exposing the "enemies of the
people." In May 1938, in a letter of consent to "run"
for the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev wrote: "I pledge
to spare no efforts in seizing and annihilating all agents
of fascism, the Trotskyites, Bukharinites, and all these
despicable bourgeois nationalists on our free Ukrainian
soil." 18
Only a few months after his arrival it became clear
that Stalin had not made a mistake when he selected
Khrushchev for the job. The Ukrainian press and
prominent Communist speakers soon described the
situation on the Purge front in the following manner:
The merciless uprooting of the enemies of the people-the
Trotskyites, Bukharinites, bourgeois nationalists, and all other
spying filth-began only after the Central Committee of the
All-Union Communist Party (B) sent the unswerving Bol-
shevik and Stalinist, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, to the
Ukraine to lead the Central Committee of the Ukrainian
Communist Party (B).19
This flattering statement in an editorial in Bilshovik
Ukrainy was seconded by leading Communists such as
A. S. Shcherbakov, at the time First Secretary of the
Stalino Province Committee, who said:
17 Ibid., June 21, 1938.
18 Ibid., May 23, 1938.
16 Bilshovik Ukrainy, No. 7, 1938, p. 25.
I subscribe to the opinion of the comrades that a really
merciless crushing of the enemies of the people in the
Ukraine began after the Central Committee of the All-Union
Communist Party (B) had dispatched Comrade Nikita Ser-
geyevich Khrushchev to lead the Ukrainian Bolsheviks.
Now the toiling people of the Ukraine can be assured that
the crushing of the agents of the Polish landowners, the
German fascists will be carried out to the end, that the
enemies of the people, every one of them, will be completely
annihilated.20
The most interesting statement of this kind was, how-
ever, made by the "master of ceremonies" himself, the
chief of the NKVD in the Ukraine, A. I. Uspensky. At
an election meeting in Proskurov he introduced himself
in the following manner:
I consider myself a pupil of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov.
Comrade Yezhov teaches us to fight the enemies of the
people, to clean up our country, our Motherland from the
enemies. I pledge to follow Comrade Yezhov, the militant
leader of the NKVD, in every respect.
(This pledge materialized: Uspensky disappeared at the
end of 1938 as did his beloved teacher.) He went on:
And only after the faithful Stalinist, Nikita Sergeyevich
Khrushchev, arrived in the Ukraine did the smashing of the
enemies of the people begin in earnest.
He concluded his speech with a personal note:
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev asked me to transmit to
you his regards and to ask you to prepare yourselves in. a
Bolshevik manner for the collection of a rich Stalinist
harvest... 21
The exact number of the top party and government
officials arrested and executed in the Ukraine is not
known, but since these officials belonged to the Ukrainian
Party's Central Committee, a comparison of the com-
position of this body before and after Khrushchev's
arrival in the Ukraine may serve as a yardstick by which
Khrushchev's ruthlessness can be measured. The last
Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party
elected before Khrushchev's arrival consisted of 117
members with voting rights and 49 candidates or al-
ternate members. These 166 men had been elected at
the 13th Ukrainian Party Congress on June 2, 1937,
when the Great Purge approached its peak. Postyshev
and many of his friends and followers were already
purged, and this was also reflected in the fact that only
31 percent of the members of the outgoing Central
Committee elected at the 12th Congress in January 1934
reappeared on the new list. On June 19, 1938, five
months after Khrushchev took over, at the 14th Party
20 Visti VTs VK, June 17, 1938.
21 Ibid., June 24, 1938.
24 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved
Congress, a new Central Committee was elected, to
which only three men from the 1937 Committee, or
less than 3 percent, were re-elected. The 15th Party
Congress took place in 1940, when the Great Purge
was over, but, in spite of this fact, 53 percent of the
members of the preceding Central Committee were not
re-elected to the new Committee.22
In his secret report of February 25, 1956, Khrushchev
disclosed that "of the 139 members and candidates of
the tAll-Union] Party's Central Committee who were
elected at the 17th Congress tin 1934], 98 persons, i.e.,
70 percent, were arrested and shot." 28 On the other
hand, it can be established that 23 members and candi-
dates, or 16.5 percent of the same Committee were re-
elected to the Central Committee at the 18th Party Con-
gress in 1939.24 A comparison of the composition of
the Ukrainian Party Central Committee elected in 1934
at the 12th Congress with that of the one elected in 1938
at the 14th Congress shows that not a single member of
the 1934 Committee was re-elected and, as stated above,
97 percent of the Central Committee members were
removed in 1937-38.
The only reason why 70 percent of the [All-Union] Central
Committee and candidates elected at the 17th Party Congress
[in 1934] were branded as "enemies of the party and the
people" was that honest Communists were slandered, accusa-
tions against them were fabricated, and revolutionary legality
was gravely undermined.
Such was Khrushchev's explanation of the massacre
of the members of the All-Union Party Central Com-
mittee which took place in 1937-38. Putting on the
mask of indignation, Khrushchev further revealed that of
the 1,966 delegates to the 1934 Congress with either
voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons had been ar-
rested on charges of antirevolutionary crimes-decidedly
more than a majority.
"This very fact," said Khrushchev, "shows how ab-
surd, wild, and contrary to common sense were the
charges of counterrevolutionary crimes made, as we now
see, against a majority of the participants at the 17th
Party Congress." The subordinate clause, "as we now
see," was obviously inserted to suggest to his compara-
tively young audience, who hardly knew the particulars
about the Great Purge, that at that time he, Khrushchev,
was not aware of the fact that over 56 percent of the
22 Ibid., May 18, 1940.
28 The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism,
pp. 22-23.
24 XVII sezd vsesoyuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (B) (Steno-
graphic report; Moscow, 1938), pp. 680-681; XVIII sezd
vsesoyuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (B) (Stenographic re-
port ; Moscow, 1939), p. 688.
delegates to the 17th Congress (which he also attended
as a delegate, at which he was presiding officer, and
which elected him to the Central Committee) were ar-
rested on trumped-up charges of treason. Khrushchev
did not spare kind words for these victims: they "were
active participants in the building of our Socialist state" ;
many of them "suffered and fought for party interests
during the prerevolutionary years in the conspiracy and
at the Civil War fronts"; and "they fought their ene-
mies valiantly and often nervelessly looked into the face
of death." And then with underlined naivete Khru-
shchev asked: "How then can we believe that such
people could prove to be `two-faced' and had joined the
camp of the enemies of socialism . . . ?"
It was "the abuse of power by Stalin" which was re-
sponsible for these crimes, Khrushchev asserted. But
who was responsible for the far wider swing of the
terror sword in the Ukraine that cut down more than
70 percent of the Ukrainian Party Central Committee in
one year? Had Khrushchev not been the highest patty
authority in the Ukraine who decided the fate of these
members? And was not Khrushchev-the ruler over 40
million Ukrainian inhabitants for more than a decade-
also responsible for the liquidation of tens of thousands
of non-party people who died for no good reason during
and after the Great Purge?
KHRUSHCHEV HIMSELF WAS proud of the first
results of his purging activities in the Ukraine, but he
would not cease brandishing the sword until he heard
the last gasp of the last "enemy." On May 26, 1938, in
a public speech before a crowd described as "100,000
people," Khrushchev boasted that "this year was a dis-
tinctive year as far as crushing of the enemies of the
people is concerned" ; the Polish and German fascists
have good reason to "bemoan the death of their agents,"
while "the peoples of the Soviet Union rejoice that they
have uprooted this foul, abominable, treacherous gang,
the loathsome Trotskyite-Bukharinite bandits, that they
have eradicated and exterminated them under the lead-
ership of our great Stalin, under the leadership of our
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov." At the same time Khru-
shchev threatened with complete annihilation "all kinds
of bourgeois nationalists" who survived.25
On June 5, 1938, in his first major speech delivered
at the Fourth Kiev Party Conference, Khrushchev asked
the party workers not to relax their vigilance:
We got rid of a considerable number of enemies. But as
[party] workers of the Ukraine, and particularly of the Kiev
province, we should not be conceited. We must not relax, for
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 25
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
the enemies will never, under any circumstances, cease carry-
ing out their subversive work against our state. Comrades,
we have annihilated quite a few enemies, but not all of them.
That is why we should be vigilant. We should not be lulled
either by applause, or by approval, or by unanimous votes.
We should always keep in mind Comrade Stalin's word that
as long as the capitalist encirclement exists, spies and diver-
sionists will be sent to our country. We should carefully
ponder these words of Comrade Stalin.26
One might think that in speaking of the "enemies"
Khrushchev actually referred to agents of foreign in-
telligence services. But he really referred to others:
The Yakirs, the Balitskys, the Liubchenkos, the Zatonskys,
and the other riffraff wanted to let in the German fascists, the
landowners and bourgeois, and make the Ukrainian workers
and peasants slaves of fascism, and the Ukraine a colony of
the Polish-German fascists.
The absurdity of this statement is evident from the back-
ground of "Yakirs, Balitskys, Liubchenkos, and Zaton-
skys." These men had been active in the revolutionary
movement long before Khrushchev joined it, and ren-
dered great service to the Bolshevik cause.27
These statements by Khrushchev referring to the Great
Purge show that he was not merely following the gen-
eral party line. Excerpts from some of Khrushchev's
speeches, quoted elsewhere in this book, also dis-
tinguished him from other leading Communists as a
more forceful inspirer and promoter of the bloody Purge,
the need for which he later denied in his secret speech
of 1956. There was hardly a speech that he delivered
in the Ukraine which did not contain the same violent
threats to annihilate the "people's enemies" as did his
Moscow harangues. The Ukrainian speeches of 1938-40
differ, however, from the Moscow orations, in firmness
of tone and selection of targets. As Stalin's vicar over
40 million people, Khrushchev spoke with greater au-
thority and self-confidence. As for the targets, an addi-
tional enemy was added: the so-called bourgeois na-
tionalists. The Great Purge reached this category of
enemies at the end of the summer of 1937. In August,
Pravda began the campaign, and all Soviet republics,
one by one, suddenly discovered that they were seats of
"bourgeois nationalists."
It was to be expected that the Ukraine, "the western
outpost of the Soviet Union," bordering on Poland and
Rumania and threatened by Hitlerite Germany, would
be selected to "expose" a greater number of "spies and
traitors" than any other non-Russian republic. This ex-
26 Bilshovik Ukrainy, No. 6, 1938, p. 7. Italics added.
271bid. Y. E. Yakir, V. A. Balitsky, and P. P. Liubchenko were
all Old Bolsheviks whose very records made the charges against
them absolutely grotesque. See p. 151 of Mr. Pistrak's book-
Ed.
plains why the "bloody touch" in Khrushchev's speeches
delivered in the Ukraine became more accentuated. A
resolution of the Moscow party organization, proposed
by Khrushchev in May 1937, read:
The Moscow Party Conference assures the Central Coin-
mittee of the Party and our vozhd, teacher, and friend, Corn-
rade Stalin, that there has not been and will not be mercy for
the spies, diversionists, and terrorists who raise their hand
against the lives of the toilers of the Soviet Union; that we
will annihilate the spies and the diversionists also in the
future and will not let the enemies of the USSR live; and
that for every drop of workers' blood the enemies of the
USSR will pay with poods of blood of spies and diversionists.
This part of the resolution was considered so well
phrased that Pravda quoted it in an editorial (May 31,
1937),
IN THE COMMUNIST dictatorship purges of dis-
senters have been "substantiated," almost without ex-
ception, by alleged connections of the defendants with
foreign intelligence services. It was with treason to the
country that the best pupils of Lenin were charged at
the great trials of the 1930's. Much later alleged trea-
son was also chosen as the most appropriate charge to
finish off Beria. Treason and espionage were also high
on the list of particulars in charges against "bourgeois
nationalists."
Hitler's aspirations included the Ukraine, and there
can be no doubt that some agents were actually dis-
patched to that part of the Soviet Union. However,
tight passport controls, close supervision of the borders,
and travel restrictions made spying in the Soviet Union
incomparably more difficult than in free countries. In
addition, there were no common borders between the
Soviet Union and Germany at that time, and small neigh-
boring Poland, herself threatened by Hitler, certainly
had no aggressive designs against her mighty neighbor to
the East. Thus there cannot have been many spies in the
Soviet Union. Fully aware of the absurdity of the es-
pionage and treason charges against old party members
whose elimination was desirable for other purposes,
Stalin and his associates used the natural aversion of the
people against spies to cover up the real reasons for the
Great Purge.
When Khrushchev became party boss in the Ukraine,
he charged into the fray as a prosecutor of "traitors" and
"spies" to an almost incredible extent. What Yezhov
lacked in eloquence was more than compensated for by
Khrushchev. No Communist leader, dead or alive,
showed greater verbal zeal in turning this Purge into
the greatest blood bath ever conducted by any group of
men against their own comrades.
26 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Facts That Have ,Come to Light"
You have heard Comrade Shelepin's speech. He told
the Congress many things, but needless to say he told
by no means all that has now come to light. Thousands
of completely innocent people perished, and each person
is a whole story. Many party, government and military
figures perished... .
People have spoken here with pain about many inno-
cent victims among outstanding party and government
figures.
Such outstanding military commanders as Tukhachev-
sky, Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Yegorov, Eideman and
others fell victim to the mass repressions. They had
been worthy people of our army, especially Tukhachev-
sky, Yakir and Uborevich, who had been brilliant mili-
tary leaders. Later Blyukher and other outstanding mili-
tary commanders fell victim to the repressions.
A rather curious report once cropped up in the foreign
press to the effect that Hitler, in preparing the attack
on our country, planted through his intelligence service
a faked document indicating that Comrades Yakir and
Tukhachevsky and others were agents of the German
general staff. This "document," allegedly secret, fell
into the hands of President Benes of Czechoslovakia,
who, apparently guided by good intentions, forwarded it
to Stalin. Yakir, Tukhachevsky and other comrades
were arrested and then killed.
Many splendid commanders and political officials of
the Red Army were executed. Here among the dele-
gates there are comrades-I do not wish to name them
so as not to cause them pain-who spent many years in
prison. They were being "persuaded"-persuaded by
quite definite techniques-that they were either German
or British or some other kind of spy. And several of
them "confessed." Even in cases when such people were
told that the accusation of espionage had been with-
drawn, they themselves insisted on their previous testi-
mony, because they believed it was better to stand on
their false testimony, in order to put an end as quickly
as possible to the torment and to die as quickly as
possible... .
I knew Comrade Yakir well. I knew Tukhachevsky
too, but not as well as Yakir. In 1961, during a confer.
ence in Alma-Ata, his son, who works in Kazakhstan,
came to see me. He asked me about his father. What
could I tell him? When we investigated these cases in
the Presidium of the Central Committee and received a
report that neither Tukhachevsky nor Yakir nor Ubore-
vich had been guilty of any crime against the party and
the state, we asked Molotov, Kaganovich and Voro-
shilov:
"Are you for rehabilitating them?"
"Yes, we are for it," they answered.
"But it was you who executed these people," we told
them indignantly. "When were you acting according to
your conscience, then or now?"
But they did not answer this question. And they will
not answer it. You have heard the notations they wrote
on letters received by Stalin. What can they sayP
In his speech to the Congress, Comrade Shelepin has
told you how these finest representatives of the Com-
munist Party in the Red Army were killed. He also
read Comrade Yakir's letter to Stalin and the recom-
mendations on this letter. It should be said that at one
time Yakir was highly esteemed by Stalin.
It may be added that when Yakir was shot he ex-
claimed: "Long live the party, long live Stalin!"
He had so much faith in the party, so much faith in
Stalin that he never permitted himself the thought that
a deliberate injustice was being committed. He believed
that certain enemies had found their way into the
NKVD agencies.
When Stalin was told how Yakir had behaved before
his death, he cursed Yakir.
Let us recall Sergo Ordzhonikidze. I attended Ord-
zhonikidze's funeral. I believed what was said at the
time, that he had died suddenly, because we knew he
had a weak heart. Much later, after the war, I learned
quite by accident that he had committed suicide. Sergo's
brother had been arrested and shot. Comrade Ord-
zhonikidze saw that he could no longer work with
Stalin, although previously he had been one of his
closest friends. Ordzhonikidze held a high party post.
Lenin had known and valued him, but circumstances had
become such that Ordzhonikidze could no longer work
normally, and in order to avoid clashing with Stalin and
sharing the responsibility for his abuse of power, he
decided to take his life.
The fate of Alyosha Svanidze, the brother of Stalin's
first wife, who was less known to the broad circles of
our party, was also tragic. He had been an old Bolshevik,
but Beria made it appear, through all kinds of machina-
tions, that Svanidze had been planted near Stalin by the
German intelligence service, although he was a very
close friend of Stalin's. And Svanidze was shot. Before
the execution, Svanidze was told that Stalin had said
that if he asked for forgiveness he would be pardoned,
When Stalin's words were repeated to Svanidze, he
asked: "What am I supposed to ask forgiveness for? I
have committed no crime." He was shot. After
Svanidze's death, Stalin said: "See how proud he is: he
died without asking forgiveness." It never occurred to
him that Svanidze had been above all an honest man.
Thus many completely innocent people perished.
That is what the cult of the individual means. That
is why we cannot show the slightest tolerance toward
abuses of power. . . .
-From the concluding remarks of N. S. Khrushchev
at the 22nd Party Congress, Pravda, October 29, 1961.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 27
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
The Party's New Rules
By Leonard Schapiro
THE DECISION to revise the rules of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union dates back to January 10, 1961.
On that date the Plenum of the Central Committee
decided to convoke the 22nd Party Congress on Oc-
tober 17, 1961, and laid down the agenda for the session.
Among the items scheduled for submission to the con-
gress were the draft of a new party program, on which
First Secretary Khrushchev was to report, and proposed
"Changes in the Rules of the CPSU," to be presented
by Frol Kozlov. It may be presumed that the drafts of
both the party program and the new rules were the work
of a commission or of two commissions, but the com-
position of the drafting body or bodies has not been
announced. The next stage in the proceedings was the
approval of the draft rules and draft program by the
Plenum of the Central Committee on June 19, 1961.
Of course, the adoption of a new program is in many
ways a much more important event in the history of the
patty than the adoption of new rules. Since the first party
rules were adopted in L898, they have gone through
fairly frequent changes. New rules were adopted at
the Second Congress of the party in 1903, again in
1906 at the Fourth Congress when the party was
nominally reunited by a reconciliation between the Bol-
sheviks and Mensheviks, and once again in 1907 when
the union was cracking at all joints. The rules were
amended in 1912, and then a whole new set was once
again adopted at the Sixth Congress in August 1917, on
the eve of the October Revolution. New rules were
adopted still again in 1919, 1922, 1925, 1934, 1939,
and 1952, and the 1952 rules were slightly amended
in 1956. But the party leadership has never been nar-
rowly bound by the rules, however frequently revised,
Reader in Russian Government and Politics at the
London School of Economics and Political Science, Pro-
fessor Schapiro is author of The Origin of the Com-
munist Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 1955),
and The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Random
House, New York, 1960).
and has always shown flexibility in ignoring them when
necessary, or in circumventing them by means of instruc-
tions formally issued in the name of the Central Com-
mittee but actually drawn up by the Secretariat.
The New Rules and Party Policy
The fact that a fresh overhaul of the rules was decided
on by the Central Committee at the same time that it
decided on the framing of a new party program, with
both drafts to be formally acted upon at the 22nd
Congress, suggests that the modification of the rules
represents part of a general policy of permitting greater
relaxation in the party, of making some attempt to
restrain its traditionally arbitrary nature. The most
sensational aspect of this policy at the congress was the
renewed denunciation of Stalin and of the anti-party
group. The question has been raised whether this policy,
to which Khrushchev is committed, has aroused opposi-
tion. The discussion of the new rules at the congress
session does not throw much light on the answer to
this question. However, the general debate and espe-
cially the new composition of the top party organs de-
termined by the congress elections allow certain con-
clusions to be drawn.
The first is that there is no real evidence to suggest
that Khrushchev is faced with any serious opposition to
his policy at the top levels of the party. The new
Presidium consists entirely of his close supporters, and
the removal from it of such important figures as Ignatov
and Aristov is probably explained by their refusal to
accept with sufficient resignation their ousting from the
Secretariat last year. The fact that Khrushchev has
further demoted two such stalwart former supporters is
in itself an indication of the extent to which he controls
the party. Nor does the new make-up of the Central
Committee, much less that of the Secretariat, offer any
evidence of present opposition to Khrushchev at the
only level of the party where it matters.
28 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
But if Khrushchev is fully in control at the top, as
all indications suggest, this does not mean that in the
party apparatus as a whole, through which the winds of
change have been blowing in recent years, there is
unanimous support for his policy of relaxation. On the
contrary, it is not only likely but indeed already evident
that there are "conservative" elements in the apparatus
who look upon de-Stalinization and the acknowledgment
of past illegalities as a serious threat to their own posi-
tions, and as a dangerous and unwise policy. It was very
probably on the support of these "conservatives" that
the "anti-party group" hoped to lean. The renewed
renunciation of the group, conversely, is probably ex-
plained in part by this factor.
Although the draft of the new rules was put through
the usual preliminary stage of organized mass discussion,
this was merely routine and much less revealing of
opinion in the ranks of the party than of the efficiency
of the agitprop network. At the congress itself, the
discussion that followed Kozlov's speech introducing the
new rules was a purely formal affair. There were a
number of speeches of a set pattern, all approving the
proposed draft, and the whole debate illustrated anew
the ability of the party leaders to control the congress
completely, whatever the currents of opinion at the
lower levels. The only real discussion of the rules has
been in the great mass of letters published in the party
journals, mostly sent in by rank-and-file members. This
type of debate is not entirely new in the USSR, but it
can probably be said that the discussion of the new rules
was rather more open and frank than any similar dis-
cussion in the party press had been for a long time.
AS A FAIR SAMPLE, one may take a single issue of
Partiinaia zhizn.'- First we find several letters strongly
rejecting a proposal made by the writer of an earlier-
published letter (Partiinaia zhizn, No. 17) that open
voting should replace secret voting in elections of party
officials and delegates. Of course, says one contributor,
it can happen in elections by secret ballot that some
Communists behave in an unprincipled manner. For
example, a candidature is sometimes supported by all
in open discussion, and then in the secret vote it is
unanimously rejected. But, continues the correspondent,
this is no reason for abolishing secret voting, but rather
a reason for developing a sense of principle among party
members and teaching them to speak the truth openly
Another letter writer denies that secret voting enables
a party member to take a pencil in his hand and hide
behind it. On the contrary, he argues, it is by taking
pencil in hand and voting that a party member openly
declares his will, and any candidate who has a con-
siderable number of votes cast against him will be led
to re-examine his own conduct and draw the right
conclusions from the voting results. A third corre-
spondent touches on an obviously sore spot. He sees the
value of secret voting in the fact that it prevents un-
principled party secretaries from getting rid of those
who criticize them. Of course, he says with transparent
sarcasm, nobody can be dismissed for criticism; this
would be coarse, crude, even dangerous, and it might
have unpleasant results for the particular party secretary
or official. "But," he adds, "to remove a critic when an
opportunity presents itself to do so at his own request,
this often comes off."
Other letters published in the same issue of Partiinaia
zhizn put forward some interesting proposals which
obviously met with no sympathy from the party leader-
ship. One was a proposal to insert in the new rules the
declaration that "membership in the party does not give
a Communist any advantages or privileges over non-
party members, but only imposes on him additional
duties towards the toilers." Another, likewise never ac-
cepted, was a suggestion that expulsion of a party mem-
ber should require an affirmative vote of not less than
three-fourths of all the registered members of his par-
ticular party organization, and not, as provided in the
draft rules, merely a two-thirds majority of those actually
present.
This sort of discussion in the party press did give
some indication of rank-and-file reactions-and possibly
was useful as a means of permitting party members to
let off steam. However, it is doubtful that it had very
much effect on the final form of the new rules. What
happened at the congress, in fact, was that Kozlov
merely summarized the amendment proposals which had
been made-no doubt omitting anything that he con-
sidered it wise to omit-and then, with complete con-
fidence that nobody would gainsay him, proceeded to
select those amendments which the congress might
adopt and those which he thought should be rejected.
Perhaps this is a measure of the degree of democracy
in the party today. Even so, it represents a considerable
advance over many periods in the past.
In general, the freer character of the preliminary pub-
lic discussion, as well as the changes embodied in the
new rules, give the impression of being in line with
the general trend of party policy in the past few years,
a trend with which Khrushchev has particularly identi-
fied himself. This may be described by the Russian ex-
pression "going downhill with the brakes on." It is
plain that there is a growing demand in the lower and
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 29
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
younger ranks of the party for greater decency and
greater democracy, for less manipulation, less dishonesty,
and less dictatorship. Khrushchev and his supporters
have apparently decided that the proper way to deal with
this tendency is not to suppress it, but rather to asso-
ciate themselves with it, to encourage it to a limited
degree at the lower levels, and at the same time to keep
it well under control so as to prevent any weakening of
the top leadership's decisive voice. In the author's view,
it is this policy of controlled relaxation which is reflected
in the new party rules.
Amendments to Initial Draft
If one compares the original draft of the new rules as
published in July 1961 with the final version approved
by the 22nd Congress, one finds that there have been a
total of 30 amendments. Of these, 26 are amendments
of a purely grammatical nature-and it must be ob-
served parenthetically that the grammar of the gentle-
men who prepared the draft left quite a lot to be de-
sired-and four can be described as changes of sub-
stance, none of them very fundamental. Perhaps the
most significant of the latter is an amendment to the
first section, which deals with the duties and rights of
party members, adding "religious superstitions" to
the originally enumerated manifestations of bourgeois
ideology and private property psychology against which
party members have the duty to conduct a decisive
struggle.
In his speech presenting the new rules to the con-
gress,2 Kozlov gave an analysis of the proposals which
had been made for amending the draft, dividing them
into three categories. The first embraced proposals which
supplemented or developed matters already dealt with
in the draft (such as the point about religion,) four
of which were added to the draft. The second category
comprised proposed changes which, according to Kozlov,
were superfluous and ought not to be adopted. These
related mainly to the duties of party members and the
method of admitting candidates to the party, and were
considered already fully covered in the existing draft.
To the third category Kozlov relegated proposals which,
as he said, do not take into account the "contemporary
conditions" of the party's activity and should therefore
be rejected. Two that he mentioned are of interest. One
was that the secretaries of party organizations up to the
level of the Central Committees of union republics
should be elected, not by the Plenum or Bureau of the
relevant committee or organization, but by the full con-
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
gress, conference, or party meeting. (Presumably the
supporters of this proposal thought that it conference or
congress might be harder to pack.) Also in this cate-
gory was the proposal, mentioned earlier, that voting
should be made open instead of secret, on the ground
that open voting better educates members of the party
in responsible behavior. This was rejected by Kozlov on
the ground that it would be a step backwards from
party democracy.
As already shown, the letters that appeared in the
party press suggested that there was considerable rank-
and-file agitation for greater democracy in the party,
for greater freedom of expression, and for a greater
measure of real choice in the election of party com-
mittees and officials. There also were a number of pro-
posals which, if adopted, would have had the opposite
result, and which represented the opinion of those who
view "liberalization" with alarm; but the general im-
pression left by the debate on the rules is that at the
lower party levels there is a strong desire for emancipa-
tion from the manipulation by higher officials to which
party members have always been subject. This move-
ment is not new. It has been evident in the party press
for several years and has, in particular, taken the form
of successful insistence by a primary party organization;,
against pressure from a higher party instance, on elect-
ing a secretary or a bureau of its own choice rather
than accepting the nominees thrust upon it. In other
instances it has taken the form of successful complaints.;
against local party officials who abused their positions
in attempting to create for themselves immunity from
criticism.
So far as the party leaders are concerned, they have
been aware of the trend in favor of relaxation and have
endeavored to keep it under strict control. This they
have largely achieved by channeling the debate into the
party press and formal mass meetings: letters to the
party newspapers could, if necessary, be ignored, and
the mass meetings could be guaranteed to produce
wholehearted approval of the new rules. But at the
same time it looks very much as if the party leaders have
been anxious to conciliate the demand for greater de-
mocracy at the lower levels, and at any rate not to go
back on the trends which have been permitted to ex-
press themselves in recent years. The best example of
this is the refusal to replace secret by open voting, but
it is not the only one. Evidently, in the matter of the
rules as in matters of general policy, the party leadership
no longer believes it wise or possible to ignore pres-
sures from below, but seeks to take the direction of these
pressures into its own hands and, by yielding to some
of them, to prevent them from getting out of control.
30 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
Comparison of- pthe new party rules with those adopted
in 1952 (and slightly amended in 1956) reveals a large
number of changes, which can be divided into three
categories. Into the first category fall changes which
may be described as declaratory, that is, which merely
assert certain propositions without providing any kind
of institutional framework for their implementation.
The second category consists of changes concerned with
the rights of the individual party member and his pro-
tection against the exercise of excessive tyranny over
him by the party organization. The third comprises real
institutional changes.
"Declaratory" Changes
The declaratory changes are found mainly in the pre-
amble to the rules and in the articles defining the duties
of party members. First comes the revised description
of the party as the "vanguard of the Soviet people,"
corresponding to the formulation adopted in the new
Party Program. The preamble also proclaims ideological
and organizational unity and the prohibition of frac-
tions and groups as part of the fundamental law of the
party. There is nothing new about this requirement,
except that it has been promoted, as it were, to the
status of a general preamble.
A number of new declaratory ideas are to be found
in the list of duties of party members set forth in
Section I of the new rules, dealing with membership
in the party. Article 2 imposes four new duties that did
not appear in the old rules, namely: sub-paragraph (a),
the duty to struggle for the achievement of the material
and technical basis of communism, to be an example
to others in productivity, and actively to promote every-
thing that is new and progressive in technical develop-
ment; sub-paragraph (c), the duty to take an active
part in the political life of the country, in government
work, and in economic ' and agricultural construction ;
sub-paragraph (e), the duty to advance the ideas of
socialist internationalism and Soviet patriotism, to strug-
gle against relics of nationalism and chauvinism, and
to promote friendship among the peoples of the Soviet
Union, between the Soviet peoples and the peoples of
the socialist camp, and among the workers of the world;
and sub-paragraph (j), the duty actively to strengthen
the military might of the USSR and, at the same time,
to struggle for peace and friendship among peoples.
CERTAIN CHANGES in the formulation of the rights
of party members also fall under the declaratory head-
ing. The right of free discussion, in particular, has been
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
more comprehensively defined. Whereas Article 4(a)
of the old rules gave party members the right "to take
part in free and businesslike discussion, at party meet-.
ings or in the party press, on questions of party politics,"
Article 3 (b) of the new rules omits the words "and
businesslike." Since, in practice, the latter qualification
had been used in the past for the purpose of stifling
criticism on the ground that it was "demagogic," the
omission may be of importance in indicating a new
trend. Otherwise, the new formulation is rather more
extensive than the old. It affirms the party member's
right:
Freely to discuss at party meetings, conferences and con-
gresses, at meetings of party committees, and in the party
press, questions of the policy and practical activity of the
party; to introduce proposals, openly to express and de-
fend his opinion until the organization has reached a
decision.
Similarly the right of the party member to criticize "any
party worker," as set out in Article 4(b) of the old
rules, has been widened by the addition, in Article 3 (c)
of the new rules, of the words italicized here:
To criticize at party meetings, conferences, congresses, and
committee plena any Communist independently of the posi-
tion which he occupies. Persons who are guilty of stifling
criticism or of persecuting Communists for expressing criti-
cism must be strictly made to answer for such action before
the party, even to the extent of being expelled from the
ranks of the CPSU.
Another declaratory change worthy of note is the
general injunction newly inserted in Section V, Article
42, which deals with the fundamental duties of repub-
lican, regional, city, and district party organizations-
that is to say, all party organizations lower than the
central organizations. The injunction states: "Party
organizations do not replace Soviet trade union, coopera-
tive, and other public organizations of the toilers, and
do not tolerate confusion of the functions of party and
other organs, or unnecessary parallelism in work." This
did not appear in the old rules, but it has been a tradi-
tional injunction issued by repeated congresses through-
out the history of the party. It deals with what is prob-
ably the fundamental problem of the Soviet system of
government, namely the difficulty of determining the
line of demarcation between party and other organs in
a system which basically maintains parallel administra-
tive structures of different kinds, charged with very
similar duties. This, however, is not a problem which
can be solved by pious injunctions. It is of interest that
the declaration inserted in the new rules is limited to
party organizations from the republic level down, which
rather leaves the impression, whether intended or not,
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 31
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
that at the highest level, where the party Presidium ership and Marshal Zhukov regarding the function of
and the Central Committee are interwoven with the the party organization in the army. Article 64 in Sec-
government organs, the prohibition is not intended to tion VIII of the new rules, which deals with military
apply. organizations of the party, contains an additional long
THERE IS ALSO much that is new in the formulation
of the duties of primary party organizations, dealt with
in Article 58 of the new rules. The duties are now set
out at much greater length than in Article 57 of the
old rules, and with the greater length also goes greater
pathos. In particular, great stress is laid on the new
moral code laid down for Communists in the party
program: Article 58 repeats much of this part of the
program as the moral code to which the primary party
organizations should endeavor to ensure obedience on
the part of every Communist. The principles of morality
borrowed from the program may be summarized as fol-
lows: love for the socialist fatherland and for the
socialist countries; conscientious work for the public
weal; concern for increasing the public wealth; high
consciousness of public duty; humane relations with
others, honesty, truthfulness, moral purity, and impec-
cable family life; rejection of injustice, dishonesty, ca-
reerism, and material greed (the addition of "material
greed" is one of the few substantive amendments to
the draft adopted at the Congress) ; friendship for all
peoples of the USSR and intolerance of national and
racial enmity; intolerance towards the enemies of com-
munism, peace and the freedom of peoples; brotherly
solidarity with all toilers and all peoples. (One may
perhaps legitimately inquire whether the attitude of
Soviet Communists towards Albania is henceforth to be
governed by love for socialist countries or by intolerance
towards the enemies of communism, peace, and freedom.
Two further alterations in the declaratory category
may be noted. One relates to the matter of broad-scale
discussion in the party. The old rules (Article 28)
included the statement that such wide discussion must
be so organized "that it could not lead to attempts by
an insignificant minority to impose its will on the ma-
jority of the party." This formulation naturally lent
itself to a certain amount of ridicule by non-Soviet critics
(including the author), since it did not say much for
the political maturity of the party if it had to restrain
an "insignificant" minority from leading the majority
astray. This absurdity has now been dropped in the new
Article 27, which retains only the provision of the old
rules that discussions on a large scale must not be
allowed to encourage attempts to form groups or split
the party.
The last declaratory change worth noting seems to
reflect something of the conflict between the party lead-
sentence stressing the duty of these organizations to pro-
mote loyalty to the party among members of the armed
forces and to educate them in the spirit and ideas of
Marxism-Leninism (listed first), as well as in other
more military duties, in patriotism, discipline, and mili-
tary efficiency. The absence of any such provision in
the earlier rules presumably reflected Marshal Zhukov's
view that party organizations should not be allowed to
interfere excessively in military matters.
Changes in Disciplinary Rules
We now come to the second category of changes, af-
fecting the relationship of the individual party member
to the authorities who control the party and him. Most
important among these are the changes that relate to the
discipline exercised by the party over its members.
Broadly speaking, the changes express two trends. One
is a trend towards relaxation which seems to reflect the
rapidly increasing size of the party-now ten million
strong-and the realization that, if it is to be retained
at that strength, a certain moderation of disciplinary
stringency is necessary. The other trend is toward in-
creased protection for the party member and reflects the
desire in the patry-to which the leaders have thought
it prudent to yield-for some sort of safeguards against
the arbitrary expulsions which characterized the party
during the purge period.
One important change is found in Article 8 of the
new rules, which deals with penalties for non-payment
of dues. Under the old rules (Article 9), non-payment
of dues without good reason led to automatic expulsion
from the party. (In one sense, this provided a kind of
indirect method of resigning from the party, for which
no direct provision has ever existed in any rules pro-
mulgated by the party throughout its history.) Under
the new rules, expulsion is no longer automatic: if a
member defaults his dues for three months, his case is to
be discussed and he is regarded as having renounced
his membership only if it appears from the discussion
that he has in fact lost touch with the party.
The most important disciplinary change relates to the
expulsion of a party member. A decision to expel can
now be taken only by a vote at a party meeting, with
at least two-thirds of the members present voting in
favor of the expulsion. As letters published in the party
press show, some members still seem to feel uneasy
about this, since two-thirds of those present at a suitably
32 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
packed meeting can actually amount to a very small pro-
portion of the total membership. The decision to expel
is, as before, initiated by the primary party organization
and requires confirmation by the higher party organiza-
tions up to the union-republic level. The right of the
expelled member to appeal all the way up to the Central
Committee is still preserved, the only change being the
new provision in Article 13 requiring consideration of
an appeal within one month, instead of 20 days as
under Article 15 of the old rules.
There are also some interesting changes relating to
the expulsion of members of the Central Committee.
Under Article 26, a member or candidate member of the
Central Committee can be expelled by a vote of two-
thirds of all members of the Central Committee, and
the voting is by secret ballot. The introduction of this
rule into the formal constitution of the party is new.
The rule itself dates from the 10th Party Congress in
1921, but originally expulsion had to be decided by a
vote of all candidates and members of the party Control
Commission as well as of the Central Committee. This
was the practice followed as recently as June 1957 when
all candidates and members of both the Central Com-
mittee and the Revision Commission were called to vote
on the expulsion of alleged members of the "anti-party"
group. The new formulation narrows the number of
persons entitled to vote in such cases.
AN ENTIRELY NEW provision relating to expulsion
is contained in Article 11 of the revised rules. This
stipulates the right of primary party organizations to
discuss and recommend action to call to account any
member of a higher party organization up to and in-
cluding candidates and members of the central com-
mittee of a republic, for any misdeed. If a primary party
organization decides to recommend that a member of
one of these higher organizations be expelled from the
party, its recommendation has to be communicated to
the party committee of which the accused person is a
member, and the committee plenum must then take the
decision, expulsion requiring a two-thirds majority of
all committee members-not, be it noted, only of the
members present at the meeting.
The old rules contained no provision at all empower-
ing the primary party organizations to bring up the ques-
tion of expelling members of higher organizations; in
fact, such action was expressly prohibited under Article
11. It should also be noted that, so far as recommend-
ing expulsion is concerned, the right conferred on the
primary party organizations by the new rules does not
apply to members and candidates of the All-Union
Central Committee or members of the Central Revision
Commission, all of whom can be expelled from the
party only by the party congress or, in intervals be-
tween congresses, by a two-thirds majority vote of the
Central Committee plenum. It may be observed, how-
ever, that the rights of party members, as newly defined
in Article 2, include the right to criticize any member
of the party irrespective of position and therefore theo-
retically include the right to criticize members of the
Central Committee. Whether in practice a primary party
organization would have the courage to do so without
having been given the green light from higher up is
another matter.
There is one other change in the disciplinary rules
that appears to be verbal rather than substantive. This
is the new provision relating to party members who fall
afoul of the criminal law of the country. Although the
wording of the new rules (Article 12) differs from
that of the old (Article 13), neither formulation can
be said to show any strong sense of the nature of legality.
The old rule provided that when a member of the party
"has committed offenses punishable by the ordinary
courts, he is expelled from the party and the fact of his
offense is communicated to the administrative and legal
authorities." The new article reads: "If a member of
the party has committed offenses punishable under the
ordinary criminal law of the country, he is expelled
from the party and is brought to responsibility in ac-
cordance with the law." Obviously, both formulations
are grossly unfair to a party member who is merely
supposed to have committed a criminal offense, because
expelling him from the party before his offense has
been established by a court, in effect, prejudices his guilt
and renders the possibility of a fair trial very remote.
Institutional Changes
The most important category of changes relates to
the institutions of the party. The first change under this
heading is found in Article 24 of the new rules, which
contains the following general provision regarding the
election of party organs:
elections to party organs are conducted by closed
(secret) voting. All members of the party participating
in elections have the unlimited right to reject candidates
and to criticize them. Voting must be conducted separately
for every candidate. Those candidates are considered elected
who have received the affirmative votes of more than half
the participants in a meeting, conference or congress.
The difference between this new formulation and the
old lies in the stipulation that more than half the par-
ticipating votes are required to elect a candidate. The
old rules (Article 26) adhered to the traditional prac-
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 33
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
tice of the party, namely that candidates were considered
elected in the order of the number of votes individually
polled by them.
In presenting the new rules to the 22nd Congress,
Kozlov pointed out the reason for this change. Under
the old system,8 candidates who received the most votes
in relation to the other candidates as well as more than
half the votes of those present at the meeting or con-
ference were elected. According to Kozlov, this prac-
tice often had the result that valuable party workers who
received an absolute majority of votes nevertheless were
not elected because they polled as few as three to five
votes less than the successful candidates. This, he
said, was to permit an insignificant minority to impose
its well on the majority. What Kozlov apparently had in
mind was the case in which there might be, say, five
vacancies to be filled from a slate of more than five
candidates, a situation which we know from the party
press occurs sometimes, but not very frequently. In such
a case, a candidate could fail to be elected by a margin
of a few votes even though an absolute majority had
voted for him.
Kozlov went on the point out that under the new
system the total number of candidates elected would
have to be flexible, and accordingly the new rules no
longer lay down numerical limits for the membership
of the various party organs throughout the hierarchy.
On the face of it, the revision of the election system
looks like a move in the direction of greater democracy,
but it could also be used as a means of forcing an un-
popular candidate in from above. Certainly, the long-
standing demand in the lower party organizations for
the right to choose from among a larger number of
candidates than there are vacancies shows that the ques-
tion is a live one. However, it may be that what is
contained in the new rules will, in practice, prove less
important than the qualification appended to Kozlov's
remarks on the electoral changes. He indicated to the
congress that "as hitherto" all details relating to the
election of party organs will be determined by instruc-
tions from the Central Committee of the Soviet Com-
munist Party.
THE MOST DRASTIC change relating to elections is
the principle laid down in the new rules (Article 25)
requiring systematic renewal of the composition of party
organs. The rules provide for a rotating system of elec-
tion to these bodies, with a portion of the membership
to be renewed at each election. In the case of the Central
Committee and its Presidium, not less than a quarter
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
of the membership is to be newly elected at each party
congress, and members of the Presidium will as a rule
hold office for a term spanning no more than three con-
secutive congresses. For party organs at the next lower
level on down through oblast party committees, the
rules require the renewal at each election of one-third
of the membership, and for organs below the oblast
level, of half the membership. Secretaries of primary
party organizations can theoretically be elected to hold
office only through two plenary meetings of the organiza-
tion, which would seem-since these organizations are
required to meet once a month-to limit their tenure to
two months.
On the face of it, the provisions for periodic renova-
tion of the membership of party organs would seem to
introduce a revolutionary change which, if carried out
in practice, will no doubt be very popular in the party--
or, at any rate, in some sections of the party-because
it will accelerate the turnover of party officials and en-
able younger men to rise more rapidly. However, the
practical effect of these provisions should not be ex-
aggerated. For one thing, there is an important qualifi-
cation to them: namely, that whenever a party worker's
exceptional political or organizational abilities make a
lengthier tenure of office desirable, he can be elected
for an unspecified "longer period," provided that this
decision is voted by not less than a two-thirds majority
of those present. This exception can easily be abused
so long as the party leadership--which means, in prac-
Some Pertinent Questions
For Mr. Khrushchev personally the decision [to
bare the facts about Stalinist crimes} was certainly
a courageous one, though no member of his audi-
ence asked "What were you doing at the time?"
What guarantees can he offer that similar "distor-
tions of the Leninist line" will not reappear?
Mr. Khrushchev said in a later speech that a leader
who forgot that he held his authority by the will
of the party and the people "pays dearly for such
mistakes." But it was not Stalin who paid; true,
in death he is dishonored, and a monument is to
be erected to the memory of his victims. The new
program and rules, Stalin's successor told his audi-
ence, "preclude the possibility of a revival of the
personality cult." What was there, one may legiti-
mately ask, in the program and rules of which
Lenin approved which did make it possible?
-From "Communists in Congress," by Jane Degras,
The World Today (London), No. 12,
December 1961, p. 524.
34 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
tice, the Central Committee Secretariat-retains the
control it exercises at present. Moreover, it should be
noted that turnover has always been high at the lower
levels, though not normally as high as one-third in the
intermediate party organs.4 Even in the case of the
Central Committee, the normal turnover has been rather
more than one-fourth of the membership: of the mem-
bers elected in 1956, only around 55 percent still remain
in the present Central Committee, having been either
continuously reelected or promoted from candidate to
full membership. On the other hand, it may be observed
that the Presidium chosen at the 22nd Congress has only
one new member out of eleven, notwithstanding the
new rules' provision for regular renewal of one-fourth
of the membership."
Practical enforcement of the rotation principle at the
lower levels of the party would, however, be consistent
with another policy which is explicitly confirmed in the
new rules, namely, a policy of relying more on unpaid
party officials and committeemen. Article 42(e) spe-
cifically makes observance of this rule in the future a
regular duty of all party organizations below the re-
public level. (Article 52 contains a similar provision
with respect to city and district committees.) Like the
rotation requirement, this may be regarded as a move
towards greater democracy in the party, where antago-
nism on the part of the rank-and-file members (to say
nothing of the general public) towards the paid party
professionals has been an unhealthy feature for many
years past. Although the trend towards "deprofessional-
ization" is not entirely new, the new rules seem to fore-
shadow a shift on a much larger scale than hitherto.
Many speeches at the 22nd Congress, including Kozlov's,
made it clear that a massive attempt is being made to
'draw into a more positive role in the party, or in party-
related activities, the literally hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of party members who have hitherto re-
garded their responsibilities as limited to compulsory
attendance at meetings and automatic adoption of pro-
posals handed down from above.
THE NEW RULES introduce some other noteworthy
changes relating specifically to the Central Committee.
One that could be of real importance, if it is actually
carried out, concerns the Central. Committee's power to
control appointments of regional and republic party
secretaries. While the new rules still preserve the previ-
4 On this, see the author's The Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, Random House, New York, 1960, p. 568.
"According to Kozlov (loc. cit.), the pre-congress elections
resulted in a turnover of 40-45 percent in the memberships of
party organs at the republic and lower levels.
ous requirement that party secretaries below the regional
or oblast level must be confirmed, after their election,
by the next higher party organs, they omit the provision
in the old rules (Article 42) which also made appoint-
ments of regional and republic party secretaries subject
to confirmation by the CPSU Central Committee. Since
the regional secretaries form the most important stratum
of the party apparatus below the Central Committee
Secretariat in Moscow, this change on its face looks quite
revolutionary. Whether it will prove so in fact, however,
remains to be seen. It may be pointed out in this con-
nection that Article 35 of the new rules contains a sen-
tence (not found in the old rules) to the effect that one
of the Central Committee's functions in between party
congresses is to effect the selection and distribution of
leading cadres. In practice, this authority has always
been exercised by the Central Committee Secretariat
(which maintains a large department specially for this
purpose), and it has been a mainstay of the leadership's
power as long as the party has existed. It would be very
strange indeed, in present Soviet conditions, if the Sec-
retariat were not to continue, as before, to wield this
authority with respect to the designation of regional
party secretaries, even though it might act behind the
disguise of formal election procedures.
Another change under the new rules is the relinquish-
ment by the Central Committee of its former authority
(under Article 37 of the old rules) to set up anywhere
in the country, for special purposes, political depart-
ments directly responsible to itself. This power enabled
the Central Committee to by-pass entirely the regular
network of subordinate party organs and was used in
the past by the Committee, or rather by the party leaders
at the top, to impose particularly severe measures of dic-
tatorial control wherever these were considered neces-
sary-on the collective farms and railways, for ex-
ample. Actually, the abolition of the Central Commit-
tee's authority in this regard seems merely to give formal
recognition to the fact that the practice has fallen into
disuse in recent years.
Finally, the new rules effect some changes in the func-
tions of primary party organizations. These organizations
retain their general functions as agencies of party control
except with respect to government organs (including
not only ministries but also the sovnarkhozy-councils
of national economy), where their power has long been
limited to reporting. In Article 59, however, there is a
change the significance of which is not immediately
apparent. According to this provision, primary party
organizations in the ministries and other government
organs no longer have the power to report (as they had
under article 58 of the old rules) both to the party
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 35
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Central Committee and to the responsible officers of the widespread pressure at the lower levels for greater
ministry concerned, but are now authorized to report democracy in the party, for less dictatorship and less
only "to the appropriate party organs." manipulation. This is clearly reflected in the institu-
TO SUM UP, the new rules reflect two trends which
have been apparent for some time. First is the attempt
to draw into the party a large number of members, to
encourage more active participation by them in the work
of the party, and also to attract into this work an ever-
increasing proportion of the population at large. This
must be seen as an integral part of Khrushchev's gen-
eral policy of trying to instill new life and enthusiasm
into a party which had largely atrophied into a caste
of petty dictators. Secondly, it reflects the desire of the
party leadership to meet, at any rate to some extent, the
Forward to Communism?
tional changes embodied in the new statutes of the party.
At the same time, a constitution can never be more
than what its executors choose to make it. While the
new rules grant certain concessions, they do not indicate
that the party leadership has given up any substantial
part of its powers. Thus, they suggest determination to
keep the pressures for greater democracy under firm
control and to move towards satisfying them with con-
siderable caution, and then only at the lowest levels.
At least, however, the new formulations seem to afford
greater leeway for those in the party who actively aspire
to make it a real medium of political participation instead
of a facade for centralized despotism.
By Rush V. Greenslade
IN THE GLARE of factional fireworks that erupted
at the 22nd CPSU Congress in October, the main pur-
pose of the convocation-endorsement of the party's
20-year program for the building of communism-
nearly disappeared. It was certainly overshadowed in
Western news reports by the attacks launched against
Stalin, the anti-party group, and Albania (read
"China"). Yet the program may be of more funda-
mental significance than the disputes. Underneath a
facade of propaganda and ideology it is a major state-
ment of intentions-of marching orders for the Com-
munist parties of the world and especially that of the
Soviet Union. It is also a comprehensive if not entirely
clear statement of what the party expects Soviet society,
its organization, and its living conditions to be like
20 years hence, at which time the Soviet Union will sup-
posedly be on the threshold of communism.
The program, which is only the third of its kind in
Soviet history, can thus be characterized as a major
event in the life of the party. The last pronunciamento
of this scope was adopted at the Eighth Congress in
1919. Considering that the Soviet regime in the inter-
vening 42 years has been devoting its energies (and those
of its people) with unprecedented single-mindedness
to building for the future, one may feel that it is high
time the party revealed what that future will be, and
when and by what path it will be reached.
The economic portion of the program is in itself
historically unique, since it is the first economic blue-
print projected for a period as long as 20 years (1960-
1980). It sets forth the party's general plans for in-
dustry, agriculture, services, investment and standards
of living, presenting them as the economic goals which
Mr. Greenslade is an American economist specializing
in the Soviet Union. This is his first contribution to
Problems of Communism.
The comments in this article are based on Nikita Khrushchev's
speech to the CPSU Congress on October 18, 1961 (Pravda,
October 19), and on the final text of the CPSU program (ibid,
November 2).
36 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
must be achieved by Soviet society for the transition
to communism.
Detailed planning so far into the future is, of course,
not possible. As other observers have already pointed
out, the present program can hardly be called a "plan"
in the sense in which the prior one-year, five-year and
most recently seven-year plans have been understood.2
The latter, which have set the direction of the Soviet
economy since 1928, had as their crucial feature the
simultaneous setting of output goals and investment
plans, and the attempt to achieve a consistency between
the two. The output goals had to be supported by a
specific list of investment projects and, at the same time,
were expected to provide the materials and equipment
to complete the projects.
By contrast, the present program simply sets forth
major commodity goals and offers a number of aggre-
gative projections for the 20-year period. There is no
indication that a consistent and detailed blueprint for
investment has been worked out-indeed, it could not
be, given the uncertain nature of future technology and
mineral resources. The program is, moreover, incon-
sistent in some parts and implausible in others. While
one can discuss the feasibility of its various features in
a general way, the chief interest of the program is the
clues it offers to the party's grand design for the future.
In this connection, the program not only outlines plans
for overall economic growth but to some extent indi-
cates the share of output that will go to consumers. The
plans for economic growth, if fulfilled, are supposed to
provide the Soviet Union with the strongest industrial
economy in the world. The plans for consumption make
it clear that the bulk of these industrial resources will
be devoted to the purposes of the state rather than to
the consumer. Although consumers have been told that
they will have the highest standard of living in the
world, there is nothing in the program to support this
promise, and much to show that a steadily rising share
of economic output will be reserved for the objectives
of the state.
Some Western observers have suggested the possi-
bility that a radical rise of consumer demands may cause
future trouble for Soviet planners. The program may be
aimed in part at curbing such demands in advance. Any
expectations Soviet citizens might entertain for a living
standard that would include, for example, widespread
private housing, automobiles, household appliances, and
the like, are emphatically discouraged. On the contrary
Soviet consumers are explicitly told that future con-
2 See, for example, Naum Jasny, "Plan and Superplan," Survey,
a Journal of Soviet and East European Studies (London), Oc-
tober 1961.
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
sumption will be tied in large measure to a pattern of
communal living.
Against this background, let us turn to an analysis of
specific features of the program.
Production Goals
Insofar as industrial development is concerned, the
output goals that are set forth in the program can be
characterized as "more of the same"-that is, as a con-
tinuation of trends that have been evident over the past
five years and that are embodied in the Seven-Year Plan.
The announced goal of not less than a six-fold increase
in industrial production is equal to an average annual
increase of nearly 10 percent. Industrial "group A"
(producers' goods) is scheduled to expand by over 10
percent annually, and "group B" (consumers' goods) by
8.5 percent annually. These rates-as well as the overall
total and the ratio between the two groups-are in line
with the actual performance of industry over the last
five years, as measured by Soviet gross production in-
dices.8 Thus the priority of heavy industry which has
guided Soviet planning since 1928 is reaffirmed.
Another major output target is an increase to 3.5
times the 1960 level of agricultural production by 1980.
Given the priorities of the past and of the program itself,
the goal for industry appears possible of fulfillment,
but the agricultural goal seems quite infeasible. The
latter-representing an average increase of 6.5 percent
annually-is perhaps not impossible in a technical sense.
However, it would require a large increase in the share
of investment going to agriculture, and there is no indi-
cation in the program that such an increase is planned or
that organizational changes of a kind that would make
the investment fruitful are even remotely contemplated.
Certainly unrealistic is the scheduling of the largest
share of expansion in the first decade of the plan: the
goal by 1970, according to the program, is an increase
to 2.5 times 1960 production, or 9.5 percent annually.
Specific targets for grain, meat, milk, cotton and other
major agricultural commodities-cited by Khrushchev
in his first speech to the Congress-all reflect the same
steep trend from 1960 to 1970, with a much smaller
rate of growth from 1970 to 1980.
The program is rather noteworthy for its lack of in-
novation in the field of agricultural organization, in
which Khrushchev has been so experimental in the past.
a Independent indices of Soviet industrial production calculated
by Western economists estimate somewhat lower rates of growth
than those shown in the Soviet indices for recent years. Pre-
sumably this will continue to be true.
37
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Both the private plot and the kolkhoz were defended
by Khrushchev. However, the programs for extensive
irrigation, for reclamation of lands in the western part
of the USSR, and for expansion of fertilizer production
strongly suggest that the Soviet Premier is determined to
continue pressing large-scale schemes in an effort to
improve the food supply.
Labor and Production
In the sense that industrial sectors of the economy (in
order of assigned priorities) can always be favored, if
need be, at the expense of other goals, the production
targets for industry can be called realistic-that is, bar-
ring any massive shift to armaments output. The goal
for industrial labor productivity, however, is probably
overoptimistic: the plan calls for an increase by 4 to
4.2 times over 1960 productivity, or more than 7 per-
cent annually, while the rate of increase for the past few
years has been only 6 to 6.5 percent (as measured by
the Soviet index).
As in the past, employment in industry in excess of
planned levels could make up for some underfulfillment
in terms of productivity. The size of the industrial labor
force (as implied by output and productivity goals) is
expected to rise from the 1960 level of 23 million
workers to 30 million by 1970 and 36 million by 1980.
Assuming the productivity rate will fall short, it can be
expected that industrial manpower needs will exceed
these levels by at least a few million. Such an increment
would have to be supplied either through an increase
of women in the labor force (on which more later) or
from other economic sectors, including agriculture.
Outside of industry, the implied employment levels
of the 20-year program contain major inconsistencies.
Output and productivity goals for agriculture, for ex-
ample, indicate no expectation of change in the size of
COMING THIS SPRING
Russia Under Khrushchev
the agricultural labor force from 1960 to 1970, but
anticipate a 30-40 percent drop-that is, from 50 mil-
lion to 30-35 million workers-between 1970 and 1980.
Any such drastic drop in the agricultural force seems
highly unlikely, given the past record of Soviet agricul-
tural production and management policy. At the same
time, the regime has promised to triple employment in
non-productive services by 1980-presumably an incre-
ment of at least 31 million workers to a total of about
47 million. The largest part of this increase supposedly
would come in the second decade of the 20-year period,
coinciding with the decline in agricultural employment.
Programming these massive labor shifts for a period be-
ginning ten years hence can hardly be described as
realistic planning.
Investment Issues
As noted earlier, no detailed investment planning is
set forth in the program. However various statements
on investment, considered in conjunction with the pri-
orities of the plan and past investment policy, permit
certain deductions. Insofar as the investment require-
ments for industrial growth are concerned, the program
can be thought of as almost automatically self-perpetuat-
ing. The established 10 percent annual growth rate in
heavy industry can provide the machinery, equipment
and construction materials for a 10 percent annual
growth rate in total investment. This rate accumulated
over 20 years about equals the figure of two trillion
rubles cited by Khrushchev in his Congress speech as
the amount planned for investment. Actually, the por-
tion of total investment allotted to heavy industry will
probably exceed the 10 percent annual growth rate, with
proportionately less going to light industry and non-
industrial sectors. With this allowance and with a boost
from foreign technology, there is no persuasive basis
-as far as investment is concerned-for forecasting
underfulfillment of the industrial growth goal. If the
projected investment trend should prove insufficient,
perhaps because of rising capital/output ratios, the
leadership can always increase the rate of investment in
industry at the expense of lower-priority sectors or of
consumption.
An Anthology of Articles from
Problems of Communism
Edited by A. Brumberg
Praeger, New York Methuen, London.
Productive Education
In terms of economic implications, one of the most
impressive and important features of the overall party
program is the plan for education. There are reasons
for believing that improvement in the level of training
38 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
of the labor force has been nearly as important a factor
in Soviet growth over the past 20 years as improved tech-
nology. In the coming 20 years, when gains from bor-
rowed technology (embodied in new capital) will
perhaps become a declining factor in the rate of prog-
ress, the training of the labor force will be even more
important. The prospects for approaching the produc-
tivity goals for industry and other key sectors depend
heavily on the success of the educational program.
The educational goals outlined in the plan aim at
continued and perhaps accelerated progress in improving
the quality of the labor force as measured by educational
attainment. Khrushchev stated that during the next
decade a program must be implemented to provide
11-year, general-polytechnical education for all children
coming of school age and at least an 8-year education
for all young people now at work. If an 11-year educa-
tion were to become more or less universal by 1980, the
average length of schooling of the labor force would
rise by about three years, compared to a rise of about two
years during the past 20 years. Enrollment in higher
educational institutions is scheduled to increase from
2.6 million in 1960 to 8 million in 1980-about the
same rate of increase as in the past decade.
These are formidable tasks, given the fact that less
than one-third of Soviet children of high-school age are
now in school and that the educational attainment of
the labor force averages only about six years of school-
ing. Doubtless the regime is relying on the success of
present experiments in running the educational system
on a combined work-and-study basis. More and more
stress has been laid on part-time, evening, and corre-
spondence programs, thus allowing students of working
age to hold down nearly full-time jobs. To what extent
this policy of learning while working will be effective
still remains to be seen.
Khrushchev against the Planners?
Education is to be aimed, then, at making Soviet man
a better producer. But for whose benefit-for his own,
or for the state's? We come to one of the most crucial
aspects of the 20-year program when we consider the
regime's attitudes and projections on consumption.
Interestingly, these were more conservative than one
might have expected on the basis of recent statements
by Premier Khrushchev. On several occasions over the
past year his remarks have indicated that he was some-
what less than happy about the entrenched principle of
the priority of heavy industry over other sectors of the
economy. For example, at the Central Committee
plenum on agriculture in January 1961 he protested
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
against overemphasis on heavy industry at the expense
of producing foodstuffs for consumption:
Some of our comrades have developed an appetite to give the
country more metal. That is a praiseworthy desire, providing
no harm is done to other branches of the national economy.
But if more metal is produced while other branches lag, their
expansion will be slowed down. Thus, not enough bread,
butter, and other food items will be produced. This will be
a one-sided development .4
On the issue of heavy versus light industry, as late as
last May-in a statement at the British exhibition-
Khrushchev categorically declared:
Soviet heavy industry is considered built. Therefore in the
future, light and heavy industry will develop at the same
pace... s
The issue that Khrushchev raised is fundamental.
Now that the Soviet Union has a massive heavy indus-
try, to what uses should it be put? A noted analyst has
suggested that a nation which has reached industrial
maturity must choose whether it will devote its re-
sources to consumer welfare or to imperialist adven-
turess The economic policy that the Soviet Union has
been following-production of more means of produc-
tion for industries producing means of production-
is essentially a postponement of such a decision. Soviet
heavy industry constitutes in effect a stockpile of un-
committed resources that can be turned in any of several
directions.
It is doubtful that Khrushchev wanted to change eco-
nomic policy very much, but whatever innovations he
had in mind when he made the above statements are
not reflected in the 20-year program. The considerations
or pressures that may have changed his mind are not
clear. One must simply accept at face value his full en-
dorsement of the program at the Congress-including
its reaffirmation of the leading role of heavy industry
and its lack of any major commitment of resources to
high mass consumption of goods.
Prospects for the Consumer
How much capacity is left for growth in consumption
after the requirements for industrial development are
met? According to the party program, a great deal. On
close examination, however, the plans for consumption .
are implausible wherever concrete prognostication is
4 Pravda, January 21, 1961.
s Quoted in the New York Times, May 20, 1961.
W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-
Communist Manifesto, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1960.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 39
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
ventured and ambiguous or misleading in other
respects.
In aggregative terms, the economic program projects
a fivefold increase in national income; this supposedly
will allow more than a sixfold increase in investment
and defense (a little over 10 percent a year) yet at the
same time permit a 4.5 fold increase in consumption.
While the investment defense projection is feasible, it
is hard to see how the consumption goal can be achieved
simultaneously. It should be noted, however, that even
if the consumption goal were to be fulfilled, the part
of output specifically earmarked for the state would
continue to be a rising share of total output.
Caveat Consumer
While the new Program of the Soviet Communist
Party contains several general prophesies of a higher
standard of living and level of consumption for the
Soviet people, in all of its 50,000 words only two
short and notably vague passages deal with the spe-
cific problem of consumer goods production. Here
is what the program has to say:
The CPSU will direct: its efforts toward ensuring a
rapid rise in the output of consumer goods. The
growing resources of industry must be applied more
and more to meeting fully all the requirements of
the Soviet people and to building and equipping
enterprises and institutions serving the everyday and
cultural needs of the public. Along with the acceler-
ated development of all branches of light industry
and the food industry, the share of consumer goods
in the output of heavy industry will also in-
crease... .
The demand of all sections of the population for
high-quality consumer goods-well-made and attrac-
tive clothing, footwear and goods for improving and
adorning the daily life of Soviet people, such as com-
fortable modern furniture, improved household ar-
ticles, a wide range of goods for cultural purposes,
etc.-will be amply satisfied. Production of automo-
biles for the public will be considerably expanded.
The output of consumer goods must fully meet
the growing consumer demand and must conform to
its changes. The timely output of goods in accord-
ance with the varied demand of the public, taking
into account local, national and climatic conditions,
is an imperative requirement for all the consumer
industries... .
-From the CPSU Program, translated in The Current Di-
gest of the Soviet Press (New York), Dec. 13, 1961.
In terms of per capita consumption the program
promises to effect a 3.5-fold aggregative increase, and
thus, in Khrushchev's words, "to achieve in the next
20 years a standard of living higher than any [in]
capitalist countries"-and specifically "80 percent above
the US 1960 level." This projection would have to be
based on an estimate that the living standard in the
USSR is at present over 50 percent that in the United
States. Non-Soviet economists have calculated, how-
ever, that Soviet per capita consumption in 1960 was
only around 30 percent that of the US; on this basis,
a 3.5-fold increase by 1980 would barely raise the USSR
to the 1960 US level.
While the Soviet people might not recognize the
doubtful foundations of these overall claims, some of
the particulars of the plans for consumption and a
higher living standard must certainly give rise to skep-
ticism. One area in which the regime ventured specific
promises, for example, was food production. As noted
earlier, Khrushchev cited specific 1970 and 1980 output
targets for various food items, including meat, milk, arid
eggs, the achievement of which would require a large
increase in agricultural production especially in the first
decade of the plan.? The performance of agriculture
will of course determine not only food supplies but the
availability of such consumer items as textiles, clothing,
leather shoes, and so forth. In the light of both recent
and long-run experience, it seems unlikely that the
average Russian can feel much confidence in this area
of prediction.
A wide array of free services is also promised to fu-
ture consumers-including ultimately free housing,
utilities, public transport and medical care. The regime
lays heavy stress on these services, together with vari-
ous promised workers' benefits (a reduction of work
hours, extensive paid annual leaves, an extension of pen-
sions, etc.) in supporting its guarantee of a future liv-
ing standard second to none. However, the plan's pro-
jection of a ten-fold increase in free services by 1980
is somewhat misleading. Most of these services are
already available-however inadequate their quantity
or quality-at low cost to the consumer (such services
represented slightly more than 10 percent of total private
consumption in 1960). Whether the consumer pays
directly for services or indirectly through taxes is mainly
a bookkeeping problem, and has no effect on his stand-
7 Most of the food targets cited by Khrushchev called for at least
doubled production by 1970. The most spectacular goal pro-
jected was that for fruits, berries and grapes; it called for a six-
fold increase of output by 1970 and a 10-fold increase by 1980.
Given the time required to grow fruit trees or even vines, planting
will have to proceed at a tempestuous rate for the next few years.
40 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
and of living. Thus the portion of the projected growth
which represents simply an elimination of the price on
an existing service does not constitute an increase in
consumption. The portion that would represent a genu-
ine increase in services cannot be achieved without
additional manpower, which, as we have seen, is un-
realistically counted upon from a sharp decline in agri-
cultural employment. In view of these considerations,
skepticism over the promised increment in services may
properly be entertained.
A word must be said about the alleged tendency of
free services to level income differentials. Free services
can be used to reduce inequality of income-if the pro-
vider of the services so chooses. There is no guarantee,
however, that the services promised in the plan will
be unlimited in supply or equally distributed. Free
housing, for example, is and will remain rationed and
assigned housing. It is highly possible that the size and
quality of quarters will continue to correspond rather
closely to the rank and importance of the occupants,
even in 1980. Rationing systems are, in fact, notoriously
amenable to the provision of special privilege to a
favored minority.
IN HOUSING, consumers are promised a tripling of
the housing stock by 1980. Allowing for population
growth this implies a future dwelling space of about
11 to 12 square meters per capita. If this level were
achieved-which is not very probable-it would be a
most welcome improvement to Soviet citizens. However
it would still fall below the present housing standard
in Western Europe in terms both of space and, from all
indications, of quality. Judging by present construction,
apartments are likely to be poorly built, badly main-
tained and sparsely furnished.
The regime's promises on housing should be judged
in the light of its virtual abandonment, in the second
half of 1960, of a loan program for the construction of
private housing-a move which undoubtedly contributed
to the significant underfulfillment of housing goals in
1960 and 1961. The most welcome offer the party could
have made to the Soviet people would have been to
restore the private-housing loan program. The rapid
growth of private-housing construction in 1958-60, along
with a steady but slower growth of state-housing con-
struction, foretold a substantial expansion in the stock
of housing by 1965; if the program had been con-
tinued, it might eventually have alleviated the housing
shortage to some meaningful degree. Private housing,
however, brought with it "evil" companions, remnants
of capitalism. The eagerness with which the popula-
tion-and especially party members-started speculating
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
in houses, building for sale or rental, cultivating com-
mercial garden plots, etc., led to the curtailment of the
loan program. The party leaders were not willing to
purchase consumer welfare at the cost of control over
individual behavior.
A similar conflict between party plans and popular
wishes is apparent in the matter of consumer durables.
The eagerness of Soviet citizens for consumer durables
has been noted both by visitors to the Soviet Union and
by the Soviet press. The present program frankly dis-
courages any hope the people might have had for eventu-
ally acquiring such items for themselves. The regime
has made clear that in promising the wide introduction
of "cheap household machines," it refers primarily to
communally-shared equipment. Khrushchev explicitly
stressed in his Congress speech that the requirements
of the population would be met by the establishment of
communal kitchens, laundries and repair shops. The
finality of this policy is attested to by the fact that apart-
ments presently under construction are equipped with
electrical circuits only large enough for lighting.
The emphasis on communally-shared goods and serv-
ices is clearly not just a matter of economic necessity
but part and parcel of the regime's long-range political
and economic planning. On the practical side, one aim
of the projected pattern of communal living is to free
more people, and especially women, for jobs. Khru-
shchev specifically cited the objective of increasing the
already high proportion of women in the labor force
(amounting in 1960 to 55 percent of the female popu-
lation over 14 years of age). He declared: "We must
develop all forms of communal services so that all those
who so desire can use them instead of performing house-
hold work." While he used the word "desire," the
basic party principle remains that everyone is expected
to work for the common good where needed, and the
availability of "free" nurseries, communal dining and
other communal facilities will make it more difficult for
women or anyone else to avoid this obligation when the
party chooses to impose it.
Conclusion
The general drift of the future pattern of Soviet life
is, then, to restrict still further individual freedom of
choice and personal or family goals and activities. It
is a thought-provoking question whether human beings
can be taught to accept the life of the ant in return for
an officially determined supply of goods and services.
Regardless of ideological rationalization, the practical
corollary of an absence of individual freedom of choice
is the presence of state control. The intent of the 20-year
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 41
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
program is to move steadily toward a society in which
the population directs its loyal efforts toward state ob-
jectives, with a minimum of attention to personal aims
or preferences. While the Soviet citizen has been prom-
ised shorter working hours, he will have to surrender an
increased portion of his leisure time to state-directed
education and to "voluntary" work for the "common
good" as determined by the party. And even though
future leaders may find it expedient to provide more con-
sumer durables than planned, there is no hint that a
surge of consumer expectations will be allowed to get out
of hand. The grandiose phraseology concerning con-
sumer welfare in fact outlines a restricted pattern of
consumption that will be quantitatively and qualitatively
controlled by the state.
It has been argued above that the 20-year economic
program must have a rather mixed appeal for the Rus-
sian people. Judged as internal propaganda, it could
have been much more attractively designed. Another
audience which theSoviet party leaders no doubt had in
mind was the peoples of underdeveloped countries, to
many of whom the consumption program doubtless
sounds attractive simply because their own present needs
are so great.
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
However, the main target audience of the program,
in the view of this writer, was the assemblage to whom
Khrushchev delivered his speech, the Communist Party.
The 20-year program was meant to justify the party's
past and to offer a raison d'etre for its present and fu-
ture. Khrushchev expressed this thought perhaps more
vividly than he realized when he declared:
The party's third program heralds the coming of a period in
which all the difficulties and privations which the Soviet
people have endured for the sake of their great cause will Ibe
made good a hundredfold.$
What kind of a consumption program could make these
privations worthwhile from the party's point of view?
Certainly not one envisioning a consumer-oriented
economy, which presumably could have been achieved
under some form of capitalism. The projected consump-
tion pattern had to be, as it is in the program, uniquely
Communist; it also had to ensure a minimum of diver-
sion of the resources of the state from the leadership's
primary purpose-the struggle for power in the world
at large, by which the Soviet Communist Party justifies
its permanent power at home.
Author's italics.
42 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
BOOKS
The Economics of Communist China
Die W/irtschaftliche Entwicklung
der Volksrepublik China,
by Bernhard Grossmann.
Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart, 1960.
Agrarian Policy of the Chinese Communist Party,
by Chao Kuo-chun,
Asia Publishing House,
Bombay & New York, 1960.
Reviewed by Alexander Eckstein
THE TWO BOOKS here under review are of rather
different types. The first, by Bernhard Grossmann, is a
broad survey of mainland China's over-all economic
development under the Communist regime, while the
second, by Chao Kuo-chun, is a monograph focused on
a particular area of Chinese Communist economic policy.
Moreover, although both books are essentially descrip-
tive, they differ in approach: Grossmann's is objective
and impartial, whereas Chao's is confused and partisan.
Of the general surveys of Communist China's economy
thus far published, Grossmann's study is unquestionably
the broadest in scope, assembling a wide range of data
and information, both quantitative and institutional.
It is more up-to-date, comprehensive, and lucid than
Yuan-li Wu's An Economic Survey of Communist China
(New York, 1956), more thorough than T. J. Hughes'
and D. E. T. Luard's The Economic Development of
Communist China, 1949-1958 (London, New York, and
Toronto, 1959), and not propagandistic like Solomon
Adler's The Chinese Economy (New York, 1957).
After a brief and not too illuminating introductory
discussion of development problems, Grossmann reviews
the actual development of China's economy prior to
1949, its recovery from war devastation, and the succes-
sive economic plans of the Communist regime. The
next six chapters then describe the development of the
Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan
(Ann Arbor, Michigan), Mr. Eckstein has written ex-
tensively on both the Soviet and Chinese economies.
principal sectors of the economy during the first decade
of Communist rule. The rest of the book is devoted to
an analysis of certain basic economic problems facing
the Peking regime, such as the dilemmas posed by rapid
population growth, production bottlenecks, and infla-
tionary pressures generated partly by high rates of in-
vestment and partly by recurrent imbalances resulting
from the bottlenecks and from planning errors.
By its very nature, such a broad survey is bound to be
uneven, with some topics treated more adaquately than
others. Thus, Grossmann's discussion of the organization
and administration of Chinese Communist economic
planning, the development of agricultural production,
and the problem of population growth is quite interest-
ing and may be considered a contribution to our knowl-
edge of Communist China's economy. On the other
hand, his treatment of industrial development, foreign
trade, Sino-Soviet economic relations, national income,
the budget, and the underlying strategy of the Second
Five-Year Plan is inadequate and, at times, confused.
PERHAPS the most serious shortcoming of Grossmann's
work is its reliance on official Chinese Communist sta-
tistics. Even while recognizing that these statistics pre-
sent problems of authenticity, the author shies away from
any real attempt to analyze and appraise them on the
ground that there is no means of verification. This, of
course, is taking the easy way out, a course which is
chosen all too often by writers on mainland China's
economy. There is no denying that it is infinitely more
difficult to dissect and evaluate the official statistics,
examining the methods of their collection and compila-
tion, than it is to take them as they are. But unfortu-
nately any study that uses these statistics in their original,
unevaluated form inevitably becomes their prisoner, for
they must necessarily condition the whole analysis and
the conclusions reached.
One of the clearest illustrations of this danger is pro-
vided by official Chinese Communist figures showing the
value of industrial production or of industrial and agri-
cultural production combined. In Chinese Communist
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 43
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 :
practice, these figures always represent the gross sales
value of the output rather than the value added in the
process of production, which has the effect of greatly
exaggerating the relative share in total production of
those industries or sectors of the economy which con-
sume the most raw materials per unit of output. Since
raw materials generally are a larger component in in-
dustrial than in agricultural goods production, it follows
that the Chinese Communist data inevitably overstate
the relative weight of industrial production and thus
serve to magnify substantially the degree of industrializa-
tion attained in China.
Exclusive reliance on official data as they stand would
indeed be necessary if there were no means of evaluating
and correcting them. This, however, is not the case. At
least up till the end of 1959, one could subscribe to a
number of economic, statistical, engineering, and agri-
cultural journals which discussed and analyzed prevail-
ing Chinese Communist statistical practices in consider-
able detail. It is clear from the information provided by
these publications that Chinese Communist statistics vary
in reliability. They are relatively most reliable for the
1955-57 period, and least reliable for the years since
1958. The data also tend, in general, to be moreaccurate
for those economic sectors in which performance has
been good than for those which are lagging. Again,
the statistics appear relatively more dependable for the
public than for the private sector of the economy, and
more reliable also for large-scale than for small-scale
enterprises.
Obviously, no study of the economic development of
Communist China, however wide-ranging its scope or
however objective the author's approach, can avoid the
risk of being misleading and superficial on some points
unless it gives detailed attention to these statistical pit-
falls and makes due allowances for the biases inherent
in the official Chinese data. While Grossmann's survey
makes useful contributions in certain areas, it may legiti-
mately be criticizedfor falling short in this rather funda-
mental respect.
STILL, whatever his shortcomings, Grossmann ap-
proaches his subject in a spirit of objectivity. By contrast,
Chao Kuo-chun's monograph on Chinese Communist
agrarian policy seems to suffer from definite political bias.
It transports the reader into an almost Alice-in-Wonder-
land sort of world in which there are no problems and no
difficulties, where everything works out smoothly, with-
out friction, and just as planned. It is a beautiful dream-
world, if only it were true. The Chinese peasantry, we
are told, has willingly accepted collectivization, spon-
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
taneously and enthusiastically joining the cooperatives,
then the collectives, and finally the communes. Chao
tells us further:
The recent few years have been an epic era in the annals
of China's agrarian development. The increase in crop pro-
duction in 1958 is outstanding in the modern history of China.
Concomitantly, gigantic socio-economic changes like the
organization of people's communes are being carried out in
rural China. When these coordinated programs . . . develop
their full impact on the nation in general and on rural areas
in particular, even greater development in agricultural de-
velopment may be expected in China. (p. 250)
Moreover, declares the author, "the big leap forward in
agriculture in 1958 was not something materializing out
of the blue; it was the cumulative result of various posi-
tive steps taken since 1949 by Chinese leaders, as the
weather was not exceptionally good in that year {1958;}.
(p. 252)
Reading these lines, one cannot help but wonder
whether Mr. Chao and the rest of us live in the same
world. Certainly, his view of reality in mainland China
seems to deny all the accounts of acute food shortages
and agricultural crises which have been appearing in
the Chinese Communist press itself for the past two
years. It also seems to contradict Communist China's
large purchases of grain from Australia and Canada
during the past year.
How can one account for the wide discrepancy be-
tween Chao's account and what appears to be the actual
state of agriculture in Communist China? The explana-
tion clearly lies in the author's uncritical approach. He
accepts without question the Chinese Communist claims
of great agricultural progress, yet seems to disregard
Peking's more recent acknowledgments of agricultural
difficulties. He does not question the effectiveness of
what he terms the "agro-technical" programs of the
Chinese Communist regime, completely failing to recog-
nize the disruptive and counterincentive effects of col-
lectivization and communization.
Since the Communists' advent to power in 1949, there
have been three years of really good harvests in mainland
China-1952, 1955, and 1958--with only mediocre or
poor crops in the other years. The pattern has been one
of several years of inferior harvests interspersed peri-
odically by a year of superior crops, with all these fluc-
tuations taking place around a rising trend in production.
Thus, the total agricultural product of Communist China
certainly was greater in 1958 than in 1952, although we
do not know by how much. According to the official
claims, food-crop production increased by more than
60 percent during these years and almost doubled be-
tween 1952 and 1960. Since the population grew in the
same period by about 20 percent, the alleged doubling
44 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
of production should have provided an ample margin
for bringing about an increase in the per capita food
supply; yet, all indications point to a probable decline,
or at best a stagnation, of the per capita level of food
consumption in 1960 and 1961. This deterioration of
the domestic food situation cannot be accounted for by
Chinese exports of food crops, since these have at no
time absorbed more than one to two percent of Com-
munist China's total farm production. At the same time,
the fact that the Chinese Communist government has
found it necessary to expend its very meager foreign
exchange resources for purchases of grain from Australia
and Canada suggests that the deterioration is likewise not
due to an official policy of accumulating reserve grain
stocks, since if such stocks had been available, the regime
would certainly have used them to relieve the domestic
food shortage before resorting to large-scale emergency
purchases abroad.
ALL THIS points to the conclusion that the official
Chinese Communist figures for agricultural production
are simply too unreliable to be used as a basis for analy-
sis. There is no question that, in part, the claimed
increase in output between 1952 and 1957 was statistical
rather than real, reflecting improvements in crop re-
porting. As far as 1958 is concerned, the official figure
for grain production was 250 million metric tons. As
against this, Grossmann gives a figure of 205 million
tons (p. 176), representing a 10-percent rise in produc-
tion compared to 1957. Although this still would be a
healthy increase for one year, it is at least within the
realm of reasonable possibility.
Assuming that food-crop production in mainland
China actually did rise by about ten percent in 1958,
we can estimate the total increase in output between 1952
and 1958 at something in the neighborhood of 25 per-
cent-or less than half the 60-percent increase claimed
by the regime. Given the 15-percent growth in popula-
tion over the same period, this still should have meant
a slight improvement in the per capita food supply by
1958. Even if such was the case, however, it seems likely
that any improvement attained by 1958 has since been
more than wiped out inasmuch as food-crop production
from 1959 through 1961 has either decreased or re-
mained stationary, while the population has continued to
expand, perhaps by another 6-7 percent.
Chinese Communist statements have cited successive
years of unprecedentedly bad weather as the main cause
of the difficulties in agriculture. Actually, however, the
primary explanation of these difficulties appears to lie
rather in the cumulative impact of inept government
policies. Weather conditions in the last few years have
evidently not been exactly benign, but there is no evi-
dence that they have been unusually unfavorable-or
more unfavorable, let us say, than in 1956 or 1957.
Regardless of the weather, the continuous disorganiza-
tion of agriculture as a result of the Communist regime's
successive programs of land reform, cooperativization,
collectivization, and communization, combined with
grossly inadequate investment allocations to agriculture,
negative producer incentives caused by heavy taxation
and various forms of "squeeze," and a number of spe-
cific errors in planning, were bound to take their toll.
It is now clear that the attempt at mass mobilization of
rural labor, undertaken in 1958 through the instrumen-
tality of the communes, has been, at least in part,
counterproductive. The dikes and irrigation works built
by mass labor teams drawn from the communes have evi-
dently been so poorly constructed in most instances that
they have not stood the test of major floods and droughts.
At the same time, the mobilization of rural manpower
for these projects caused labor shortages in agriculture
and thus contributed to the post-1958 decline in farm
production.
In the light of the overwhelming accumulation of
evidence now pointing to a serious crisis in Chinese
Communist agriculture, one cannot help but wonder
how Mr. Chao could have been so completely misled.
A partial explanation is, perhaps, provided by the fact
that when his book was published in 1960 the outlines
of the crisis, though already visible, were not nearly as
obvious as they are now. At the same time, it is apparent
that the author's roseate picture of agricultural progress
in Communist China stems above all from his readiness
to accept the claims of the regime at face value, without
qualification or critical appraisal.
Despite this, Chao's book does shed some useful light
on the historical background and evolution of Chinese
Communist agrarian policies. It is particularly inter-
esting to note how many of the policies implemented by
the Communist regime since 1949 were already fore-
shadowed during the so-called "soviet period" between
1927 and 1937.' For instance, Mr. Chao's study clearly
points out that one of the central tenets of Chinese Com-
munist agrarian strategy-"rely on the poor peasants
and farm laborers, and ally yourself with the middle
peasants"-was formulated and tried out then. Simi-
larly, many of the mass organizations which were to play
i This period saw the emergence in certain areas of China, prin-
cipally in Hunan and Kiangsi Provinces, of a number of local
Communist "soviets" which, in 1931, joined together in pro-
claiming the "Chinese Soviet Republic." These governments
practically ceased to exist with the retreat of the Chinese Com-
munist forces into northwest China (1934-35), and the Chinese
Soviet Republic was formally dissolved in 1937.-Ed.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 45
 such a crucial role during the land reform drive of
1949-52 (the Peasant Associations, Youth League, etc.)
were first formed and tested in that early period. The
same applies to the Chinese Communists' definition of
rural class status, the organization of mutual aid teams,
and a number of other measures.
In the last analysis, both books reviewed here illustrate
in what an early stage of development scholarly studies
of Communist China still are. Grossmann's task would
certainly have been much easier had there been a backlog
of detailed monographic studies on which to base a
Filling Stalin's Shoes
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Power and Policy in the USSR,
by Robert Conquest.
St. Martin's Press, New York, 1961.
Russland unter Chruschtschow,
by Boris Meissner.
R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 1960.
The Red Phoenix,
by Harry Schwartz.
P. A. Praeger, New York, 1961.
Moscow Journal,
by Harrison E. Salisbury.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961.
Reviewed by Leon Goure
SINCE WORLD WAR II, the uneasy and increasingly
difficult "coexistence" of the Communist and non-Com-
munist powers has elevated "understanding Soviet
Russia" to something akin to a Western goal and an
intellectual sport. The many unresolved mysteries in
the field of Soviet studies have fascinated scholars add
laymen alike. And few of these mysteries have stirred
the imagination more, or been more hotly debated by
Mr. Goure, a frequent contributor to this journal, is the
author of Civil Defense in the Soviet Union (University
of California, 1961).
comprehensive survey. This raises the question whether
it is worthwhile to devote such a large share of the
limited scholarly resources available for the study of
Communist China to the preparation of general surveys
rather than of studies of narrower scope-sharply fo-
cused, deeply probing, and truly objective-which would
illuminate specific aspects of Communist China's society,
polity, and economy. The more available such authori-
tative studies become, the less will be the attention paid
to such pseudo-scientific, superficial works as Mr. Chao's
one-sided eulogy of Chinese Communist agrarian policy.
Western observers, than the internal politics of the
Kremlin, and especially the power conflicts within the
Soviet leadership.
This aspect of Soviet political life has of course re-
mained largely hidden from view. However, the curi-
osity of investigators has been piqued by occasional
outward evidences of cracks in the monolithic facade
of the Soviet ruling system--the sudden bloody con-
vulsions which have repeatedly shaken it, the sleight-
of-hand which overnight has transformed venerated
leaders into traitors or criminals, the seemingly inex-
plicable changes in the political fortunes of many promi-
nent personalities. These recurrent clues to the inner
workings of Soviet politics have all served to confirm the
widespread belief in the West that there is a continuous
and debilitating struggle for power within the Soviet
ruling group.
Such being the case, identification of the current locus
of controlling power, of the issues at stake and the influ-
ences at work, assumes vital importance for the evalua-
tion of Soviet policy. Hence, Khrushchev's leadership
positionand what, if any, limitations there are upon his
ability to impose his decisions have become a focal point
of study and debate.
The views on this subject are as varied as they are
numerous. In part, the absence of any consensus re-
sults from the paucity and unreliability of the available
data and from the fact that differing approaches are
46 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
used in analyzing them; in part, however, one suspects
that it reflects the propensity of some analysts, more than
others, to be influenced in their judgments by the wish
to make a solution of the East-West conflict appear more
hopeful. It is at once striking and disquieting to note
that the same "facts" have been interpreted by some
as indicating a progressive collapse of collective leader-
ship and a consolidation of Khrushchev's one-man rule,
and by others as signifying that Khrushchev has at times
been the unwilling spokesman of a continuing collec-
tive leadership in which he has had to wage a constant
struggle against more reactionary and aggressive
elements.
The latter view has tended to present Khrushchev in
a relatively favorable light and has been used by its
exponents in order to explain retrogressive developments
in Soviet policy. Thus, they attributed the stiffened
Soviet posture which caused the collapse of the 1960
Paris summit conference to a combination of pressures
on Khrushchev from the Stalinists, the Soviet military,
and the Chinese. For a long time, too, it has been
fashionable among members of this school to point to
Suslov as a sort of eminence grise of Soviet politics-
a line which Moscow spokesmen have sought to exploit
by hinting that unless the Western powers make appro-
priate concessions to Soviet demands, Khrushchev stands
in danger of being replaced by some other-presumably
more intransigent-leader.
Certainly, however, in view of the obvious importance
of correctly assessing the "real Khrushchev" and the
character of the Soviet ruling group, no Western analyst
or statesman can allow himself the luxury of indulg-
ing in wishful-or what has sometimes been called
"positive"-thinking. Least of all is there justification
for assuming that Khrushchev's de-Stalinization moves,
suspension of mass terror, and other reforms represent
a fundamental transformation of the Soviet system, or
that they imply, a priori, a change in the ultimate goals
of Soviet foreign policy.
The books under review all attempt to describe and
interpret the political character of the Soviet system.
The fact that each of the authors uses a different ana-
lytical method may be partly responsible for the diver-
gent pictures they present.
MR. ROBERT CONQUEST'S Power and Policy in the
USSR, besides covering the greatest time span, is an
unusual and highly provocative study of Soviet politics.
The author presents his work as an exercise in "Krem-
l.inology." He notes that while the book as a whole
provides a "fairly full political history of the USSR in
recent years," each of its chapters is designed primarily
to "demonstrate . . . the interplay of the various evi-
dential factors, to be an exercise in the application and
development of method" (p. 15). The author's thesis
is that the basic and constant force in Soviet politics
is the Communist ideology, as interpreted in the party
line: "This force, operating in the minds of the thou-
sands of senior officials structured into the apparatus of
power, exerts the tension which produces the struggle
for power" (p. 19). On the other hand, he holds that
social pressures are external to the Soviet political mecha-
nism and need only be taken into account by the analyst
"in the same way as the weather or the Ural Moun-
tains" (p. 18).
Mr. Conquest likens Kremlinology to paleontology
in that both must build their theories on insufficient
factual evidence. Whether this is a fair parallel is open
to some doubt. The paleontologist, given a single au-
thentic bone, can reconstruct an entire prehistoric skele-
ton with a high degree of certainty; Kremlinologists,
on the other hand, have fewer scientifically proven
guidelines to go by and are liable to reconstruct a whole
menagerie of dissimilar beasts from the same evidential
fragments-or even to disagree on what constitutes
acceptable evidence. The author restricts his own search
for evidence to official Soviet materials, probably a wise
decision since it eliminates any argument over the va-
lidity and significance of information obtained from
secondary or unofficial sources.
Mr. Conquest's book concerns itself with Soviet poli-
tics in the period from 1949 to 1960 and is divided
into three parts. The first part describes the methodology
and evidence employed. The second deals with the strug-
gle for power under Stalin. Since the focus is on the
evidences of struggle in the leadership, the author here
analyzes the Leningrad Case of 1949-50, the disputes
of 1950-53 over agriculture, the Georgian purges of
1951-53, the 19th Party Congress (October 1952), and
the Doctors' Plot in the last days of Stalin's rule. The
conclusions he draws from these developments hold few
surprises, but the thoroughness and care with which he
analyzes and documents each case are impressive. The
third part of the book, entitled "Struggle for Power in
Conditions of Collective Leadership," covers the period
1953-60. Here it becomes evident that Mr. Conquest
does not believe in the thesis of a successful consolida-
tion of one-man rule by Khrushchev, and it seems likely
that some of the conclusions and interpretations he ad-
vances in this section will encounter disagreement.
One criticism that may be made is that while the
author's method of research succeeds in showing the
alignment of forces in the various power conflicts and
the public issues dividing the antagonists, it often fails
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 47
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
to explain why a contender was able to gain the ad-
vantage. For example, it is not made clear why Beria,
just after Stalin's death in March 1953, was allowed
to regain control of the entire police apparatus despite
the fact that none of his colleagues in the Presidium
had much reason to trust him. Again, the author can
shed no light on why the other members of the Presid-
ium, having successfully united against Beria, later
failed to recognize Khrushchev as the major threat to
their power and allowed him to destroy them piecemeal.
Mr. Conquest further takes the view that the Presidium
formed after the 20th Congress represented at least a
partial defeat for Khrushchev, notwithstanding the fact
that it was not able to prevent him from forming and
controlling a Party Bureau for the RSFSR.
There are still other unresolved mysteries, such as the
role played by Mikoyan in prompting the final decision
on Khrushchev's secret speech at the 20th Congress, or
the remarkable change in Khrushchev's power position
between the December 1956 Central Committee plenum
and the February 1957 plenum-a change which re-
sulted in the unusual phenomenon of the Central Com-
mittee successfully overruling a majority of the Pre-
sidium as well as a decision of the Supreme Soviet.
The most dramatic moment, of course, was the June
1957 plenum, when the "anti-party" group is alleged to
have attempted its coup against Khrushchev. Mr. Con-
quest appears to believe that Khrushchev was saved by
the intervention of Serov and Zhukov in preventing the
majority decision against Khrushchev in the Presidium
from being made public. Zhukov's purported role in the
crisis has been frequently cited although there is no
evidence from official Soviet sources to support it, just
as there is no clear indication that the issue was neces-
sarily-as many analysts have assumed a priori-a pro-
posal by the anti-party group to remove Khrushchev
outright. It is equally possible that the group merely
sought some limitation of Khrushchev's power, which
might explain why its members kept their party mem-
bership for such a long time and why Khrushchev could
continue cooperating temporarily with Bulganin and
Voroshilov.
Mr. Conquest's final assessment seems to be that
Khrushchev, in spite of his recent ascendency, still faces
opposition forces capable of resisting and even defeat-
ing his decisions. What these opposition forces could
have been since 1957, however, is not clear, and the 22nd
Congress has given no indication that Khrushchev's
consolidation of his controlling position is likely to
undergo any significant reversal in the foreseeable future.
Whether Mr. Conquest's conclusions strike individual
readers as sound or unsound, few will question that his
book makes a real contribution to Soviet studies. Read-
ers will also welcome the lengthy appendices which, in
addition to translations of various documents, include a
useful index of the membership of the Presidium since
1949 and of the Central Committee since 1952.
PROFESSOR BORIS MEISSNER is likewise a dis-
tinguished Kremlinologist. His book, compared to Con-
quest's, covers a more limited time span, dealing pri-
marily with the period from the 20th through the 21st
Party Congress, and also provides a broader treatment of
events since it is not restricted merely to political de-
velopments within the highest leadership but also dis-
cusses the party andeconomic programs. On the whole,
Professor Meissner's study aims less at an analysis of
the power struggle than at a comprehensive and detailed
description of Soviet internal politics during the period
in question. Documentary appendices take up almost
two-thirds of the book, and the author, in his descrip-
tion and analysis, does not confine himself exclusively
to Soviet official documents as does Mr. Conquest, but
also uses satellite and Western Communist sources.
Concerning the events at the June 1957 Plenum, Pro-
fessor Meissner's interpretation is that Khrushchev was
saved by Zhukov's initiative in summoning the members
of the Central Committee to Moscow, while Bulganin
and Voroshilov may have attempted to mediate between
the two factions in the Presidium. However, the new
revelations made at the 22nd Congress about these events
cast doubt on this thesis. It is by no means clear in any
event why the anti-party group, with its majority in the
Presidium, had to debate for three days with Khru-
shchev, supposedly supported only by Mikoyan and Kiri-
chenko, unless the objectives of the majority were
actually far more limited in scope than is often assumed.
Nor is it clear why Zhukov should have acted as such a
champion of Khrushchev if, as Professor Meissner claims,
there was a close relationship between Zhukov and 13u1-
ganin (pp. 46-47). It seems fairly evident that Khru-
shchev, though victorious in 1957, was not then prepared
to reveal publicly that a majority had opposed him, and
therefore retained Voroshilov and Bulganin since they
by themselves constituted no threat to him and their
retention would make his position appear stronger. Pro-
fessor Meissner believes that the 21st Congress con-
firmed Khrushchev's leadership, but that the question
still remained open as of that time whether he would
succeed in establishing undisputed one-man rule.
Mr. Harry Schwartz is well known to students of
Soviet and international affairs. His book, The Red
Phoenix, is largely a selective compilation of his articles
for the New York Times, arranged under various head-
ings according to subject matter. He has supplemented
48 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
these with an introductory and a concluding chapter and
has inserted some material to connect the various articles.
Mr. Schwartz covers a far wider range of subjects
than either Mr. Conquest or Professor Meissner. He is
concerned not merely with the internal politics of the
party and the power struggles within the leadership,
but also with the whole gamut of social, economic, ideo-
logical, and external political factors which have a part
in shaping the character of Soviet policies. Unfor-
tunately, however, the format of his articles does not
permit him either to develop his interpretations as fully
as would seem desirable or to bring together all the
elements he treats into a unified over-all analysis.
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, it would be
difficult to quarrel with Schwartz' general conclusion
that the Soviet leadership-first of Stalin and later of
Khrushchev-has proven itself highly skillful in wag-
ing the cold war, and that the next fifteen to twenty
years may well see a further significant expansion of
Soviet power. How this power will be applied, the
author believes, will depend greatly on how successful
the leadership will be in solving the country's growing
social and agrarian problems and on how disruptive the
succession crisis may prove when Khrushchev leaves the
scene. Mr. Schwartz is in general far from optimistic
about future prospects and does not share the view of
those who see in Khrushchev a progressive reformer and
liberalizer of the Communist dictatorship.
COMPARED to the works discussed above, including
that of his colleague Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Harrison Salis-
bury's Moscow journal is much more plainly journalistic
than scholarly in approach. The book is an extensive-
and apparently largely unedited-selection of news dis-
patches and extracts from a diary, both written while
Mr. Salisbury was in Moscow, from 1949 to September
1953, as correspondent for the New York Times. One
of the author's stated aims is to demonstrate that the
"old-fashioned virtues of using one's eyes, ears and,
sometimes, one's nose to detect what is going on about
him have not entirely lost their purpose.. .." But if
these virtues are indeed of value, the book hardly shows
that they are enough.
The material from Mr. Salisbury's diary makes pain-
fully clear the handicaps under which newsmen in the
Soviet Union have had to work. In the absence of real
contacts with Soviet governmental and political sources,
foreign correspondents stationed in Moscow were forced
to rely for news largely upon translations from the So-
viet press and on gossip among themselves or with
embassy personnel. At one point in his diary, in fact,
Mr. Salisbury complains that a reduction in the number
of foreign correspondents seriously constricted his sources
of information.
Although much of this material was already used in
the author's American in Russia, published in 1955, a
novel feature of his present book is that it includes the
censored portions of his news dispatches from Moscow,
thus providing the reader with a concrete picture of the
strategy and idiosyncracies of the Soviet press censor-
ship. Considering the extremely difficult conditions
under which correspondents in Moscow had to work,
it is not surprising that Mr. Salisbury at times reached
wrong conclusions and that some of his estimates of
the character and aims of Soviet policy were quite mis-
taken. This may possibly explain also why his views on
American foreign policy, expressed quite forcefully at
various points in his book, do not always appear founded
on a full understanding of the problems and forces
confronting the United States.
Although all the books reviewed here put consider-
able stress on the problems and uncertainties facing the
Soviet leadership, they offer the reader little ground for
optimism. On the contrary, they indicate not only that
Khrushchev has consolidated his position and expanded
the bases of Soviet power, but also that there is as yet
no evidence to suggest that "Khrushchevism," for all
its de-Stalinization, is less dangerous for the West than
old-fashioned Stalinism. Mr. Schwartz' conclusion seems
well taken when he warns that "the prudent assumption
for the outside world would seem to be that they [the
Soviet leaders] will be successful and that the essential
features of the Soviet dictatorship will remain for the
indefinite future." Indeed, Khrushchev's vicious public
humiliation of Voroshilov at the 22nd Congress echoed
the political cruelty of the Stalin period and provided
a sobering reminder that the present Soviet dictator, who
knew how to dance the gopak when ordered to do so
by the Vozhd, may know how to make others dance to
his own tune as well.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 49
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Notes and Views
How Statistics Are Made
IN DEALING WITH Soviet statistics, three basic problems
have to be overcome: 1) difficulties of interpretation aris-
ing from differences in the economic and statistical concepts
used in the Soviet Union and in the West; 2) deliberate
Soviet suppression, omission, or befogging of statistical
data; and 3) faulty reporting within the USSR at the enter-
prise or collective farm level. All three problems stem,
directly or indirectly, from the fact that the Soviet leader-
ship regards statistical information as a weapon of the
proletarian state, but the degree of difficulty they cause for
Western analysts of Soviet economic performance differs
with the individual problem.
In principle, the first is the least formidable since it
ceases to be of much concern once the conceptual differences
are understood. Western economic observers know, for
example, what major components make up the "national
income" by Soviet definition. Such knowledge is, however,
far from complete, partly because disagreements of defini-
tion continue to exist among Soviet economists and statis-
ticians, and partly because there is some doubt how far
even those definitions which are ostensibly agreed upon are
adhered to in actual statistical practice. In any event, con-
ceptual differences as such are quite legitimate, and if due
care is exercised to take them into account, difficulties of
analysis can be more or less resolved.
The second problem is, of course, much more trouble-
some, directly connected as it is with the use of statistics
for window-dressing purposes. Whatever other purposes
they may serve, a primary function of statistics in the Soviet
Union is to provide substantiation for what Stalin called
the "law" of the smooth, proportional development of the
Soviet economy., This requirement gives rise to three kinds
of statistical malpractice: 1) the suppression of informa-
tion on how particular data were arrived at; 2) the dis-
closure of relatively meager data for a number of important
economic categories (for example, the industrial labor
force); and 3) the omission of embarrassing statistical in-
formation. In spite of some improvement since 1953, both
in the volume of data published and in the range and
1 See Naum Jasny, Soviet Industrialization 1928-1952, Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960.
coverage of accompanying explanatory notes, Soviet statis-
tical handbooks are still poor in data and lopsided in the
information they furnish. Duplication tends to exaggerate
the volume of information supplied. For instance, about
one-seventh of the Soviet statistical handbook for industry
(Promyshlennost SSSR, Tsentralnoe Statisticheskoe Up-
ravlenie) consists of a mere repetition in percentage form
of absolute figures presented elsewhere in the handbook.
The third problem, with which this article is mainly con-
cerned, is somewhat more subtle and has particular interest
in that it tends to give trouble not just to Western analysts,
but to the Soviet Central Statistical Administration itself.
Manipulation of economic data at the central government
level-which the Soviets consider ideologically justified on
various grounds-is one thing. But tampering with figures
at the lower echelons of the reporting hierarchy is quite
another. It is regarded, in fact, as a serious crime since it
undermines the work of the national economic planners and
usually covers up activities which violate "socialist moral-
ity." It would nevertheless appear that the very nature of
the Soviet economic apparatus and the way it functions
are such as to make conscious tampering with the flow of
statistical information to the central government quite com-
mon, if not inevitable.
IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE that the production de-
mands made upon Soviet enterprises and collective farms
are often unrealistic in relation to the amounts of produc-
tive resources allocated to them. The result is that enter-
prise directors and collective farm chairmen spend a good
portion of their lives trying to circumvent regulations. Ful-
fillment of the plan comes first, and often this can be
achieved only by entering into illegal deals with private
"fixers" and friends among the officialdom.2 The former
2 For an instructive account of a Soviet manager's plight,
see Ignat Ovsyannikov, "I was a Soviet 'Capitalist'," the
Sunday Telegraph (London), July 23, 1961. For a study of the
"fixer" network, see Jan S. Prybyla, "Private Enterprise in the
Soviet Union," The South African Journal of Economics, Sep-
tember 1961, and December 1961.
So Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
provide materials and services which are in short supply,
and the latter help to block the channels of communication
with the upper strata of the executive hierarchy. The risks,
of course, are great, and leave no room for the fainthearted.
Nevertheless, the system virtually necessitates taking them,
with the twofold result that much of what actually takes
place at the production level is not shown in the reports
sent in to the government authorities, and that the figures
which do reach the top echelon of the economic hierarchy
are often grossly distorted.
From time to time, the system of managerial collusion
breaks down. This sometimes occurs because of the mana-
gers' blatant disregard for the minimum living standards of
workers in areas which the authorities regard as of particu-
lar importance to the economy. Several breakdowns of this
kind have occurred in the "virgin land" regions of the
USSR, where the miserable living conditions of immigrant
workers on a number of state farms and development
projects became a national scandal.8 In these cases, to be
sure, the managers' total disregard for even the simplest
needs of the workers-reflecting their one-sided concentra-
tion on plan fulfillment ("Don't bother me with dormi-
tories; I have other things to attend to. The plan is col-
lapsing.")4-was only the proximate cause of the break-
down in the system of data-fixing. The ultimate cause was
an increase in labor turnover, which in itself was serious
enough to endanger fulfillment of the plan.,
Illegal deals and false cover-up reporting seem to be
particularly common practices on the part of collective
farm chairmen, probably resulting from the fact that ag-
riculture in the Soviet Union has for years suffered from
singularly poor treatment in the matter of resource allo-
cation. In the Ukraine alone, an investigation of the op-
erations of 8,199 collective farms revealed that 5,945 illegal
deals had been entered into over a period of two years .6
They had, of course, been covered up by deceptive report-
ing, which in turn vitiated subsequent central economic
planning. One can readily appreciate the planners' irrita-
tion at being fed falsified information, but one can also
sympathize with the hard lot of those whose duty it is to
translate unrealistic production targets into actual goods
and services. Moreover, the process is a cumulative one in
that the falsification of production reports induced by
unrealistic central planning generates still more unrealistic
planning, and hence still more falsification. This vicious
circle stems from the inherent rigidity of the system itself,
which has not been essentially altered despite repeated
moves toward decentralization of the economic adminis-
tration.
8 See "Virgin-Landers Are Tired of Lame Excuses," Kom-
somolskaia pravda, November 28, and December 27, 1959, and
January 8, 1960. Also, "Letters with Commentary: Concern
about Everyday Life is Concern for the Plan," Izvestia, January
5, 1960.
4 A manager's answer to workers' complaints, quoted in Izvestia,
loc. cit.
, On the construction sites of the Pavlodar Elevator and Flour
Mill Construction Trust in the single year 1959, 1,800 workers
left their jobs and 1800 new workers were hired. Izvestia, loc.
cit.
6 Resolution of the CC of the Ukrainian CP, Sotsialisticheskaia
zakonnost, No. 10, October 1960.
CAPTION LEFT: "Let us take another type of official, the type who likes to live off the state. There are some
enterprise directors, collective farm chairmen and heads of state farms and various departments who make a spe-
cialty of requesting year after year that their production assignment be reduced and their payrolls and cap-
ital investments increased." (From Khrushchev's speech of October 18 to the 22nd CPSU Congress.) CAPTION
BELOW: "On a true fishing tackle." Tackles spell out "Petition."
-From Krokodll (Moscow), October 30, 1961.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 51
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
The wide prevalence of fanciful reporting by kolkhoz
(collective farm) managers does not mean that it is less
risky for them than for factory managers. They also have
to contend with regular official auditing of their accounts
as well as with periodic "raids" by party inspection bri-
gades. There is also the danger that disgruntled kolkhoz-
niki, spurred by some personal grudge against the collective
farm chairman, will write letters to the editors of local
papers exposing any cheating on his part. No less than the
director of an industrial plant, the kolkhoz chairman knows
that if he tries to hoodwink the government and a show-
down comes, he will stand alone.
THERE ARE other factors, however, which explain the
greater readiness of kolkhoz administrators to assume these
risks. One is the rapid turnover of collective farm chair-
men. A kolkhoz chairmanship is not a coveted position,
but one which is regarded, at best, as merely a stepping-
stone to professional advancement, and at worst, as a
burden to be passed off as soon as possible. In either case,
the occupant is not anxious to keep the post any longer
than necessary, and he feels under strong compulsion to
make the production record of his kolkhoz look as good as
possible while he is there, in the hope of being rewarded
with a better managerial post. In 1955, when 30,000
kolkhoz chairmen were replaced by party appointees be-
cause of the unsatisfactory performance of their farms, one
of the newly designated chairmen found that his particular
farm had been successively managed by some twenty dif-
ferent chairmen, most of whom had not held the job for
more than a year.? This is not at all an unusual phenome-
non in Soviet agriculture. In fact, at the CPSU Central
Committee session convened in January 1961 to discuss
agricultural problems, Premier Khrushchev specifically
complained about the attitude responsible for the rapid
turnover of collective farm managers. Their outlook, he
said, seemed to be dominated by the idea that "next year
I'll be going to another gubernia." s
Another factor that facilitates data-juggling at the kolk-
hoz level is the shortage of competent bookkeepers on the
collective farms. Finally, complaints have been raised
about the practice of disguising a farm's lagging produc-
tion by displaying prominently a leading worker's spectacu-
lar achievements.?
False reporting in the agricultural sector is by no means
limited to collective farm chairmen. Transgressions are
apparently committed with at least equal frequency by
procurement officials, who cheat the collective farms either
to fulfill their own plans or to enrich themselves. One of
their methods, for example, is to understate the fat content
of delivered milk (the procurement official insists on doing
the measurement by the eye) or to overstate the moisture
content in grain (use of moisture gauges is avoided). Khru-
shchev himself criticized the latter practice in his speech
before the Central Committee plenum last year.
The factories make fine instruments, but reasons are always
found for the gauges to be out of order. Why? That's clear.
A collective or state farm brings in grain, and the receiving
agent bites a grain and determines the moisture content that
way.'?
Needless to say, practices such as these induce the
swindled kolkhoz chairmen to cheat even more. One device
they have adopted rather widely consists in purchasing
clarified butter in a state store-preferably in a different
province or republic-and reporting the purchase as part
of the farm's production. It is also a common practice to
buy butter in one republic and sell it, remelted, to a cream-
ery in another republic.11 When the stores are short on
the products which the kolkboz chairman wishes to buy
for inclusion in his "output," he often resorts to purchases
from the collective farmers' private plots. The private
sector thus becomes a useful reserve to be drawn upon
when planned deliveries of meat, milk, vegetables, and
other products to the state begin to lag.12
THE EFFECT OF false reporting at lower levels becomes,
of course, cumulative as the figures travel upwards. Union
republics and provinces have been known to report fulfill-
ment of grain procurement quotas and at the same time
ask the state for seed and feed grain for their livestock.
In other words, while the plan was "fulfilled," no allow-
ance was made for future production. In 1959, for ex-
ample, the Russian Republic delivered 1,643 million poods
of grain but took back 361 million poods or 22 per cent
of the grain it had delivered.13 Hence, after allowance is
made for padding, the republic plan was fulfilled only to
the order of 78 per cent, and this does not take into ac-
count faulty reporting at the farm level.
In the industrial sector matters are not much better.
Falsification of figures and illegal practices at the enterprise
or trust level appear to be quite common in spite of num-
7 Letter addressed to Khrushchev by the Chairman of the Lenin
Collective Farm, village of Sulimovka, Baryeshevka District, Kiev
Province, Selskaia zhizn, December 13, 1960.
8 Pravda, January 14, 1961.
B "We often see one man on a collective farm achieving out-
standing results year after year, while the collective farm as a
whole is lagging. The front-ranker's name becomes a kind of
shield behind which the collective farm's managers take refuge."
Khrushchev's speech at the Party CC Plenary Session on Agri-
culture, January 17, 1961, Pravda, January 22, 1961.
101 bid.
11 See Khrushchev's speech at Rostov-on-Don, Pravda, February
5, 1961; also speech by I. R. Razzakov, First Secretary of the
Kirgiz Party CC, Party Plenary Session on Agriculture, Pravda,
January 14, 1961.
12 "Private Flocks on Collective Pastures," a report on hood-
winking in the Rhilaya Koss District, Guryev Province, Kom-
somolskaia Pravda, January 12, 1961.
13 Khrushchev's speech at the Plenary Session of the Party CC,
Pravda, January 22, 1961.
52 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
erous checks which are built into the system of industrial
reporting. Two examples will illustrate the situation.
Soviet raw materials salvage trusts normally operate
under a scrap metal collection plan. In 1957 the Chief
Metal Salvage Administration for a certain area reported
fulfillment of its plan. The following year, however, it
was discovered that the Salvage Administration's figures
included 1,800 tons of metal which had in fact been col-
lected by private operators from the dump of the Dzer-
zhinsky Metallurgical Plant and sold to the Chief Metal
Salvage Administration for 120,000 rubles. The Salvage
Administration had thereupon sold the metal back to the
same plant.14
The second example is even more instructive. The Dis-
trict of Tsarichanka was in serious difficulties, having
failed to reach the scrap metal collection targets set by the
plan. Seeking a way out of their predicament, the District
Cooperative officials contacted a private operator who was
in possession of receipts for scrap metal sold to state enter-
prises; the scrap metal had been previously stolen from the
railroad. The District Cooperative bought these receipts
and thereupon reported fulfillment of the plan. The state
enterprises which acquired the railroad's scrap metal
through the services of the "fixer" also fulfilled their plan.
The railroad officials, to be sure, found themselves short
of scrap metal, but since in the subsequent proceedings
their name was not mentioned, it is probable that the de-
ficiency had been made good by accounting methods. The
benefits of the operation, however, did not end here. For
fulfilling the plan, enterprise and cooperative officials re-
ceived a bonus, and since the officials of the local soviet
had had the good sense to look the other way, the plan in
the area of their jurisdiction was fulfilled, and they too re-
ceived bonuses. When eventually the whole matter came
to light, the private fixer was the only party punished.15
In their efforts to keep in step with the plans, managers
resort to a number of well-established courses of action. If
the plan is stated in terms of physical output, there is a
distinct temptation to fulfill it by lowering quality per unit
of weight or item of production. If, on the other hand, the
plan is set in terms of value of output at constant prices,
the possibility exists of fulfilling the plan by producing
commodities which require large inputs of materials and
much processing per unit of output. Since, however, ma-
terials and processing capacity tend to be limited, illegal
sources of supply are often used, or the assortment of out-
put is violated.16
141zvestia, August 24, 1958.
16 Ibid.
16 See Robert W. Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, Houghton-
Mifflin, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1960, pp. 127-134.
-Again, the calf hasn't gained any weight!
-Well, that's not his concern. The livestock
specialist makes up the report; he'll take
care of it.
All this should not be interpreted to mean that the Soviet
economy is paralyzed by waste and bogged down in a
morass of statistical falsification at the production level.
Waste, inefficiency, rigidity, and fraud there are in plenty,
but they should be viewed as subtractions from the econ-
omy's forward movement and as an indication of the high
price the Soviet system exacts for economic progress. These
conditions of life in Soviet industry and agriculture should
also serve as a constant reminder that waste in Soviet
economic reporting often parades as achievement, and that
Soviet statistics always require critical examination. Soviet
economists and statisticians are aware of this problem, but
they are obliged to work with such material as they get
from the field, and while loopholes are constantly being
closed by legislative and executive action, the relentlessness
of every new plan spurs managers to ever more ingenious
feats of circumvention.
Jan Prybyla
(Mr. Prybyla, who last appeared in these pages with
"Gomulka and the Peasants," May-June 1958, is cur-
rently Assistant Professor of Economics at the Pennsyl-
vania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.)
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 53
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Some Aspects of Soviet Reality
THE 22ND CONGRESS of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union was grasped by the Kremlin image-makers as
another opportunity to project their idea of the world's
future. Against a background of spectacular sputnik suc-
cesses and undeniable (though far more limited) achieve-
ments in the economic field, speaker after speaker at the
Congress offered stentorian declarations to the effect that
"the 20th century is a century of graphic Communist tri-
umphs" and that the Communist Party is "the only social
and political force that really solves the social problems
troubling mankind and really fulfills the undertakings it
sets forth in its programs." It would be impossible within
the space of a short article to challenge in detail all the
pretentious claims made at the Congress by the rulers of
Soviet Russia. But a recent visit to the USSR has enabled
this writer to collect substantial evidence of the fact that
the Communist system, far from solving the social problems
that plague all societies to some degree, produces additional
problems which are indigenous to communism and which
its leaders are forced to combat.
In his speech to the 22nd Party Congress, Mr. Khrushchev
described these problems as "a terrible power that fetters
the minds of people." In one single passage he listed them in
the following order: "... indolence, parasitism, drunken-
ness and rowdyism, swindling and money grabbing... ,
dominant-nation chauvinism and local nationalism... ,
bureaucratic methods, a wrong attitude towards women.
" Some of these maladies are not unknown in non-
Communist nations. But in what western country do "indo-
lence," "parasitism," and "a wrong attitude to women" be-
come matters of national concern? Elsewhere in the speech
the Premier added that economic progress in the Soviet
Union is being hampered by "stagnation and conserva-
tism," bad management, the opportunism of careerists, and
the machinations of crooks who falsify production results
and circumvent efforts aimed at their removal.
THE KREMLIN PROPAGANDISTS conveniently label
all these deviations from the prescribed code of behavior as
"survivals of the capitalist past." Naturally they are not
prepared to admit thatcommunism is at fault. They argue
that it is the individual who must be blamed. Yet it is quite
obvious that one of the root causes of the phenomena listed
by Mr. Khrushchev is the Soviet economic system. A rigidly
planned economy in which the laws of supply and demand
are ignored, in which too few goods are perpetually chased
by too many citizens, and in which the much maligned
profit motive is supposedly non-existent, is tailor-made for
anti-state and anti-social evils.
The Soviet captain of industry, for example, is judged
solely by his ability to fulfill the all-important plan. His
targets are laid down for him and he depends for his sup-
plies of raw materials on other government agencies. Yet
as Mr. Khrushchev himself has noted, "output plans do not
always dovetail with plans for the supply of materials and
machines and with coordinated deliveries...... Conse-
quently the manager is engaged in a constant struggle
between the limitations of his producing unit and the de-
mands of the state. Though directors of industrial enter-
prises-and state-farm managers or collective-farm chair-
men as well-may ask for production plans to be reduced
and for payrolls and investment funds to be increased, in
the final analysis they are forced to accept orders from or-
ganizations which do not necessarily consider their local
problems.
It. is in this atmosphere that the tolkach-literally trans-
lated pusher, but better rendered as "fixer" or "expediter"
-comes into his own. It is his job to ensure that the fac-
tory which employs him, albeit surreptitiously, gets its raw
materials and machines on time, whatever the cost. He is
authorized by his director to use all means at his disposal
to attain these ends, including bribes, presents, pressure and
even threats.
The writer met a tolkach in Moscow who explained how
the system worked. He had come to the capital from one of
the Far Eastern sovnarkhozy (the basic administrative units
of the Soviet economy) for the purpose of persuading a
friend in the Central Planning Organization to reduce his
factory's targets, and he felt confident that he would be able
to do so. But this, as he put it, was a "special komman-
dirovka" (assignment). His usual job was to travel around
the area covered by the sovnarkhoz, buying from other
plants the surplus materials that his director needed. He
would pay for them either by using factory funds in deals
subsequently "concealed" by the accountant, or by "divert-
ing" some of his factory's production (cars in this in-
stance) to his helpful friends and contacts. An educated
man in his forties, thus a product of the Soviet regime, he
saw nothing wrong with a system which relies on dishonest
54 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03
practices to deliver the goods. "Everybody does it" was his
comment. Under the increasing influence of quantities of
vodka in Russia's largest hotel, he became more expansive,
admitting that he thoroughly enjoyed his life and position,
although it was based on corrupt practices. He was full
of praise for a regime that enabled him to live a life of
comparative luxury-including an official car for his
journeys, a large expense account and the ability to "make
something" for himself on the side. I asked him whether he
wasn't afraid of being caught and tried for what he knew
to be an "economic crime." His reply was illuminating:
My director will protect me. He is in well with the local
party people and has done them many favors. If they touch
me, they'll have to purge many others much more important
than I am. Anyway, as long as the targets are met, no one
is going to ask too many awkward questions.
The moral, or rather amoral aspects of the matter didn't
concern him at all. "I'm a pragmatist" he laughed. "With-
out me and thousands like me our economy would be in a
bad way."
The Russian term for the various practices that involve
using "pull," influence or unofficial contacts and channels
for attaining one's ends is "blat," and it permeates life in
the USSR. A few days after the above incident, I came
across another sample of it. In the same hotel I was joined
at dinner by an elderly man, who subsequently identified
himself as a second party secretary of a Ukrainian town.
He too had come to Moscow to see a "friend." But his
problem was a different one. In his provincial town, this
party bureaucrat occupies a position of some importance.
Because of it, he is under constant pressure from relatives
and friends to do them favors: a better flat, a voucher for
a Black Sea spa, a transfer to another part of the country,
protection from inquiries, and so on. Mostly out of fear, he
ABOVE: "Tssss!" BELOW: "The introduction
of the new sometimes involves certain pro-
duction expenditures, extra worries and even
disappointments. How much easier it is to go
on calmly doing today what one did yester-
day, and tomorrow what one is doing today!
Unfortunately, we still have executives who
want to spend all their days in complete
calm." (From Khrushchev's speech of Oc-
tober 18 to the 22nd CPSU Congress.) Sign
carried by the two men reads: "Wall News-
paper. For Quiet and Tranquility."
CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
was resisting various inducements to break the law, with the
result that his life had become a misery. "My wife calls
me a fool" he complained. "What's the point of being a
shishka [slang for big-wig], she says, if you don't cash in."
This man, too, is a member of the Soviet elite, obviously
one of the "moral cripples" castigated by Mr. Khrushchev
at the Party Congress. His main interest in life is to be left
alone. When asked why he didn't expose those who were
pressuring him to break the law, and, apparently, his
principles, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "What's the
use." All he wanted was that his friend in Moscow get
him another appointment in a new environment. When I
pointed out that this was precisely the type of favor he was
denying his friends, he replied: "Oh no, I don't want this
for myself. The party will benefit if I move to a new place,
where people don't know me. Then I'll be able to work in
peace." It did not seem to occur to him that the predica-
ment he finds himself in is directly attributable to the
system, which puts its servants in positions vulnerable to
various pressures.
IN DISCUSSING production problems in his speech to the
Party Congress Khrushchev made the statement that
"routine and stagnation" coupled with "conservatism in
technology" are "alien to the very nature of socialist pro-
duction." In point of fact they are, to a very large extent,
endemic. Like many other features of the Soviet scene, they
do not spring from covert hostility to the regime but are
based on a realistic grasp of the harsh facts of Soviet eco-
nomic life. Mr. Khrushchev cited the example of one of
Russia's largest car factories-the Moscow Likhachev
Works-which has made only "slight changes" in the de-
sign of its four-ton lorry, first produced in 1947. He ad-
mitted that the introduction of the new sometimes involved
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 55
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
"extra worries and even disappointments," but he did not
get to the root of the problem that confronts industrial
managers.
A director of a Leningrad factory explained to me why
so many Soviet managers are opposed to the introduction of
new techniques. He himself is in charge of a comparatively
smooth-running plant, producing lathes. He has been meet-
ing and surpassing his targets for the past three years, in
part because he was successful in getting his quotas scaled
down; thus he and his workers are earning substantial
bonuses for overproduction. Last year the central planning
authorities advised him that one of his shops would soon be
modernized. They proved to him that ultimately his output
(and consequently his salary) would increase. But like so
many Soviet citizens he is more interested in the reality of
the present than in the problematical future. Long-term
planning means much less to him than current rewards. He
argued:
It is impossible to maintain production during modernization.
There are always difficulties, and I and my workers will be
worse off till the new equipment has been installed and is
running smoothly. That might take months. I-shall be earning
less and have a headache into the bargain.
Significantly, he stressed that the trade-union representa-
tives of his workers had approached him with a promise to
back his resistance. I asked this director, a graduate of the
Moscow Baumann Institute, whether he could possibly win
his struggle against the planners. "Well," he replied, "ulti-
mately they'll get their own way. But it will take time.
Before then I hope to get a transfer to another plant."
DESPITE SOVIET CLAIMS about the "unbreakable ties
between the party and the people," there are many signs
which suggest that communism inevitably brings the in-
dividual into conflict with society. CPSU members con-
stitute less than 5 percent of the population. It is they,
together with other representatives of the elite, who derive
the lion's share of the benefits the regime has to offer. The
remaining Soviet citizens-about 200 million of them-
seem to be fully aware of this. In no Western democracy
is the gulf between the rulers and the ruled so marked as in
the "motherland of socialism." In no Western democracy
do people speak so contemptuously about "Oni"-the
"They" of the ruling class. This is not to suggest that the
bulk of the peoplefeel an ardent antagonism towards the
regime. What does exist is a predominantly passive ac-
ceptance of actuality-an attitude that the narod, the
people, can do almost nothing against the self-appointed
molders of society. (From this estimate must be excluded
a section of the university youth, the only people the writer
came across who were prepared to discuss and sometimes
even challenge some of the basic tenets of Marxism-Lenin-
ism.)
The Soviet man-in-the-street, the taxidriver, bricklayer,
shop assistant, waiter and factory worker or employee, has
few illusions about his position in the order of things. He
is far too preoccupied with making a living to argue about
the intrinsic features of communism. What he wants is a
better life. To achieve it he is ready to make use of the
system when he can and to cheat it when he must. Mr.
Khrushchev, who has the knack of pinpointing (without
resolving) the issues that matter, put the problem most suc-
cinctly when he said:
The mood of the people and the productivity of their labor
depend to a large extent on living conditions and on good
service. The way to solve this problem is through the estab-
lishment of modern, well-equipped shops, canteens, dining-
rooms, service establishments and big food factories.
In other parts of his speech he made the following points:
One of our important tasks is to meet in full the demand
of the urban population and industrial centers for milk: and
the widest assortment of dairy products and of high-quality
potatoes and vegetables.... The popular demand for these
goods [meat, milk, dairy produce, sugar, cloth, footwear,
furniture, household and other goods] is still not being fully
met.... There must be stricter order in the allocation of
flats . . . priority must be given to those actually in need... .
There is no reason to believe that the Soviet regime is de-
liberately depriving its people of adequate supplies of food,
consumer goods or flats. But the fact remains that even in
the two largest cities-Moscow and Leningrad-:Russians
find it impossible to plan a meal until they have found out
what the shops are selling on any given day; that they :have
no option but to buy expensive (and often shoddy) clothes
and furniture; and that millions still live in single rooms
shared with four, five or even six other people. Mr. Khru-
shchev has promised that by the end of the current Seven-
Year Plan (1965) the minimum monthly wage will be
raised to 50-60 rubles. To get this figure into perspective,
it is enough to realize that a ready-made man's suit of in-
ferior quality costs 120 rubles; that a short-sleeved shirt is
priced at 10 rubles; that the cheapest pair of walking shoes
(at least among those the writer saw) is 35 rubles; and that
oranges are priced at a half-ruble apiece-i.e., 50 oranges
would swallow up half the monthly wage of a chamber-
maid, taxidriver or shop-assistant.
A Russian journalist I met who had just returned from
a cross-country trek remarked that he had seen no "hungry
eyes" on his trip. By all accounts the Russians do not
starve. But they are still leading a very drab and to some
extent primitive existence. One catches oblique admissions
of this fact interspersed among the myriad claims of
Russia's great material progress. In his Party Congress ad-
dress, for example, Mr. Khrushchev castigated the thesis,
evolved by Stalin, that "in the USSR the increase of mass
consumption [purchasing power] continuously outstrips
the growth of production.. . ." He added that the sup-
porters of this point of view "were actually justifying the
shortage of articles of primary necessity and the perpetua-
tion of the ration-card system and its psychology." How-
56 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
ever much Mr. Khrushchev might protest, years of shortages
have given the "ration-card psychology" a very strong grip
on the people of the Soviet Union. The narod knows that
there is not enough to go around, and every citizen is out
to ameliorate his lot at the expense, if necessary, of society
as a whole. A few examples will illustrate this:
A Moscow taxi-driver, pointing to a huge block of flats
in a new district, said to me: "Not a single family living
here has the right to do so. But I too have a friend on the
Housing Committee and he hopes to fix things for me
soon."
A Moscow University professor disclosed that he always
speaks English in shops and restaurants to "get better serv-
ice."
A stranger approached me in a Leningrad record shop
and asked me to buy him three discs: "They'll serve you,
even if it means they'll have to go to the storeroom. As far
as we are concerned, we have to take what they have on
the counter." (This man, who refused to tell me what his
job was, seriously suggested that the trading network
should be handed over to private enterprise. "A bit of
healthy competition," he said, "would soon bring goods into
the shops.")
I also heard of a Leningrad engineer who lived in a
modern three-room flat. His wife had left him, taking their
three children. He did not tell the authorities, but instead
illegally sublet two of the rooms at 60 rubles each per
month.
MR. KHRUSHCHEV would label these attitudes-reiter-
ated in many similar instances noted by foreigners-as
"petty-bourgeois degeneration," as "remnants of capitalism"
infecting isolated individuals. He alleges that the concept of
"mine" is the supreme and exclusive principle of bourgeois
society, that Communists, on the other hand, "reject ethics
... where the prosperity of some is possibly only at the
expense or the ruin of others, where the corrupting psy-
chology of egoism, greed and lust for money are cultivated."
In contrast to the frank admissions of self-interest made to
me in casual conversations, I found it impossible to discuss
this problem with official representatives of the regime.
Their stubborn refusal, to admit facts which must have been
as apparent to them as they were to me, precluded any
sensible conversation. An interesting instance on the diffi-
culties of communicating with Communists was provided by
a friend of mine. At a diplomatic reception in Moscow he
described to an employe of the Soviet Foreign Ministry an
encounter he had had with a black-market peddler who
wanted to buy the shirt off his back. My friend remarked
that this must be a problem for the authorities. His Soviet
contact reacted quickly: "You are all wrong. There is no
black market. We arrested all the black-marketeers in
Moscow a fortnight ago."
The edifice of Communist society, then, can only strike
the visitor as a facade. Behind the veneer provided by very
gradual material improvement, there is a nation which
knows little contentment. The Communist Party is not the
embodiment of the genuine will of the Soviet people, but
is trying to manipulate the aspirations of the people to at-
tain its own ends. A good illustration of the rift between
communism and its subjects is supplied by a joke circulat-
ing in Moscow, related to me by a Moscow University stu-
dent: A senior party official asks a local bishop, "How are
your churches?" "No complaints," is the reply-"They are
always full." The official is puzzled: "I can't understand
it. My meetings are always empty." "Ah," the bishop re-
joins, "just make them independent of the state and
party."
JUSTAN
(JUSTAN is the nom de plume of a British student of
Soviet affairs.)
To Readers in the United States
if you wish to subscribe to
PROBLEMS OF COMMUNISM
please see notice on inside back cover.
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4 57
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Correspondence
EDITORS' NOTE: Readers are welcome to send communications dealing with matters discussed in Problems of Com-
munism. Comments should be addressed to the Editors, Problems of Communism, U. S. Information Agency, 1776
Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D. C. (Please note: Communications concerned with subscription orders
or inquiries should be addressed directly to local USIS offices or to the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Govern-
ment Printing Office, as specified on the back inside cover of this journal.)
To THE EDITORS: According to Mr. Zavalani's article
(Problems of Communism, July-August 1961) Nikita Khru-
shchev's trip to Albania in 1959 was the "acme" of Soviet-
Albanian relations. By interpreting some events from 1956
to 1959, it can be seen that Khrushchev's journey marked
not the acme, but rather the crisis in Soviet-Albanian rela-
tions. Events since May-June 1959 have essentially been
implementations of Soviet and then bloc policy against the
Albanian hierarchy. By noting the development of Sino-
Albanian ties from 1956-59, and the events from late De-
cember 1958 to May 1959, we can see that Khrushchev's
trip provided a major test for the Chinese and Albanians
against Russian pressure. Recent events are proof enough
that the two countries passed that test.
The shift in focus of Soviet policy toward Yugoslavia
since 1955 was paralleled by an attempt of the post-Stalin
Soviet leadership to replace satellite subalterns dependent
on Stalin with pro-Khrushchev personnel. In Albania a
threat was made in the spring of 1956 by an anti-Hoxha
group to overthrow Enver Hoxha; i.e., the coup led by Liri
Grega, et al. was Soviet-engineered but it failed. Following
his successful defense, Hoxha traveled to China for the 8th
Chinese Communist Party Congress, met Mao and on his
return to Albania stated:
In the Chinese people we have a valuable and dear friend.
... This love for and interest in our country we saw also in
the leadership of the Communist Party and the Government
of China. . . . Particularly great is the love which Comrade
Mao Tse-tung has for our country. He called our people
heroic fighters. . . . He said that in our efforts to build
socialism, the Albanian people will have, as always, the
brotherly help of the people of China. This, he said, is our
international obligation to the Albanian people. (Basilkimi,
Tirana, Oct. 9, 1956.)
Hoxha, then, used the trip to China to bring his case against
Soviet interference to the important Chinese party. Since
the leadership of that group was uneasy about the new
directions of Soviet policy taken by Khrushchev at the 20th
Congress, the Chinese found it useful in late 1956 to :lend
support to Hoxha, particularly in the aftermath of the
Hungarian and Polish revolutions. The financial aid from
China to Albania, first begun in 1955, was continued, and
an increase in Sino-Albanian trade followed.
Although the first Sino-Albanian ties were of limited im-
portance, the development of Sino-Russian and Russo-Al-
banian tensions heightened their significance. Paralleling
Sino-Soviet continued disagreements after the 1957 Moscow
Conference, Soviet-Albanian tensions also rose steadily.
While the Yugoslav issue was a main factor causing the Al-
banians' disgruntlement vis-d-vis the Russians, their insecu-
rity was increased by other factors as well. First, although
Soviet economic aid to Albania had primarily been allotted
for the development of the mineral sector of the Albanian
economy, bloc needs decreased for the products of the
Albanian economy. Large Soviet discoveries of oil and sub-
sequent planning for the CMEA oil pipeline from the Soviet
Union to the East European manufacturing centers served
to minimize that area's future needs for Albanian oil. (This
result was particularly painful to the Hoxha regime, which
felt in late 1957 that its discoveries of new wells in late
1956 would yield two million tons of oil in 1960, result-
ing in increased domestic prosperity.) Recognizing this
situation, the Russians advised a heavier investment in the
development of the Albanian agricultural sector. In view
of Soviet political disagreement with the Albanians, it was
necessary for them to obtain new outlets for the sale of
their country's prime export item-oil--because of a cor-
rectly estimated future lack of East European markets. As
political succor was obtained from the Chinese, similarly,
China's need for oil (and dependence on the Russians
for most of its imported supplies) made the CPR a willing
purchaser of Albanian oil, as well as copper and chrome.
Second, the Albanians in late 1958 and early 1959 began
to show concern about military developments in the Soviet
58 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Union and Balkans. Vaunted Soviet missile and air power
reduced the military value of the Soviet naval base in Al-
bania. Reacting to the establishment of US rocket-bases in
Italy and Greece, the Albanians wanted the Russians to
construct bases in the Balkans, particularly in Albania. In-
stead, Khrushchev proposed a peace-zone in the Balkans
and paid lip-service to Albania's potential value for rocket-
bases, which were not installed.
As Soviet-Albanian differences increased in the political,
economic and military fields, and the Chinese at the same
time indicated their interest in supporting the Albanians,
the Soviet Union attempted to use economic pressure
against Albania. In mid-December 1958 Hoxha left Al-
bania for the Soviet Union for talks about the future of the
Albanian economy; little was reported about the meeting.
In January 1959 the Chinese pledged to advance the Al-
banians 55 million rubles for the 1961-65 Five-Year Plan.
Shortly thereafter the USSR promised Hoxha to provide
Albania with a 355 million ruble credit for the Third Five-
Year Plan. (This fact contradicts Mr. Zavalani's statement
that Soviet aid was promised after Khrushchev's Albanian
trip.) Talks concerning implementing the Soviet promises
were held in March and May 1959 between Aleksei Kosy-
gin, the Soviet economic expert, and Koco Theodosi, Chair-
man of the Albanian State Planning Council. The Russians
were still willing to let the Albanians exercise limited eco-
nomic independence, as long as political unity could be
achieved, despite their objections to the course of the Al-
banian economy.
Nevertheless, the Albanians remained apprehensive about
the threat from the Yugoslavs, as well as about Soviet indif-
ference. They attempted to show the validity of their con-
cern at two trials of so-called Yugoslav spies in late April
1959. It is possible that the trials were the result of another
Soviet attempt to assist in the overthrow of Hoxha; at
minimum, they were an important indication of Albanian
fears of external threats.
In contrast with continued Soviet flirtations with Tito,
the Chinese support for the Albanians remained firm. Co-
incident with the above-mentioned trials, Hysni Kapo, a
major Albanian party leader, departed for China. At a
reception for Kapo in Peking, Chou En-lai assured him that
"though Albania and China are geographically far apart,
the Chinese people take a great interest in and deeply ad-
mire the struggle of the Albanian people." (Bashkimi,
May 13, 1959.)
Shifts of power in the economic, political and military
sphere thus heightened the fears of the already hypersensi-
tive Albanian leadership. The Chinese, though far away,
willingly offered the Albanians assistance in order to gain
an ally in Eastern Europe. By putting economic and politi-
cal pressure on the Albanians to prevent them from enter-
ing into such a liaison, Khrushchev prior to May 1959 tried
to halt the formation of an entente. Failing to do this from
Moscow, he traveled to Albania, where despite an appar-
ently warm welcome, he failed to achieve his objective. The
Chinese had offered to support the Albanians if need be,
and the latter were unwilling to continue to subvert their
interests to the Yugoslavs. The May 1959 meeting of Khru-
shchev, Hoxha and Chinese general P'eng Teh-hua in Al-
banian territory marked the end of any opportunity for
Soviet-Albanian amity.
DANIEL TRETIAK
Honolulu, Hawaii
MR. ZAVALANI REPLIES: Answering Mr. Khrushchev's ac-
cusations made in his report to the 22nd Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Enver Hoxha said
in a long speech delivered before a Communist gathering in
Tirana:
Khrushchev knows perfectly well the reasons which led
to the deterioration of Soviet-Albanian relations because he
himself is the culprit. We shall limit ourselves to saying
that it all began at the Bucharest meeting of June 1960.
This disposes of the main objection raised by Mr. Daniel
Tretiak to my assessment of the conflict between the Al-
banian and Soviet Communist parties. The rest of his ex-
tensive remarks do not essentially contradict the points I
made in my article... .
THE 22ND PARTY CONGRESS
TO THE EDITORS: In his special supplement on the 22nd
CPSU Congress (November-December, 1961), Professor
Fainsod writes:
In a rather extraordinary paragraph (No. 27) which appears
on its face to endorse the principle of inner-party democracy,
there is a warning that "broad discussion, especially discus-
sions on an all-Union scale, of questions of party policy must
be carried out in such a way as to ... prevent the possibil-
ity of attempts to form fractional groupings destructive to
party unity or attempts to split the party."
Yet is this paragraph really so "extraordinary?" Here is
Article 28 of the party statutes adopted at the 19th Party
Congress in 1952:
However, broad discussion, especially discussions on an all-
Union scale, of questions of party policy must be organized
in such a way as not to lead to attempts by an insignificant
minority to impose its will on the party majority, or attempts
to form fractional groupings destructive to party unity, or to
schismatic efforts which may shake the strength and stability
of the socialist system.
May I say that what is really "extraordinary" is not so
much the change in the party statutes as Professor Fainsod's
interpretation of it? For what is truly new in the 1961
statute, and what Professor Fainsod fails to mention, is the
following clause: "Discussions of controversial and obscure
questions within the framework of individual organizations
or the party as a whole are possible." Although this sen-
tence is qualified in the new statutes by the same kind of
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
restrictions as were present in the old statutes, its very in-
clusion may be regarded as an attempt to broaden the scope
of permissible discussion, as well as to formalize the exist-
ing situation in the party-a situation characterized by an
outspoken agitation on contentious issues which began
shortly after Stalin's death and continues to this day. The
fact remains that Kozlov's attempt to set rigid limits on
party discussion failed in fact though not in theory, since
the agitation by what the 1952 statute called "an insignifi-
cant minority," and what is more likely to be, at this time,
a very sizeable group within the party, led by Khrushchev
himself, is still being vigorously pursued.
J. B. MARTIN
New York, N. Y.
MR. FAINSOD REPLIES: In using the phrase "rather extraor-
dinary," I did not intend to suggest that the ban on fac-
tionalism was a novel development. What I hoped to make
clear was that all the verbiage about enlarging the scope of
intra-party discussion was still qualified by the familiar
prescriptions against "factional groupings" and "attempts
to split the party," which incidentally apply to the new
clause which Mr. Martin cites as "really extraordinary."
I would be much more impressed by Mr. Martin's de-
scription of the "existing situation in the party" as char-
acterized by "outspoken agitation on contentious issues"
had any member of the so-called "anti-party" group been
given an opportunity to present his views to the 22nd Party
Congress. Khrushchev's attack on these views may qualify
as "agitation," but "discussion of controversial questions"
in which only one side is represented does not in my book
contribute to the broadening of intra-party discussion.
To THE EDITORS: This is to tell you how much I enjoyed
reading the special supplement to the last issue of your
magazine, on the 22nd Party Congress. I think Mr. Fainsod
has succeeded in giving us a most illuminating analytical
review of the important political, ideological, and psycho-
logical facets of the congress.
LAZAR VOLIN
Washington, D.C.
IN FUTURE ISSUES
The Purges Revisited ............................... by Boris Nicolaevsky
The Vagaries of De-Stalinization .......................... by Jane Degras
Painting in the Soviet Union ............................ by Nina Juviler
Artists and Bureaucrats-A Memoir .................. by Wladimir Slepian
Deception as a Fine Art .............................. by Ronald Hingley
NOTE: Due to coverage of the 22nd CPSU Congress, the second installment
of the series on communism in Africa could not be published in this issue; it
will appear in the March-April issue.
60 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
 Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4
Where to Obtain Problems of Communism
NoTE: In the United States, Problems of Communism is available on sale at the Superintendent of Documents, US
Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. Price per copy: $.35; subscription price: $1.50 a year; addi-
tional $.50 for foreign mailing if orders are placed in the United States. Outside the United States, single copies
or subscriptions may be obtained free of charge through requests addressed to the nearest office of the United States
Information Service. Following are the locations of USIS offices:
EUROPE
AUSTRIA-Vienna, Linz, Salzburg
BELGIUM- Brussels
DENMARK--Copenhagen
FINLAND-Helsinki
FRANCE-Paris, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Strasbourg, Tours
GERMANY Bonn, Berlin, Bremen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt,
Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart
GREAT BRITAIN-London.
ICELANn-Reykjavik
ITALY-Rome, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo,
Trieste, Turin
NETHERLANDS--The Hague
NORWAY-OSlO
PORTUGAL-Lisbon
SPAIN-Madrid, Barcelona, Seville
(See note below on the Spanish-language edition pub-
lished in Latin America)
SWEDEN-Stockholm
SWITZERLAND-Bern, Geneva
YUGOSLAVIA-Belgrade, Zagreb
NEAR EAST AND SOUTH ASIA
AFGHANISTAN--Kabul
CEYLON--Colombo
CYPRUs-Nicosia
GREECE-Athens, Thessaloniki
INDIA-New Delhi, Lucknow, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras,
Bangalore, Trivandrum, Hyderabad
IRAN--"Tehran, Isfahan, Khorromshahr, Meshed, Tabriz
IRAQ--Baghdad
ISRAEL-Tel Aviv
JORDAN-Amman
LEBANON-Beirut
NEPAL-Katmandu
PAKISTAN-Karachi, Lahore, Dacca
SAUDI ARABIA-Jidda
SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC--Damascus
TURKEY-Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir
UNITED ARAB REPUBL.IC-Cairo, Alexandria
LAOS-Vientiane, Pakse, Luang Prabang, Savannakhet
MALAYA--Kuala Lumpur, Penang
NEW ZEALAND-Wellington
PHILIPPINES---Manila, Cebu
SINGAPORE
TAIWAN-Taipei, Kaohsiung
THAILAND --Bangkok, Chiengmai, Korat, Songkhla, Udorn
VIET NAM-Saigon, Hue, Can Tho, Dalat
AFRICA
CAMEROUN-Yaounde
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC--Bangui
DAHOMEY-Cotonou
ETHIOPIA-Addis Ababa, Asmara, Eritrea
FEDERATION OF RHODESIA AND NYASALAND---Salisbury,
Blantyre, Lusaka
GABON-Libreville
GHANA-Accra
GUINEA--Conakry
IVORY COAST--Abidjan
KENYA-Nairobi
LIBERIA-Monrovia
LIBYA-Benghazi, Tripoli
MALAGASY REPUBLIC-Tananarive
MALI---Bamako
MOROCCO-Rabat, Casablanca, Fez, Marrakech, Tangier
NIGER-Niamey
NIGERIA-Lagos, Enugu, Ibadan, Kaduna
REPUBLIC OF CONGO--Brazzaville
REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO---Leopoldville
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA--Pretoria, Johannesburg,
Capetown
RuANDI URUNDI---Usumbura
SENEGAL-Dakar
SIERRA LEONE-Freetown
SOMALI REPUBLIC-- Mogadiscio
SUDAN-Khartoum
TANGANYIKA-Dar-es-Salaam, Zanzibar
TOGO-Lome
TUNISIA--Tunis
UGANDA-Kampala
UPPER VOLTA-Ouagadougou
FAR EAST
AUSTRALIA-- Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne
BURMA-Rangoon, Mandalay, Moulmein
CAMBODIA-Phnom Penh
HONG KONG
INDONESIA---Djakarta, Medan, Surabaya, Jogjakarta
JAPAN--Tokyo, Kobe, Fukuoka, Yokohama, Nagoya,
Sapporo
KOREA--Seoul, Pusan, Taegu, Kwangju
LATIN AMERICA
A list of USIS posts where the Spanish-language edition
(Problemas del Comunismo) may be obtained is published
in its current issue. The English edition is also available
at these posts and in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, Belo Hori-
zonte, Brasilia, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador,
Sao Paulo.)
Approved For Release 2004/02/03 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000100240021-4