THE STALIN ISSUE AND THE SOVIET LEADERSHIP STRUGGLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP03-02194R000200800001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 136
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 17, 1968
• Content Type: REPORT

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.fir' ( -r- 1 , , ----
DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Report
THE STALIN ISSUE AND THE SOVIET LEADERSHIP STRUGGLE
RSS No. 0030A/68
17 July 1968
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THE STALIN ISSUE AND THE SOVIET LEADERSHIP STRUGGLE
The Annex is divided into three chronological sec-
tions with three further sub-divisions in each. The first
sub-division deals with the use of the Stalin issue in the
Soviet leadership struggle. The second considers the prac-
tical effects on intellectual freedom resulting from a
policy of greater restrictions and central controls. The
third sub-division traces the treatment of the Stalin issue
in Soviet communications media.
Chief, DDI Special Research Staff
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Page
POINT COUNTERPOINT
Khrushchev's Fall to Shelepin's Set-Back: October 1964-
December 1965
Leadership
The Sides Are Formed . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Shelepin's Drive for Power . . . . . . . . . . 4
Brezhnev Undermines Shelepin . . . . . . . . . 11
Intellectuals
Press For More Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The Neo-Stalinists Push; The
Moderates Counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Stalin Themes
Criticism of Stalin Continues. . ... . . . . 20
Drive to Restore Stalin's Image Begins . . . .23
Anti-Stalinists Continue to Resist . . . . . . 27
Re-Stalinizing Dominates . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
CREEPING CONSERVATISM
The 23rd Congress--Before and After: December 1965-
November 1966
Leadership
Build-up To the Congress . . . . . . . . . . . 36
The Congress Opens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Post-Congress Orthodoxy. . . . . . . . . . . . 44
A Shift in Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Intellectuals
Pre-Congress Clamp-Down. . . . . . . . . . . . 48
The Congress and After . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
A Frightened Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Stalin Themes
Re-Stalinizing Is Pushed . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Exceptions to Rule; Nekrich Book Debate. . . .57
Post-Congress: Pro-Stalin Line. . . . . . . . 60
Liberals Fight Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Revolt of Old Bolsheviks . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Leadership Shift Reflected in Stalin Issue . .67
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
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NEO-STALINIST LINE ADOPTED
The 50th Anniversary Year:November 1966-December 1967
Leadership
Hard-Line Dominates; Dissension Continues. . .73
Leaders Speak . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 75
Shelepin's Defeat and Reaction To It . . . . . 79
Year End Atmosphere Repressive . . . . . . . . 83
Intellectuals
Pressure Increases: Protests Continue. . . . . 84
Campaign Against Noviy Mir . . . . . . . . . . 87
Liberal Efforts Rebuffed . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Year Ends With Harsh Policy. . . . . . . . 93
Stalin Themes
Stalin Era Whitewashed . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Wartime Errors Erased . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Collectivization Smoothed Over . . . . . . . 100
Stalin's Revolutionary Role Praised. . . . . 102
Liberal Efforts--Feeble and Hopeless . . . . 103
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
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From Khrushchev's Fall to Shelepin's Set-Back
(October 1964-December 1965)
After the ouster of Khrushchev, the Soviet leaders
were preoccupied with the task of rewarding those who had
cooperated in overthrowing Khrushchev and reversing some
of Khrushchev's more unpopular measures. The man who
seemed to benefit the most from the early appointments
was Aleksandr Shelepin, former Komsomol and KGB Chief.*
He was promoted to full membership in the CPSU Presidium
in November and several of his associates and*groteges
received promotions within-;the party apparatus. Shelepin
also appeared to benefit from changes made in the leader-
ship of the press and propaganda organs.***
Podgornyy's position also seemed to be fairly strong
at this time. Aleksey Rumyantsev, who had been secretary
for propaganda and agitation in Khar'kov Oblast', probably
when Podgornyy was there, became chief editor of Pravda.
*At this time Shelepin was a Party Secretary, Deputy
Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Chairman of the
Party State Control Committee.
**Petr Demichev, a former First Secretary of Moscow City,
became a candidate member of the Presidium. He is report-
edly a good friend of Shelepin and owes his position to
him. Vladimir Semichastnyy, KGB Chief and a Shelepin
protege, was promoted from candidate to full membership
on the central committee.
***Vladimir Stepakov, who had come up in Moscow City
under Demichev, became editor of Izvestiya and Nikolay
Mesyatsev, who had served under Shelepin in the Komsomol,
became Chairman of the State Committee for Radio and Tele-
vision. Another subordinate of Shelepin's in the Komsomol,
Mikhail Khaldeyev, became Chief of the RSFSR Propaganda and
Agitation Section in January 1965.
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Podgornyy gave the main report at the November party
plenum, and at the November anniversary celebrations,
the toast to the party was given by Podgornyy rather than
Brezhnev, who followed with a toast to the military.
More importantly, moderate trends with which Podgornyy
was subsequently to associate himself seemed to prevail
throughout this period. The 1965 budget included a reduc-
tion in the overt military budget and concessions to the
consumer,-both of which Podgornyy favored.
Condemnation of Khrushchev began almost immediately
after his ouster; this was necessary if the new leaders
were to justify their own action in getting rid of him.
However, these attacks were frequently accompanied by
support of collective leadership and occasionally accom-
panied by condemnation of the cult of personality as well.
The approach to the Stalin issue by members of the
hierarchy remained essentially as before. On 6 November
an article by Latvian First Secretary Arvid Pelshe, who
has been associated with Suslov, appeared in Pravda; in it
he discussed the cult:
The ideology and practice of the personality
cult, alien to Marxism-Leninism, has done
considerable harm to our party and the Soviet
state. The personality cult reduced the role
of the masses and of the party, minimized
collective leadership, undermined intra-party
democracy, and suppressed the activity,
initiative, and independent action of the
party members . .
`For example, a November Kommunist Belorussia editorial
stated that where the cult of personality takes root,
collectivity of leadership is impossible. And a January
1965 article in Kommunist Sovetskoye Latvii, probably con-
trolled by Pelshe, attacked the cult of Stalin's personality
in harsh terms and stated that it had done serious damage
to party and state leadership, adding, however, that this
could not and did not change the nature of the socialist
system.
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The 20th CPSU Congress put an end to this.
It was thus a turning point in the party's
history . . . The Congress recommended to
the Party Central Committee 'not to relax
the struggle against the remnants of the
personality cult' . . .
Similarly, in December, First Secretary of Kazakhstan,
Kunayev,* a Brezhnev protege, spoke at a commemorative
meeting for Saken Seyfullin, a writer who had died in the
purges. On 6 December, a strong attack on Stalin was
carried in a Pravda article, which also strongly praised
the 20th and nd Party Congresses.
In February 1965 the journal Partiynaya Zhizn'
(Party Life), scoffed at the suggestion that criticism of
the cult would cease:
Some people abroad have begun to speculate
and even assert that after the October plenum
of the Central Committee the CPSU will give
up criticizing the cult of Stalin's person-
ality and revise its general line, elaborated
at the 20th and 22nd Party Congresses. Vain
hopes! . . . The process begun at the 20th
Party Congress is an irreversible process.
There is no return to the old ways, and there
will be none. It is not a matter merely of
somebody not wanting this return, but of the
objective conditions of life of Soviet society
and of the Communist Party at the present stage.
That some party figures felt the need to reassure the party
and public that there would be no return to the past may
well have reflected the fact that there was indeed pressure
being exerted to do just that.
'D. A. Kunayev was reappointed First Secretary in
December 1964. He had held this post from 1960 to 1962
and had then been named Chairman of the republic's Council
of Ministers.
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Shelepin's Drive For Power
The expression of the neo-Stalinist views that
Stalin should not be criticized and that intellectuals
should be made to conform began somewhat sporadically, but
seemed clearly to come from a Shelepin-oriented group. The
first, and for a number of months, the only, favorable ref-
erence to Stalin appeared on 6 November in Komsomolskaya
Pravda, the organ of the Young Communist League (Komsomol);
the Komsomol had been headed previously by Shelepin and
Semichastnyy, and since 1959 its chairman had been their
protege, Sergey Pavlov. In this article Stalin was referred
to as one of Lenin's "comrades-in-arms ."
In February Kommunist published an article by Moscow
City First Secretary Nikolay Yegorychev,* who has been one
of the most violent spokesmen for the neo-Stalinists. This
may well have been the opening salvo in Shelepin's attack
on Brezhnev's position. Yegorychev advanced a number of
themes which were subsequently to be stressed by the neo-
Stalinists. After paying lip service to the important
measures taken to root out the consequences of the cult
of Stalin's personality, he concentrated his attacks on
the sins of the Khrushchev era. He stated that "events of
recent years" had caused doubts among ideologically unstable
youths, and he criticized those who take what he called a
one-sided view of the past and stress only shortcomings.
In connection with this, we must lodge a
complaint against those of our creative intelli-
gentsia who sometimes are too attracted by
describing the willfulness of the period of
the cult of personality and the moral experi-
ence and physical deprivation of innocently
condemned people.
He coupled this criticism with a call for more patriotic
and ideological training. This represented precisely the
sort of statement which Partiynaya Zhizn', in the same
month, had indicated was impossible.
*Yegorychev rose to his position through the Moscow
Komsomol and party apparatuses; he succeeded Demichev as
first secretary there.
SF.C:R FT
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Yegorychev continued to press his point at the
Second Congress of RSFSR Writers early in March. He
attacked a number of articles which had appeared in lib-
eral journals, as well as Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich, a sensational novel published
during the Khrushchev period which graphically described
life in a Stalin labor camp. He condemned those who permit
criticism of shortcomings to degenerate into blackening
the "glorious history" of party and people. He called on
writers to instill in youth pride in the great achievements
of their history, and said that
The instilling of such views is hardly facili-
tated by the excessive enthusiasm of part of
our creative intelligentsia for depicting
the cruelties and willfulness of the period
of the cult of personality . . . .
Komsomol Chief Pavlov, a Shelepin protege who also spoke
at this congress, scored pessimistic works which, he said,
as a rule are "connected with the cult theme. The opening
statement to the congress by Party Secretary and Presidium
member Andrey Kirilenko* had been somewhat less harsh than
these speeches; while he had stressed the party's demands
on writers, he had not criticized writers for dwelling on
the cult nor had he condemned criticism of shortcomings.
From 24 through 26 March an agricultural plenum of
the CPSU Central Committee was held. The main order of
business was the agricultural report delivered by Brezhnev
and the adoption of his proposed five-year program designed
to bolster the agricultural sector of theeconomy. A number
of personnel changes were also made at the plenum. Demichev,
probably a Shelepin supporter, became party secretary re-
sponsible for ideological matters. Kirill Mazurov** was
named a full member of the Presidium and was succeeded as
Belorussian First Secretary by Petr Masherov,*** who also
*Kirilenko served in the Ukraine under Brezhnev, but at
times has seemed closer to Podgornyy in his policy views.
**Mazurov was First Secretary of the Belorussian Komsomol
during the late 1940's--when Shelepin was all-union Komsomol
secretary for cadres.
***Masherov rose through the Belorussian Komsomol and Party
organizations after Mazurov.
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became a candidate member of the Presidium. Both Mazurov
and Masherov had served in the Belorussian Komsomol and
may well have become aligned with Shelepin. Masherov's
subsequent statements would indicate his clear support for
Shelepin's neo-Stalinists; Mazurov's views have not been
made as clear.
During 1965 there were indications of increasing
dissension within the leadership. Evidently, the Stalin
issue was a major, if not the major, source of conflict.
16 April at a meeting of central committee ideological
specialists, Demichev, in his new role as ideological
spokesman, reportedly proposed changes in policy toward
the intellectuals and called for "more balanced treatment"
of Stalin.
In May Brezhnev became the first member of the new
leadership to mention Stalin's name in public. The occasion
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was the 20th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet
Union in World War II. In his speech Brezhnev stated
that as was well known the war had begun under unfavorable
conditions for the Soviet Union and that great efforts had
been made to strengthen the country:
The State Defense Committee was formed
with the Secretary General of the Central
Committee of the All-Union Communist Party,
Josif Visarionovich Stalin, at its head to
exercise leadership over all action in the
matter of organizing the repulse of the enemy.
Brezhnev went on to pay tribute to the armed forces and the
intellectuals for their wartime performance, but did not
mention either of Shelepin's organizations, the KGB or the
Komsomol. Thus, while supporting the neo-Stalinist position
on the Stalin issue, Brezhnev was clearly shying away from
any support, implied or explicit, of Shelepin. Brezhnev
had thus made clear his support for a policy of at least
partial rehabilitation of Stalin. His reasons for doing
so probably include the fact that as party first secretary
he had the most to gain from such a rehabilitation. If
he could establish that much of Stalin's power position
was both legitimate and desirable, he could hope to acquire
at least some of this power.
September. The common thread was that 25X1
Shelepin would replace Brezhnev, 25X1
Rumors concerning impending changes in the leadership
began in the summer of 1965 and ended somewhat abruptly in
There were a number of variations 25X1
and subsidiary t ernes Suslov 25X1
was the most prominent member of the leadership, but did 25X1
not want the top position.
Mikoyan would retire, that Brezhnev would take his place,
and that Shelepin would take Brezhnev's position. Some
claimed that Kosygin would also be relieved.
One of the issues causing disagreement among the
leaders at this time was that of politics versus economics.
Support for the dogmatic position which views the party as
a political and ideological body was indicated by Suslov,
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Shelest, and, most strongly, by Georgian First Secretary
Mzhavanadze, who, in June, invoked Stalin's words to support
his position. After expressing his hostility to the influx
into the party of a large number of people with production
expertise, h0 stated:
Proceeding from the Leninist principle of
building our party, I.V. Stalin, acutely
and figuratively, said at one time, 'Our
party is a fortress the doors of which
open only to the tested.'
Indications of controversy within the leadership also
came in the form of several strong statements on the need
for collective leadership. Such a defense appeared in
Pravda on 15 April and an even stronger one appeared in the
Uzbek paper Pravda Vostoka on 20 April. The latter article
praised the 22nd Party Congress, which had strongly con-
demned the cult of personality, and attacked the cult as
well as the methods of personal dictatorship, suggesting
that its target was a neo-Stalinist individual or faction.
Thus it would appear that the First Secretary in Uzbekistan,
Rashidov, was at this time giving some support to a moderate
faction which felt itself losing ground, probably to Brezhnev.
During the spring and summer Podgornyy seemed to be
losing strength, while Shelepin was acquring it. In April
party secretary Titov, a Podgornyy associate, was sent to
Kazakhstan as second secretary; he was removed from the
secretariat the following September. In May Shelepin sup-
porter Stepakov was promoted from chief editor of Izvestiya
to head of the central committee's Propaganda and Agitation
Department.* That same month all Moscow-resident Presidium
members with the exception of Podgornyy received medals
for their wartime contributions. And in May and June a
large number of articles extolling the virtues of the
KGB appeared in the press.
*The Izvestiya post was to remain vacant until October,
an indication that the leaders could not agree on the
appointment.
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In July the central committee reprimanded Kharkov
Oblast, with which Podgornyy had been associated, for
serious shortcomings in the work of party admissions.
An 11 August Pravda editorial reported this and also crit-
icized the ob ads 'for emphasizing numerical over qualitative
growth. This marked the climax of a campaign of criticism
of Podgornyy's oblast' which had begun in February with an
article by Brezhnev protege Shcherbitskiy. This suggests
that Brezhnev was puEthng the campaign, probably with the
concurrence of neo-Stalinist and orthodox elements.
In August and September, on the eve of the economic
plenum, forceful articles appeared from both the neo-
Stalinist and liberal camps. On 29 August Pravda published
an article by Komsomol Chief Pavlov, a Shelep ni protege,
who again attacked those who look at history through the
"prism of the negative results of the personality cult."
He urged that the great achievements of the 1930's be
stressed.
Pavlov's theme was picked up by a secretary of the
traditionally hard-line Leningrad city party committee,
Yu. Lavrikov, in a 9 September speech. He too condemned
a "one-sided" approach to the complexities of the cult.
And, on 15 September, First Secretary of Leningrad Oblast'
V. Tolstikov came down strongly on the side of orthodoxy
with an article criticizing the lack of positive heroes
and ideology in literature and art. The Azerbaydzhan
first secretary, V. Akhundov, also stressed a hard line
in his speech in September to a plenum of the republic's
creative unions. Interestingly, KGB Chief Semichastnyy,
a Shelepin protege, had served briefly as Second Secretary
under Akhundov in the late 1950's, an indication that
Akhundov might be in league with the neo-Stalinists.
On 9 September the liberals launched a counterattack
with the publication of Rumyantsev's second liberal defense
of the intellectuals in Pravda.* In this article he
criticized the call for positive heroes as the sole cri-
terion of a work and said that shortcomings should not be
ignored. Sometime before 21 September, when the official
*See page 18 for further discussion of this article.
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announcement was made, Rumyantsev was relieved as Pravda?s
editor and succeeded by M. Zimyanin;*'',- this was a real-
blow to the moderates, and represented a major defeat for
Podgornyy. Rumyantsev's identification several months
later in a fairly responsible position** indicated, however,
that Podgornyy still retained considerable strength.
Shelepin may have made his major push for power in
September. About this time several articles were published
defending the Party-State Control Committee--which he headed--
suggesting either that the organization was under attack,
that Shelepin was trying to strengthen this organization,
or both. This committee had been established in 1962. Its
function was to find and punish party and government offi-
cials guilty of misconduct. The existence of such an
extra-party organization had been controversial and Shelepin's
position as head of the committee gave him a fairly power-
ful base from which to operate. Sovetskaya Belorussiya, the
Belorussian paper, in a 13 August editorial, described
party state control as an "inherent, integral part of party
organizational work." This was an indication of the support
being given Shelepin by the Belorussian party and its leader
Masherov. Also, in mid-September the writers Andrey Sinyav-
skiy and Yuriy Daniel were arrested by the KGB for publishing
works in the West under pseudonyms. The timing of these
arrests may have represented an attempt by the neo-Stalinists
to seize the initiative on the eve of the September plenum.
But the Presidium must have agreed to the action, indicating
that Brezhnev approved and had taken a number of key votes
with him.
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before the September plenum to proposals to reform the
economic structure through de-centralization and an emphasis
*Zimyanin rose to prominence through::the Belorussian
Komsomol and Party; he also served as deputy minister of
foreign affairs.
**Rumyantsev's identification in November as Acting
Academician Secretary of the Department of Economics indi-
cated that he still had support.
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on profits, came from Shelepin and Suslov, who feared the
increased freedom for plant managers would weaken central
control of the economy. The reform adopted at the Septem-
ber party plenum represented a compromise with the economic
reformers, backed by Kosygin, achieving only a portion of
their goal. while reform
was a significant issue, the major political issue before
the plenum was the proposal to partially rehabilitate Stalin.
There were those, who favored political as
well as historical rehabilitation. It was decided, however,
to leave the rehabilitation at the level of the 20th anni-
versary of the end of the war--public reference to Stalin's
existence as an historical figure when obviously called for.
Thus, on both issues--the economy and Stalin--a compromise
position seems to have prevailed. At the Supreme Soviet
session which followed the plenum, Brezhnev was named a
member of the Supreme Soviet's Presidium, a largely honor-
ific post, but still indicative of his growing strength.
Polyanskiy was named a first deputy chairman of the Council
of Ministers, thereby becoming Shelepin's senior in the
government. Neither Brezhnev nor Kosygin mentioned
Shelepin's Party-State Control Committee in his speech,
a fairly obvious omission.
Brezhnev Undermines Shelepin
Brezhnev's support for the neo-Stalinist position
both on re-Stalinizing and cultural policy was revealed
shortly after the plenum. A protege of his, Sergey
Trapeznikov who in June had been appointed Chief of the
central ,committee's Section for Scientific and Educational
Institutions, wrote an article which appeared in Pravda on
8 October, in which he strongly asserted the supremacy of
theory over practice. Trapeznikov said that no party is
guaranteed against tactical errors, but that the main
question is the depth of these mistakes and the timely
correction of them. He condemned one-sided approaches to
industrialization, collectivization, and, of course, the
war. Thus, several specific policies were added to the
subject of Stalin's wartime leadership as being no longer
suitable topics for criticism. The official, and clearly
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Brezhnev-supported, line on the cult of the personality
was made clear:
. . . Certainly the cult of personality
brought significant harm to the cause
of socialist construction in certain
spheres of the life of society. How-
ever, neither the cult of personality
itself `nor its consequences flowed in
any way from the socialist system and
did not change and could not change
its character. Therefore, it cannot
be recognized as either theoretically
or factually correct when in some of
our scientific or artistic publi-
cations life is portrayed only from
the viewpoint of the manifestations
of the cult of personality and they
thereby cloud the heroic struggles of
the Soviet people who are building
socialism . . . .
This article by Trapeznikov was followed on 20 October
with an instructional letter, sent out by Trapeznikov's
department to schools, calling for changes in the treatment
of the Stalin and Khrushchev periods in history courses.
It called for inc&eased emphasis on the role of the central
leadership in mobilizing economic resources for defense
during the war and for restoration after it. The letter
also stressed the need to reveal the harm of subjectivism.
These two Trapeznikov statements clearly demonstrated that
a policy had been adopted, that Brezhnev had endorsed that
policy, and that the line was orthodox.
Thus, the major protagonists in the struggle taking
place within the leadership at this time both seemed to be
supporters of the neo-Stalinist line. That Shelepin, leader
of a neo-Stalinist faction, was involved was clearly re-
vealed in the ongoing dispute over the future of the Party-
State Control Committee. On 8 and 12 October respectively
Izvestiya and Pravda asserted that the role of the commit-
tee would rise under the new ministry system set up at
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the September plenum. On the 15th Krasnaya Zvezda sup-
ported the role of the control groups in the armed forces
and demanded that persecution of them stop. However,
Partiynaya Zhizn followed the line taken by Kosygin and
Brezhnev at the September plenum, and completely ignored
the role of party-state control organs, referring to party
organs as the checking bodies. And Soviet State and Law
criticized party-state control groups quite strongly. This
sharp divergence over an organization closely connected with
a Presidium member, Shelepin, clearly revealed the intensity
of the struggle.
Shelepin's neo-Stalinists continued to push their
position. Demichev addressed members of the RSFSR Writers
Union in Moscow and reportedly called for an end to "camp"
literature (i.e., literature concerning Stalin's crimes)
and for an emphasis on the "heroic" aspects of Soviet
history. In early September he had reportedly apologized
to the writers for excessive attacks on them; now he was
pushing the attack again. On 28 November a Pravda article
by RSFSR Agitprop Chief Khaldeyev, a Shelepin associate,
also emphasized a hard-line approach. He criticized a
one-sided approach in literature and called for improvement
in the ideological and political indoctrination of youth.
He particularly called upon the Komsomol to do more in this
area. Deputy Chief of the central committee's cultural
section, G. Kunitsyn, in November's Kommunist, threatened
nonconformist artists with expulsion from creative unions.
A central committee plenum was held from 4 to 6
December and was followed by a two-day session of the
Supreme Soviet. A number of high-level personnel changes
were made, thus vindicating to some extent the flood of
rumors of the previous summer. Mikoyan, who had undoubtedly
opposed any rehabilitation of Stalin and would continue to
push the rehabilitation of Stalin's victims, "resigned" as
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and was
succeeded by Podgornyy. Podgornyy probably simultaneously
left his position on the CPSU Secretariat, although this
could not be announced until the next central committee
meeting--the congress in March 1966. This action marked
a real set-back for the moderates. However, it was matched
by a blow to Shelepin. The Party-State Control Committee
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was abolished and Shelepin lost his position as Deputy
Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In his speech to
the plenum Brezhnev said that there had been shortcomings
in the work of the committee, a clear slap at Shelepin.
A protege of Brezhnev's~ Vladimir Shcherbitskiy, was named
a candidate member of the Presidium. Thus, Brezhnev seemed
to have emerged the victor from this particular skirmish.
He had administered a decisive rebuff to the moderates and
had also managed to stave off Shelepin's challenge, dealing
him a severe defeat in the process.
Press For More Freedom
The unsettled nature of the leadership and the lack
of an agreed position during the first few months after
Khrushchev's ouster was reflected in relatively more freedom
for the intellectuals. Liberal articles were published
and attacks on conservative views were commonplace. Liter-
aturnaya Gazeta's 12 November criticism of a conservat vi
novel, for example, recalled the harsh methods of the Stalin
years. The book being reviewed had called for a militant
struggle for party-mindedness in art; the review stated
that the struggle for socialist realism had been compli-
cated by the"subjective approach of Stalin" and by attempts
at administrative solutions to complicated problems.*
On 13 December 1964, A. Bocharov in Izvestiya made
a plea for a liberal artistic policy, stating that criticism
should persuade and educate, not suppress. His closing
statement was quite pointed:
In order to be authoritative, a critic must be
guided by the highest interests of the people
and not by group predilections, not by the
'literary policy' of the moment, which too
often resembles literary confusion.
*The application of the term subjective to Stalin is
unusual, for at this time the term was being applied
primarily to Khrushchev.
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An article by Noviy Mir's chief editor, Aleksandr
Tvardovskiy, commemorat ni g the journal's 40th anniversary
appeared in the January issue of that journal. Tvardovskiy
defended the need to present the whole truth, arguing that
there is no such thing as truth of life versus truth of
fact--that there is only truth.* He continued his attack
on orthodox cultural viewpoints by stating that each work
cannot present the whole picture--that only literature as
a whole can do that--and that no hero is able to represent
all things. He stated that at one time (i.e., under Stalin)
the exaltation of the hero had taken the place of reality.
Tvardovskiy was answered on 9 January by a Pravda
editorial which argued that the artist must present life
in full historical perspective and criticized works which
concentrate on the negative aspects of life. These con-
tradictory views, as expressed by the most liberal journal
published in the Soviet Union and the party paper, recur
repeatedly in the dialogue between liberal intellectuals
and the conservatives.
In February Pravda published two contrasting articles
on cultural policy. The paper's editor Rumyantsev, an
apparent Podgornyy supporter, was the author of the first,
which appeared on 21 February and was moderate. Rumyantsev
made the necessary bows toward the need for party spirit in
all forms of creative work, but he concentrated his ener-
gies on support for the "highest humanist ideal," the free
all-around development of every individual in conformity
with the general interest. Rumyantsev then connected a
strong defense of collective leadership with the concept
of the freedom to create, thus reflecting the knowledge
*This particular issue bears a somewhat frightening
resemblance to the basic question in the purge trials in
the late 1930's--did it matter in fact whether or not the
accused person had conspired against Stalin; or was it
enough that he had the potential to do so? The facts in
other words are irrelevant. The argument for the truth of
life is that any fact which does not support the official
view is out of tune with the truth of life, is therefore
wrong, and should not be expressed. It is an attempt to
suppress by the use of jargon any honest and objective
attempt to describe and assess history and life.
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and fear of the intellectuals that the emergence to domi-
nance of a single man, be he Stalin, Khrushbhev, or Brezhnev,
greatly increases the chances of arbitrary interference.
Neither the right of leadership in and of
itself nor the post occupied gives grounds
for intervening in the course of life; only
competence in one or another sphere of
knowledge and practice entails this right.
The second Pravda article appeared on 26 February and
was written by Yu. Barabash, who was not further identified.
Barabash strongly defended socialist realism and the "posi-
tive hero." He presented the basic arguments for the truth
of life, stating that the good artist even if he depicts
ugly and alien phenomena does so in the context of an affir-?
mation of what is wonderful. Writers fail, he stated, when
they do not rise above superficial, empirical observations
to the great generalizations. Barabash ended his article
with a statement concerning the world-wide struggle for
the minds of men, stating that the question of the goals
of art concerns the place of the artist in the struggle of
ideologies. This somewhat vague linking of the issues of
creative freedom and alien ideology was to become a basic
tenet of the neo-Stalinists attacks, and is very reminiscent
of Stalin's attacks on intellectuals, accusing them of
internationalism and cosmopolitanism. The publication of
these two, conflicting articles in Pravda suggests that at
this point the official position on culture was still being
sharply disputed, reflecting the unsettled nature of the
leadership struggle. Podgornyy may have backed the first,
moderate article; the quick appearance of an orthodox
article revealed that the backers of a hard line would not
be defeated easily.
The Neo-Stalinists Push; The Moderates Counter
The pressure of the neo-Stalinists in the leadership
began to be reflected in cultural trends in the spring of
1965. On 27 April an article appeared in Literaturnaya
Gazeta which called for the restoration to respectability
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of the literature of the Stalin period, andthe repudia-
tion of subjectivism (i.e., Khrushchevianism) in the study
of the history of Soviet literature. The article stated
that although the cult of personality had inflicted losses
on the development of Soviet literature, it never cut
short its progressive movement. An article in that same
paper two days later appealed to writers to seek historical
truth "in all its entirety."
For this it must be kept in mind that genuine
penetration into the truth of life of those
years is the thorough investigation of many
objective factors and not merely the depic-
tion of Stalin's errors and miscalculations.
Arrests and demonstrations apparently began at least
as early as April. In that month the two young intellec-
uals, A. Amalrik and A. Zverev, were reportedly arrested;
one was sentenced to two and a half years in exile for
parasitism--the other apparently was released. There is
also a report that in April leaders of the central executive
committee of SMOG* planned a demonstration. This was held
on 14 April and resulted in several arrests and several
university expulsions.
The hard-line view taken by the Leningrad organiza-
tion,particularly its oblast' first secretary, Tolstikov,
was reflected in a 30 June Leningradskaya Pravda article
which reported that a meeting of party members from the
Leningrad writers organization had acknowledged that
"justifiable criticism" had been leveled at Leningrad
writers by a plenum of the city party committee.
However, the liberal intellectuals were far from
cowed. In July the theatrical journal Teatr published an
article by A. Anikst, criticizing the theater of the Stalin
era and praising the theater of the early 1960's. The
*A loose, illegal organization of young dissidents taking
its name from the first letters of the Russian words for
word, thought, form, and profundity.
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25X1
liberal journal Yunost' in July took a similar line on
films and defended the portrayal of diversified types of
heroes. And, on 1 August, Pravda published an article
by Tvardovskiy defending against an attack on his poem
"Terkin in the Other World" made in a 30 July letter to
Pravda. Tvardovskiy stated that "anyone who reads the
poem without prejudice" would see that is presents a satiri-
cal picture of those aspects of reality--stagnation,
bureaucracy, formalism--that hamper Soviet progress.
In September there were several important articles
representing the liberal point of view. Noviy Mir published
an editorial which again denied the validity of counter-
posing small and large truth, arguing that truth is truth.
And on 9 September Pravda carried the previously mentioned
liberal editorial by its chief editor Rumyantsev, in which
he made a liberal defense of the arts. He stated that
positive heroes are certainly important but should not be
the only criterion of the artistic value of a work. He
argued that socialist realism should not be oversimplified
and that criticizing faults is not alien to socialist
realism; on the contrary, ignoring shortcomings may lead
to nihilism. He also supported the Noviy Mir position
that no writer, let alone in one work, can do that which
is possible only to literature as a whole. Rumyantsev
criticized those who try to set the intelligentsia against
party spirit, stating that this amounts to a demagogic
attack on culture. He supported party guidance of the
arts, but explained why some people question this guidance:
One can see in such questions the legitimate
alarm caused by recollections of the fact that
not so long ago words about party guidance
sometimes masked crude rule by decree in the
sphere of artistic life, and categorical,
diletantist judgments about certain artists
and their works.
Furthermore, Rumyantsev's concept of party guidance differed
somewhat from the conservative view; he emphasized that the
party should defend the artist's right to select his own
theme. and style.
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ar,k..tcr, I
On 19 September Pravda, in another editorial,
presented a conservative version of Rumyantsev's article,
suggesting that the decision to fire Rumyantsev had
already been made, and another article on the 24th was
even more conservative. Radio Moscow, however, continued
to carry Rumyantsev's editorial in broadcasts for two weeks.
A certain inability to decide just what the offical line
was at this time was displayed by Izvestiya which published
two contradictory articles in a three-day period. On 23
September F. Kuznetsov made a plea that works be judged by
their artistic merit, not their ideological content. Three
days later V. Shcherbina stated that these two concepts are
inseparable.
in October the 70th birthday 25X1
of the poet Yesenin was marked and the poet Yevtushenko
read an unpublished poem "Letter to Yesenin" which was
clearly an attack on Komsomol chief Pavlov:
When a rosy-cheeked Komsomol chief
Bangs his fist at us poets
And wants to knead our souls like wax
And wants to fashion them in his own image,
His words, Yesenin, do not terrify us,
Although it is hard to be happy . . .
You were more party-oriented than all the scoundrels
Who tried to teach you to think like the party.
In a November Kommunist article a man named V. Ivanov
attacked the "so-called theory of deheroization," and re-
futed the Noviy Mir editorials on "the truth of life versus
the truth of fact." He quoted Lenin to the effect that
facts in totality are definitely conclusive, but taken out
of context and totality are fragmentary and arbitrary.
The arrests of Daniel and Sinyavskiy in mid-September
frightened the intellectual community, and on 5 Decembera
demonstration was held in Moscow to protest these arrests;
a number of persons were arrested, some of whom were sub-
sequently tried. Also in December the first of what was
to be a series of written protests was sent by Sinyavskiy's
wife to Brezhnev, the USSR Procurator General, and various
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Soviet newspapers. In it she recalled the trials of 1937
and termed her husband's arrest an example of lawlessness.
Thus, throughout 1965, while the liberals and mod-
erates managed to score occasional points, the clear trend
was toward an increasingly more orthodox line. By the end
of the year Noviy Mir stood virtually alone in its defense
of the liberal position. In its November editorial it
again quoted Lenin to support its view that ideological
persuasion is only effective when accepted voluntarily,
a plea that there be no clamp down on the intellectuals.
Criticism of Stalin Continues
The unsettled nature of the struggle for power in
the Soviet Union opened the way for a push by the intel-
lectuals to attain greater freedom. It also permitted the
continuation of harsh criticism of Stalin as a leader and
continued rehabilitation of those who suffered and died in
the purges.
The liberal journal Noviy Mir published a number of
articles in the months after Khrushchev's fall which were
highly critical of Stalin's handling of the pre-war situa-
tion. Ivan Mayskiy,* in memoirs published in that journal
in December, attacked Stalin for failing to heed warnings
about an impending attack and for failing to strengthen
defenses. The writer Ilya Erenburg, in a January article,
attacked Stalin's extermination of army commanders before
the war. These have been the main criticisms of Stalin's
pre-war leadership.
Voprosy Istorii KPSS, the organ of the Institute of
Marxism-L- en nism, published a number of anti-Stalin articles
during this period; in November it carried several such
articles. One deprecated Stalin's revolutionary theories
and charged that he had in fact conspired with Kamenev and
Zinovyev against Lenin in 1917 on the question of whether
*Mayskiy was Ambassador to London before the war. In
March 1966 he was to be one of the signers of an appeal to
Brezhnev not to rehabilitate Stalin.
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OrA. . . I
the time was ripe for armed revolution. Another criti-
cized Stalin's theory of disproportionate rates of
development, claiming this had, in fact, caused a decline
in production.* A third article attacked Stalin for
issuing contradictory directives, for indulging in wishful
planning, and for making decisions alone. In February
Voprosy Istorii KPSS carried an article attacking the cult
of personality, stating that it had delayed the modernization
of Soviet armed forces; the article charged that the most
dangerous consequence of the cult was the destruction on
the eve of the war of many talented military leaders.
Various other anti-Stalin articles were also pub-
lished in the months following the coup. In December
Kommunist carried an article concerning the signers of a
peace treaty with Germany in 1917. Lenin favored the treaty,
but Stalin, according to the article, vacillated and com-
mitted the unpardonable error of siding with Trotskiy in
the dispute. After Lenin sharply criticized Stalin, he
reportedly admitted his mistake and supported Lenin.
The rehabilitation program continued uninterrupted
in the first months after Khrushchev's fall, with Pravda
carrying particularly strongly-worded articles. In November
an inkling of things to come appeared, however. The 75th
birthday of purged Ukrainian leader S. Kosior was marked
by praise from most papers. However, Pravda Ukrainy pointed
out that Kosior had erred in joining the left communists"
on the issue of signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. This
paper would prove to be one of the most outspoken of the
neo-Stalinist organs, probably reflecting the position of
Ukrainian party leader Shelest.
Volume 7 of the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia,
which was presumably an officia publication, was signed
to the press in March 1965, although it did not appear
*The question of disproportionate rates of development
between heavy and light industry continues to be explosive.
The dogmatists think heavy industry should develop at a
faster rate; the liberals argue that the gap between the
two rates should close.
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until the following October. The tone on a number of
issues was clearly anti-Stalin, indicating that as of March
the official line on the Stalin question had not been
changed. An article on collectivization by V. Danilov
praised the policy itself, but criticized Stalin's role:
Starting in the fall of 1929 the tendency
toward excessive forcing of collectivization,
which reflected the position of I.V. Stalin,
sharply increased. This policy was based on
a scornful attitude toward the opinions of
the peasant, ignoring his attachment to his
individual farm, ignoring the instructions of
Engels and Lenin, the party decisions on the
impermissibility and harmfulness of haste and
force in cooperatizing small farms . . . .
The theoretical justification of the forcing of
collectivization was Stalin's article published
on 7 November 1929 in Pravda entitled 'The Year
of the Great Breakthrough,' which asserted
that the basic masses of the peasantry had
already joined the kolkhozes and that 'the
deciding victory' had already been attained.
Danilov stated that in early 1930 directives were issued
for a retreat, but-::that Stalin's article "Dizzy With Success,"
in blaming local officials for the chaos, had caused even
greater mistakes.
The volume also used very strong language in dis-
cussing Stalin's crimes:
Stalin began to misuse power and crudely violate
the Party Statute and Soviet laws . . . . The
cult of personality engendered careerism and
servility, suspicion and distrust, and in the
field of theory it engendered dogmatism and
alienation of theory from practice. Having
established his own personal control over organs
of the NKVD, Stalin dealt summarily with offi-
cials whom he did not like. In 1937 . . .
Stalin advanced the harmful and theoretically
mistaken thesis that as socialism becomes
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stronger and the Soviet state moves further
ahead, the class struggle in the country will
become sharper and sharper. This thesis
served as justification for mass illegal
repressions against prominent leaders of the
party and state, members and candidate mem-
bers of the central committee, important
military leaders, and many other people who
were guilty of nothing . . The repres-
sions began at first against ideological
opponents, the majority of which were
represented as agents of imperialism and
foreign intelligence, and then the very
same false accusations were made against
other Communists who had never taken part
in any opposition . . . .
The language used in this article is very reminiscent of
Khrushchev's secret speech denunciation of Stalin. As
stated above, the fact that this was signed to the press
in March indicated that no decision to totally restore
Stalin to a position of respectability had yet been made.
Drive to Restore Stalin's Image Begins
Meanwhile, the neo-Stalinist drive for power which
began in February 1965 was quickly reflected in articles
relating to the Stalin issue. A sharp reduction in
rehabilitations of Stalin's victims began in February and
the first indications of an organized effort to restore
Stalin to respectability appeared about the same time;
this first concerted effort was concentrated on Stalin's
wartime image.
Soviet military figures have generally been in the
forefront of the shifting lines on the Stalin issue, but
always pushing the same point. Their main interest is
increased control of military matters by the military.
When the party line was anti-Stalinist, the military argued
that Stalin had been an incompetent wartime leader because
he had failed to listen to the professionals. Now, with
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the start of re-Stalinizing, military figures were to
argue that Stalin had been an effective wartime leader
precisely because he had listened to his military advi-,
sors. A February article in Krasna a Zvezda by Marshal
Bagramyan credited Stalin with participation in successful
military planning--after he had listened 'to military advice.
In April 19659 according to a Reuters report, Soviet
historians were ordered to stop picturing Stalin only as a
"muddle-headed military failure"during the war. In the
future, it said, history books would show him neither as a
military genius nor as a complete imbecile in matters of
strategy. This order was reflected in a reported interview
of several Soviet historians with journalists in April.
The spokesman for the group stated that Stalin had made a
mistake in thinking that Hitler would not attack and in not
taking more precautions. However, he warned that Stalin's
merits should not be ignored and quoted Stalin himself to
prove that he had consulted others and had admitted his
own mistakes.
Articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of
victory over the Germans in World War II began appearing in
April; these reflected:_the new "balanced" approach to
Stalin and the war. A first step was simply toidenWify
Stalin in his wartime positions without further comment,
a technique used by Brezhnev in his 8 May speech. A
second approach was to ignore the deplorable state of Soviet
defenses at the start of the war9 dismissing all discussion
of miscalculations, purges, and defeats as subjective and
one-sided. Still a third method was to blatantly lie about
the state of Soviet defenses on the eve of the war. For
example, a 30 April Pravda article defended military
industrial preparations for the war. The author, Vasiliy
Ryabikov, then First Deputy Chairman of USSR Sovnarkhoz
and later First Deputy Chairman of USSR Gosplan, had a
special axe to grind as he had become Deputy Peoples
Commissar for Armaments in 1939; however, the publication
of the article in Pravda indicated that his argument had
high-level supporter-this article Ryabikov dated the
drive to prepare for the war from 1939, and claimed that
the
powerful industry established in the Soviet
Union before the war ensured the Soviet army's
uninterrupted supply of everything necessary
for the rout of the enemy.
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The vehicle used most widely to convey a favorable
portrait of Stalin was the memoirs of military figures
who simply reported their wartime contacts with Stalin,
presenting him as a reasonable, if fallible, leader.
Marshal Konev, a former First Deputy Minister of Defense,
performed this function in a series of interviews and
articles published during the spring of 1965. In one
article Konev described his success in persuading Stalin
to change his mind on a military plan, and in another he
credited him with participating in the forming of plans to
capture Berlin. In his memoirs in Noviy Mir in May, he
stated that Stalin was a wise leader who was "particularly
alert to the political and economic overtones of his
military decisions." And in a press conference at the
USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 28 April, Konev ex-
pressed the new "balanced" formulation of Stalin's
wartime role:
Stalin played a certain positive role in the
cause of insuring victory over the enemy, but
in the first period of the war and before its
beginning, there were miscalculations and
shortcomings in Stalin's activities and these
have already been mentioned.
A similar approach was taken by Marshal Bagramyan
in a 17 April article in Literaturnaya Gazeta, as well as
by Marshal Sokolovskiy in a May interview with a L'Unita
correspondent. Bagramyan did criticize the purge of-
military figures on the eve of the war and stated that
there had been strategic miscalculations before the war.
However, he stated that measures had been taken to prepare
the country. Sokolovskiy went further than this, stating
that the "main" reason for early defeats was that the
young Soviet state had not had time to build the necessary
military-technical base, and that for this reason Stalin
had tried to delay the war.
On 8 and 9 May various celebrations were held in
honor of the 20th anniversary of the victory in World War
II, and numerous speeches were given. The most important
of these was one by Brezhnev, in which he identified
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25X1
Stalin in his wartime role; he also glossed over the
errors made in the early stages of the war:
It is well known that the first stage of the
war took place in conditions that were unfav-
orable to us, and advantageous to the enemy.
On the side of the fascists who committed this
insidious and treacherous attack was the factor
of surprise . . .
He thus ignored the numerous warnings of impending attack,
and made no reference to failure to prepare defenses.
The start of re-Stalinizing was reflected in various
articles on other Stalin-related issues, although there was
not the same uniformity as in the articles relating to
his wartime role. An April article in a Turkmen journal
discussed the rise of the cult of personality and the 20th
congress in a "balanced" manner. The article stated that
the cult had been the result of exceptional conditions,
and that various factors, including imperialist encircle-
ment, had demanded strict centralized leadership and
certain limitations on democracy. The article went on to
state that Stalin's personal shortcomings had, however,
caused the cult of personality to emerge. While the article
stated that the 20th congress had criticized the cult, it
emphasized that the June 1956 central committee decree on
the cult had analyzed the cult profoundly and had rebuffed
attempts to use criticism of the cult to undermine the
socialist system. The call to use the June 1956 decree
as a guideline for statements on the Stalin issue would
be made with increasing frequency in the months ahead.
This decree had marked a sharp modification of Khrushchev's
February 1956 denunciation of Stalin. The decree had
praised Stalin as a Marxist-Leninist and leader, but said
that he had had certain negative character traits which
had lent themselves to the development of the cult. The
decree's sharpest criticism was reserved for enemies who
tried to use the issue to sow confusion and undermine
socialism. Thus, the attempts to restore this decree as
the basic guideline on the Stalin issue was a clear step
toward re-Stalinizing.
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During the summer and early fall of 1965 there
were a number of instances in which Stalin was mentioned
without comment. A July Voprosy Istorii KPSS article
included Stalin in a list of persons who had played an
important role in the struggle against the Trotskiyites.
The film The Aurora Salvo which was released in October
1965 containe one scene of Stalin--smoking a pipe and
voting in favor of Lenin's call for armed action. On 12
September Pravda carried an excerpt from a book on the
Brest-LitovsTreaty, in which Stalin is simply included
in a list of those who voted "correctly" (i.e., for the
treaty.)
Whereas Volume 7 of the Soviet Historical Encyclo-
pedia, signed to the press in March 1965, had dea t harshly
with Stalin on the subject of the repressions, volume 8,
signed to the press in October 1965, represented a more
"balanced" approach, similar to the line of the June 1956
decree. This volume emphasized that iron discipline and
some restrictions on democracy had been necessary under
the complex conditions oftthe times, but that these had
always been considered temporary. The article praised
Stalin for fighting deviation, organizing the building of
socialism, and protecting Lenin's attitudes on the possi-
bility of building socialism in one country. It then went
on to criticize the cult and the use of administrative
methods. The article closed by stating that the party
had liquidated the violations of socialist legality.
Anti-Stalinists Continue to Resist
During this period articles attacking Stalinist
positions continued to appear, indicating that those who
wished to prevent a rehabilitation of Stalin had not been
subdued. On 15 April Kommunist Ukrainy published an arti-
cle on the contributions o the Ukrainians to the defeat
of the Germans, and included Khrushchev in a list of those
who had held responsible posts. The moderate position
taken by this paper suggests that it was under the influ-
ence of Podgornyy, rather than the more orthodox Shelest.
The journal Voprosy Istorii KPSS, while acceding to the
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apparent directive to identify Stalin in his wartime
positions, also blamed early military reverses on various
factors, tracing many of these to violations of collectivity
under Stalin's cult of personality.
From February through April 1965, the journal Noviy
Mir published the memoirs of Soviet writer Ilya Erenburg.
Erenburg was highly critical of Stalin and the cult; he
attacked Stalin as a military leader,
. . . Litvinov and Mayskiy told me that the
pact with Hitler had been necessary--Stalin
had succeeded thereby in frustrating the
plans of the Western allies . . . But Stalin
did not use the two-year respite to strengthen
defenses--military men and diplomats alike
have told me this. I have written that Stalin
was extraordinarily suspicious and saw in his
closest collaborators potential "enemies of
the people," but for some reason he trusted
Ribbentrop's signature. The Hitlerites'
attack caught us by surprise. At first Stalin
lost his head. He did not dare to announce
the attack himself; he charged Molotov with
doing so . . . .
Erenburg also denounced at some length the purges. He
discussed the "deification of Stalin and Stalin's responsi-
bility for all that occurred, ridiculing the attempt to
shift blame elsewhere.
A group of writers was invited to the central
committee where one of the secretaries ex-
plained to us the reasons for Beria's arrest
. . . The comrade who spoke with us said:
'Unfortunately, in the last years of his life
Comrade Stalin was strongly influenced by
Beria.' When I later thought about these
words, I recalled the year 1937. Would
someone then say that at that time Yezhov had
influenced Stalin? It was obvious to everyone
that such insignificant people could not have
prompted Stalin's political course.
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Another voice of moderation came from the journal
Soviet State and Law in an article by Deputy Procurator
General Zhogin, attacking Vyshinskiy and Stalin. Zhogin
charged that Vzshinskiy had cooperated with the NKVD, had
suppressed attempts to enforce legality at the purge trials,
and had engineered the purges of those who protested. He
said that all of this was the fruit of the cult of personali-
ty and that Vyshinskiy had carried out Stalin's orders.
Vyshinskiy's words had served as "theoretical justification
of tyranny and coercion and of the mass persecution of
entirely innocent people." Zhogin called for the exposure
of these distortions in order to strengthen socialist
legality;.
In May there was a sudden upsurge of rehabilitations
in the press which lasted through June. Voprosy Istorii
KPSS resumed its publication of rehabilitation items w th
no apparent change in formulation. Izvestiya and Sovetskaya
Rossiya carried rehabilitation items as did Krasnaya Zvezda.
Kommunist Estonii published a strongly worded article on
the suffering of the Estonian party in the purges.
Noviy Mir persisted in its resistance to re-Stalinizing
trends. In September it published an article by V. Kaverin
in which he discussed a number of writers who had had diffi-
culties in the 1930's. He stated that the 20th party
congress had put an end to arbitrariness, and, in discussing
the trials of the 1930's, said that it had turned out that
those convicted had been right and the accusers had been
devoid of any moral values. And in October, Noviy Mir
published an article reviewing the book The Last Two Weeks
by A. Rozen.* The author of the review, A. Kondratovic ,
sharply criticized a TASS statement which had been issued
a week before the outbreak of World War II, denying the
possibility of war. He said that it would have been one
thing if it had come from a man who was excessively trust-
ful, but we all know that Stalin was distinguished by
completely different qualities." He then attacked those
who argue for the "truth of life" as opposed to the
"truth of fact:"
*This book was published in February 1965 and criticized
the handling of the two weeks before the war.
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Sometimes the attempt is made to link the
1941 defeats to a petty "truth of fact"
which it is said is a far cry from what
"truly occurred;" those writers who ex-
amined that threatening summer of 1941
in an attempt to understand how it hap-
pened, have been called "narrow-minded
writers." But in those months we lost
hundreds of thousands, if not millions
of people, and we surrendered to the
enemy, even if only for a time, a huge
territory, and to call this petty, non-
essential "truth of fact" is really a
blasphemy. To "dissuade" writers from
the "1941" theme means at the very least
to show a lack of interest in historical
truth . . Much of what A. Rozen writes
about looks unbelievable. During the
reading one often asks the question how
could such things happen? But even this
astonishment is a blessing; that means we
have come a long way from those times . . .
Re-Stalinizing Dominates
The strength of the conservative position was
reflected in the fall of 1965 in the reduction in the
number of rehabilitations appearing in the central press,*
and the modification of the language used in those that
did appear. For example, on 3 September Pravda carried
*The provincial papers continued to publish some
rehabilitations, particularly the Latvian, Lithuanian,
and Armenian papers.
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an article about V. Knosin, former Comintern Secretary,
but failed to mention his death in the purges, simply
giving 1937 as the last date in his career. In general,
this was the new format to be followed in the months
ahead.*
In September, October, and November, the memoirs of
Admiral N. Kuznetsov were published; these carried on the
process of presenting a "balanced" view of Stalin. While
somewhat critical of Stalin's behavior on the eve of the
war, Kuznetsov's emphasis was on Stalin's positive achieve-
ments. He indicated that Stalin had been a competent and
reasonable leader and he denied the "malicious" story that
Stalin had planned strategy on a globe (Khrushchev's story)
and said that he could vouch for numerous cases where
Stalin was engrossed in pinpoint detail and "knew every-
thing right up to the position of each regiment." He
stated that more and more during the war Stalin had listened
to his front commanders, and he added that every man made
mistakes and that wartime errors should not always be blamed
on an "incorrect evaluation of the situation by Stalin."
In December a fairly clear step toward rehabilitation
of Stalin as a revolutionary was taken in the pages of
Pravda Ukrainy. The article concerned the 1917 Sixth Party
Congress and the question of whether or not Lenin should
*There were of course exceptions to this. On 17 November,
the 76th birthday of Kosior, Radio Moscow stated that "in
1938 Kosior was defamed and arrested. S.V. Kosior perished
. ... as a victim of arbitrariness."
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appear before the court of the Provisional Government.
This article glided gently over Stalin's position,
stating that
in the past few years contradictory data
have been presented on the position of
individual delegates concerning the problem
of V.I. Lenin's appearance before the court
. . Some delegates considered it possible
for the leader of the party to appear before
the authorities under certain conditions.
I.V. Stalin made the solution of this
problem contingent upon guarantees for
Lenin's safety. Since there were no
guarantees he was against an appearance
before the court at the given moment!:,. . . .
The appearance of this positive appraisal of Stalin's
revolutionary role in the Ukrainian paper suggests once
again the neo-Stalinist position of Ukrainian leader
Shelest.
For the first several months after Khrushchev's
ouster, the new leaders were busy undoing some of
Khrushchev's policies and making personnel appointments.
Shelepin, leader of a neo-Stalinist faction, emerged with
considerable strength after the November plenum, and suc-
cessfully installed many of his proteges in the party and
state apparatuses, particularly in the cultural and informa-
tion media. He also maintained his previous strength in
the KGB and Komsomol.
Podgornyy, a moderate, also appeared to have gained
some strength after the ouster, and for several months
a moderate policy prevailed, more in keeping with Podgor-
nyy's views than Shelepin's. This line was reflected in
'the publication of numerous liberal articles on cultural
matters and by the continued criticism of Stalin and
rehabilitation of his victims. If anything, more freedom
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to write existed in the first few months after the coup
than had previously been the case, possibly reflecting
the fact that the leadership situation was in a state of
flux and that no agreed upon position existed.
In February 1965 the paper Partiynaya Zhizn'
(Party Life) published an article stating that there would
be no return to the pre-1956 view of Stalin. While this
article was reassuring on the surface, it indicated that
there were those who feared such a revival and therefore
probably also those who supported it. Support for re-
Stalinizing was revealed almost immediately. Kommunist,
in February, published an article by Moscow city chief
Yegorychev which raised for the first time a number of
neo-Stalinist themes--including the idea that many people
had gone overboard in criticizing events of the period of
the cult of personality. This line was picked up by
various individuals and journals quite quickly; in February
Voprosy Istorii KPSS, which had been publishing a number
of anti-St alin articles, suddenly stopped its prograt .-o-f' * ~.
rehabilitating Stalin's victims.
A party decision must have been made early in
1965
on the question of mentioning Stalin in his wartime
posi-
tions. The uniform nature of the campaign and the public
approval given it by Brezhnev in May, as well as the
importance of the issue, indicated that this decision had
been made at the highest level. Given the split between
moderates and hard-liners existing in the presidium at
this time, it seems clear that Brezhnev must have supported
the rehabilitation, along with the neo-Stalinist and
orthodox members of the presidium. Rehabilitation of
Stalin as a wartime leader was the most logical place to
start a total rehabilitation; for the issue was a war from
which the Soviet Union emerged victorious and in which
Stalin, at least as a unifying symbol, played an important
part.
However, Brezhnev must have been aware that a total
rehabilitation of Stalin would be a real shock and he was
prepared only to move gradually. This was indicated by
several equivocal statements made by him as well as by
the fact that persons closely associated with him, such
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as the First Secretary of Kazahkstan Kunayev, were not
pushing the neo-Stalinist line. Thus, while the decision,
to restore Stalin's wartime image was being carried out
fairly consistently during this period, a L::f or r ren.abil-
itation of Stalin in other areas did not occur, Both
praise and criticism of his general role continued to be
expressed.
The neo-Stalinists used various other issues in
their assault on the liberals in the spring of 1965. In
April articles were published urging the restoration of
Stalin-era literature to respectability and strongly assert-
ing the argument supporting "truth of life," Also in
April arrests of dissident intellectuals began., although
on a relatively small scale compared with gnat would come
later. In June the Leningrad newspaper indicated. that the
intellectuals in that area had been criticized by the city
party committee, revealing the hard-line posture being
taken by that party organization. In the, spring the reha-
bilitation .of-,f)?a:lin's victims was also halted for several
months.
During the summer the liberals enjoyed a brief :"gat
not unchallenged resurgence as reflected in the resumption
of the rehabilitation program and the publicat:icn of various
liberal articles; these articles were subjected to sharp
criticism, however. In September the liberals apparently
attempted to defend their position with the publication
of a very bold article by Pravda editor Rum,,,a:n,ts ev, who
may well have been speaking forPodgo.rn.y,yo This :liberal
push was quickly repulsed. Rumyantsev was fired and at.
almost the same time Daniel and Sinyavskiy were arrested,
marking a real clamp-down on the liberal intellectuals.
Signs that the neo-Stalinists were pushing hard at
this time could be seen in the various defenses made of
Shelepin's Party-State Control Committee. Defense of the
committee came from the Belorussian paper, suggesting
that Shelepin had the support of that republic's organiza-
tion headed by Mazurov and Masherov. The new Pravda
editor Zimyanin, who had replaced Rumyantsev, Sad risen
in Belorussia, and Pravda from now on would support a fairly
consistent hard-line, another indication of the Belorussian
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orientation. Pravda expressed its support for party-
state control i.e., Shelepin) in December--after that
committee had been abolished.
Shelepin received a rebuff at the September central
committee plenum; neither Kosygin nor Brezhnev mentioned
party-state control, an obvious omission. Polyanskiy was
named a first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers,
thereby becoming senior to Shelepin in that organization.
And a compromise economic reform program, reportedly
opposed by Shelepin, was passed.
The appearance in the beginning of October of a
dogmatic article by Sergey Trapeznikov, Brezhnev's protege
who had been appointed chairman of the department of
Scientific and Educational Institutions the previous June,
revealed Brezhnev's support for the hard-line, re-Stalinizing
policy. This article exempted from criticism various new
aspects of Stalin's policies--collectivization, primacy of
heavy industry, politics over economics; in addition,
Trapeznikov criticized "some" rehabilitations. Brezhnev's
pre-emption of a major portion of the neo-Stalinist plat-
form served to weaken Shelepin's basis for arguing that
he (Shelepin) deserved to be the party's leader.
At the December party plenum, the Party-State Control
Committee'. was abolished and Shelepin was removed from his
position as deputy chairman of the council of ministers.
At the same time the moderates were weakened by Podgornyy's
appointment as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme
Soviet, which also meant that he had lost his more powerful
position on the party secretariat. Furthermore, he replaced
Mikoyan, suggesting that this moderate was finished as a
political force.
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SEURE '
NOVEMBER 1964
CPSU ..PRESIDIUM
Full Members
BREZHNEV
KIRILENKO
KOSYGIN
PODGORNYY
POLYANSKIY
MIKOYAN
SHELEPIN
SHELEST
SHVERNIK
SUSLOV
VORONOV
Candidate Members
DEMICHEV
GRISHIN
MAZUROV
MZHAVANADZE
RASHIDOV
YEFREMOV
ANDROPOV
BREZHNEV
DEMICHEV
IL'ICHEVI
PODGORNYY
PONOMAREV
RUDAKOV
SHELEPIN
SUSLOV
TITOV
1. Dropped in March 1965.
2. Elected in March 1965.
3. Dropped in September 1965.
SFC:R F.T
MARCH 1965
CPSU PRESIDIUM
Full Members
BREZHNEV
KIRILENKO
KOSYGIN
MAZUROV2
MIKOYAN
PODGORNYY
POLYANSKIY
SHELEPIN
SHELEST
SHVERNIK
SUSLOV
VORONOV
Candidate Members
DEMICHEV
GRISHIN
MZHAVANADZE
RASHIDOV
USTINOV2
YEFREMOV
ANDROPOV
BREZHNEV
DEMICHEV
PODGORNYY
PONOMAREV
RUDAKOV
SHELEPIN
SUSLON
TITOV
USTINOV2
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The 23rd Congress--Before and After
December 1965-November 1966
Build-Up To The Congress
Following the December plenum an orthodox, hard-line
approach to cultural matters as well as to the Stalin issue
seemed to prevail in the leadership. At the same time,
however, the neo-Stalinist members of the Shelepin faction
expressed less extreme views than had previously been the
case, suggesting that they were reacting cautiously to
Shelepin's set-back in December. For example, in a
25 December speech Demichev retreated somewhat; although
he called for approval of all that is new and truly commu-
nistic and criticized lack of principles and ideals, he
closed by stating
The party has a cautious and careful regard
for the intelligentsia, trusting it, being
concerned for the future of talent, and the
directing of it so that it is socially
useful, and about the healthy, normal
development of it. 'Talent is a rare
thing,' said Lenin, 'it must be methodi-
cally and cautiously encouraged . . . .'
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The fact that Shelepin?s set-back in December had
not meant a corresponding set-back for neo-Stalinist views
was quickly demonstrated, however. On 30 January Pravda
published an article by three historians which urged that
the use of the term "period of the cult of personality" be
discontinued, and called for more positive portrayals of
the Stalin era. They argued that emphasis should be put
on the enormous successes of the period and that the cost
in human suffering should be minimized. They attacked those
who pay tribute to "unprincipled opportunism," apparently
a reference to Khrushchev's use of de-Stalinization. Also
in January the Moldavian paper Sovetskaya Moldaviya pub-
lished an article by a member of the council the House
of Political Education of the Moldavian Central Committee,
analyzing the cult and its exposure, The article instructed
propagandists to refer to the June 1956 decree; it attacked
those who turn criticism of the cult into a campaign and
told propagandists to emphasize that the party had dealt
with all that had conflicted with the lines of the 20th
Congress. Both of these articles reflect the carrying out
of the instructions issued by Trapeznikov in October 1965
and mark a further step in the road to re-Stalinization.
The clearest expression of the prevailing orthodox
approach was the trial in February of the writers Daniel
and Sinyavskiy, an action which must have been approved by
the Presidium. According to the writer Valentin Katayev,
Kosygin had opposed the trial and "the whole damned thing"
but had been outvoted. It seems likely that Mikoyan would
have opposed it and probable that Podgornyy, too, would not
have supported it. It seems clear that Brezhnev, in league
with the neo-Stalinists and other orthodox members of the
hierarchy, supported the action. The two men received
five and seven years respectively for their "crime" of
publishing so-called anti-Soviet works under pseudonyms
in the West.
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On 15 February the 25X1
Polish party organ Trybuna Ludu published a strongly worded
editorial in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the
20th CPSU Congress. This editorial could be read as a
warning to the Soviet Union, linking as it did the coming
23rd Congress with the heritage of the 20th, which it said
had become "a common gain for the entire Communist movement."
In contrast, the anniversary received only muted attention
in the Soviet press.
On the eve of the 23rd congress, a number of republic
and regional party meetings were held, at which party lead-
ers expressed for the most part hard-line sentiments. The
most strident voice came, not surprisingly, from Mzhavanadze's
bailiwick, Georgia, where party secretary Sturua spoke of the
"costs" of de-Stalinizing, saying it had brought nihilism and
cosmopolitanism (an old Stalinist term with anti-Semitic
connotations), as well as attempts by some authors to bring
back Trotskiyism and other deviations. He condemned the
term period of the cult of personality, claiming that it
belittled a period of heroic victories and enormous suc-
cesses. And, finally, he attacked those who undervalue
ideological work and write about shortcomings. He stated
that this does not help the building of communism. And
he closed with a call for party coordination of ideological
work.*
*The a ians reacted quickly to Sturua's speech. On
27 March Unita warned that if the 23rd congress re-evaluated
Stalin an minimized the negative judgment of the 20th
congress, "we cannot accept it."
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At the Belorussian congress first secretary Masherov
stated that de-Stalinization had brought into disrepute
"an entire historical era" in the country's life. He also
criticized those who distort certain events of the war
and emasculate the class content of history. First Secre-
tary Bodyul, in Moldavia, implied that the uncrowning
of Stalin had led to a distortion of the historic achieve-
ments of the party in its struggle for socialism. In Latvia
Pelshe emphasized the importance of party education and
criticized those writers and artists who are disposed to
fault finding and exaggerating existing shortcomings and
difficulties. In the Ukraine Shelest used Sholokhov's
formulation that when the heart of each artist belonged to
the party, he would be free to write as his heart dictates.
And, at the Leningrad Oblast' Party conference, Tolstikov
presented his neo-Stalinist solution to the problem of
non-conforming intellectuals:
Under present conditions, we are faced with
having to strengthen the party's influence
on the creative intelligentsia, and to help
it, by its creative works to strengthen
Communist ideals.
At theEEnd of March several warnings were sounded
about the proposed rehabilitation of Stalin. One came
from the journal Voprosy Filosofii (Questions of Philosophy)
which warned that reversion to one-man rule was still a
possibility:
In the conditions of the application of
socialism there exists the possibility that
while taking part in collective work, definite
personalities may pursue aims which are their
own or which are aims of a faction. Moved by
ambition, they have personal aims and cause harm
to the common cause, particularly if those per-
sonalities have leading positions.
The article then proposed that reforms be adopted to
"prevent the repetition of past mistakes."
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The second, and most spectacular, warning came from
25 Soviet intellectuals. These individuals sent an urgent
appeal and warning against the rehabilitation to Brezhnev.*
The letter stated that the authors saw nothing to indicate
that condemnation of the personality cult had been mistaken--
on the contrary, they said, many horrifying facts remained
to be revealed. They said that any attempt at rehabilitation
would cause great dissension within Soviet society, and
would be interpreted by the world as capitulation to the
Chinese.
The Congress Opens
The 23rd Congress opened on 29 March and proved to
be much less interesting than the build-up to it. The
reported rehabilitation of Stalin amounted only to the
restoration of the terms "Politburo" and "General Secre-
tary;" these were perhaps the symbolic vestiges of an
abandoned plan. Whether the proposed rehabilitation was
abandoned because of opposition in Eastern Europe, internal
protest, or power shifts in the Presidium is not clear; it
seems most likely that the leaders were startled by the
vehemence of the reaction, both at home and abroad, and
decided that it would be wise to move cautiously.
In his speech to the congress, Brezhnev mentioned
neither Stalin nor Khrushchev by name, but he did refer to
the miscalculations, undue haste, and subjectivism of recent
years (a clear slap at Khrushchev). He called for party-
mindedness and a class approach, although he rejected
arbitrary influence (an apparent rejection of the more
neo-Stalinist recommendations of Tolstikov). Brezhnev's
speech was less extreme in tone than many of the pre-
congress speeches had been, perhaps a reflection of the
leadership's decision to pull back; nonetheless, the tone
of his speech was orthodox:
The party will always support art and
literature which confirm beliefs in our
ideals and will wage an uncompromising
struggle against all manifestations of
ideology which is alien to us.
*See Appendix Item A and page 49 for further discussion.
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Socialist art is deeply optimistic and
cheerful . . . . This, of course, does not
mean that one must write only about what
is good. As everyone knows, we have many
difficulties and shortcomings and the
truthful criticism of them in works of
art is useful and necessary; it helps
the Soviet people to eliminate the short-
comings. Unfortunately, one also encounters
those hacks in art who, instead of assistance
to the people, choose as their specialty the
blackening of our system and the slander of
our heroic people. Of course, we have only
a few such people. They do not to any extent
reflect the feelings and mind of our creative
intelligentsia who are linked inseparably
with the people and with the party . . . .
After Brezhnev spoke, a number of speeches. were
given which were more hard-line than his. Yepishev, Chief
of the Main Political Administration of the Soviet Army
and Navy, warned against relaxing ideological work, and
stated that some "bearers of petty bourgeois licentiousness"
under the pretence of struggling against the consequences
of the cult of personality and others under the guise of
advocating historical truth, run down the heroic history
and struggle of party and people, and try to blacken Soviet
reality and minimize the grandeur of our triumphs over
fascism.
The series of neo-Stalinist reports was begun by
Yegorychev, that stalwart supporter of the Soviet Union's
heroic past, who started by reassuring those who had been
frightened by the spectre of Stalinism:
The personality cult, the violation of
Leninist norms and principles of party
life and socialist legality--all that
has hindered our movement forward--has
been decisively rejected by our party,
and there will never be a return to this
past!
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He then proceeded, however, to attack once again those
who write off the heroic history of the Soviet people,
and to condemn insufficiently party-minded approaches to
history and individuals. He closed by stating that the
sensational instances when direct ideological saboteurs
penetrate the ranks of the workers of art can be explained
only by political carelessness. Yegorychev's attack seemed
to include a large portion of the intelligentsia in its
scope. The liberals had demonstrated their apprehension
about this sort of approach in a January Noviy Mir article
which criticized Stalin's statement at the l h party congress
that the main bulk of the intelligentsia had opposed the
revolution, and therefore had to be broken and dispersed.
Moldavian First Secretary Bodyul, a Brezhnev man,
called for stricter literary controls. He urged that a
decisive rebuff be given to the falsifiers of history and
to those who slander the Soviet people. He described the
nature of freedom in the Soviet Union, stating that artists
are free to create but
in the same degree the party and state organs
enjoy the right of free choice of what to
print . . . . In our opinion, the weak side
of leadership of this sector of ideological
work is insufficient party demandingness toward
selection and publication of works of literature,
art, and cinema.
Moscow Oblast' First Secretary Konotop was more explicit
and more harsh in his recommendation thafh Bodyul had been:
Each person is free to write and to speak
everything which pleases him, without the
slightest restrictions. But every free
union (including the party) is also free
to dismiss those members who use the party
for preaching anti-party opinions.
Thus the threat had been raised of expulsion from party
and creative unions; expulsion from the latter would mean
the end of the right to publish. Other hard-line speeches
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SLUKt 1'
were given on this occasion by Masherov, Mzhavanadze,
Pelshe, and Rostov party chief, M. Solomentsev.
On the other side of the fence, the more moderate
Podgornyy stated that the party had done much to strengthen
law and order and to eliminate harmful elements connected
with the cult of personality. He said that economic and
cultural issues present new questions, requiring legislation.
In his speech Podgornyy also appealed for greater democracy
in the party. In general those leaders who support a moderate
approach have been silent on the Stalin issue and related
subjects such as cultural freedom. In this particular speech
Podgornyy dealt only briefly with the topic but his treatment
was clearly moderate, as he implied that these issues should
be dealt with through legislation--not administrative fiat.
At the congress Mikoyan and Shvernik were dropped
from the Politburo and Pelshe was added; formerly First
Secretary of Latvia, Pelshe is reportedly close to Suslov.
Pelshe also took over Shvernik's function as chairman of
the party's Control Commission. These actions marked another
setback for the moderates on the Politburo.* Kunayev, a
Brezhnev follower, and the Belorussian First Secretary
Masherov, an apparent Shelepin supporter and probably Mazuo-
rov's protege, became candidate members of the Politburo.
*Before the congress, in February, the moderates had
suffered another setback when A. Kochinyan replaced Ya.
Zarobyan as First Secretary in Armenia. A subsequent speech
by Kochinyan revealed that Zarobyan had been demoted for
opening party membership to the masses and recruiting tech-
nicians rather than political workers, as well as for poor
ideological leadership. Zarobyan had come from Kharkov
Oblast', Podgornyy's bailiwick, as had N. Sobol, dismissed
in March from his position as Ukrainian Second Secretary.
Both of these actions therefore represented a defeat for
Podgornyy, and the Armenian shake-up may also have marked
a defeat for Mikoyan, an Armenian who probably had had con-
siderable influence in personnel appointments in that
republic over the years.
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In other personnel actions during this period, Shelepin's
associate Khaldeyev was shifted from his position as
RSFSR Agitprop Chief to become the new editor of Partiynaya
Zhizn and G. Yenyutin, a long-time Brezhnev associate was
named Chairman of the RSFSR People's Control Commissions.
After the congress, there were a number of indications that
Shelepin had been assigned responsibility for light indus-
try matters, and from a meeting he attended the following
September, it appeared that Demichev had assumed Shelepin's
responsibility for supervising the Soviet security apparatus.
From these actions it would appear that the moderates-had
received a further setback as had Shelepin, but Shelepin
still had considerable strength juding from his ability
to keep his supporters in high-level posts.
Post-Congress Orthodoxy
Following the congress a number of speeches given
by party leaders indicated that the orthodox re-Stalinizing
line continued to prevail. At a Leningrad Oblast' meeting
early in April, Tolstikov delivered an only thinly veiled
warning:
The congress devoted attention also to3the
negative phenomena in the development of
literature and art. We also have been
having cases of lowered demandingness
toward the results of creative work here
in Leningrad. Such lack of demandingness
appears especially often in evaluating the
creative work of the young writers and this
has a negative effect on their creative
growth. Our creative organs should think
seriously about these facts.
And Brezhnev-supporter Kunayev, who had previously been
quite moderate, gave a dogmatic speech in May at a congress
of Kazakh writers. He called on writers to be in the fore-
front of the ideological struggle and to combat the challenge
of bourgeois propaganda, and he affirmed party leadership
of the arts. He did make several concessions to the
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moderate view, stating that writers could depict negative
aspects of life--but from a Communist position--and that
demands should not be made on writers to write on specific
subjects.
Demichev, in his May election speech, condemned
ideologically harmful works and linked them to foreign
propaganda which seeks to subvert Soviet society. This
line by now had become almost standard and is reminiscent
of the Stalinist concept of a sharpening class struggle.
There can be no dissent within the structure as envisioned;
therefore, any dissonance must be attributed to an aggres-
sive, alienkdeology. In the logical continuum of this
line, Demichev condemned brige building between East
and West. Subsequent extension of the line would lead
to the charge that dissident writers were in fact agents
of the West and should be tried for treasonous activity.
On 16 May Yepishev, head of the armed forces' politi-
cal administration, gave a dogmatic speech at a conference
on the indoctrination of youth. He reportedly called on
writers to show the greatness of the times instead of
questioning herioc legends. He praised the literature of
the Stalin era, and said that Stalin's reasons for sending
people to death or prison camps should be understood. He
then criticized both Noviy Mir and Yunost' for publishing
articles describing setbacks during the war and for paying
tribute to abstract humanism and pacifism.
Differences within the leadership on the Stalin
issue were reflected in the publication of contradictory
articles by the two highest-ranking military figures in
the Soviet Union in June 1966. Defense Minister Malinovskiy
wrote an article in Izvestiya on 23 June in which he men-
tioned neither the purge of military leaders before the
war nor mistakes on the part of Stalin. He attributed
the initial defeats to the enormous size of the attacking
forces which he said had been built up with the help of
Western imperialists. He emphasized the pre-war buildup
by the Soviet regime which, he said, saw the danger long
before the war, and he praised the party for strengthening
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the moral-political unity of the country.
In an article in-.the Jule'issue of the Military Histori-
cal Journal Marshal Andrey Grechko, First Deputy Minister
of De ense, bucked the prevailing line and returned to the
historiography of the Khrushchev era. He criticized Stalin
and charged ineptitude by "the highest military and political
leadership" on the eve of the war. He accused the regime of
underestimating the immediacy of the Nazi threats, and
stated that Stalin and his closest advisors--men at the head
of the Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff
(Timoshenko and Zhukov) "grossly miscalculated" the strategic
situation. He further asserted that decisions on major
defense problems were made by one man while responsible mil-
itary leaders "often enough supported and encouraged these
erroneous views." The use of this issue by Grechko may have
demonstrated his dissatisfaction with what he considered
the lackof: consideration being given strategic military
problems, and the willingness of some military men, for
example Malinovskiy, to go along with it. Grechko was to
change his emphasis on the Stalin issue considerably before
being named Defense Minister the following year.
A Shift In Positions
A debate on the subject of collectivity of leadership
versus individual responsiblity was carried on in the press
during the summer and fall of 1966. On 20 July a Pravda
article by F. Petrenko reaffirmed the principle of collec-
tive leadership and warned against the imposition of
individual power. On 8 August a Pravda editorial appeared
to respond to this by citing the need both to strengthen
party democracy and at the same time to develop a sense
*A Rude Pravo version of this article had apparently been
tailored to a e into account bloc sensitivities. In this
version, Malinovskiy referred to a series of grave mistakes
committed during the early stages of the war, asserted that
the USSR had a very limited time in which to prepare, and
cited shortages of planes, tanks, and artillery at the
start of the war.
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of responsibility and discipline. The editorial quoted
Lenin to the effect that "irresponsibility taking shelter
under references to collectiveness of work, is a most
dangerous evil,"
An article by Brezhnev-supporter Kunayev in Partiynaya
Zhizn? on 1 October supported the Pravda editorial. Kunayev
stressed the primacy of individual leadership, and he too
used the Lenin quotation. However, Georgian Second Secretary
P. Rodionov, in a Voprosy Istorii KPSS article reasserted
Petrenko's view and emphasized that ndividual leaders must
subordinate themselves to the collective. In this debate
the neo-Stalinists, represented by Petrenko and Rodionov,
demonstrated their fear that Brezhnev was acquiring too
much power. They resorted to the same argument used pre-
viously by the moderates--that there are dangers inherent
in the imposition of one-man rule and that the collectivity
of leadership must be preserved. The neo-Stalinists were
answered by the Brezhnev forces in the Pravda editorial
and Kunayev's article. The argument used y them was that
while collectivity is fine, it must not be used to cover up
irresponsibility, and that there must be individual responsi-
bility and discipline.
In August and September Izvestiya published two arti-
cles which strongly attacked Stalin and the personality cult.
The first article stated that Stalin had departed from the
norms of party life and had destroyed collectivity of leader-
ship. The second was even stronger in its denunciation of
Stalin; it accused him of overestimating his own services
and crudely violating collectivity. It charged that his
thesis that the class struggle was growing more and more
aggravated had led to crude violations of socialist
legality. These articles seem to have come from the
moderate side as they condemn the Stalinist theory of
intensifying class struggle, a term which was being resur-
rected by the neo-Stalinists. The Izvestiya articles do,
however, agree with the neo-Stalinist defenses of collec-
tive leadership mentioned above, and for good reason. The
moderates had been on the defensive for a long time and
they, too, feared Brezhnev's increasing strength. Thus,
the neo-Stalinists and the liberals had a common interest
in stopping Brezhnev.
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An indication that Shelepin's faction had cause to
be concerned about the strength of its position was the
identification of Shelepin in Nugust as secretary in charge
of consumer goods, a real come-down for him. In September
Shelepin lost another foothold in the security forces. A
new Ministry for the Protection of Public Order was estab-
lished with N. Shchelokov, a long-time Brezhnev associate,
appointed to head it. The logical appointee had been
V. Tikunov, a Shelepin associate, who had been serving as
chief of the RSFSR militia.
In November Brezhnev indicated his support for a
general rehabilitation of Stalin; in a speech in Tbilisi,
he again mentioned Stalin's name, this time including him
among a group of "ardent revolutionaries" who had led the
struggle for the revolution in Georgia. Thus, while the
neo-Stalinists were siding with the moderates on the
question of collective leadership, Brezhnev took the
Stalin issue an additional step. By further restoring
Stalin he could also restore the concept of one-man rule
to respectability and thereby legitimize his own drive
for increased power.
Pre-Congress Clamp-Down
The general shift to an increasingly hard-line
policy was reflected in a clamp-down on the intellectuals
in the first few months of 1966. In addition to the trial
of Daniel and Sinyavskiy and their sentencing to five and
seven years at hard labor respectively for the publication
of "anti-Soviet" works in the West, there were a number of
other arrests and trials. In early January, diplomatic
sources reported that a Soviet student had been sentenced
to seven years in prison as the alleged leader of
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51.1AK1, 1
approximately 250 Leningrad students who had secretly
published the magazine Kolokol (The Bell), the magazine
of "free thought." Eight others reportedly received
sentences ranging from two to five years. The group re-
portedly claimed that it was not anti-Communist, but was
opposed to Communism as practiced in the Soviet Union, and
was against what they considered the remnants of Stalinism.
Once again Leningrad was acting as the leader in implementing
a hard-line policy. In February the young poet Vladimir
Batshev was sentenced to five years exile in Siberia.
Accused of being a parasite, he was condemned for partici-
pation in the 5 December demonstration protesting the arrests
of Daniel and Sinyavskiy and for carrying on literary activ-
ities without being a member of the Union of Writers. Also
in February the writer Valeriy Tarsis was deprived of his
Soviet citizenship while traveling abroad.
The Soviet intellectuals reacted to the increasing
pressure with fear and courage. Just before the 23rd con-
gress convened on 29 March, 60 members of the USSR Union of
Writers sent a letter to the presidiums of the congress,
the USSR Supreme Soviet, and the RSFSR Supreme Soviet.* They
asked permission to stand surety for Daniel and Sinyavskiy.
While criticizing the publication of works abroad without
authorization, the signers stated that the trial of the
two writers had set a dangerous precedent and threatened
the progress of Soviet culture. They called for more
freedom, not its condemnation.
Also on the eve of the congress, a group of 25 in-
tellectuals sent a signed letter to Brezhnev, arguing
against any rehabilitation of Stalin at the congress.**
They mentioned tendencies in speeches and articles directed
at such a rehabilitation and stated that this caused them
deep apprehension. They said they had seen nothing which
would warrant thinking the original condemnation of the
personality cult was wrong; on the contrary, they maintained
*See Appendix Item B.
**See Appendix Item A.
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that many of the most horrifying facts about Stalin's
crimes had not yet been made public. They said that
there were many dangers involved in any rehabilitation
of Stalin, including serious dissensions in Soviet society.
. . . Stalin is responsible not only for the
destruction of countless innocent people,
for our unpreparedness for the war, for a
departure from the Leninist norms of party
and state life. His crimes and unjust deeds
also distorted the idea of Communism to such
an extent that our people will never forgive
him for this. Our people will not understand
and will not accept even a partial departure
from the decisions on the personality cult.
No one will be able to obliterate these de-
cisions from its consciousness and memory.
Any attempt to do so will lead only to con-
fusion and disarray in the broadest circles
. . No explanations or articles will make
people believe in Stalin again; on the contrary,
they will simply create disorder and anger.
To undertake anything like this is dangerous,
taking into account the complex economic and
political situation of our country.
The letter went on to describe another danger--that a
rehabilitation would pose a threat of a new split in the
world communist movement--between the Soviet Union and
the Communists in the West who would see this as a sur-
render to the Chinese. The letter closed by saying that
such a decision by the Central Committee could not be
regarded as routine--that it would have historic importance
for the destiny of the county.
In its March editorial Noviy Mir again defended
truth in literature and used Pravda's 26 February article
on the coming 23rd Congress to support its position. It
said that Pravda, which had in fact given limited attention
to the 20th Congress, had praised that congress for over-
coming the personality cult and for restoring Leninist
norms of party and state life, the observance of collectivity
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of leadership and intra-party democracy. Noviy Mir asserted,
optimistically, that the party was constantly strengthening
these things and was doing everything to avoid a repetition
of the violations of legality connected with the cult.
In obvious disfavor, Noviy Mir's editor-in-chief, Tvardov-
skiy was the only candidate or full member of the central
committee not elected a delegate to the congress.
The Congress and After
As noted above, the 23rd Congress did not formally
rehabilitate Stalin and, in fact, skirted the issue almost
entirely. However, most of the speeches which dealt with
culture were hard-line. This was true not only of the
leaders who spoke, but also of those members of the intel-
ligentsia itself who spoke. Mikhail Sholokhov gave one
of the most vicious speeches of all, stating that if
Daniel and Sinyavskiy had been caught in the 1920's they
would have received harsher judgment and that if anything
the sentences they received were too mild. One exception
to the general trend was a speech given by USSR Cultural
Minister Yekaterina Furtseva. While admitting that there
were shortcomings in the arts, she named no names and
called for friendly guidance. She said that the October
1964 plenum had gotten rid of the last vestiges of admin-
istrativeness in the arts and that in the new atmosphere
intellectuals could work calmly and assuredly.
The sycophants and hacks immediately picked up the
basically tough line projected at the congress. Both
Pravda, in an article by Literaturnaya Gazeta editor
Chakovskiy, and Literaturnaya Rossiya, in editorial,
attacked foreign propagandists for trying to frighten the
creative intelligentsia with the "spectre of Stalinism."
According to the latter paper
Our ideological opponents are trying again
to put an equal sign between the basic prin-
ciples of Soviet literature of socialist realism
and its party spirit and closeness to the people,
and the shortcomings connected with the cult
of personality . . . .
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The editorial also described as slanderous, claims that
Sholokhov's views on Daniel and Sinyavskiy were not shared
by other writers.
In April the literary journal Yunost' (Youth)
published a very self-critical editoria .
the Komsomol was trying to take over the journal
and the editorial represented the attempt to forestall this.
Yunost' had been sharply criticized at the congress. The
editorial recited conservative views on such topics as
positive heroes and the ideological content of writing, but
closed with a defiant statement:
Nobody and nothing hinders or can hinder all
the young and truly talented in the Soviet Union
from growing and developing. It is not for
nothing that the young in Soviet literature
blossomed particularly well in recent years.
Thus the editorial closed by implying that there had been
an upsurge in Soviet literature during the Khrushchev years
and that the writers were aware of this and would not tol-
erate repressive measures aimed at cutting off this growth.
In April, at a plenum of the Board of the RSFSR
Writers Union, a secretary of the union, M. Alekseyev,
defended the literature of the Stalin years and condemned
the "devastating term 'cult literature." He stated that
some people had gone too far in condemning the cult:
. . . Because of certain reasons, a good little
bit of confusion was brought into the under-
standing of history and the present day during
the last 10-12 years. The word 'great' related
not to the whole history of the'Soviet state but
only to the decade which began approximately in
1953. It was suggested that this period should
define the concept of the present day while
events which happened earlier were not history.
. . . Since in a certain part of this history
there developed an ugly phenomenon, which was
unnatural for our society and which at the
20th Party Congress was named the 'cult of
personality', our ideological opponents did
not fail to use this to blacken our revolution
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and to cast aspersions on Soviet real life
as a whole. As regards Soviet literature,
despite the obvious facts which we cited
above, it was simply declared non-existent.
Alekseyev praised several of Konstantin Simonov's war
novels, but stated that he could not accept everything in
them, specifically the idea that some heroes operated
during the war with doubts which they could not possibly
have had until after the 20th Party Congress. In other
words Alekseyev was claiming that nobody knew of Stalin's
crimes until they were revealed by Khrushchev in 1956.
Various articles published in the spring demonstrated
the prevalence of a conservative trend. For example, in
its lead editorial in May, Voprosy Istorii KPSS criticized
false portrayals of the cult period, and cited the influence
of subjectivism and voluntaristic mistakes. It said that
there were still instances where "under the guise of crit-
icism of the cult of personality, the work of our party
and people in the construction of socialism was belittled."
On 7 May a Pravda article conceded that the period of the
cult of personality had been linked with serious perversions
and mistakes in the work of state security, but claimed
that this did not change the socialist nature of Soviet
intelligence and counterintelligence.
Pressure also continued to be exerted on the intel-
lectuals. In May the writer Igor Galamchok was given a
suspended sentence for having refused to testify at the
Daniel-Sinyavskiy trial. In July 1965, 40 Ukrainian
intellectuals had reportedly been arrested for national-
istic activities. Open trials for some of these were held
in January and February 1966, but because of protest demon-
strations open trials were discontinued. In April a closed
trial was held, but three intellectuals managed to attend.
Two of them, Ivan Dzyuba and Ivan Drach, later started a
campaign to obtain signatures for a petition, pleading for
the release of those tried. This was the beginning of a
series of arrests and trials in the Ukraine which would
increase in number and intensity in the next few years.
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A Frightened Response
Clearly frightened by the prevailing trend, and
possibly encouraged by what they may have considered to be
the success of their previous letter pleading that Stalin
not be rehabilitated, liberal intellectuals continued to
protest. Lidiya Chukovskaya addressed a letter to Mikhail
Sholokhov, which was subsequently smuggled to the West,
condemning him for his congress speech. A number of other
letters protesting the Daniel-Sinyavskiy trial were also
written during this period and smuggled out. In one of
these, written by A. Yakobson, the statement appears that
the works of the two men were not anti-Soviet, but were
"against Stalinism, its survivals and all attempts to revive
it in our society."
Several articles appeared during the summer which
revealed continued intransigeance on the part of even pub-
lished writers. In the Armenian paper Kommunist, Bagish
Ovsepyan wrote an article in which he reported glowingly
on the 23rd congress, saying it had guaranteed once again
that there would be no return to lawlessness and that it
was a worthy successor to the 20th and 22nd congresses.
His description bore little resemblance to the real thing.
In an Izvestiya article on 21 July, Konstantin Simonov
stated that it was worth repeating that had it not been
for the purges, the USSR would have faced Hitler with
many more commanders. On 22 July Literaturnaya Rossiya
carried another Simonov article which contained implicit
criticism of Zhdanov. On 30 July Tvardovskiy wrote a
letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta in which he rejected crit-
icism of the staging of his p ay "Terkin in the Other World"
at the Satire Theater which had been closed at the end of
June. The editors of the paper accompanied Tvardovskiy's
letter with the statement that his evaluation was one-sided.
The play was performed once more--in mid-August, but there-
after disappeared from the theater's repertoire.
In August Noviy Mir published an article which was to
cause considerable controversy in the months ahead. The
article was by V. Lakshin, an editor of the journal, and
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was entitled, "Writer, Reader, Critic." In it Lakshin
praised works by Solzhenitsyn and Semin which had previ-
ously been criticized, and again presented Noviy Mir's
case for truth in literature. This article was subse-
quently attacked by both Literaturnaya Gazeta and
Literaturnaya Rossiya; both Lakshin and the journal itself
were criticized. This was the start of an intense campaign
against Noviy Mir which would continue into the following
year.
Re-Stalinizing Is Pushed
The prevalence of an orthodox line during and after
the December 1965 plenum was reflected in the appearance
in early 1966 of numerous articles glossing over Stalin's
errors and crimes. The focus of attention had shifted,
however, from Stalin's wartime role to more general policies
and achievements of the Stalin years, with the policy of
collectivization receiving the most attention. This indi-
cated that Trapeznikov's October 1965 instructions were
being followed.
Sel'skaya Zhizn', in a 29 December 1965 article
attacked those who assert that conditions were not right
for collectivization in the 1930's and who concentrate on
the negative features of collectivization, ignoring all
that was progressive. The article admitted that errors
had been committed early in the process of collectivization,
but minimized their seriousness; it spread the responsibility
among local, oblast, and central organs, and failed to crit-
icize Stalin at all. In fact, the article praised as
"courageous fighters for the triumph of Lenin's cause"
Ith.ose who stood "at the source of the construction of
the kolkhozes;" this can certainly be read as indirect
praise of Stalin.
This theme was further advanced by F. Vaganov in
a February Kommunist article, and by S. Kaplan in Pravda
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Ukrainy on 14 February. Kaplan even used a Stalinist
argument to explain early difficulties in collectiviza-
tion. He said that the policy had been accompanied by
a sharpening of the class struggle in a country encircled
by capitalist states. He did mildly criticize Stalin's
"inclination" to be hasty and "overly decretory" but
clearly minimized the importance of this factor.
Evidence that the January article in Pravda, in
which the three historians urged that the term "period
of the personality cult" be renounced, was being taken
seriously can be seen in two articles which appeared in
early 1966. In late February Sel'skaya Zhizn stated that
criticism of collectivization could no Fe justified by
references to the subjectivist term "period of the person-
ality cult." Similarly, a 12 March Pravda Ukrainy article
criticized the use of this term, stating that its use
had led to the detraction of Soviet achievements.
Another indication of the prevalence of a con-
servative line was the halt. in the rehabilitation program.
From January through April Voprosy Istorii KPSS again sus-
pended its rehabilitations and on the eve of the congress
the section of the journal which had included such articles
was eliminated. In December the U.S. Embassy in Moscow
reported a trend in Soviet writing to concede that the
Stalin cult had been regrettable, but had been an aberration
unrelated to the system's basic structure. The embassy
cited several poems emphasizing the need to stress the
positive, including one stating that youths who have heard
about special camps, the Kirov murder, and so forth, should
balance such a "momentary bit of offal" against the stride
of the century.
A somewhat ominous indicator of the trend was
Oktyabr's publication in March of an article referring to
Boris Kedrov as a son and brother of "enemies of the people,"
Kedrov's father had been one of the first rehabilitations
after Stalin's death, and Stalin's term "enemies of the
people" had been specifically condemned by Khrushchev in
his secret speech.
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Exceptions to Rule; Nekrich Book Debate
There were exceptions to the generally hard-line
emphasis in early 1966, but for the most part these came
from the most intransigeant and liberal journals. Noviy
Mir, for example, continued to publish anti-Stalinist items.
In January it carried a review of A. Nekrich's book 22 June
1941, which had been published in 1965 and by now was very
controversial. The book had been highly critical of Stalin
for his handling of the prewar situation, and the review
also charged Stalin with grave errors, and stated that those
who arrested and persecuted Marshal Tukhachevskiy and his
comrades must have known that they were innocent.
In February 1966 a meeting was held to discuss the
Nekrich book and to determine the propriety of the book's
condemnation of Stalin.* Participants in the conference
included people from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism,
the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, the
foreign ministry and the armed forces. G. Deborin, later
identified as head of the editorial board at the Institute
of Marxism-Leninism, opened the meeting by criticizing the
book for what he considered a number of incorrect evaluations
and facts. He argued that Soviet unpreparedness at the
start of the war was not primarily due to Stalin's stub-
bornness, but was the result of various factors including
misinformation. He attacked Nekrich's implication that
Stalin, Voroshilov, Budennyy, Blyukher, and others had
known of the innocence of the Tukhachevskiy-Yakir group,
but had condemned them nonetheless. Throughout this talk,
there were numerous shouts from the floor, and when Deborin
attempted to pay tribute to the honor and conscience of
Budennyy and Voroshilov, he was shouted off the rostrum.
A number of people then spoke and disputed Deborin's
statements, putting the blame for military unpreparedness
*This account is based on notes taken by a participant
at the meeting and eventually made available to the U.S.
Embassy. A similar transcript was published by Posev.
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Stalin bears the main responsibility for
the tragedy. He created the situation in
the country. Stalin's biggest crime was
usurpation of power and destruction of our
best military and Party cadres . . . Now
there are still people who say that Stalin
must not be spoken of badly. They say he
was not alone . . . . Stalin assumed the
boldness of independently leading the
country and his guilt is tremendous. It
is necessary to speak of this so that it
not be repeated.
This speaker then went on to discuss the trial of the
Tukhachevskiy-Yakir group, stating that the "fraud was
prepared by the Gestapo, but the idea came from Stalin,"
Another speaker provided an example of the kind of
statement probably most feared by the hierarchy; he criti-
cized those around Stalin, who had not stopped him.
Each is guilty, but the degree of guilt
varies. One is guilty in that he decided
not to say what he was thinking. The
further and the higher, the greater the
responsibility. At each level rejection
of truth for the sake of personal well-
being is a crime, and the higher the level,
the more serious the crime. The main
culprit is Stalin.
At the end of this meeting there was an exchange
betwen Deborin and a man named Snegov, who said that Stalin
should have been shot, not exonerated. Snegov charged that
Stalin had helped Hitler in every way, especially in the
invasion of Poland, because he had shot all the Polish
Communists in the Soviet Union and had declared the Polish
Communist Party illegal; he then stated that Stalin had
betrayed all communists in all countries. At that point
Deborin accused Snegov of saying things that "come from a
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camp hostile to us," and he asked Snegov to what camp he
belonged. Snegov's reply was, "I am from Kolyma."* Snegov
closed by stating that
you can't frighten us with camps.
We will not be intimidated. The time
is different, and the past will not
return . . . .
Snegov's optimism was not supported by subsequent events.
In July 1967, Nekrich, the author of the book under discus-
sion, was to be expelled from the party as an example to
those who do not conform with the party line.
There were several other instances of intransigeance
on the part of the liberals in early 1966. In February
Noviy Mir carried an article by V. Kardin which was to
have repercussions for months to come. Kardin stated that
since the 20th congress there had been a strong desire to
"drink from the river named fact," but that historians and
memoirealists faced numerous obstacles--including the
opposition of those who disagree with the restoration of
historical truth. The other major liberal journal Yunost',
in January, published for the first time in the Soviet Union,
the text of a letter of Lenin's which was written in March
1923 and in which he upbraided Stalin for the latter's
rude treatment of Nadezhda Krupskaya, and demanded either
an apology from Stalin or the "severance of relations
between us." The existence and contents of this letter
as well as the quarrel itself had been described in an
article in Pravda in 1964, but the text itself had never
been published before.
There were several other anti-Stalinist articles
before the congress. In March, for example, Voprosy Istorii
KPSS published an article by A. Solov'yev which was very
critical of Stalin's 1922 position on the nationalities
issue (which had amounted to forced incorporation). Solov'-
yev stated that this concept had "conflicted with the ideas
of equality and independence of fraternal Soviet republics."
*One of the forced labor camps under Stalin.
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He described Lenin's oppostion to this proposal, and
stated that Lenin had favored strengthening both the union
of republics and the sovereignty of each republic, and
had warned of the dangers of extreme centralism.
Post-Congress: Pro-Stalin Line Dominates
The conservative impression given by the congress
was picked up and reinforced in various articles and speeches
in the spring of 1966. At the Writers Union Congress inn
April, union secretary Alekseyev scoffed at those who refer
to the battle of Stalingrad as the battle of Volgograd,
stating that there was no such battle. Similarly, he
scoffed at those who try to ignore the fact that Stalin
was the supreme commander during the whole war. And
Kalashnik, deputy to Yepishev at the armed forces politi-
cal administration, criticized those who sometimes place
the blame for the failures and difficulties at the start
of the war on one figure--Stalin. While he admitted that
the lawlessness and some errors played a certain negative
role, he emphasized other factors such as the military and
economic superiority of fascism which at that time had the
benefit of the resources of almost the entire continent,
and the fact that many Soviet troops had to be maintained
in the East in case Japan entered the war.
On 9 May an. j?article by Deborin, who had participated
in the attack on Nekrich's book in February, appeared in
Pravda. In this review of a history of Soviet foreign
policy from 1917-1945, Deborin stated that despite the
desire of the Soviet Union to conclude a collective secur-
ity pact with Britain and France in 1939, the Soviet Union
"was forced to accept the German proposal for signing a
non-aggression pact." He blamed this situation on the
British and Americans who, he said, preferred to make a
deal with the fascists.
In addition to articles glossing over wartime diffi-
culties, articles restoring Stalin's image in other areas
also appeared. In May Oktyabr' attacked Zalygin's Na Irtyshe
for portraying collectivization one-sidedly and for exag-
gerating the influence of the cult of personality on this
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tiEuK 1
great historical event. In June Izvestiya included Stalin
on a list of those who played a major role in speeding up
industrialization. In July an article in Mezhdunarodnaya
Zhizn' presented a favorable picture of Stalin at the
Potsdam negotiations in July 1945.
In July Oktyabr' carried several very hard-line
articles. In one of these Strokov, in typical fashion,
launched an attack on that great Khrushchevian sin--
,-subjectivism--and described how that insidious quality
manifests itself:
. . Subjectivism may appear in the
modernization of history and then a man,
let us say from the 1940's, begins to think
like a 'prophet', anticipating the party
in condemning the cult of personality . . . .
Subjectivism can incidentally 'reappraise'
crucial historical events--and then it turns
out that kolkhoz construction from the very
beginning even to this day was a 'fatal
mistake.' Yielding to the widespread
fashion -to portray mainly our failures in
the first stages of the Great Patriotic
War--subjectivism will dismally concentrate
on the 'horrors' of our 'defeats,' even
when a gradiose attack by the Soviet armies
is under way, and ardently will expose the
commanders as 'fools' and the sinister
'osobisty' (KGB).
In the same issue, A. Dymshits attacked the concept of
abstract humanism,* stating that it is impossible to
approach in terms of abstract humanism such policies as
war communism and collectivization, because it must not
be forgotten that despite hard times progress was always
being made.
*Also a favorite target of the Chinese.
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On 21 July Kazakhstanskaya Pravda attempted to
shift blame for the excesses in collectivization to local
officials, stating that the central committee had cau-
tioned local organization against artificially forcing the
rate of collectivization. This article, coming from the
republic headed by Brezhnev-supporter Kunayev suggested
that he probably sanctioned this approach and, therefore,
felt that Brezhnev approved. A 17 August Pravda article
also criticized those who argue that collectivization had
to be imposed from above. It said that while the party
did not wait for the development of a material-technical
base, this base had been developed simultaneously.
Liberals Fight Back
Coincident with a brief upsurge in other areas of
the cultural community, probably a combination of fear at
the prevailing hard-line and relief because Stalin had
not been formally rehabilitated, a number of anti-Stalin
articles were published in the spring and summer of 1966.
First of all there was a sharp upsurge in the rehabilitation
program in May. Most interesting were two articles in
Izvestiya, which had not carried rehabilitation articles
since May 1965.* One article stated that the historian
V. Nevskiy was arrested in February 1935 on false charges
and two years later was dead; the other was about the
UZ-bek leader, F. Khodzhayev** and mentioned only his
"tragic" death in 1938. Other articles appeared in
Literaturnaya Rossiya and Kommunist Estonii on purge
victims, and th-e Military History Journa carried an
article which stated tha T Fe personalty cult had
harmed strategic theory because of the unjust reprisals
against many who were best trained in military theory,
including Tukhachevskiy.
*Pravda had halted its rehabilitation articles after
Rumyantsev was replaced in September 1965.
**Khodzhayev was executed in 1938 after his confession at
the last of the big show trials. Only two other people
who were involved in any of the three big trials, A. Ikramov
and N. Krestinskiy, have been rehabilitated.
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For the first time since December 1965 Voprosy
Istorii KPSS carried items on purge victims, although it
now used a very conservative format. It mentioned Nevskiy
and Kirov, but mentioned neither the purge of the former
nor the assassination of the latter. Furthermore, the May
issue carried an article which indirectly provided justi-
fication for the purges, by stating that the struggle with
the`"enemies of Leninism" had been instrumental in preventing
differences within the party during the war. The article
also criticized subjective errors which led to the deprecation
of the party and people under the guise of criticizing the
cult of personality.
After May the rehabilitations again dropped off,
although the provincial press continued to be stubborn.`
Those articles which did appear carefully skirted any men-
tion of the purges. For example, an article noting the
death of R. Katanyan and signed by Anastas Mikoyan gave
Katanyan's career until 1938 with no further elaboration.
On 24 August Izvestiya discussed the events of 1935 and
1936, and mentioned talin only once--when he was held
responsible for "violations of socialist legality" which
did not alter the nature of the system. On 21 July Izvestiya
had carried an article by Konstantin Simonov in which he
cited the grave harm done the military by the purges.
Throughout this period Izvestiya was consistently more
moderate on the Stalin and cultural issues than was Pravda,
perhaps a reflection of the government-party rivalry--i.e.,
Kosygin's relative moderation compared to Brezhnev's
orthodox views.
*Bakinskiy Rabochiy on 7 June carried an article on a
former First Secretary of Azerbaydzhan, stating that his
life was "tragically cut short" in 1938. A 14 July article
in Kommunist Tadzhikistan carried the same wording on
Rakhin ayev. In August Kommunist Armenia published an
article on Marshal Gay, calling him one of the outstanding
Armenian officers "ruined by slander during the years of
the personality cult." The same issue published an item
on the poet Vartanyan, closing with
. . . in 1937 the storm cloud, which was hanging
over many persons also touched even the Communist
poet Azasi Vartanyan.
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In July 1966 the Outline History of the Moscow
Party Organization was signed to the press. While tfie
history placed the blame for excesses in collectivization
on local officials and praised Stalin's 1930 article "Dizzy
With Success" for having stressed the impermissibility of
using force to carry out collectivization it came down sur-
prisingly hard on the crimes of Stalin. It criticized the
crude violations of Leninist norms and principles
of party life and socialist legality, the
willfulness and misuse of power, and the mass
repressions against completely innocent Soviet
people, engendered by the cult of Stalin's
personality.
According to the history, Stalin deserved authority, but
after the 17th congress he had begun to violate Leninist
norms, and at the February-March 1937 plenum advanced the
mistaken thesis that as socialism strengthens the class
struggle intensifies:
This was said at a time when the exploiting
classes were already liquidated . . . . This
assertion served as a theoretical basis for
illegal represscibnsr; against honest Soviet
people. Enormous harm was caused to the
party and the whole people by the political
adventurists Yezhov and Beria, who subjected
many honest officials to unjustified repressions.
This particular history also treated Khrushchev
fairly kindly, quoting from a 1963 speech by him in which
he stated that there would have been even worse repressions
if everyone had agreed--implying that he and others had
stood up to Stalin. The history stated that in general
party organs were improved in Moscow after a December 1949
plenum; it was at that plenum that Khrushchev became first
secretary of the oblast. It is not at all clear who was
responsible for the publication of this history. Moscow
city and oblast' leaders Yegorychev and Konotop were at
this time pushing a much harder line than that suggested
in the history. For example, while presenting a "balanced"
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view in some respects, the history cited shortcomings in
the party in the 1940's, stating that there was not the
proper struggle against dogmatism.
Noviy Mir continued to resist the re-Stalinizing
pressure, as did several other journals. In August, for
example, Noviy Mir published an article criticizing the
1938 decision oT Stalin and Vyshinskiy to declare subsidiary
activities of kolhkozes illegal. This particular issue is
still very much alive in the Soviet Union now, with the
pragmatists supporting such activities. Several articles
critical of Stalin's handling of collectivization were
published in the spring and summer. The Ukrainian Historical
Journal published two on the subject, one in April and one
in JuNy. The articles denied that Stalin's article "Dizzy
With Success" had ended excesses in the countryside, attrib-
uting this instead to the work of Ukrainian party organi-
zations. One of the articles stated that excessive haste
and violations of the principle of voluntariness were among
the biggest errors in the beginning of collectivization.
In the summer of 1966 a meeting was held at the
Institute of Marxism-Leninism to discuss the third volume
of the History of the CPSU, which covered the period from
March 1917-March . The meeting was chaired by Pospelov,
chairman of the institute and chief editor of the volume,
and was attended by a group of Old Bolsheviks. Pospelov,
in opening the meeting, described the difficulties in
compiling the volume, stating that it had been necessary
to overcome the "subjective layers which had been written
in the previous ten years."
Following Pospelov's remarks a number of Old
Bolsheviks rose to criticize the history and denounce
Stalin. Several speakers attacked the praise given Stalin's
official history, The Short Course, in the volume. One
speaker claimed that he had spoken with Brezhnev protege
Trapeznikov, head of the scientific and educational insti-
tution about this in April 1966, and that Trapeznikov had
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said he did not agree with the editorial board on this
and that he would give corresponding instructions. The
speaker stated that he would like to know why this had
not been done .
Several speakers then rose to challenge Stalin's
performance as a revolutionary. Numerous specific charges
were made, including the statement that Stalin had been no
better than Trotskiy. One speaker stated that Stalin and
Voroshilov had wiped out many loyal military specialists,
and another said that Stalin had fabricated charges against
Lenin's closest workers. A man named Snegov, possibly the
same man who had participated in the debate on the Nekrich
book,* launched perhaps the strongest attack:
It is said that one man cannot change as much
as an entire army. Stalin proved that more
could be destroyed by one man than by a whole
army. He destroyed millions of people . . . .
Affectionate mothers are defending the child
Stalin is every way possible . . . . The thing
boils down to the fact that some counted on .
having the 23rd Congress rehabilitate Stalin.
That didn't happen and it won't happen! . . .
The 23rd Congress confirmed once again the
lines of the 20th and 22nd Congresses. There
is no return to the times of Stalin.
An old Bolshevik named Zorin attacked the methods of
the meeting, charging that the previous day some young
historians had not been permitted in the room. He charged
that documents were hidden, and said that it must be re-
vealed how Leninist norms had been perverted by Stalin:
Your conception is the conception of the Chinese
leaders. You stand together with the bourgeois
falsifiers. The history of the Party must not
justify the perversions. You wrote that Trotsk.iy
tried to replace Leninism with Trotskiyism, but
you remain quiet about Stalin's having replaced
Leninism with Stalinism. Now will the young
people believe you; can they believe lies?
*See page 58 for further discussion,
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At the end of the meeting there were various com-
ments from those who had helped frame the history. Bugayev,
the head of the commission, said that in writing the history
it was necessary to be guided by the decisions of the cen-
tral committee on 30 June 1956. At this there were shouts
that the 22nd Congress had declared Stalin a criminal and
that this congress had not been abrogated. When Pospelov
spoke and tried to maintain that Stalin's role had been
mostly positive during this period, he was interrupted by
shouts that he stop falsifying history.* Publication of
this volume of the history was very slow; it finally appeared
in October 1967 and its publication was accompanied by a
Pravda article, whose re-Stalinizingtone indicated that the
efforts of the Old Bolsheviks had failed.
Leadership Shift Reflected in Stalin Issue
In September and October, Pravda Ukrainy, which for
several years had published neo-Stalinist articles, carried
a two-part article by G. Kikalov which evaluated the Stalin
cult more critically than it had in the past. While he made
the usual calls for emphasis on positive achievements and
ignored the question of excesses in collectivization and
the purges, Kikalov said that sometimes "arbitrary admin-
istrativeness was condoned," principles of free exchange
of opinion were violated, and objective truth suffered
as a result. He said that while it was only natural that
people respected Stalin, who had properly fought the
Trotskiyites and rightists, Stalin had begun to manifest
some negative traits; he began to think of himself as in-
fallible, made theoretical errors, and ignored collective
leadership. It would appear that publication of this
article in this neo-Stalinist journal was part of the
campaign being started at this time by the Shelepin
*The original account of this meeting was carried in
the underground journal Feniks 66, whose publisher Yuriy
Galanskov was sentenced to 5 years in a labor camp in
January 1968. The shortened version of the meeting was
carried in the April issue of Survey, a London-based
quarterly journal of Soviet an East European studies.
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faction. Their target was Brezhnev, who they feared was
gaining too much strength and their weapon was the Stalin
issue--pointing out the consequences that can flow fro
the concentration of power in the hands of one man. fin
general, neo-Stalinist attacks on Stalin concentrate on
the abuses of collective leadership through the accumulation
of power in the hands of a single man, whereas moderate
anti-Stalin attacks include charges of repression and
criticism of the purges.
On 1 November Brezhnev made his adoption of the
re-Stalinizing policy complete when he referred to Stalin
as an "ardent revolutionary. This line was echoed rapidly
by various publications. On 6 November an Izvestiya chron-
icle of Lenin's activities in November 1917 listed Stalin
among those consulted by Lenin during the critical days
of armed uprising in Moscow. The November issue of
Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta credited Stalin as well as Lenin
with authoring the regime:'s November 1917 declaration--.of
the rights of nationalities. And Komsomolskaya Pravda on
6 November, published exerpts from Theodore Dresser's
1928 book Dreiser Looks at Russia, in which he treated
Stalin as a dedicated nationa eader and as a revolutionary
figure concerned with the fate of humanity and the individual.
Indications that a further step toward the neo-
Stalinist position had been taken at the December 1965
plenum were substantiated in early 1966. A January Pravda
article instructed historians to stop referring to the
term period of the cult of personality and to take a
positive view of the Stalin era. A similar article
appeared shortly thereafter in a Moldavian paper, in-
structing propagandists of the correct view to take on
the cult. The trial of Daniel and Sinyavskiy in February,
as well as the arrests of several other young intellectuals,
indicated the start of an actively repressive policy
toward dissident intellectuals.
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The decision to proceed with the trial of Daniel
and Sinyavskiy and to impose harsh sentences must have
been made by the Presidium, as the implications of this
decision were important enough to warrant high-level
consideration. Of the twelve members of the Presidium,
at least seven must have supported the measure. Kosygin
reportedly opposed it, Mikoyan presumably opposed it, and
Podgornyy, in this subsequent statement at the congress
that cultural matters should be dealt with through legis-
lation, indicated that he would have opposed it. Suslov,
Shelepin, Mazurov, and Shelest almost certainly supported
the decision. Brezhnev must therefore have given his
support and have taken with him the votes of at least two
of the following--Kirilenko, Polyanskiy, Voronov, and
Shvernik.
several pre-congress regional party meetings, high-level
spokesmen indicated their support of a hard-line. Among
those who expressed neo-Stalinist viewpoints were Masherov
of Belorussia, Shelestof the Ukraine, and the First Secre-
tary of Moldavia, Bodyul, who at one time may have served
under Brezhnev in Moldavia. Leningrad chief Tolstikov
urged that party influence on the creative intellectuals
be strengthened. The most strident tones came from
Georgia, where party secretary Sturua used the term cos-
mopolitanism, which under Stalin had been an anti-Semitic
charge used to justify repression of the intellectuals;
Georgian First Secretary Mzhavanadze also gave a hard-
line speech.
In addition, many articles which were written
during this period, particularly on the subject of -'I
collectivization, reflected a coordinated policy of rehabil-
itating Stalin and his policies. Particularly ominous
were the Stalinist terms which were resurrected. In
addition to Sturua?s use of the term cosmopolitanism,
a February article on collectivization referred favorably
to Stalin's long-discredited theory of the sharpening
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of the class struggle in the 1930's. And in February,
the neo-Stalinist journal Oktyabr' referred to two
rehabilitated purge victims as enemies of the people.
This term had been condemned by Khrushchev in his
secret speech.
When it opened in late March 1966, the 23rd Congress
proved to be somewhat anticlimactic. Stalin was not rehabil-
itated and the only remaining vestige of a rehabilitation
plan was the symbolic restoration of the terms Politburo
and General Secretary. It seems likely that the decision
not to proceed with public and formal rehabilitation was
based on the violent reactions to the proposal, both at
home and abroad. Various communist parties had indicated
disagreement and the rumors had brought a frightened response
from Soviet intellectuals, a group of whom bravely sent a
letter of protest to Brezhnev urging that Stalin not be
rehabilitated.
II/Brezhnev emerged from the 23rd congress as clearly
the first among equals; his acquisition of the title
General Secretary had clearly strengthened his position.
Although this was primarily a symbolic victory, it nonethe-
less served to set him apart from his colleagues and estab-
lish him as Stalin's legitimate heir. The fact that
Brezhnev was the beneficiary of the policy of re-Stalinizing
supports the view that he had supported the policy. However,
a number of speakers at the congress, including Yegorychev
and Moscow Oblast' First Secretary Konotop, gave much
tougher speeches than that given by Brezhnev. Thus it
would seem that in spite of Brezhnev's support of much
of the neo-Stalinist position, pressure for even more
repressive measures was being exerted by members of the
neo-Stalinist faction.
Personnel changes made at the congress indicated
that the moderates were continuing to lose ground. Mikoyan
and Shvernik were dropped from the Politburo and Suslov
associate Pelshe, the First Secretary of Latvia, was
added. In addition Brezhnev-protege Kunayev, the First
Secretary of Kazakhstan, and neo-Stalinist Masherov,
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the First Secretary of Belorussia, became candidate
members of the Politburo. However, Shelepin was
apparently assigned responsibility for light
industry at the congress--a clear set-back for him
also. Thus, the net gainer was Brezhnev.
In the months immediately after the congress, a
conservative line prevailed, but the more extreme neo-
Stalinist statements virtually ceased. Furthermore,
while the intellectuals continued to write letters pro-
testing the Daniel-Sinyavskiy trials and the generally
orthodox line, they must have felt a certain amount of
relief at the failure of the congress to rehabilitate
Stalin. In addition, they might have felt that the
retreat by the leadership on this issue had been brought
about by their protests, a belief which might have en-
couraged them to draft further protests. Thus, still
frightened by the prevailing conservative line, but
hopeful that things might change, the liberals appa-
rently decided to press ahead. In May there was a
resurgence of rehabilitations and during the spring and
summer a number of articles were published criticizing
Stalin for his role in collectivization.
This liberal push was soon halted, however; the
rehabilitations ended by summer and articles critical
of Stalin were quickly outnumbered by articles exonerat-
ing him. As the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow
approached, Stalin's military image was further improved,
and prewar miscalculations and errors were increasingly
rationalized. One exception to this was a June article
by Marshal Grechko, reportedly a Brezhnev man, in which
he attacked Stalin and charged the prewar leadership,
both political and military, with ineptitude. The pur-
pose of this article may have been to stress the need
for,}more emphasis on contemporary military defenses;
he may well have been annoyed by the adoption at the
May plenum of an emormous agricultural program. Grechko's
point may have been that the military should not be
slighted and his method was to show the disastrous
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results of ignoring military needs.
Friction in the leadership continued throughout
the summer. This was most interestingly demonstrated in
a debate which took place in the press during the summer
and fall. Several articles were written by neo-Stalinists,
stressing the importance of collective leadership and
warning against the dangers inherent in the imposition of
one-man rule. An article in the neo-Stalinist journal
Pravda Ukrainy criticized Stalin's tendency to think of
himself as 1-nTallible and to ignore collective leadership.
These articles revealed the concern felt by the Shelepin
faction over their leader's decline and Brezhnev's growing
strength.
The apprehension of the neo-Stalinists was shared
by the liberals who also had a vested interest in pre-
venting Brezhnev from acquiring further power. During
the. summer two articles in Izvestiya also defended col-
lective leadership strongly. Izvestiya, the government
paper, had been consistently moderate during the period,
possibly reflecting Kosygin's views. These articles defend-
ing collective leadership, which used the Stalin issue,
suggested that Kosygin and the moderates were also very
uneasy about Brezhnev's growing strength.
These attacks by both moderates and neo-Stalinists
on Brezhnev's position, were answered fairly quickly. A
Pravda editorial and an article by Brezhnev protege Kunayev
both emphasized the need for responsibility and discipline,
and quoted Lenin to the effect that irresponsibility must
not be allowed to hide under references to collectivity;
Kunayev also stressed the primacy of individual leadership.
Furthermore, on 1 November,, Brezhnev pushed even further
the issue of Stalin. By referring to Stalin as an "ardent
revolutionary", he reinforced his own claim to be Stalin's
heir and by implication defended the concept of one-man
rule.
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DECEMBER 1965
CPSU PRESIDIUM
Full Members
BREZHNEV
KIRILENKO
KOSYGIN
MAZUROV
MIKOYANI
PODGORNYY
POLYANSKIY
SHELEPIN
SHELEST
SHVERNIKI
SUSLOV
VORONOV
DEMICHEV
GRISHIN
MZHAVANADZE
RASHIDOV
SHCHERBITSKIY2
USTINOV
YEFREMOV'
ANDROPOV
BREZHNEV
DEMICHEV
KAPITONOV2
KULAKOV3
PODGORNYYI
PONOMAREV
RUDAKOV
SHELEPIN
SUSLOV
USTINOV
APRIL 1966
CPSU POLITBURO
Full Members
BREZHNEV
KIRILENKO
KOSYGIN
MAZUROV
PELSHE4
PODGORNYY
POLYANSKIY
SHELEPIN
SHELEST
SUSLOV
VORONOV
DEMICHEV
GRISHIN
KUNAYEV4
MASHEROV4
MZHAVANADZE
RASHIDOV
SHCHERBITSKIY
USTINOV
ANDROPOV
BREZHNEV
DEMICHEV
KAPITONOV
KULAKOV
PONOMAREV
RUDAKOV5
SHELEPIN
SUSLOV
USTINOV
Dropped in April 1966. 3. Elected September 1965.
2. Elected in December 1965. 4. Elected in April 1966.
SECRET 5.. Died in July 1966.
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NEO-STALINIST LINE ADOPTED
The 50th Anniversary Year
November 1966-December 1967
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Hard Line Dominates; Dissension Continues
Following Brezhnev's indication in early November
that he favored further restoration of Stalin's name, a
number of leaders rushed to follow suit. Azerbaydzhan
First Secretary Akhundov, Armenian First Secretary Kochinyan,
and, of course, Georgian First Secretary Mzhavanadze all
mentioned Stalin favorably in February 1967. In the last
two months of 1966 both Shelest and Yegorychev once again
expressed their typically neo-Stalinist views, indicating
that this neo-Stalinist faction continued to push. In a
speech at the Fifth Ukrainian Writers Congress, Shelest
called for more vigilance and militance toward the enemy.
He stated that if the enemy praised you, you must have made
a political mistake, According to Pravda Ukrainy, Shelest
recalled the 1965 central committee decree criticizing
Khar'kov Oblast' (Podgornyy's old domain) and indicated
that there were still shortcomings there, a clear slap at
Podgornyy. On 6 December Yegorychev spoke on the occasion
of the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow; he had
only praise for Stalin's role.
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During this period there continued to be articles on
the subject of collective leadership and criticism within
the party. The most significant of these was a March article
by Petrenko in Voprosy Istorii KPSS. Petrenko argued that
collective leadership and a scientific approach help prevent
but cannot exclude serious mistakes and that Lenin had con-
sidered honest acknowledgement and correction of mistakes
as a sign of the seriousness of the party, its moral
strength, and its ability to implement revolutionary,
reorganizations. For example:
The frank, bold statement on the serious
mistakes and distortions, committed as a
result of the personality cult of Stalin,
which was made by our party at its own
initiative can serve as an example of
:-resolute criticism and self-criticism.
The 20th Party Congress resolutely sub-
jected these mistakes to fundamental
criticism. The party began step by step
to correct them . . . .
Petrenko stated that every party member has the right to
criticize any other Communist no matter what position he
holds, and that persons guilty of suppressing criticism
should be punished--even expelled from the party. Petrenko
seemed clearly to be indicating his strong support for
current criticism of party members, at any level, implying
that this was directed at high-ranking people--possibly
Brezhnev.
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However, Petrenko's concept of criticism was limited.
He quoted Lenin to the effect that "if freedom of criticism
means freedom to defend capitalism, then we will crush it."
And he stated that it was necessary to take a critical look
at the past, but that this look should not be negative:
. . . For instance, many historians and
writers are now striving to interpret in
a critical manner the time during which
the harmful consequences of the personality
cult of Stalin had a negative influence on
the development of Soviet society. This is
a necessary step in the further development
of historical science and artistic creativity.
The task is not easy, but is of the highest
degree of importance. Incompatible with its
implementation, however, are the attempts to
distort our past in a one-sided manner, in a
distorted mirror, as just a solid chain of
mistakes and shortcomings.
Thus Petrenko's article, while using the Stalin issue to
illustrate the need for criticism, was conservative in
emphasis, suggesting that it came from the neo-Stalinist
faction which must have considered itself on the defensive
at this time.
Leaders Speak
On 23 February First Deputy Defense Minister Grechko,
in an Izvestiya article, completely exonerated the party
leadership of blame for failing to prepare for World War II.
Less than a year before, in June 1966, he had been quite
critical of prewar preparations. Now he stated that
In connection with the growing threat of an
armed attack the party and government adopted
the necessary measures to further strengthen
the Soviet Army. In the period between
1 January 1939 and 1 June 1941 the numerical
strength of the armed forces increased almost
2.5 times. The formation of mechanized corps,
aviation divisions, and new artillery and anti-
tank units began in 1940-1941, but unfortunately
by the outbreak of the war they had not yet
been fully supplied with new material
equipment. -75-
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In April Grechko became USSR Minister of Defense, reportedly
with Brezhnev's backing, and in a 9 May article in Pravda
he completely explained away the initial setbacks of the war:
. . . Encouraged by the reactionary circles
of the Western powers, Hitler at the time of
the attack on the Soviet Union had enslaved
most European countries and had forced their
manpower and industrial resources to serve
his predatory plans. As a result, fascist
Germany invaded the territory of our country
with an emormous already mobilized and power-
ful army. Not a single state could have
resisted such pressure. Only a state born
by the Great October and only a people who
had liberated themselves from the fetters of
capitalism were strong enough to engage in
a singlehanded struggle against such a
formidable enemy and achieve a brilliant
victory.
In the spring several members of the hierarchy referred
in speeches to the state of culture in the Soviet Union. In
his March election speech, Brezhnev cited shortcomings in
creative work and stated that criticism of these shortcomings
was directed solely at the fruitful development of culture
and that this was a concern which the party manifests
unfailingly and constantly. While still more moderate
than statements by neo-Stalinists such as Shelest and
Yegorychev, this was Brezhnev's strongest statement up
to this time on the subject of party control of the arts.
In late April two somewhat different attitudes toward
cultural matters were expressed by Kirilenko and Yegorychev.
Kirilenko in the past had expressed both moderate and pro-
Brezhnev sentiments. In November 1966 he had given a
speech in which he strongly praised Brezhnev for his
wartime activities. Now, on 22 April,he statedsimply
that Soviet literature and art were flowering. Two days
later, in Pravda, Yeogrychev warned against negative
attitudes and called for the strengthening of ideological
work. He stated that one cannot for a minute forget that
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communism is being built in circumstances of a sharp
struggle of two ideologies, and that malicious attacks
on the revolution and falsification of historical events
had intensified. He stated that Soviet history must be
evaluated correctly and he casually dismissed the crimes
of the Stalin era:
Of course, now everything is clear, as they
say, looking back. Apparently some things
could have been done better perhaps and with
less expenditure of forces . . . . At one time
in our country so much was said about errors
and mistakes that some people . . . could get
the impression that all we have done is make
mistakes . . . . We must have a more exacting
attitude than ever before toward everything that
is put out in publications, that is presented
in exhibits, that is put out on screens and
on stages of theaters and is secured in con-
cert halls. The role of Communist creative
organs grows especially in this.
Thus, whereas Kirilenko had indicated that all was well,
Yegorychev was full of accusations and warnings that the
party would exert even more pressure upon the intellectuals.
This difference between these two speeches suggests that
while Brezhnev and his followers supported re-Stalinizing
and a generally orthodox position, they were being
pushed to proceed still more rapidly toward more re-
pressive measures. This pressure still being exerted
by the neo-Stalinists was apparently part of their
ongoing effort to gain the initiative in their struggle
for the leadership.
1The Fourth All-Union Writers Congress finally
opened in May, having been postponed several times pre-
viously. The party's message to the congress demanded of
literature well-developed ideological criteria, emphasized
party control of the arts, and warned against western
influence. Podgornyy was the highest-ranking speaker at
the congress and the tone of his speech was orthodox,
although he did not call for further party control of the
arts or do any threatening. He discussed the fierce
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struggle taking place between the two social systems and
said that ideological enemies try to disarm the Soviet
people. He said that loyalty to the truth of life and
the indelible principles of party-mindedness enable writers
to write vivid history of the great deeds of the Soviet
people. On the other hand, he had only praise for Soviet
writers, and said that there was every reason to expect
that the writers union would continue to champion party-
mindedness and people-mindedness. Thus, he seemed to be
saying that any control necessary should be exercized by
the writers union, a clear difference from Yegorychev's
threat that the party should do more.
In a speech on 12 June Mzhavanadze called for the
purification of party ranks and used a Stalin quotation
to support his point. Whether or not he was calling for a
purge of impure party members is not certain, but such a
call is implied, making this a very threatening speech:
First, I would like to draw your attention
to the need for a most decisive struggle for
the purity of party ranks . . . . The penetra-
tion of the party by unworthy members has not
yet been overcome . . . . I will cite in this
connection the words of I.V. Stalin, who said
that there was nothing higher than the title
of a member of the party, the founder and
leader of which was Comrade Lenin. He also
said, "It is not given to everyone to be a
party member . . ." This means that the door
of the party must not be open to all but only
to worthy people, entirely dedicated to the
cause of the party.
In June 1967 the theses of the central committee
for the 50th anniversary were published. They contained
some criticism of the cult of Stalin, although they pre-
sented the 50 years of Soviet rule as a period of unbroken
progress. To the extent that they reintroduced some
criticism of the cult, however, they differed from the
January central committee decreebon preparations for the
anniversary. That decree had projected an overwhelmingly
favorable image of the entire course of Soviet history.
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There wasnno mention of Stalin or criticism of his reign--
not even a reference to difficulties at the start of the
war. Thus the return of some criticism was a definite
shift.*
Shelepin's Defeat and Reaction To It
Defense, replacing Malinovskiy, who had died two weeks
In the spring and early summer of 1967 Shelepin
suffered a series of defeats in the form of personnel shifts.
Goryunov, the head of TASS and a Shelepin man, was replaced
in April. In the same month Grechko became Minister of
was relieved as Chairman of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism,
a position he had held since 1949. While Pospelov's alle-
giances are not clear, the timing of his removal and the
fact that his journal had published Petrenko's March article
which was apparently anti-Brezhnev, suggests that he was
considered sympathetic to Shelepin.
IIn May Shelepin's *protege
Semichastnyy was replaced as KGB chief by Andropov. * While
the KGB had had several failures right before-;,-this shift--
includ,idg the defection of Stalin's daughter--it seems
clear that the firing of Semichastnyywwas primarily a blow
at Shelepin's neo-Stalinist faction. Also in May, Pospelov
A crisis in the leadership occurred following the
Middle East debacle in early June. At the end of that
month a party plenum was held and Brezhnev apparently
reported on the situation. A number of regional leaders
(all republic first secretaries except Masherov who had
previously indicated his neo-Stalinist tendencies) rose
*See page 98 for further discussion.
**In June Andropov was taken off the Secretariat, but
became a candidate member of the Politburo, the highest
position held by a KGB chief since Beriya's death.
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to support Brezhnev, However, Yegorychev, in his speech,
reportedly attacked the regime's handling of the situation,
possibly arguing that the Soviet Union should have taken
a stronger position. Yegorychev's apparent support of
a harder foreign policy provides an example of the correla-
tion between these policies and the Stalin issue. Yegorychev,
one of the most outspoken members of the neo-Stalinist
faction, was also supporting a very hard foreign policy.
Several days after his attack, the Moscow city com-
mittee relieved Yegorychev of his positions and appointed
Viktor Grishin, who had previously headed the Soviet trade
union organization. The following month Shelepin replaced
Grishin as head of Soviet trade unions, indicating a further
decline in his fortunes and strongly suggesting that he was
being punished along with Yegorychev* for the latter's move
at the congress. At the September plenum Shelepin was
released from his position on the secretariat; however, he
retained his position on the Politburo.
Following Yegorychev's removal and Shelepin's
demotion, a group of articles appeared defending collective
leadership and the right of party members to criticize.
These seemed clearly to be reactions to the firing of
Yegorychev and indicated the degree of support for Shelepin's
neo-Stalinist faction within the party apparatus. They may
also have represented the fear of various second-level
officials that they might meet Yegorychev's fate. For
example, the first article was by Georgiy Popov, Yegorychev's
counterpart in Leningrad City, The Leningrad party organi-
zation had long been hard-line; now it was clearly siding
with Yegorychev and, by implication, Shelepin. Popov
emphasized the right to criticize and the dangers inherent
in the tendency of some leaders to suppress criticism from
below and to attempt one-man leadership.
The second article was by Petrenko, who had previ-
ously written several articles defending collective
leadership and the right to criticize. The article was
published in Partiynaya Zhizn' in September and was
particularly interesting as Petrenko again raised the
personality cult spectre, even though he seemed to be
defending Yegorychev, a neo-Stalinist. Petrenko stated
*Yegorychev was subsequently named Deputy Minister of
Tractor-Agricultural Machine Building.
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that the party theses issued in June had resolutely con-
demned the cult of Stalin's personality which had expressed
itself in the raising up of the role of one person which,
he said, is alien to Marxism-Leninism and a deviation from
the principle of collective leadership. He went on to
defend collective leadership, and to say that the party
secretary must not misuse his position. In praising criti-
cism he stated that "cases where certain officials
/ rezhnev?7 incorrectly take criticism from below /Yegory-
chev?7 are far from having been eliminated."
The third article in this series also appeared in
Partiynaya Zhizn' in the same month; this too is significant
as Khaldeyev, a close Shelepin associate, had been appointed
chief editor of that journal in the spring of 1966. In this
article Masherov, the Belorussian First Secretary and appa-
rently a member of Shelepin's neo-Stalinist faction, quoted
from Brezhnev's speech at the 23rd Congress in support of
criticism and self-criticism. According to Masherov, each
party member should have an opportunity to express his
judgments, expose shortcomings, and work to eliminate these
shortcomings. He said that an important place in the
development of criticism is occupied by central committee
plenums much as the June plenum at which Yegorychev expressed
his crit71cism?7 and that a correct response to criticism is
necessary. Critics must be listened to and their criticism
must be followed by the correction of errors. Masherov went
on to say that critics too have a responsibility and should
not be impatient, and should not engage in criticism for
the sake of criticism or in order to achieve some personal
egotistical goals. However, Masherov left little doubt of
where his allegiance lay. He stated that the desire of a
leader to guard himself from Criticism could lead to vio-
lations of Leninist norms and he closed with a case study.
He cited a bureau head Z_B_rezhnev?7 who was justifiably
criticized for shortcomings. But the bureau head was
offended and took revenge by accusing the critic LYegprychev?7
of irresponsibility and having him transferred to a lower
paying job.
A fourth article dealing with this subject appeared
on 19 September in Sovetskaya Rossiya; this was written by
Gorkiy First Secretary Katushev, who has been close to
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Brezhnev,* and its tone was quite different from that of
the other three. Katushev did not emphasize collective
leadership nor did he stress the right to criticize;
rather he concentrated on the need to convince through
argumentation and reasonable plemics. He stated that
sometimes opponents act without restraint and hurl accusa-
tions at each other, a situation which results in even
greater divergence of viewpoints. He stated that in order
to convince someone it is neceesary to use logic and
reason--that no organizational measures or administrative
threats can force him to change his mind. While these
words might have been directed at Brezhnev, Katushev's
closing statements supported the view that the main target
was Yegorychev and the neo-Stalinists. Katushev stated
that freedom of discussion is permitted only until a deci-
sion is adopted, and that then that decision must be carried
out. He stated that sometimes a complication arises when
a man who agreed to a decision and voted for it, subsequently
does not implement it--a possible reference to Yegorychev's
criticism of Middle East policy after the fact. Katushev
closed by stating that conviction and exactingness must be
joined, and he quoted Lenin to the effect that after the
attempt to convince fails, then force may be used.
It is ironic that in the first three of these arti-
cles, written in defense of Yegorychev (and by implication
Shelegin as well) by his neo-Stalinist allies, liberal
arguments were used. Support of a Stalinist position
carries with it implied approval of the right of the leader
to get rid of his opponents, and the need of the Shelepin
group was the opposite--to emphasize the rights of those
not in control to attack with impunity. As a result, a
somewhat bizarre situation arose in which supporters of
Yegorychev, one of the most fanatic re-Stalinizers, were
forced to resort to arguments for collective leadership,
the right of criticism, and even outright condemnation of
the cult of personality, in an effort to safeguard their
*Katushev s appointment as Gorkiy First Secretary had
been personally supervised by Brezhnev in December 1965;
Katushev had indicated strong support for Brezhnev at the
23rd Congress and Brezhnev personally defended Gorkiy
Oblast' in January 1967 after it had been criticized in
Pravda in 1966.
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own survival. In defense of Brezhnev, Katushev responded
with an article stating in effect that the right to argue
is limited to the period before a decision is made, but
that then there must be unity and compliance.
Year End Atmosphere Repressive
The 50th anniversary of Soviet rule was celebrated
in November and was unsensational. As suggested by the
January decree on preparations for the anniversary and the
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theses issued in June, the entire period of Soviet history
was treated overwhelmingly favorably. Even the cult, which
had been condemned in the theses, was not mentioned,
Brezhnev gave the major speech on this occasion. He did
not mention Stalin by name, but was favorable by implication.
He praised the 18th Congress of 1939 and stated that the
party had foreseen the possibility of a military clash with
the forces of imperialism at this time and had prepared the
country and the people for defense. He admitted that there
had been miscalculations, but explained these away on the
basis of the pioneering role of the Soviet regime.
Pressure Increases; Protests Continue
Following Brezhnev's favorable mention of Stalin
in November 1966, pressure on intellectuals to conform was
to increase. However, liberal intellectuals continued to
make their feelings and apprehensions known. On 27 December
Literaturnaya Gazeta published a fascinating article by
A. Yanov, which contained a strong liberal appeal for a
truthful examination of the past. Yanov called for a
clear interpretation of past and present, and stated that
problems need investigation--not indignation. He argued
that an examination of the past is a prerequisite to
obtaining freedom from the consequences of those mistakes:
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'A nation which has forgotten its past
runs the risk of experiencing it again,'
said some philosopher.
Yanov then attacked an Oktyabr' article by K. Bukovskiy.
K. Bukovskiy writes: 'Regardless of what
we were--blind or "hypnotized"--and
regardless of the origin of the "hypnosis"--
in those years we not only did not lie, but
we had no doubts about anything.' And that
is all! Black on white. But wait a minute,
esteemed Konstantin Ivanovich, how about
the investigation of the mechanism of that
gigantic illusion, that unprecedented his-
torical mystification, and that "hypnosis"
which you yourself were talking about--
has it been completed, exhausted, signed
and filed away in the archives? So what
gives you the right to offer your personal
opinion and your personal experiences as
the final result of the investigation as a
categorical imperative? How do you know
that 'we' did not doubt?
In December Soviet intellectuals again expressed
their apprehension at orthodox trends, this time in a
letter which warned against confirmation by the Supreme
Soviet of a decree published in September 1966, extending
Article 190 of the RSFSR Criminal Code to cover literary
protests.* The letter was signed by nine academicians,
various members of the intellectual community, and a
number of Old Bolsheviks. It stated that the signers
considered the adoption of the decree unjustified and
that the decree raised the danger of "violations of
socialist legality" and the "creation of an atmosphere
of suspicion and denunciation" (i.e., a return to
Stalinist methods).
The concern expressed both by Yanov, who was in
effect stating that the refusal to continue to probe the
crimes of the Stalin era could well foreshadow a return to
Stalinist methods, and of the intellectuals, who were
protesting what they considered to be the sign of such
*See Appendix Items C for text of decree and D for text
of protest.
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a return, was valid. The year 1967 opened with a harsh
clamp-down on the dissident intellectuals. In mid-January
Yuriy Galanskov, editor of Feniks (Phoenix) 1966, a secret
typewritten literary-publicistjjournal, wwas arrested,
as were three of his co-workers. On 22 January a demonstra-
tion held to protest these arrests resulted in the arrests
of more people, including art critic Igor Golomshtok, who
had defended Sinyavskiy at his trial, and Viktor Khaustov,
who was subsequently sentenced to four years in a labor
camp. Khaustov was the first person convicted and sentenced
under the new section of Article 190 of the RSFSR Criminal
Code. Others arrested at this time were tried in August
1967.**
On 24 January it was reported from Moscow that
Aleksandr Ginsburg had been arrested for compiling the
Belaya Kniga (White Book), a collection of documents on
the Daniel Sinyavskiy case. Ginsburg had sent a copy to
the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet in October 1966.
Ginsburg and Galanskov were tried in January 1968.*** In
March, according to Posev,**** a number of young people
were arrested in Leningrad on charges of having organized
a circle connected with emigre groups under the cover of
a philosophical circle. Posev reported that a trial was
being prepared for some of these people, and that as a
result of preliminary investigations, 11 of the 25 had
been sent to psychiatric hospitals or released under
surveillance.
The general tightening of policy was also revealed
in the closing down of two art exhibits in January. One
*Among the items pub ed in Feniks was the previously
mentioned "Discussion of the Third Volume of the History
of the CPSU."
**See page 93 for further discussion of the trial.
***See page 94 for further discussion of this trial.
****An anti-Soviet emigre publishing organization in
West Germany.
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was an unofficial, unsanctioned exhibit of unorthodox art
and the second was a display of Chagal paintings.* On
23 January the Fifth Plenum of the USSR Union of Artists
was held and dogmatic speeches were given by the union's
acting head, F. Belashova, and by USSR Minister of Culture,
Yekaterina Furtseva. Furtseva had been quite moderate in
previous speeches and stood out for her moderate statement
at the 23rd congress. Her shift at this time suggests that
she had been given clear instructions about prevailing policy.
Campaign Against Noviy Mir
During the first few months of 1967 there was con-
siderable evidence that the liberal journal Noviy Mir was
in trouble. The first indication came in a 27 January
Pravda editorial--its first major editorical on culture
in over a year. In a personnel change in January Kunitsyn,
a consistent hard-liner and formerly deputy chief of the
central committee's cultural section, became editor of
Pravda's Department of Art and Literature; he may have
been responsible for this editorial which criticized both
Noviy Mir and Oktyabr', but was much more harsh in its
comments on the former.
On 1 February Literaturnaya Gazeta published an
article which followed the line o Pravda's editorial.
This journal had reportedly been taken over by a dogmatic
group in December, although Chakovskiy remained as chief
editor; in January the paper began a new format. In this
article Noviy Mir was sharply criticized. The journal was
also attacked at a session of the Board of the Union of
Writers during this period. At the meeting various speakers
pointed out the "substantial ideological and artistic errors,
over-simplification, and shortcomings in the journal's
activities."
An 8 March article by Tvardovskiy in Literaturnaya
Gazeta revealed, however, that he would not give in easily.
*In February three of the artists who had participated
in the exhibit were called to a meeting of their combine
and "condemned."
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He stated that "We are attentive and will be attentive in
the future to criticism," but only if this criticism
proceeds from the lofty concepts of the
literature of a socialist society, worthy
of the great traditions of Russian realism
bequeathed by the classics.
His omission of the adjective "socialist" modifying "realism"
indicated his continued opposition to the official line.
In March, while in Italy attending a writers meeting,
Tvardovskiy stated that the concept of realism did not
need to be explained by adjectives.
Publication of Noviy Mir was held up during the
early part of 1967. During January there were reports that
the central committee was trying to force changes in the
editorial board by removing A. Dementyev and B. Zaks,
two assistant editors upon whom Tvardovskiy reportedly
relied heavily. The party central apparatus was said to
be reluctant to have a scandal but determined to weaken
Tvardovskiy. In March, when the first issue of the journal
finally appeared, Dementyev and Zaks had been removed from
the board and three new members had been added. The two
removed were definitely liberals; the leanings of the new
three was less clear.
In May Yunost' published two poems by Tvardovskiy,
both applicable to freedom and the attacks made against
him. The first read
I myself inquire and find
All my own mistakes.
I shall remember them
Without a given libretto.
There is no sense--I am a grown man--
In laughable self-defense.
But please, don't hang on my soul.
Don't breath down my neck.
In the second, more allegorical poem, Tvardovskiy described
his birth--under the fir trees in the forest--saying it is
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the legend that any baby born there will not be touched
by the wolves [read censors].
Alas, ignoring that special birthright
Which the forest grants,
With what gusto,
With how much fury
The wolves do eat me.
All kinds of them eat,
But I still come from under the fir tree:
They have not eaten me up.
In spite of Tvardovskiy's appeals and claims that he had
not been "eaten up," he had clearly been weakened during
the early part of 1967.
Liberal Efforts Rebuffed
In January 1967 the Ukrainian Komsomol's literary,
socio-political journal, Dnipro, published an article by
its editor-in-chief Yuriy Mushketik. He described the
literary upsurge following the 1917 revolution, and said
that it was followed by
watchfulness, silence and decline, empty
proclaiming, searching for deviations and
isms, along with singlemindedness and
vulgarization. There were fewer and fewer
theoretical and debating articles. Prose
was petty and poetry was shrieking. The
lively spurt caused by the wave of general
popular patriotism after the war, and again
the clogging up of the literary channel. And
finally, the dethroning of the cult of person-
ality, the revival of certain earlier violated
principles of .Soviet and party life and the
further development of democracy, which opened
a wide road for the development of Soviet
literature . . . .
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Dnipro was quickly rebuffed for publishing such an article.
On 25 February Molodoy Ukrainy attacked the journal and
said that it had been criticized by the Ukrainian Komsomol
central committee.
Another example of a republic journal being censured
is that of Zvezda Vostoka, the organ of the Uzbek Union of
Writers. In its first four issues of 1967 the journal
published a number of works by semi-controversial authors,
In one of these Konstantin Simonov reviewed For Whom the
Bell Tolls, and alluded to the purges. The fifth and sixth
issues of the journal did not carry any such works in spite
of promises that it would do so, and in August, the editor
V. Kostyria, was reportedly dismissed,
In April and May, in the weeks preceding the Fourth
Writers Congress, the efforts by the liberals to stage a
comeback were overshadowed by the orthodox articles being
published. On 19 April an editorial in Literaturnaya
Gazeta made a strong demand for unity and central control
over the arts. It used as its reference the 35th anniversary
of the party resolution which banned all independent literary
organizations and forced writers into a single, tightly-
controlled writers union. Similarly, Pravda published two
threatening articles on the eve of the congress, One implied
that those who did not respond properly to criticism might
well lose their jobs, and the other, one of whose authors
was Kunitsyn, called for more aggressive criticism of
incorrect concepts. This article proposed the establishment
of an institution of "readers' opinions" to help those in-
volved in publishing works to deepen the educational
influence of literature and art; in other words they pro-
posed the establishment of still another control organization
to weed out "incorrect concepts."
Originally scheduled for the spring of 1966, the
Fourth Writers Congress had been postponed twice before it
finally opened in late May 1967.
the congress had been put off because of dissidence
and "hundreds" of writers had been arrested in Leningrad
and Kiev in the weeks before the congress. An orthodox
line dominated at the congress and the most interesting
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episode occurred behind the scenes. Aleksandr Solzhe.-nitsyn
circulated a letter to the delegates strongly condemning
censorship in the Soviet Union and describing his own
persecution at the hands of the authorities.* In addition,
79 intellectuals circulated a petition calling for discussion
In June 1967 Grani published a letter
sent by an anonymous person in Moscow, stating that even
Solzhenitsyn himself had given up hope of being published.
Solzhenitsyn's letter was followed in the early summer
of 1967 by a number of protests, concerning censorship. The
intellectuals had undoubtedly been frightened by increasing
threats of tightened control as well as by the actual clamp-
down on liberal journals and dissident intellectuals. It
seems likely that they were encouraged to mount their attack
when they did because of the defeat of Shelepin's neo-
Stalinist faction in the spring and early summer.
On 19 June a scheduled trip to New York by the poet
Andrey Voznesenskiy was suddenly cancelled. Voznesenskiy,
obviously angry, sent a letter to Pravda in which he de-
scribed the "atmosphere of blackmail, confusion, and
provocation" in which he had been living. A copy of this
letter was sent to the West and printed in the New York
Times,*** On 2 July Voznesenskiy appeared at the Taganka
Theater and read a poem attacking censorship; two days
later he was reportedly called before a special meeting
of the Board of the Union of Writers and put under pressure
to withdraw the comments in his letter and poem. He refused
to do so even though he was censured and threatened with
expulsion from the union,****
*See Appendix Item E.
**The quarterly journal of Posev.
***See Appendix Item F.
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On 30 June Komsomolskaya Pravda carried an article
by Pravda correspondent Burlatskiy and a former secretary
of the Komsomol Karpinskiy. These two men attacked censor-
ship in the theater and strongly implied their support of
freedom to criticize. They attacked those who avoid dis-
cussing certain phenomena because it might put the system
in an unfavorable light, stating that these people sacrifice
real political interests--the improvement of Soviet society--
for the sake of improperly understood propaganda interests.
They argued that art is obligated to intrude into life and
touch all its aspects. They said that Lenin's formula for
guiding creative work
definitely excludes a secret and narrow
departmental approach which is never
guaranteed against a subjective bias . . . .
Publication of this liberal article in the organ of
the Komsomol, an organization headed by Shelepin protege
Sergey Pavlov indicates that the neo-Stalinist faction
had allied itself with the liberals on the issue of censor-
ship, as well as on the subject of the right to criticize.
The publication of this article coincided with the publication
of three articles defending collective leadership and freedom
to criticize which were published following Yegorychev's
dismissal and Shelepin's setback.
This particular article was decisively rebuffed only
a week after its publication, On 8 July Komsomolskaya
Pravda itself, in an editorial, rejected the article, calling
it erroneous and stating that it contradicted party
principles,
The Komsomol Central Committee having
examined the article . . . has found that
the publication of the article was a
crude ideological mistake on the part
of the Komsomolskaya Pravda editorial
board.
The editorial then quoted Brezhnev's comments on party
guidance of the arts, made at the 23rd Congress. Thus,
this attempt to challenge Brezhnev, made in the form of
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a liberal article but apparently sanctioned by the neo-
Stalinists, was rejected immediately, undoubtedly at the
bidding of high-level officials.
Year Ends With Harsh Policy
In the fall of 1967 the ominous tendencies continued.
On 30 August Vladimir Bukovskiy and two others arrested in
January for protesting the arrests of Galanskov and his
co-workers went on trial. Bukovskiy, who said he had orga-
nized the demonstration was sentenced to three years and the
two others to one year each. Bukovskiy did not plead guilty
at his trial, although the Soviet press indicated that he
had; on the contrary he made a spirited plea in his own
behalf and attacked the manner in which the whole trial had
been conducted. The text of his plea was attached to a
letter sent by Pavel Litvinov to four Soviet newspapers,
as well as to the French and Italian party papers. In his
letter Litvinov, the grandson of Maxim Litvinov and a
-physicist, described a warning he had received from the KGB
not to become involved in any reporting on the Bukovskiy
trial.* Litvinov defied this order and has subsequently
participated in the drafting of several protests.
On 22 September
the head of Moscow City party's cultural section, Solovyeva,
called for more control by theater party organizations over
theater repertories:
There are cases when it is necessary for
all the members of the party bureau to
convince one director or another that he
must review his selection of plays or his
outline and at times even replace a
performer.
In October a joint plenum of the boards of cultural unions
and organizations of the USSR and RSFSR was held, and a
very dogmatic line dominated. Ye. Belashova stated that
the artist must take a side in the struggle for ideologies
and that "even silence can be treason."
*See Appendix Item G.
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The 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution
came and went in November and there was no indication
that the prevailing repressive line would lift. In fact,
if there was any shift in policy line in the months after
the anniversary, it was toward a still more orthodox line.
In October and November Oktyabr' published a,-novel by
Kochetov in which Stalin was viewed as a very positive,
though fairly minor, figure and the use of terror received
implied approval.
Even more threatening than orthodox articles, however,
were the continuing arrests and trials of intellectuals.
In mid-December there was a report that four people were
being tried in Leningrad on the serious charge of having
participated in an armed terrorist network trying to over-
throw the Soviet state. This trial had reportedly grown
out of the arrest in early 1967 of 25 intellectuals con-
nected with the philosophy department at the University of
Leningrad. Many. rumors circulated in Moscow, including
the report that similar groups had been discovered in
the Ukraine and another that the case was so serious that
the central committee had met to consider it. Other
reported trials included one involving six youths in Moscow
charged with distributing anti-Soviet leaflets and one
involving a student charged with writing an allegedly anti-
In January 1968 the four individuals arrested the
previous January--Ginsburg, *Galanskov, Dobrovolskiy, and
Lashkova, went on trial. In connection with this particular
case, several petitions were reportedly circulated. The
first was said to be signed by about 100 members of the
intellectual community and was sent to the Procurator
General; it requested assurances that the trial would be
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public. The second petition was reportedly signed by 44
intellectuals and charged that the long imprisonment of
the four persons without trial was in violation of the
criminal code of the Soviet Union. In addition, Litvinov
and the wife of the imprisoned author Yuriy Daniel denounced
the trial in a letter which was published in the West.* In
what they termed an appeal to world opinion, they condemned
the manner in which the trial had been held and demanded a
new trial. Litvinov was subsequently fired from his position
as a physics instructor. Two other petitions were reportedly
circulated with respect to this trial; one was an appeal by
30 intellectuals and the other a petition of 12 who wished
to appear as defense witnesses. In December there were
reports of another petition, this one signed by 180 Moscow
intellectuals who urged that a law be adopted which would
implement the constitution's pledge of freedom of the press.
All of these pleas were to no avail; the trial of the four
was not public and heavy sentences were imposed. Ginzburg
and Galanskov received seven and five year sentences re-
spectively; Dobrovolskiy, who turned state's evidence,
received a two-year sentence, and Lashkova, who had merely
typed for the group, received a one-year sentence.
Thus, during the early part of 1968 there was consid-
erable evidence that a very harsh policy prevailed--the
harshest policy since the death of Stalin--and that repression
of intellectuals who dared to voice opinions which deviated
from the party line would continue. Official sanction was
put on this policy with the central committee resolution
passed at the April 1968 plenum; this resolution called for
a further tightening of ideological pressure.
The continued shift toward more and more orthodox
views, revealed in the arrests of dissident intellectuals
in early 1967, was also reflected in the new extremes
reached in extolling the Stalin era. In November and
December, on the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of
Moscow, numerous articles and speeches were published
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praising Stalin for his leadership at this time of crisis.
In a January article in Molodaya Gvardiya, N. Mikhaylov,
possibly the chairman of the State Committee for Publishing
and a Shelepin protege, described Komsomol unity during
the war and attributed this to Stalin's inspiring leadership,
Mikhaylov stated that Stalin must have known of Hitler's
designs, for with his experience and hatred of fascism he
would not have treated reports of the planned attack care-
lessly. But he also knew what Hitler's strength was, so
he tried up until the last minute to ward off the approaching
war and buy time for preparations, He stated that Stalin
withstood all pressures because he had great ideological
conviction, implicit faith in the party, and recognition of
the party's authority.
A 16 January broadcast over Moscow Domestic Service
on the years from 1933 to 1941 ignored any errors or problems
of the period, and concentrated on praising industrial and
agricultural growth. It paid tribute to the 1936 consti-
tution as well as to the 1937 elections which saw a "remark-
able victory" for the block of party and non-party candidates.
It praised the 18th party congress of 1939 for its approval
of the war prevention policy of the party--and it totally
ignored the purges.
In March Kommunist Moldaviya urged that the positive
achievements of collectivization be stressed and attacked
a West German author (a euphemism for Soviet writers who
make the same point) who
attempts to impose on the reader the current
but absolutely groundless thesis prevalent
in bourgeois historiography concerning
the forcible nature of collectivization . . . .
And on 7 May Pravda published an article which
glossed over the disagreement between Stalin and Lenin on
the subject of nationalities in 1917:
. On the basis of the report by I.V.
Stalin, the conference adopted a resolution
signed by V. I. Lenin, on the nationalities
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question. The Bolshevik Party came forth
decisively in favor of meeting the demands
of the working people of all oppressed
nations, recognizing their right to self-
determination, including separation and
formation of an independent state.
On 30 May Krasnaya Zvezda criticized various World
War II memoirs, and charged that personal memoirs should not
contradict the "truth of history.t? It attacked those who
criticize General Headquarters for its conduct of the war,
stating that
The best evidence of the fact that the
General Headquarters and its working
organ, the General Staff, skillfully
directed the operations of the Soviet
troops is the victorious outcome of
the war. The General Headquarters
included prominent commanders and party
and state leaders. The Supreme Commander,
I.V. Stalin, displayed great firmness;
his leadership of the military operations
was on the whole correct, and his merits
in this field were numerous.
In this early part of 1967, there was a virtual
suspension of any references to the purges and rehabilita-
tions of purge victims. Even the provincial papers halted
publication of such articles with very few exceptions.
Interestingly, those references which did appear seemed
to involve the military. For example, in February the
Armenian paper Kommunist published a series of articles
on Marshal Gay and there was also apparently a commemora-
tive meeting held for Gay in which Armenian First Secretary
Kochinyan participated. On 26 March Krasnaya Zvezda car-
ried an article by Marshal Vasilyevskiy in which he referred
to Tukhachevskiy as an outstanding theorist and leader.
Both Tukhachevskiy and Gay had been proponents of moderniza-
tion of Soviet forces before their purges, and it is
possible that these particular rehabilitations were being
pushed by those who wished more emphasis to be put on
modernization of Soviet armed forces.
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In June 1967 the central committee issued its theses
on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the revolution. On
the subject of war preparations, the theses gave official
sanction to the complete ignoring of prewar miscalculations
and errors, The theses stated that the Soviet Union had
done all it could to establish a system of collective secur-
ity in Europe, but that these efforts were rebuffed by the
men of Munich who preferred an alliance with Hitler. In
this very complex situation the Soviet Union had been forced
to sign a nonaggression pact with Hitler, thereby gaining
time to prepare. Even though the party and government took
steps to strengthen defenses it was impossible to prevent
war. The theses also praised the 20th party congress
resolution which it said had condemned the Stalin personality
cult; the cult, according to the theses, had expressed it-
self in the glorification of the role of one man, departures
from the Leninist principle of collective leadership, un-
warranted repression, and other violations of socialist
legality. This reference is very low key, as the resolution
passed by the 20th Congress was relatively mild; the strong
anti-Stalin element at the congress was Khrushchev's
"secret speech."
On 21 July the new First Deputy Minister of Defense,
Yakubovskiy, wrote an article for Krasnaya Zvezda which
successfully passed over whatever errors there might have
been in prewar preparations. He praised measures taken
to train military personnel and did not even make an
oblique reference to the purges. He then explained why
the Soviet Union had suffered some defeats in the early
stages of the war:
It was not possible, however, to fully
implement the planned program of preparing
the armed forces for the war. Specifically,
the rearmament of the ground forces with
new military technical equipment and the
formation of mechanized groups of units
remained unfinished, This explains the
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difficulties encountered by our troops
in the first period of the Great
Fatherland War . . . .
In mid-July it was reported that Nekrich, author of
the controversial book 22 June 1941, which had been published
in 1965 and discussed at a stormy meeting early in 1966, had
been expelled from the party. Thus, Nekrich became the
scapegoat for past "errors" in analysis of prewar prepared-
ness and Stalin's wartime role, and an example to those who
might wish to write in a similar vein. It was also reported
that the editor who had approved the publication of Nekrich's
book had been fired. In September Voprosy Istorii KPSS
followed this with an attack on Nekrich by Deborin, who had
also participated in the February 1966 meeting held to criti-
cize Nekrich's book.* Deborin claimed that the book had been
written in the spirit of bourgeois historiography. He then
proceeded to defend war preparations and the leadership of
the party during the war; he asserted that the Soviet Union
had signed the Ribbentrop Pact only when it was clear that
an anti-Nazi alliance was impossible. Deborin denied that
preparations for an attack had not been made and that the
Soviet leadership had underestimated the danger of war.
On 24 August a Krasnaya Zvezda article by Major
General Zhilin called for a new official wartime history
to correct the "subjective" view of Stalin's leadership.
He stated that bourgeois falsifiers must be refuted--that
they try to discredit the foreign policy of the Soviet
Union in the prewar years and conceal the fact that this
policy was directed at providing collective security in
Europe and restraining aggressive forces. He called for
criticism of subjective statements made by some memoirists
who mistakenly evaluate the readiness of the Soviet Union
to repulse aggression in the late 1930's and wrongly eval-
uate events at the start of the war.
An 8 December article in Krasnaya Zvezda completed
the transition to a positive view of Stalin as prewar and
wartime leader:
*See pages 57-59.
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Historical experience obviously confirms
the correctness of the military policy of
the party at all stages of socialist con-
struction and the decisive significance of
the prewar five-year plans for the defense
potential of the country. This experience
rejects the formerly existing anti-historic
views on alleged miscalculations of the
Communist Party and Soviet government in
the creation of military-economic potential.
In any case, in such a short time the military-
industrial base of the USSR simply could not
reach the volume of the military-industrial
base of fascist Germany, which as early as
1933 began to actively reorganize its
economy for war purposes and later com-
pleted its military-economic potential by
making use of the heavy industry of the
European states it had occupied.
The treacherous attack on the Soviet Union
by fascist Germany, which had previously
mobilized its first-class equipped war
machinery, as well as a certain incom-
pleteness in the measures taken by our
country to prepare itself to repel an
aggression, allowed the Hitlerite army,
despite the heroic resistance of the Soviet
troops, to rapidly penetrate into the USSR o, .
Thus all that remains of previous criticisms of the handling
of the prewar situation, is the statement that there was a
certain incompleteness in the measures taken to repel
aggression.
Collectivization Smoothed Over
In August several articles were published on the
period of collectivization. The first was by Brezhnev-
protege Trapeznikov and appeared in Pravda on 4 August.
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Trapeznikov acknowledged that there were complications
and difficulties in collectivization, which were the
result of the fact that this policy was carried out
among a culturally backward and widely dispersed peasant
population. He stated that this had been one of the
"most brilliant periods" in Soviet history and that
collectivization had been an historical necessity. However,
he said that there had been no way of knowing exactly what
stages had to be gone through, how fast to go, and exactly
what economic forms the new type of enterprise would take.
It must be said that a considerable mess and
confusions prevailed in this respect, There
were elements in the party which, engaging in
hare-brained schemes for the selection of
forms of collective economy, tried at first to
create various types of gigantic units--agro-
industrial combines--in order to propagate
communes, or to design agro-cities without
consideration for the objective conditions
and the practical experience of the masses.
The agro-gorod concept described by Trapeznikov had
been supported by Khrushchev; thus Trapeznikov had absolved
Stalin and the party of any guilt and had. shifted blame
for confusion in agriculture to Khrushchev, implicating
at the same time those who also had supported such policies--
Podgornyy, Polyanskiy in 1959 and, more recently the
Belorussians.
A 26 August article in Pravda Ukrainy by A. Yevdoki-
mov continued the line found in Trapeznikov's article, and
criticized the ideologists of anti-communism for treating
collectivization as though it had been implemented contrary
to Leninist principles. He then discussed the complexity
of the development of socialist agriculture and some of
the problems encountered. In particular, he stated that
the defense of the country during the war had placed
demands on heavy industry, thus retarding the strength
of the material-technical base of agriculture. There
was no mention of Stalin, and no indication that inccwrect
orders from the center had created difficulties in
collectivization.
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Stalin's Revolutionary Role Praised
On 8 August several articles were published com-
memorating the 50th anniversary of the Sixth Party Congress.
A Pravda article by first deputy editor Zarodov stated
that the report to the central committee, delivered by
Stalin and Sverdlov, had presented a bright, vigqrous
picture of the development of the revolution. An article
published in Belorussia also mentioned Stalin's report and
noted that he was elected a member of the central committee,
The article listed several delegates who had wavered on
the subject of Lenin's court appearance, but Stalin was not
included on the list. According to this article, Stalin
did make one error, but the error is minimized. At a time
when Lenin was saying that the situation was fully defined
and power was in the hands of the counter-revolutionary
military, Stalin stated that "it was still not clear in
whose hands the power is." The article makes it clear
that the situation had, in fact, only been defined for
about a month. An October article in Pravda discussed the
October 1917 adoption of a resolution on armed uprising,
and listed Stalin among those who had supported Lenin.
In October the third volume of the History of the
CPSU, which had caused such a furor in the summer of 1966,
was finally published. It was accompanied on 26 October
by a Pravda editorial which blasted previous one-sidedness
and serious errors which had been made in the characteriza-
tion of the early struggle of the party; these errors had
involved viewing these struggles in terms of the blunders
made by people involved in them. While the editorial did
not mention Stalin by name he was obviously the person now
being exonerated.
On 22 October the Georgian paper Zarya Vostoka
published an article on the uprisings in Georgia in the
early 1920's. In discussing Ordzhonikidze's handling of
the uprising, the article referred constantly to telegrams
sent to Lenin and Stalin; the two names are always men-
tioned together. Then, according to the article, in
September 1920 Stalin was sent to study and clean up the
situation in Georgia, After establishing Communist power
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SLUKJ '1
in that state, the article stated, the party's Orgburo
adopted a decree at Stalin's suggestion calling for the
immediate dispatch of cadres to Georgia.
Liberal Efforts--Feeble and Hopeless
Several feeble efforts were made by the moderates to
combat the steadily increasing orthodox pressure, but
these efforts were doomed to failure. The rehabilitation
program was virtually ended, but there were several commemora-
tive meetings held. In August such a meeting was held for
Yan Rudzutak, who had died in the purges in 1938; Mikoyan
spoke at this meeting as did various Latvian veterans of
the revolution.* In September a similar meeting was held
for another of Statlin's victims, Postyshev; press coverage
of both these meetings was, however, minimal.
In October a war film based on a scenario by Kon-
stantin Simonov opened in Moscow. Among the subjects
discussed in the movie were the lack of preparedness for
the war, Stalin's refusal to believe that the Germans would
attack, and the catastrophic effect of the purges on the
Soviet high command. this film
had encountered fierce opposition before it was finally
released; however, the fact that it was released indicated
that there was still some support for a moderate position
in high places.
Another interesting deviation from the general trend
was the passage in September of a decree exonerating the
Tatars of the charge of collaborating with the fascists.
The decree stated that the accusation made in 1944 had
been without foundation and had groundlessly attributed
this crime to the whole Tatar population. This decree
*In December Mikoyan again demonstrated his sympathy for
the liberals when he attended a performance of the contro-
versail play "Bolsheviki" at the Sovremennik Theater and
made a demonstrative show of approval. This play delivered
the message that the start of Red Terror during the Civil
War had been a dangerous step.
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was passed by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet of
which Podgornyy is chairman. However, in spite of this
rehabilitation there was apparently little change in the
situation of the Tatars. A petition sent to the West in
early 1968 included the charge that although the Tatars
had been officially rehabilitated, they still could not
return to their homeland.
On 30 December one of the most interesting turn
arounds of this period occurred. Pravda Ukrainy, which
had been one of the most outspoken of the neo-Stalinist
Stalinist
journals, published a rehabilitation. On the 70th birthday
of V. Primakov, a former member of the Military Council
in Leningrad, the paper stated that he had been slandered
in 1935, removed from his job, and a year later was dead.
The use by this paper of a rehabilitation might be a further
indication of the fear of the neo-Stalinists in the wake
of the Yegorychev purge, that they were now in danger of
being repressed by Brezhnev.
A rigid, orthodox line dominated the first six
months of 1967, in spite of reports of dissension within
the leadership. While there may well have been dissension,
a conservative-orthodox faction, led by Brezhnev and per-
haps strongly influenced by Suslov, was strong enough to
enforce its line. This line was demonstrated in the arrests
of a number of intellectuals early in January and by large-
scale arrests in the Ukraine and Leningrad on the eve of
the Fourth Writers Congress. The leaders in these two
areas, Shelest and Tolstikov, had been among the most
outspoken proponents of the neo-Stalinist line; the sup-
pression of intellectuals in their regions demonstrates
the direct relationship between an expressed orthodox
viewpoint and direct administrative action.
The few liberal articles which were published during
this period were met with fairly swift punishment, re-
flecting the orthodox solution of dealing with non-
conformists through administrative action. The most
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Or, _ 1 _I1 1
notable example of this was the harrassment of Noviy Mir
which culminated in the replacement of two key members of
that journal's editorial board. Another instance was
the expulsion of Nekrich from the party for having written
a book in 1965 critical of the handling of prewar prepara-
tions. His expulsion was a clear warning to others who
might be tempted to indulge in historical objectivity.
The orthodox line was also reflected in the con-
tinued halt in the rehabilitation program; the only
exception was the publication of several articles on purged
military leaders Gay and Tukhachevskiy. Both of these men
had been supporters of modernization of the Soviet armed
forces in the 1930's, and these articles might have been
backed by contemporary supporters of increased emphasis
on a modernized military establishment. Articles which
appeared during this period concerning Stalin's wartime
role and his actions as a revolutionary and leader seemed
to exonerate him completely of any mistakes.
Signs of dissension within the leadership continued.
Several more articles were published defending the need
for collective leadership. One of these, by Petrenko,
defended collective leadership and also called for the
right of criticism and self-criticism within the party.
The tone of Petrenko's article was quite hard-line,
however, suggesting that {'he was speaking for the neo-
Stalinists rather than the liberals. He used the cult of
personality to illustrate the evils of one-man leadership--
the first time the neo-Stalinists had resorted to this
device.
Having effectively beaten down the moderates,
Brezhnev was now ready tolaunch a major campaign against
Shelepin, and during the spring and summer of 1967, the
latter's strength was gradually whittled away. In April
his protege Goryunov was relieved as head of TASS, and
in May Semichastnyy was replaced as KGB chief. Following
the Middle East crisis and his apparent challenge to the
leadership on its handling of that situation, Yegorychev,
the most outspoken member of the neo-Stalinist faction,
was fired as Moscow City boss. As a final blow, Shelepin
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was appointed head of the Soviet trade union organization
and removed from the party secretariat.
In the wake of these major setbacks for the neo-
Stalinist faction, several articles appeared defending
collective leadership and the right of party members (i.e.,
Yegorychev) to express criticism of their superiors
(i.e., Brezhnev) even at the highest party levels. These
articles seemed clearly aimed at Brezhnev, and came in at
least two instances from members of the neo-Stalinist camp.
The adoption by this faction of an anti-Stalin line suggested
real desperation on their part; their use of this line was
clearly defensive--an attempt to stave off further setbacks.
Another apparent shift was the publication of a rehabilita-
tion by the neo-Stalinist journal Pravda Ukrainy in late
December, Having previously backed the halt in the rehabil-
itation program as part of a general re-Stalinizing, they
now apparently feared that they themselves were in danger
of being purged and therefore were now identifying with
the purge victims rather than with Stalin.
That Shelepin's defeat and that of various of his
neo-Stalinist backers did not signify a corresponding
defeat for their point of view was revealed almost immedi-
ately. Encouraged by Shelepin's defeat, the liberal
intellectuals published several articles at the end of
June in which they criticized censorship and seemed to
urge its abolition. These articles were quickly suppressed.
The continuation of a harsh policy was also reflected in
the continuation of the arrests and trials of dissident
intellectuals and in the favorable treatment Stalin and
his policies continued to receive. Thus, it was clear
that an orthodox line, favored by Brezhnev, still
dominated.
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APPENDIX A: TEXT OF APPEAL AGAINST STALIN'S REHABILITATION
March 1966
Respected Leonid Ilich:
Tendencies have appeared lately in some public speeches
and articles in our press which are in fact directed at
a partial or indirect rehabilitation of Stalin. We do
not know how firmly these tendencies are grounded, but
they manifest themselves ever more frequently as the
XXIII Party Congress draws nearer. However, even if it
is only a matter of a partial revision of the decisions
of the XX and XXII Party Congresses, this causes deep
apprehension. We think it our duty to inform you about
our opinion in this matter.
Until now we have not been aware of a single fact,
of a single argument which would permit us to think that
a condemnation of the personality cult was wrong in any
of its respects. On the contrary, it is difficult to
doubt that a large part of striking, of truly horrifying
facts about Stalin's crimes has not yet been made public.
These facts would confirm the absolute correctness of the
decisions of both Party Congresses.
There is something else as well. We believe that
any attempt to whitewash Stalin conceals a danger of
serious dissensions within Soviet society. Stalin is
responsible not only for the destruction of countless
innocent people, for our unpreparedness for the war, for
a departure from the Leninist norms of party and state
life. His crimes and unjust deeds also distorted the
idea of Communism to such an extent that our people will
never forgive him for this. Our people will not under-
stand and will not accept even a partial departure from
the decisions on the personality cult. No one will be
able to obliterate these decisions from its consciousness
and memory. Any attempt to do so will lead only to con-
fusion and disarray in the broadest circles. We are con-
vinced, for instance, that this would cause great unrest
among the intelligentsia and would seriously complicate
the moods of our youth. Like the whole of the Soviet
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public we are worried about the young people. No explana-
tions or articles will make people believe in Stalin again;
on the contrary, they will simply create disorder and
anger. To undertake anything like this is dangerous, tak-
ing into account the complex economic and political situa-
tion of our country.
We also see another danger as equally serious.
The question of Stalin's rehabilitation concerns not only
home, but also international politics. Any step towards
his rehabilitation would undoubtedly pose a threat of a
new split in the ranks of the world Communist movement,
this time between ourselves and the Communists of the West.
They would assess this step as a surrender to the Chinese,
to which they would never agree. This is a factor of
exceptional importance which we cannot write off. In the
time when we are threatened, on the one hand, by ever more
active American imperialists and West German revanchists
and, on the other, by the leaders of the Communist Party
of China, it would be extremely unwise to risk a rift or
even complications with the fraternal parties in the West.
So as not to claim your attention for too long we
limit ourselves to mentioning only the most substantial
arguments against any rehabilitation of Stalin, first and
foremost concerning the danger of the two-way split. We
do not even speak about the great complications which any
departure from the decisions of the XX Party Congress
would bring upon the international contacts of our cul-
tural community--among other things upon its struggle for
peace and international cooperation. All that has been
achieved so far would be endangered.
We could not but write you about our thoughts. It
is quite clear that a decision of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on this ques-
tion cannot be regarded as a routine one, taken in the
general course of work. In either case it will have his-
toric importance for the destinies of our country. We
hope that this will be taken into account.
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bhu1CL 1
APPENDIX B: TEXT OF SOVIET WRITERS' PETITION TO KREMLIN
November 1966
To the Presidium of the 23d Congress of the Soviet Communist
Party.
To the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics.
To the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian
Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.
We, the undersigned group of Moscow writers, re-
quest you to grant us permission to stand surety for the
recently sentenced writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli
Daniel. We believe that this would be an act of both
wisdom and humanity.
Although we do not approve the means by which these
writers published their work abroad, we cannot accept the
view that their motives were in any way anti-Soviet, which
alone could have justified the severity of the sentence.
The prosecution failed to prove the existence of such a
motive.
At the same time, the condemnation of writers for
the writing of satirical works creates an extremely danger-
ous precedent and threatens to hold up the progress of
Soviet culture. Neither learning nor art can exist if
neither paradoxical ideas can be expressed nor hyperbolic
images be used as an artistic device. In our complex
situation today, we need more freedom for artistic experi-
ment and certainly not its condemnation. From this stand-
point, the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel has already caused
us more harm than did any of their mistakes
Sinyavsky and Daniel are gifted men who should be
given the chance to make up for their lack of political
prudence and tact. If they were released on our surety
and remained in touch with Soviet society, they would soon
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iDr.l i1J1 I
realize their mistakes and redeem them by the artistic
and ideological value of the new literary works they
would create.
We beg you, therefore, to release Andrei Sinyavasky
and Yuli Daniel on our surety.
This would be an act dictated by the interests of
our country, the interests of the world and those of the
world Communist movement.
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APPENDIX C: TEXT OF A DECREE ISSUED BY THE PRESIDIUM OF
THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE RSFSR [RUSSIAN
SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC] ON 16
SEPTEMBER, ENTITLED "ON THE ENTRY OF A SUP-
PLEMENT TO THE PENAL CODE OF THE RSFSR",16
September 1966
Chapter IX "Crimes Against the Administrative
Order" in the Penal Code of the RSFSR is hereby supple-
mented by Articles 190 [sub-section 1], 190 [sub-section
2], and 190 [sub-section 3] which contain the following
provisions:
Article 190--l. Spreading scientifically slander-
ous fabrications which discredit the Soviet system of
government and social order: systematic dissemination,
in verbal form, of scientifically slanderous fabrications
which discredit the Soviet system of government and the
Soviet social order, as well as preparation of writings
or printed products of the same content and their dis-
semination:"in any form shall be punished with deprivation
of freedom up to 3 years or with corrective labor terms
up to one year or with a fine up to 100 rubles.
Article 190--2. Defamation of the coat of arms
of the state or of the national flag: defamation of the
government coat of arms or the flag of the USSR, the
RSFSR, or any of the other Union Republics shall be pun-
ished by imprisonment of up to 2 years, corrective labor
service up to one year, or a fine of up to 50 rubles.
Article 190--3. Staging group actions which violate
public order or active participation in such actions:
the staging of group actions or active participation in
such actions, which violate public order in a serious
manner or which are accompanied by open failure to comply
with the legal requests of agents [representatives] of
the government, or which interfere with the activities
of the transportation system, of government and community
[social] agencies or enterprises, shall be punished with
imprisonment of up to 3 years or corrective labor service
up to one year or a fine of up to 100 rubles.
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APPENDIX D: PETITION AGAINST EXTENSION OF ARTICLE 190
January 1967
Copies to the Political Bureau of the CPSU;
to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet USSR;
to the Attorney General of the USSR.
Comrade Deputies:
We, a group of Soviet citizens, consider it to
be our duty to express our attitude toward the 16 September
1966 Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the
RSFSR "On the Entry of a Supplement to the Penal Code of
the RSFSR."
In our opinion, the additions to Articles 190--l
and 190--3, of the Penal Code of the RSFSR, have no founda-
tion in the political reality of our land. The passage
of such laws, at this time, seems to us to be an unjusti-
fied act which conjures up the danger of false judicial
verdicts,the violation of socialist justice, and the
creation of an atmosphere of suspicions and denunciations.
Article 190--l facilitates subjective evaluations and
arbitrary interpretations of statements as scientific
slander against the Soviet system of government and social
order.
We are convinced that Article 190--l and 190--3
are in conflict with the Leninist principles of socialist
democracy. If the Plenum of the Supreme Soviet of the
RSFSR should confirm these Articles, they might become
an obstacle on the road to the implementation of the free-
doms guaranteed in the USSR constitution.
The signers include the following: Academician
Asturov, biologists; academician Zeldovich, physicist;
academician Knunyants, chemist; academician Leontovich,
physicist, Lenin Prize winner; academician Sakharov, phy-
sicist; academician Skazkin, historian; academician Tamm,
physicist; academician Engelgardt, biochemist; author
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Kaverin; author Nekrasov; author Dombrovskiy; author
Voynovich; composer Shostakovich; movie director Romm.
This letter was also signed by a group of old
Bolsheviks and others, giving us a total of 21 signa-
tures, some of the signatures being illegible. The
document was received by the Supreme Soviet between 1
and 10 January 1967.
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6I UKLl
APPENDIX E: TEXT OF SOLZHENITSYN LETTER PROTESTING
CENSORSHIP, May 16, 1967
To the presidium and the delegates of the congress,
to members of the Union of Soviet Writers, to the editors
of literary newspapers and magazines:
The oppression, no longer tolerable, that our
literature has been enduring from censorship for decades
and that the Union of Writers cannot accept any further.
This censorship under the obscuring label of Glavlit
[Soviet censorship agency], not provided for by the Con-
stitution and therefore illegal and nowhere publicly
labeled as such, is imposing a yoke on our literature and
gives people who are unversed in literature arbitrary con-
trol over writers.
A survival of the Middle Ages, censorship manages
in Methuselah-like fashion to drag out its existence al-
most to the 21st century. Of fleeting significance, it
attempts to appropriate unto itself the role of unfleet-
ing time of separating the good books from the bad.
Our writers are not supposed to have the right,
they are not endowed with the right, to express their
anticipatory judgments about the moral life of man and
society, or to explain in their own way the social problems
or the historical experience that has been so deeply felt
in our country.
Works that might have expressed the mature think-
ing of the people, that might have timely and salutary
influence on the realm of the spirit or on the develop-
ment of a social conscience are prohibited or distorted
by censorship on the basis of considerations that are
petty, egotistic and, from the national point of view,
shortsighted.
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Outstanding manuscripts by young authors, as yet
entirely unknown, are nowadays rejected by editors solely
on the ground that they "will not pass."
Many union members and even delegates at this con-
gress know how they themselves bowed to the pressure of
censorship and made concessions in the structure and con-
cept of their books, changing chapters, pages, paragraphs,
sentences, giving them innocuous titles, only to see them
finally in print, even if it meant distortingthem irremedi-
ably.
We have one decisive factor here, the death' of
a troublesome writer, after which, sooner or later, he
is returned to us, with an annotation "explaining his
errors." For a long time, the name of Pasternak could
not be pronounced out loud, but then he died, and his
books appeared and his verses are even quoted at ceremonies.
Pushkin's words are really coming true: "They are
capable of loving only the dead."
But tardy publication of books and "authorization"
of names do not make up for either the social or the
artistic losses suffered by our people from these monstrous
delays, from the oppression of artistic conscience. (In
fact there were writers in the 1920s, Pilnyak, Platonov
and Mandelshtam, who called attention at a very early
stage to the beginnings of the cult and the particular
traits of Stalin's character; however, they were destroyed
and silenced instead of being listened to.)
Literature cannot develop between the categories
"permitted" and "not permitted"--"this you can and this
you can't." Literature that is not the air of its con-
temporary society, that dares not pass on to society its
pains and fears, that does not warn in time against the
threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does
not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade.
Such literature loses the confidence of its own people,
and itspublished works are used as waste paper instead
of being read.
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~ihuKL1
Our literature has lost the leading role it played
at the end of the last century and the beginning of the
present, and the brillance of experimentation that distin-
guished it in the 1920s. To the entire world the literary
life of our country now appears as something infinitely
poorer, flatter and lower than it actually is, then it
would appear if it were not restricted, hemmed in.
The losers' are both our country, in world public
opinion, and world literature itself. If the world had
access to all the uninhibited fruits of our literature,
if it were enriched by our own spiritual experience, the
whole artistic evolution of the world would move along
in a different way, acquiring a new stability and attain-
ing even a new artistic threshold.
I propose that the congress adopt a resolution that
would demand and insure the abolition of all censorship,
overt or hidden, of all fictional writing and release
publishing houses from the obligation of obtaining authori-
zation for the publication of every printed page.
These duties are not clearly formulated in the
statutes of the Union of Soviet Writers (under "Protec-
tion of copyright" and "Measures for the protection of
other rights of writers"), and it is sad to find that
for a third of a century the union has defended neither
the "other rights nor even the copyright of persecuted
writers.
Many writers were subjected during their lifetime
to abuse and slander in the press and from rostrums with-
out being given the physical possibility of replying. More-
over they have been exposed to violence and personal per-
secution (Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva, Pasternak,
Zoshchenko, Platonov, Aleksandr Grin, Vasily Grossman).
-116-
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The Union of Writers not only did not make avail-
able its own publications for reply and justification,
not only did not come out in defense of these writers,
but through its leadership was always first among the
persecutors.
Names that adorned our poetry of the 20th century
found themselves on lists of those excluded from the
union or not even admitted to the union in the first
place.
The leadership of the union cowardly abandoned to
their distress those for whom persecution ended in exile,
camps and death (Pavel, Vasilyev, Mandelshtam, Artem Vesely,
Pilnyak, Babel, Tabidze, Zapolotsky and others).
The list must be cut off at "and others." We learned
after the 20th congress of the party [on de-Stalinization
in 1956] that there were more than 600 writers whom the
union had obediently handed over to their fate in prisons
and camps.
However, the roll is even longer, and its curled-
up end cannot be read and will never be read by our eyes.
It contains the names of young prose writers and poets
whom we may have known only accidentally through personal
meetings, whose talents were crushed in camps before being
able to blossom, whose writings never got further than
the offices of the state security service in the days of
Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria and Abakumov [heads of the secret
police under Stalin].
There is no historical necessity for the newly
elected leadership of the union to share with preceding
leaderships responsibility for the past.
I propose that paragraph 22 of the union statutes
clearly formulate all the guarantees for the defense of
union members who are subjected to slander and unjust
persecutions so that past illegalities will not be repeated.
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:CRET
If the congress will not remain indifferent to what
I have said, I also ask that it consider the interdictions
and persecutions to which I myself have been subjected.
1. My novel "In the First Circle" was taken away
from me by the state security people, and this has pre-
vented it from being submitted to publishers. Instead,
in my lifetime, against my will and even without my know-
ledge, this novel has been "published" in an unnatural
"closed" edition for reading by a selected unidentified
circle. My novel has become available to literary offi-
cials, but is being concealed from most writers. I have
been unable to insure open discussion of the novel within
writers associations and to prevent misuse and plagiarism.
2. Together with the novel, my literary archives
dating back 15 and 20 years, things that were not intended
for publication, were taken away from me. Now tendentious
excerpts from these files have also been covertly "pub-
lished" and are being circulated within the same circles.
The play "Feast of the Victors," which I wrote down from
memory in camp, where I figured under four serial numbers
(at a time when, condemned to die by starvation, we were
forgotten by society and no one outside the camps came
out against repressions), this play, now left far behind,
is being ascribed to me as my very latest work.
3. For three years now an irresponsible campaign
of slander is being conducted against me, who fought all
through the war as a battery commander and received mili-
tary decorations. It is being said that I served time
as a criminal, or surrendered to the enemy, (I was never
a prisoner of war), that I "betrayed" my country, "served
the Germans". That is the interpretation now being put
on the 11 years I spent in camps and exile for having
criticized Stalin. This slander is being spread in secret
instructions and meetings by people holding official posi-
tions. I vainly tried to stop the slander by appealing
to the board of the Writers Union of the R.S.F.R. [Russian
Republic], and to the press. The board did not even
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react, and not a single paper printed my reply to the
slanderers. On the contrary, slander against me from
rostrums has intensified and become more vicious within
the last year, making use of distorted material from my
confiscated files, and I have no way of replying.
4. My story "The Cancer Ward," the first part of
which was approved for publication by the prose depart-
ment of the Moscow writers organization, cannot be pub-
lished either by chapters, rejected by five magazines,
or in its entirety, rejected by Novy Mir, Zvezda and
Prostor [literary journals].
5. The play "The Reindeer and the Little Hut,"
accepted in 1962 by the Theater Sovremennik [in Moscow],
has thus far not received permission to be performed.
6. The screen play, "The Tanks Know the Truth,"
the stage play "The Light That Is in You," short stories,
"The Right Hand," the series "Small Bits," cannot find
either a producer or a publisher.
7. My stories published in Novy Mir have never
been reprinted in book form, having been rejected every-
where--by the Soviet Writer Publishers, the State Litera-
ture Publishing House, the Ogonyok Library, They thus
remain inaccessible to the general reading public.
8. I have also been prevented from having any
other contacts with readers, public readings of my works
--in November, 1966, 9 out of 11 scheduled meetings were
canceled at the last moment--or readings over the radio.
Even the simple act of giving a manuscript away for "read-
ing and copying" has now become a criminal act, and the
ancient Russian scribes were permitted to do.
My work has thus been finally smothered, gagged
and slandered.
In view of such a gross infringement on my copy-
right and "other" rights, will the fourth congress defend
me, yes or no? It seems to me that the choice is also
not without importance for the literary future of several
delegates.
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~L1)1t1. 1
I am, of course, confident that I will fulfill
my duty as a writer under all circumstances, from the
grave even more successfully and more unchallenged than
in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to the truth,
and to advance its cause I an prepared to accept even
death. But, maybe, many lessons will finally teach us
not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime. At no
time has this ennobled our history.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn
May 16, 1967.
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APPENDIX F: TEXT OF VOZNESENSKIY LETTER,TO PRAVDA,
22 June 1966
For nearly a week now I have been living in an atmos-
phere of blackmail, confusion and provocation.
On June 16 I received an official notification from
the Union of Writers that my trip to New York to give a
reading at the Arts Festival there June 21 (this was the
only poetry reading at the festival and it had been allotted
to a Soviet poet) was "inadvisable."
I warned the leadership of the Union of Writers of
the consequences of cancellation: the evening had been
advertised for six months ahead, posters had been put up
and tickets sold, and it would have been too late to arrange
an alternative program. Despite my conviction that the
union's decision was extremely unwise, I immediately, after
talking with them, sent a cable to the United States saying
I could not come.
But what does a poetry evening matter? That's not
the main point. Let's also forget that at first (until
June 16) everybody was in favor of it, but that then they
suddenly changed their minds. What is intolerable is the
lying and total lack of scruples that went with all this.
Here I have been working, taking part in functions
organized by the Union of Writers, going to the theater,
receiving foreign writers at the request of the Novosti
agency, only to learn that for three days now the Union
of Writers has been telling journalists that I am seriously
ill. Of course, the leaders of the Union of Writers must
know what they are talking about, but why haven't they at
least informed me that I am sick? It's difficult to imag-
ine anything more idiotic. It's an insult to elementary
human dignity.
I am a Soviet writer, a human being made of flesh
and blood, not a puppet to be pulled on string.
Why is it that I suddenly have to learn from for-
eign broadcasts that "the government of the U.S.S.R. has
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allowed Voznesenskiy to go to the festival. The ban has
been lifted and he has received his visas. It now is only
a matter of his getting a ticket . . ."
But at this very same moment the union tells me:
"Youu._; trip is off. In reply to questions we are saying
you are ill." In other words they tell one lie to me and
another to the world at large. What sort of position does
that put me in? What am I supposed to tell people? Why,
during all this, has nobody in the leadership of the Union
of Writers bothered to call me and explain what was going
on, or at least, tell me what the official reasons for my
non-departure were? Why do they pull the wool over every-
body's eyes by saying (variously) that I'm ill, that I've
left it too late to get a ticket, or (now that everybody
knows that it's too late for me to get to the poetry reading)
that I am just about to leave? Why compromise a Soviet poet
in the eyes of thousands of lovers of Soviet poetry? Why
lead people to think that the reading might take place
after all? Why involve the organizers of the evening in
further expense? And why, in general, create all this fuss
about my trip at such a crucial time as this in world
affairs!
It is not a question of me personally, but of the
fate of Soviet literature, its honor and prestige in the
outside world. How much longer will we go on dragging
ourselves through the mud? How much longer will the Uriion
of Writers go on using methods like these?
Clearly the leadership of the union does not regard
writers as human beings. This lying, prevarication and
knocking people's heads together, is standard practice.
This is what they do to many of my comrades. Letters to us
often do not reach us, and sometimes replies are sent in our
name. What boors, what chameleons they are! We are sur-
rounded by lies, lies, lies, bad manners and lies.
I am ashamed to be a member of the same union as
these people.
That is why I am writing to your newspaper, which is
called "Truth" (Pravda).
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APPENDIX G: EXCERPTS FROM LITVINOV LETTER TO VARIOUS
PAPERS
I regard it as my duty to make public the following:
On September 26, 1967, I was summoned by the Commit-
tee of State Security (K.G.B.) to appear before Gostev, an
official of the K.G.B. Another officer of the K.G.B., who
did not give his name, was present during our conversation.
After this talk was over, I wrote it down immediately
and as fully as I could remember. I vouch for the accuracy
of the substance of what was said between the representa-
tive of the K.G.B. and me.
Gostev: Pavel Mikhailovich, '[we] have'_knowledgb that you
together with a group of other people intend to reproduce
and distribute the minutes of the recent criminal trial of
Bukovsky and others. We warn you that if you do that, you
will be held criminally responsible.
I: Irrespective of my intentions, I cannot under-
stand what the criminal responsibility for such an action
might be.
Gostev: The court will decide that, and we wish
only to warn you that if such a record should be spread
through Moscow or other cities or appears abroad, you will
be held responsible for this.
I: I know the laws well and I cannot imagine what
particular law would be transgressed by the composition of
such a document.
Gostev: There is such an article, 190-1. Take the
criminal code and read it.
I: I know this article very well and can recite it
from memory. It deals with slanderous fabrications which
would discredit the Soviet social system and regime. What
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kind of slander could there be in recording the hearing
of a case before a Soviet court?
Gostev; Well, your notes will be a biased distortion
of facts and a slander of the court's actions, and that
would be proved by the agency competent to handle such
cases.
I: How can you possibly know this? Instead of
starting a new case, you yourself should publish the
record of this criminal trial and in this way kill the
rumors circulating in Moscow.
Gostev: And why do we need to publish it? It is
an ordinary criminal case of disturbance of the peace.
I: If so, it is all the more important to give
information about it, to let all the people see that it
is really an ordinary case.
Gostev: Vechernyaya Moskva (a Moscow newspaper)
of September 4, 1 77, gives all the information about the
case. All that has to be known about that trial is in there.
I: In the first place, there is too little informa-
tion: The reader who had heard nothing previously about
this case simply would not understand what it is all about.
In the second place, it is false and slanderous. Rather,
the editor of Vechernyaya Moskva or the person who gave such
information should be charged with slander.
Gostev: Pavel Mikhailovich, the news report is
absolutely correct. Remember that.
I: It says there that Bukovsky pleaded guilty. Yet
I who was interested in this case, know perfectly well that
he did not plead guilty.
Gostev: What does it matter whether he pleaded
guilty or not? The court found him guilty. Consequently,
he is guilty.
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b.LUKr, 1
I am not talking now about the court's decision; nor
did the newspaper have it in mind. And confession of guilt
by the defendant represents a completely independent judi-
cial concept. In general, it would be a good idea to tell
more about Bukovsky; for example, how he was arrested while
reciting poetry on Mayakovsky Square, brought to the police
station and beaten up.
Gostev: This is not true. It could not be.
I: His mother said so.
Gostev: Who cares what she said?
I; She did not tell it to me--I do not know her--
but to the court, and nobody interrupted her or accused her
of slander.
Gostev: She should rather have told you how she
was summoned and warned about the conduct of her son. We
can summon your parents, too. And in general, Pavel
Mikhailovich, have in mind: Vechernyaya Moskva has
printed all that the Soviet people should know about this
case and this information is completely true and we warn
you that if not only you, but your friends or anybody
makes this record, you specifically will be held responsible
for it. You understand very well that such a record can be
used by our ideological enemies, especially on the eve of
the 50th anniversary of Soviet power.
I: But I do not know of any law that would prohibit
the dissemination of a non-secret document only because it
might be misused by somebody. Much critical material from
Soviet newspapers might also be misused by somebody.
Gostev: It should be clear to you what we are talk-
ing about. We are only warning you, and the court will
prove the guilt.
I: It will prove it, I have no doubt. The trial
of Bukovsky makes that clear. And how about my friend
Aleksandr Ginzburg? Is he imprisoned for the same kind of
actions that you are warning me about?
sEcRET
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bLUi'c r, 1
Gostev: Well, you will learn what he did when he
is put on trial. He will be acquitted if he is innocent.
Could you possibly think that now, in the 50th year of
Soviet power, a Soviet court would make a wrong decision?
public?
I: Then why was Bukovsky's trial closed to the
I: Yet it was impossible to get in.
Gostev: Those who had to get in got in. There were
representatives of the public and all seats in the hall
were taken. We did not intend to rent a club (auditorium)
because of this case.
I: In other words, the public nature of legal
proceedings was violated.
Gostev: Pavel Mikhailovich, we have no intention of
arguing with you. We simply warn you. Just imagine if
people would learn that the grandson of the great diplomat
Litvinov (Maxim M. Litvinov, former Foreign Minister) is
busy with such doings, this would be a blot on his memory.
I go?
I: Well, I do not think he would blame me. Can
Gostev: Please, The best thing for you to do now
would be to go home and destroy all that you've collected.
I know that a similar kind of conversation was
conducted with Alexsandr Ginzburg two months before his
arrest.
I am asking you to publish this letter so that in
case of my arrest the public would be informed about the
circumstances which preceded it.
October 3, 1967
Moscow, 8 Alexei Tolstoy
Street, Apartment 78.
SECRET
P. M. LITVINOV.
Assistant in the Faculty
of Physics in Moscow,
Institute of Precision
Chemical Technology
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APPENDIX H: TEXT OF LITVINOV-DANIEL APPEAL, 12 January
1967
To World Public Opinion:
The judicial trial of [Yuri] Galanskov, [Aleksandr]
Ginzburg, [Aleksei] Dobrovolsky and [Vera] Lashkova, which
is taking place at present in the Moscow City Court, is
being carried out in violation of the most important prin-
ciples of Soviet law. The judge and the prosecutor, with
the participation of a special kind of audience have turned
the trial into a wild mockery of three of the accused
--Galanskov, Ginzburg and Lashkova--and of the witnesses--
unthinkable in the 20th century.
The case took on the character of the well-known
"witch trials" on its second day, when Galanskov and
Ginzburg--despite a year of preliminary incarceration,
in spite of pressure from the court--refused to accept
the groundless accusations made against them by Dobrovolsky
and sought to prove their own innocence. Evidence by
witnesses in favor of Galanskov and Ginzburg infuriated
the court even more.
The judge and the prosecutor throughout the trial
have been helping Dobrovolsky to introduce false evidence
against Galanskov and Ginzburg. The defense lawyers are
constantly forbidden to ask questions, and the witnesses
are not being allowed to give evidence that unmasks the
provocative role of Dobrovolsky in this case.
Judge [Lev M.] Mironov has not once stopped the
prosecutor. But he is allowing people who represent the
defense to say only that which fits in with the program
already prepared by the K.G.B. (state secret police) in-
vestigation. Whenever any participant in the trial de-
parts from the rehearsed spectacle, the judge cries, "Your
question is out of order," "This has no relation to the
case," "I will not allow you to speak." These exclama-
tions have been directed at the accused (apart from
Dobrovolsky), to their lawyers and to the witnesses.
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The witnesses leave the court after their examina-
tion, or rather they are pushed out of the court, in a
depressed state almost in hysterics.
Witness Yelena Basilova was not allowed to make
a statement to the court--she wanted to record how the
K.G.B. had prosecuted her mentally sick husband, whose
evidence given during the investigation when he was in
a certifiable state, plays an important role in-the
prosecution case. Basilova was driven out of the court
while the judge shouted and the audience howled, drown-
ing her words.
P. Grigorenko (former Maj. Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko
of the Soviet Army) submitted a request asking that he
be examined as a witness because he could explain the
origin of the money found on Dobrovolsky. Galanskov gave
him this money. Grigorenko's request was turned down on
the pretext that he is allegedly mentally ill. This is
not true.
Witnesses Aida Topeshkina was not allowed to make
a statement to the court in which she wanted to give
facts showing the falsity of Dobrovolsky's evidence.
Topeshkina, an expectant mother, was physically ejected
from the courtroom, while the audience howled at her.
The "commandant of the court," K.G.B. Colonel
Tsirkunenko, did not allow witness L. Katz back into the
court after a recess, and told her, "if you have given
other evidence, you could have stayed."
None of the witnesses have been allowed to stay
in the court after giving evidence, although they are
obliged to stay under Soviet law, Appeals by the wit-
nesses on the basis of Article 283 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure [the relevant article] went unheeded, and the
judge said sharply to witness V. Vinogradova, "You can
just leave the court under Article 283."
The courtroom is filled with specially-selected
people--officials of the K.G.B. and volunteer militia--
who give the appearance of an open public trial. These
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people make a noise, laugh, and insult the^accused and
the witnesses. Judge Mironov had made no attempt to pre-
vent these violations of order. Not one of the blatant
offenders has been ejected from the hall.
In this tense atmosphere there can be no pretense
that the trial is objective, that there is any justice
or legality about it. The sentence was decided from the
very start.
We appeal to world public opinion, and in the first
place to the Soviet public opinion. We appeal to every-
one in whom conscience is alive and who has sufficient
courage-
Demand public condemnation of this Shameful trial
and the punishment of those guilty of perpetrating it!
Demand a new trial with the observance of all legal
norms and with the presence of international observers=
Citizens of our country! This trial is a stain
on the honor of our state and on the conscience of every-
one of us. You yourselves elected this court and these
judges--demand that they be deprived of the posts which
they have abused. Today it is not only the fate of the
three accused which is in danger--their trial is no better
than the celebrated trials of the nineteen-thirties,
which involved us in so much shame and so much blood that
we have still not recovered from them.
We pass this appeal to the Western progressive
press, and ask for it to be published and broadcast by
radio as soon as possible, We are not sending this re-
quest to Soviet newspapers because that is hopeless.
(signed)
LARISA BOGORAZ-DANIEL
Moscow, V-261,
Leninsky Prospect 85,
Flat 3
PAVEL LITVINOV
Moscow, K-1, Ulitsa Alexei,
Tolstoy 8, Flat 78.
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Secret
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