Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

ends and that his errors were not personal ones but intrinsic in the Soviet system of monolithic authoritarianism. He was refuted in Pravda , a week later.

The Hungarian invasion destroyed much of the appeal of Communism to the Leftists of Western Europe and the world; this had already been left in shreds by the “secret speech.” Even in the Soviet Union, university students and intellectuals disapproved of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Many literary works written during the de-Stalinization phase in the spring were published the following winter, when the tide had turned again. Khrushchev struck hard at these groups and continued to do so for several years, with the result that the alienation of Russian intellectuals from Khrushchev became established. This was reflected in the expulsion from the universities later in 1956 of hundreds of students who refused to applaud the Soviet attack on Hungary. The official Soviet line was that most disturbances of this kind arose from the activities of foreign agitators of capitalist aggressors.

Simultaneously with the Soviet political and intellectual reaction after June 1956, came a series of efforts to alleviate the economic stringency: wages were raised, taxes reduced on the poorest payers, social benefits were extended, and the labor unions were urged to protect them; numerous projects in heavy industry under the Five-Year Plan were slowed up and their resources diverted to consumer goods. Most significant of all, there was a sharp increase in the influence of state officials and a corresponding decrease in that of party officials.

This reversal was fully evident in the Central Committee session of late December 1956, but the following meeting, in February 1957, showed Khrushchev in an aggressive counterattack. This took the form of suggestions for a drastic reorganization of Soviet economic life toward a more decentralized system. Undoubtedly this plan had considerable merit, but in Khrushchev’s eyes it had an additional advantage, since it would remove much of economic life from the influence of the central state ministries and leave it open to increased influence from local party groups. He proposed the division of the Soviet Union into several dozen economic regions, each under an economic council, or sovnarkhozy , of diverse groups, and the devolution to these groups of the economic functions of the majority of the economic ministries in Moscow. These ministries would be abolished, along with the State Commission for Current Planning (GEK) and Molotov’s Ministry of State Control. This would leave only the long-range economic planning agency (Gosplan) and a few economic ministries at the center, with annual planning and most execution left to the regional or lower groupings.

This plan had real merits which can hardly be covered here. Clearly, the growing complexity of the Soviet economy, over a widely diverse terrain and people, could not be operated efficiently by uniform regulations from the center. Moreover, each economic ministry, because of the constant shortages of resources, materials, and labor, sought to build up, within itself, its own sources of supply and also had a constant urge to hoard equipment and parts, even when they were not needed by it and were urgently needed by enterprises of a different ministry in the next street or district. This hampered expansion and also resulted in very expensive cross-hauling of the freight of one ministry from remote areas at the very time that a different ministry might be hauling similar resources in the opposite direction. The serious overworking of the Soviet railway system, a constant weakness in the economy, was intensified by such needless hauling.

In spite of its merits, the anti-K group in the Presidium was unwilling to adopt this reform because it would drastically weaken centralized state control and strengthen localized party control in the Soviet economy. The state hierarchy of Soviets had fallen into decay, partly because of Stalin’s use of the party and secret police, partly as a means to avoid use of the fraudulently democratic Soviet constitution and of its federalist features. As a consequence, the state hierarchy lacked effective or flexible control down through its levels, while the party hierarchy had these well developed. Much of the state’s power locally was exercised through the economic ministries, which Khrushchev now wished to abolish. And because of his control of the party and through it of the party press, headed by Pravda , Khrushchev could keep up a steady drum of propaganda for his economic reorganization. Every local figure was for it, and it appeared to other rival leaders as an antistate move. Khrushchev, on the other hand, could make the opposition seem “antiparty,” with all the treasonable overtones Stalin had given to that expression.

The economic reorganization law was passed on May 10, 1957, abolishing twenty-five economic ministries (retaining nineteen) and devolving their functions to twenty-nine regional sovnarkhozy ; the State Economic Commission (GEK) was also abolished, leaving, as the only central economic control, the State Committee for Long-Term Planning under Yosif Kuzmin (a Khrushchev party official), who simultaneously became first deputy prime minister of the Soviet Union. Shepilov was restored to the secretaryship of the Central Committee, which he had lost in December. These changes were pushed through by an alliance of the party, the army, and all the forces of localism, both economic and state. Khrushchev had won a great victory, which could make the party dominant in economic life.

Having failed to block Khrushchev’s economic plans, his rivals in the Presidium were reduced to a last resort: they had to get rid of the man himself. On June 18th, at a meeting of the Presidium, the motion was made to remove Khrushchev as first party secretary. The discussion grew violent, with Malenkov and Molotov attacking and Khrushchev defending himself. He was accused of practicing a “cult of personality” of his own, of ideological aberrations which threatened the solidarity of Communism, and of economic mismanagement. It soon became clear that the vote was 7-4 against him, with Mikoyan, Kirichenko, and Suslov his only supporters. He was offered the reduced position of minister of agriculture.

Khrushchev refused to accept the result, denying that the Presidium had authority to remove a first secretary and appealing to the Central Committee. The members of this larger group joined in the discussion as they arrived, while Khrushchev’s supporters sought to delay a final vote until his men could come in from their party posts in the provinces. Marshal Zhukov provided army planes to bring in the more distant and more reliable ones. The discussion became bitter, especially when Zhukov threatened to produce documentary evidence that Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich had been deeply involved in the bloody purges of 1937. Madame Furtseva, who was, like Zhukov, an alternate member of the Presidium, filibustered with a speech of six hours. Surprisingly, Khrushchev’s agent Shepilov spoke against him, but M. A. Suslov, the head of the security police and the most cold-blooded killer left in the Soviet Union, shifted to Khrushchev’s side. Eventually there were 309 members present, with 215 wanting the floor, over 60 actually making speeches.

When the vote was finally taken, Khrushchev’s loyal supporters in the party hierarchy voted for him solidly, and his removal, already voted by the Presidium, was reversed. Khrushchev at once counterattacked. He moved and carried the expulsion from the Presidium of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Shepilov for “antiparty activities.” Then came the election of a new Presidium, from which Pervukhim and Saburov, the two strongest supporters of a centralized, state-controlled economy, were also removed. Pervukhim became an alternate member, but Saburov was dropped completely. The new Presidium had fifteen full members instead of the previous eleven, and nine alternate members instead of six. The old alternate members, Zhukov, Furtseva, L. I. Brezhnyov, and N. M. Shvernik, who had supported Khrushchev, were moved up to be full members, joining the holdovers Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kirichenko, Mikoyan, Suslov, and Voroshilov, while five loyal agents of Khrushchev, led by Aristov and F. R. Kozlov, were added.