Russia After Stalin

by Deutscher Isaac

The diehards of the security police may, of course, join hands with the army. Signs of an ambiguous alliance between them and some military leaders were clearly visible in the incident of the Kremlin physicians in January 1953. But there have also been indications of a division among the army leaders. Not enough military support may therefore be available for a joint coup. But even if such a coup were to succeed, its result would be the establishment of a military dictatorship, not the restoration of the orthodox Stalinist regime. The prestige of the army stands high and is intact, while that of the police has been irreparably damaged. The police could be only the army's junior partner, and perhaps not even that—it might only be able to hold the stirrup for a Russian Bonaparte.

Military dictatorship

We have already mentioned the important part that some army leaders played in the political events of the last period. This emerges from the official, and now disavowed, statement about the plot of the Kremlin physicians, published on 13 January 1953. The Statement contained the following curious passage:

‘The criminal doctors tried in the first instance to undermine the health of the leading Soviet military personnel, to put them out of action and thereby to weaken the country's defences. They tried to put out of action Marshal A. M. Vassilevsky, Marshal L. A. Govorov, Marshal E. S. Koniev, General of the Army S. M. Shtemenko, Admiral G. E. Levchenko, and others. However, the arrest has upset the evil designs and the criminals have not succeeded in achieving their aim.’ (My italics — I.D.)

The communique also claimed that the doctors had brought about the premature death of Zhdanov and Shcherbakov. Only these two dead party leaders figured as victims of the conspiracy. Not a single living party leader was mentioned as a prospective victim.

This omission was not accidental. Its significance becomes clear when this indictment is compared with accusations made in previous comparable cases. In every purge trial it was alleged that the ‘terrorists’ prepared to assassinate in the first instance the party leaders: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and others. The accusation levelled against the Kremlin doctors created a startlingly novel pattern. Not only did it not contain so much as a hint at a conspiracy against living civilian leaders — it stressed most emphatically that the ‘conspirators’ worked primarily or, rather, exclusively against the military.

After the official disavowal of the accusation, this last circumstance appears all the more significant. What — it must be asked — were the motives of the Ministry of State Security when it singled out military leaders as the sole targets of the imaginary conspiracy?

The Ministry clearly intended to build up the prestige of the marshals and generals and to play down the importance of party leaders. The assassination motif had a definite function in all the purge trials. It had been calculated to enhance the authority of the wouldbe victims of conspiracy. Prosecutor, judges, and Press had told the nation: ‘These are our irreplaceable leaders. Their lives are most precious to our cause. Even the enemy knows this: and it is at them he aims. To their defence we ought to rally.’ In the ‘doctors' plot’ the tale of assassination was intended to point the same moral. The Ministry of State Security was out to place the marshals and the generals on a pedestal and, by implication, to disparage the party leaders.^[20]

Did the heads of the security police act on their own initiative when they accorded the marshals and generals the honour of being the only prospective victims of conspiracy? Or were perhaps some of the military chiefs not averse to being hailed as the nation's heroes and indispensable leaders? The security police had no special reason to render this disinterested service to the marshals and to exclude the party chiefs, unless it acted against the latter with the complicity or on the instigation of the former. The glory of martyrdom has more than once enhanced a claim to power; and a bid for power was implicit in the original story of the ‘doctors' plot’. We need not necessarily attribute personal political ambition to any of the army leaders. They may have made an initial move towards seizure of power from the conviction that it was their duty to frustrate the reforms and the peace overtures contemplated by Malenkov. They may have acted on the belief that the new policy will weaken Russia militarily.

We have said that the tale about the ‘doctors' plot’, the cry for vigilance, and the campaign against the Jews were calculated to create an atmosphere of nationalist and war-like hysteria, which would have ruled out the possibility of any domestic reform and conciliatory foreign policy. It should perhaps be added that the extreme demonstrations of Russian nationalism have as a rule been initiated or encouraged by the army, while the party only connived at them willingly or reluctantly. It was the army that fostered the cult of Kutuzov, Suvorov, and the other traditional heroes of Russian nationalism; and the army's influence was discernible in the campaign against aliens, ‘rootless cosmopolitans’, and other ‘security risks’.