Stalin: A Biography

The arguments, from a structural viewpoint, were finely poised. Zhdanov and his friends could indicate that the Council of Ministers, left to itself, could not guarantee Stalinist ideological rectitude. Without this, the October Revolution was undermined and the rationale of the USSR’s existence was ruined. The Soviet Union could not survive on technocratic impulses alone. Yet the other side of the debate had an equally strong case. The USSR functioned in a world of intense military and economic competition. If party doctrinaires held the whip hand over ministerial specialists, the country’s capacity to match the USA and its capitalist allies would be reduced. Pettifogging tutelage by the party would tie one of the Soviet Union’s hands behind its back in a contest which placed the West at an advantage.

Stalin did not need to be persuaded that the USSR had to become more competitive or that ideological indoctrination and political control were important. His state could do without neither government nor party; and even when he gave preference to one of them over the other, he omitted to make the choice a definitive one. The institutional tension worked to his personal advantage. By locking the two bodies in rivalry, he strengthened his position as arbiter. But this in turn meant that he had to settle for a lower level of administrative efficiency that he would otherwise have liked. He started from the premise that each institution pursued its interests at the expense of others. Persistent rivalries led to systematic obstruction. The tangled competences of government, party and police produce a thicket of bureaucratic paperwork which slowed down the processes of deliberation and implementation. Dynamism was introduced when Stalin himself gave a direct order or when he allowed an influential group of subordinates to pursue a desired initiative. But Stalin knew he could not know everything. The network of central institutional bodies worked well to maintain his despotism; it was less effective in facilitating flexible, efficient rulership. Stalin paid a price for his despotism.

49. POLICIES AND PURGES

Stalin did not confine his Kremlin political activity to manipulating the existing central structures and playing the leading politicians off against each other. There had to be constant deliberation on policies in the dangerous post-war years. The external and internal situation was always in flux and Stalin could not cope without consulting his fellow leaders. He had to accept that limits existed to what he could learn about the world by his solitary efforts. Nor could he safely rely exclusively on his own judgement. It was pragmatic to sanction a degree of diversity of opinion among his subordinates before fixing policy. Disagreements among the leaders were not only inevitable: they were also desirable. There was no secret about this; Politburo members understood how they were being manipulated. But they also saw that if they failed to take a position when affairs were under discussion, Stalin might decide that they were no longer of any use to him. At the same time they had to avoid saying anything which would annoy him. Short of assassinating him, they remained at his mercy — and his scrupulous attention to the details of his personal security made it highly unlikely that an attempt on his life would be successful.

Stalin’s leading associates were in any case simultaneously occupied with the discharge of their institutional duties. Immense responsibility fell to each of them and their power and privileges were at least some compensation for the subjugated condition of their work. They were also motivated by patriotic zeal and, in some cases, ideological commitment. They had operated under Stalin’s control for years. It is hardly a surprise that he continued dominating and exploiting them just as they did their own subordinates.