Stalin: A Biography

And so Stalin frequently shuffled the pack of the leadership as individuals won or lost his trust in the battles he permitted over policy. One leader he demoted soon after the war was Vyacheslav Molotov. Alongside Kaganovich and Mikoyan, Molotov was his longest-serving subordinate. Initially all seemed well. When Stalin went south on vacation in October 1945, he left the foursome of Molotov, Beria, Mikoyan and Malenkov in charge of the Kremlin.¹ But almost certainly he was looking for a pretext to attack Molotov, and the incident over the publication of excerpts of Churchill’s speeches gave him what he wanted. Stalin may have resented Molotov’s wartime fame as well as his popularity as an ethnic Russian. The British press must have made the situation still worse by speculating that Molotov was flexing his muscles to assume power.² The beneficiaries of the demise of Molotov were Malenkov and Beria, who in March 1946 were promoted — at a rare Party Central Committee plenum — to full membership of the Politburo, and Malenkov’s name came after Stalin’s in the composition of the Orgburo and Secretariat.³ Molotov was not sacked as Minister of External Affairs until March 1949 but his time as Stalin’s deputy had already ceased.

Yet although Stalin was resentful and suspicious, even he did not yet wish to get rid entirely of Molotov. When Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, visited Stalin in Moscow in May 1950, Stalin recalled Molotov to take an active part in the discussions.⁴ Molotov’s expertise was as yet too useful to discard. His formal status had been undermined but his actual influence, despite having been reduced, was still far from negligible. He remained a Politburo member and, more importantly, a regular dinner guest at Stalin’s dacha. Stalin was playing a long game.

For a counterweight to Malenkov’s new authority he turned to Andrei Zhdanov, who was put in charge of the Propaganda Administration in the Party Secretariat in April 1946. Zhdanov’s position was consolidated by the simultaneous appointment of Alexei Kuznetsov, who worked alongside him in Leningrad, to head the Secretariat’s Cadres Administration. Malenkov knew he would need to look over his own shoulder.⁵ Indeed scarcely had he risen than he was cast down. In May 1946 the Politburo sacked him from the Party Secretariat. Stalin blamed him for failing to improve the quality of aircraft production. N. S. Patolichev took his place.⁶ Malenkov’s time in the sun had been short; like Molotov, however, he was not entirely excluded from Kremlin activity (at least after his return from an assignment in the Soviet republics of central Asia). As yet the juggling of the personnel pack after the war did not involve much beyond the obvious loss of prestige and influence. Malenkov was not arrested but his clients in party and government were removed from posts and often replaced by individuals associated with Zhdanov at the time when he had worked in Leningrad. Zhdanov’s star was in the ascendant.

Exactly why Stalin had suddenly changed his preferences remains mysterious. It may be that he was genuinely annoyed by the revelations of sloppy standards in the aircraft-production industry. Perhaps, however, he was looking for any pretext whatever to keep the entire Politburo on its toes — and there was no member of the Politburo who eventually failed to incur his disapproval. Possibly Stalin’s fondness for Zhdanov also played a part; Molotov recalled: ‘Stalin loved Zhdanov more than all the rest.’⁷ With Zhdanov at his right arm, Stalin moved against Mikoyan. This was not their first contretemps in recent years. In 1944 Stalin had ‘crudely’ rejected Mikoyan’s proposal to give grain seeds for winter sowing to the restored collective farms of Ukraine: he accused Mikoyan of acting in ‘an anti-state fashion’.⁸ In December 1946 this turned into permanent hostility on Stalin’s part when he accused him of supporting moves to yield to the USA’s conditions for increased mutual trade.⁹