Stalin: A Biography

His subordinates of course knew he was not gaga and had not attended the Congress just to be its political ornament: he was also listening and watching like a bird of prey. Stalinist conservatism was the order of the day. Failure to go along with the ceremonial plaudits for the policies of party and government would have been suicidal. Malenkov’s report stepped wholly over the threshold of realism with his claim that the problem of grain supplies in the USSR had been solved ‘definitively and for ever’. But such a trespass was safer for a speaker than the slightest sign of dissent.

The Central Committee plenum after the Congress on 16 October 1952 heard Stalin’s last oral salvo. Accompanied by the other leaders, he entered the Sverdlov Hall to an ovation. He made a speech lasting an hour and half; he did this without notes and fixed his audience with a searching gaze.³⁶ His main theme, undeclared, was himself. He implied he was not long for this life. He reminisced about the dangers of early 1918 when enemies beset the infant Soviet state on all sides: ‘And what about Lenin? As regards Lenin, go and re-read what he said and what he wrote at that time. In that incredibly grievous situation he went on roaring. He roared and feared nobody. He roared, roared, roared!’³⁷ Talking about Lenin, he was really describing himself and his contribution to the Revolution. ‘Once I’ve been entrusted with it [a task], I carry it out. And not so that I should get all the credit. I wasn’t brought up like that.’³⁸ When a Central Committee member proudly affirmed that he was Stalin’s pupil, Stalin interjected: ‘We are all pupils of Lenin!’³⁹ This was the nearest he came to leaving behind a political testament. Rather than bequeath recommendations on specific policies, he itemised the qualities needed by the Soviet leadership after his death. They included courage, fearlessness, personal modesty, endurance and Leninism.

His immediate aim was to expose the weaknesses of some potential successors. Unlike Lenin, he unstopped the bottles of his wrath as he poured insults on the heads of his victims. Molotov and Mikoyan were the main casualties. Stalin ranted on with accusations of cowardice and inconsistency, alleging that their trips to the USA had given them an exaggerated admiration of American economic strength. He recalled incidents when Molotov had wanted to soften the demand for grain supplies from the kolkhozes. Molotov took his dressing down without replying. Mikoyan, however, decided that active defence was called for, and he took the lectern to respond.⁴⁰ Politburo members already knew of Stalin’s hostility to Molotov and Mikoyan, but it was news for other leading members.

The scenario was close to completion for a final settling of accounts. Molotov, Mikoyan and Beria lived in dread. The Central Committee set up a Presidium as its main executive organ instead of the Politburo. Stalin read out the list of proposed members. The entire list was accepted without discussion.⁴¹ The new Party Presidium was to have an internal Bureau, and neither Molotov nor Mikoyan was appointed to it.⁴² (Beria gained a place, but this was no serious consolation; he knew that Stalin had often worked with a salami-slicer when starting a purge.) When the Presidium met on 18 October, Malenkov was put in charge of its permanent commission on foreign affairs, Bulganin was to supervise ‘questions of defence’ and Shepilov was to head the commission on ‘ideological questions’.⁴³ Old though he was, Stalin still had applied himself to reading reports, plotting his manoeuvres and attending crucial meetings — and, as in 1937, he passed up the opportunity to take a vacation that whole year. The Bureau met six times in the remaining weeks of 1952 and Stalin attended on each occasion.⁴⁴ Much of the proceedings centred on personnel postings. But there was also discussion of business of a distinctly sinister nature. Stalin raised the question ‘of sabotage in medical work’; he also required a report ‘about the situation in the MGB of the USSR’.⁴⁵

Stalin desired to bind an official party organ behind the wagon of his conspiracy. The risk of a coup against him needed to be reduced. By moving slowly and obtaining formal sanction for each stage of the way, he also hoped to convince the younger and therefore less experienced Bureau members that his measures were based on solid evidence. The killer needed to secure his alibi and his legendary guile had not left him.