Communists: The Show Goes On

In that important branch of Russian political show business—public condemnation of the regime’s enemies—styles have changed. Stalin’s show trials specialized in public confessions followed by quiet executions in the cellar. Khrushchev generally dispenses with the deadly finale, but instead of letting his victims reveal their own past, he himself holds stage center and tells their stories for them. At this kind of monologue, Khrushchev and his friends at the 22nd Party Congress last week continued to prove themselves masterful. One by one, once famed party names were hauled out again and their misdeeds splashed all over the modernistic new Kremlin Palace of the Congresses.

They were guilty of nothing, of course, that is not fairly standard in Communism —political assassination, tyrannical capriciousness, vicious infighting. But Khrushchev chose to reveal these facts with every sign of pious horror.

Blackest of All. Old Stonebottom Vyacheslav Molotov, senior member of the anti-Khrushchev clique ousted from power four years ago, was denounced as the blackest villain of all. After his exile as Ambassador to Outer Mongolia from 1957 to 1960, the ex-Foreign Minister had been given a respectable sinecure as Soviet delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. During the past year, Molotov had become a familiar Viennese sight as he strolled through the Belvedere Gardens or sipped coffee at cafes. But instead of minding his pleasant business, the unrepentant Stalinist a few weeks ago dispatched a circular letter to all 133 members of the Soviet Party’s Central Committee, supporting the militant Chinese line. “Without serious conflict, without war, advance toward Communism is impossible,” Molotov wrote.

Nothing but the truth, probably. But Khrushchev, trying to make the West believe he’s a nice fellow, does not find that kind of truth palatable right now. So everyone on the Moscow stage denounced Molotov and agreed that he had never been any good, anyway. Back in 1937, reported Party Control Chairman Nikolai Shvernik. Molotov had been so “extremely cynical” that when his car accidentally skidded off a Siberian road, Molotov demanded and got the conviction of a group of guiltless persons on charges of attempted assassination.

Nightmares Relived. Other revelations about other nogoodniks: former Premier Georgy Malenkov had staged the whole sale slaughter of loyal party members in Armenia and Byelorussia; ex-Deputy Premier Lazar Kaganovich, who personally hand-picked Khrushchev from obscurity for his first major job in the ‘305 as secretary of the Moscow party committee, was assailed as a cruel assassin who had once rejected an old comrade’s appeal by scrawling across it: “Only one punishment—death.”

Said Khrushchev’s top cop, Aleksandr Shelepin, piously: “You sometimes wonder how those people can sleep peacefully. They must be plagued by nightmares. They must hear the sobs and curses of mothers, wives and children of comrades who perished innocent.”

Winding up the week-long session of name calling, Khrushchev agreed that “diehard Molotov” and the others must be ousted from the Party. But for ailing, aging former President Kliment Voroshilov, 80, previously accused of conspiring to purge half the army general staff, he pleaded forgiveness. Voroshilov “sincerely condemns his acts and repents,” said Khrushchev; what is more, he helped expose his onetime collaborators.

Two Possible Answers. The question remained why Khrushchev had publicly revived condemnation of long-deposed ex-party leaders deliberately. Two answers suggest themselves. One is that the Stalinist dead horses Khrushchev is kicking are perhaps not so dead after all—in short, that there is considerable feeling against Khrushchev among middle-echelon party functionaries who agree with Peking in its criticism of Moscow’s present policies; such dissidents presumably would profit from a graphic vision of the punishment that awaits them.

The other—more farfetched—answer is based on the theory that in the history of the Communist Party, as one U.S. Russian expert explains it, “when you are about to change course, you knock off the advocates of that course so they cannot claim credit for having forced you to it.”* In this view, Khrushchev is readying a much tougher domestic and international strategy, but before he can safely do so, he must thoroughly discredit rival power groups who urge the same line.

* Stalin ousted Leon Trotsky, then adopted Trotsky’s ideas on rapid industrialization; Khrushchev purged Malenkov for the latter’s advocacy of more consumer goods, promptly began his own wooing of the consumer.