The signs of the demotion were unmistakable. At Stalin's funeral Shvernik could be seen only behind the far end of the group of leaders assembled at the Lenin Mausoleum. Yet nominally he was still President of the Republic since the instalment of Voroshilov was not to take place until a week later, at the session of the Supreme Soviet of March I5th. At that session Khrushchev introduced Voroshilov on behalf of the party with an eloquent eulogy, extolling the great merits and qualities which made the Marshal a most suitable candidate for the Presidency. Not a single kind word was said about the departing holder of the office — his services did not receive even the most perfunctory acknowledgment. Shvernik was voted out of the Presidency in icy silence.
It is difficult to believe that all this was a matter of chance; and that barely a few hours after Stalin's demise Shvernik had to leave the Presidency simply in order to become Chairman of the Trade Unions Council, as was officially announced. Was it perhaps that during the brief interregnum, Shvernik and Gorkin tried to use their constitutional prerogatives against Malenkov or against the sweeping overhaul of the ruling group? And that this was the real reason for their demotion?
Whichever is true, these changes were hardly calculated to lend support to the professions of continuity. Their cumulative effect may well have been to create a feeling that there was a strong, self-assured, new hand at the helm; but they also suggested that the statements about continuity need not be taken literally. Indeed, they provoked a sense of discontinuity and uncertainty among the Soviet hierarchy — and in public opinion as well. At the very moment of his accession Malenkov appeared to have carried out a triple coup — in the party, in the government, and in the Presidency. It was only natural that people should wonder about its implications.
About the time of Stalin's death — this much is obvious now — the reformers and the die-hard supporters of Stalinism were arrayed against one another. Through the changes in the party, the government, and the Presidency, the reformers strove to gain the upper hand.
At this point we pass from the analysis of basic trends in Soviet society to a view of the mechanics of political power.
The two material instruments of power on which the regime relied in the past were: police and army. Both were controlled by the party, but each naturally had its distinctive outlook, its sectional interests, its policies and ambitions. The attitude of the army will be discussed later — here we are concerned with the part of the political police in the new situation.
The political police would not be true to character if it did not view with apprehension and suspicion any attempt to liberalize the regime. It has a vested interest in preserving the status quo. It has its spokesmen in the leading bodies of the party; and these must have warned the reformers that the experiments envisaged were dangerous and fraught with incalculable consequences. (Such Court struggles between gendarmes and semiliberal reformers are not unusual in autocratic regimes; and in Russia they have recurred at every major political crisis.)
This is not to say that in the inner councils of the party Beria necessarily represented the ‘anti-liberal’ attitude of the police. He was called in by Stalin in 1939 to take over from Yezhov the direction of the N.K.V.D., to wind up the great purges and tame the political police whom Stalin himself had previously encouraged to run amok. Rightly or wrongly, Beria gained the reputation of being one of the more moderate and educated men in Stalin's entourage. As Minister of Internal Affairs he does not seem to have exercised direct control over the political police in recent years. The latter was managed by the Minister of State Security, and its last chief, Ignatiev, was responsible among other things for concocting the ‘doctors' plot’.
The political police could hardly have been alone in its opposition to reform. Almost certainly it had its allies among Stalin's Old Guard, which was, and perhaps still is, divided on this issue. From conviction or from personal resentment at Malenkov's ascendancy, Molotov certainly looked askance at Malenkov's liberal gestures. The demoted Shvernik has for long been Molotov's close associate; he headed the trade unions at the time when the unions helped to enforce a state of martial law in industry. By elevating Voroshilov to the Presidency and Kaganovich to the post of Vice-Premier responsible for the conduct of economic affairs, Malenkov evidently set two members of the Old Guard against Molotov and Shvernik.
Malenkov's first preoccupation was to keep the political police in check and to prevent its interference with contemplated reforms. As early as March 6th he merged the Ministry of State Security with that of Internal Affairs and placed Beria at the head of the united department. Ignatiev, the last Minister of State Security, was transferred to the Secretariat of the Party a week later, on March I4th. In the light of subsequent events this appointment appears to have been calculated to confound the die-hards in the political police. They were evidently led to believe that as one of the five new Party Secretaries Ignatiev would be able to counteract effectively the reformist trend. In the meantime Beria acted, opened the dossiers of the former Ministry of State Security, and investigated the background to the ‘doctors' plot’.
At the same session of the Central Committee at which Ignatiev was assigned to the General Secretariat of the Party, Malenkov resigned from it. If we are to believe the official account, Malenkov himself asked to be relieved from the Secretariat in order to be able to devote his undivided attention to government affairs. It is possible, of course, that Malenkov did not weaken his position by surrendering his post at the Secretariat. The Secretariat may not be as important to him as it once was to Stalin: unlike Stalin, Malenkov was able to place his supporters at all the levers of the party machine long before his assumption of power. Alternatively, Malenkov may have withdrawn from the Secretariat under pressure from opponents who were jealous of his holding all the highest offices in both party and State. What indicates that there was friction and bargaining on this point is the circumstance that Malenkov's resignation, allegedly decided on March I4th, was not announced until a week later, on March 21st.
The adherents of reform scored their first signal success with the announcement of an amnesty on March 28th. The amnesty may have been the result of a compromise. But the terms in which it was presented and, even more, the motives given for it appear to have been designed to disgrace the political police and — by implicaition — the dead Stalin.
‘Vigilance!’ had been the time-honoured battle cry of the political police. The argument for vigilance had run: Although socialism was triumphant in the Soviet Union and the old property-owning classes had vanished, the class struggle continued unabated; the very progress of socialism was driving foreign and domestic enemies to extremes of sabotage, treachery, and terrorism.
The reformers did not, of course, deny the need for vigilance; but they placed the emphasis on the strength and consolidation of the Soviet regime, and on the growing socialist maturity of the people, which made a more lenient policy both possible and necessary.