The Ministry clearly intended to build up the prestige of the marshals and generals and to play down the importance of party leaders. The assassination motif had a definite function in all the purge trials. It had been calculated to enhance the authority of the wouldbe victims of conspiracy. Prosecutor, judges, and Press had told the nation: ‘These are our irreplaceable leaders. Their lives are most precious to our cause. Even the enemy knows this: and it is at them he aims. To their defence we ought to rally.’ In the ‘doctors' plot’ the tale of assassination was intended to point the same moral. The Ministry of State Security was out to place the marshals and the generals on a pedestal and, by implication, to disparage the party leaders.[20]
Did the heads of the security police act on their own initiative when they accorded the marshals and generals the honour of being the only prospective victims of conspiracy? Or were perhaps some of the military chiefs not averse to being hailed as the nation's heroes and indispensable leaders? The security police had no special reason to render this disinterested service to the marshals and to exclude the party chiefs, unless it acted against the latter with the complicity or on the instigation of the former. The glory of martyrdom has more than once enhanced a claim to power; and a bid for power was implicit in the original story of the ‘doctors' plot’. We need not necessarily attribute personal political ambition to any of the army leaders. They may have made an initial move towards seizure of power from the conviction that it was their duty to frustrate the reforms and the peace overtures contemplated by Malenkov. They may have acted on the belief that the new policy will weaken Russia militarily.
We have said that the tale about the ‘doctors' plot’, the cry for vigilance, and the campaign against the Jews were calculated to create an atmosphere of nationalist and war-like hysteria, which would have ruled out the possibility of any domestic reform and conciliatory foreign policy. It should perhaps be added that the extreme demonstrations of Russian nationalism have as a rule been initiated or encouraged by the army, while the party only connived at them willingly or reluctantly. It was the army that fostered the cult of Kutuzov, Suvorov, and the other traditional heroes of Russian nationalism; and the army's influence was discernible in the campaign against aliens, ‘rootless cosmopolitans’, and other ‘security risks’.
Between January and March 1953 a Russian Bonaparte cast his shadow ahead. He has been compelled to with-draw. He may now be standing in the background and watching the scene. Should Malenkov's government not be able to master the situation, should discontent be rife, should social discipline break down in consequence of the reforms, and should danger from abroad coincide with internal disorder, then the war-lord will step forward again and seize power, with or without the aid of the embittered die-hards of Stalinism.
A military dictatorship would signify neither a counterrevolution, in the Marxist sense, nor the restoration of Stalinism. Russia's military interest demands that the present economic order be conserved; and no military leader can or will do anything to change it fundamentally. His attitude towards the legacy of Bolshevism would hardly be very different from Napoleon's attitude towards the legacy of Jacobinism. He would not feel tied to any party tradition, and he would fill with his own martial splendour the vacuum left by the defunct Stalin cult. He, too, would be compelled to rationalize and modernize the system of government, but he would do so on a strictly authoritarian basis. If the internal tensions were to grow acute he would seek to relieve them by military adventure abroad. He might then out-Napoleon Napoleon and, before his own destruction, place Europe and Asia at Russia's feet.
Democratic regeneration
The prospect of a military dictatorship, while not altogether unreal, is improbable. The Russian people would have to prove extremely immature to exchange the rule of the nagan for the rule of the sword.[21] The present reaction against Stalinism indicates that the nation has outgrown authoritarian tutelage. Malenkov's reforms reflect a popular craving for freedom. To be sure, freedom may release discontent and lead to disorder and anarchy which would be a standing invitation to a new dictator. But freedom leads to such lamentable results only in nations too poor, or regimes too conservative, to satisfy the material needs of the people. In empty stomachs freedom turns sour. But Russia is no longer so poor and the regime is, after all, not so conservative. The economic progress made during the Stalin era has at last brought within the reach of the people a measure of well-being which should make possible an orderly winding-up of Stalinism and a gradual democratic evolution.
At the same time as Malenkov's government struck the blow at the security police it also decreed an overall reduction in the prices of most consumer goods. The reduction, ranging from 5 to 50 per cent, was the sixth consecutive measure of this kind carried out in the last three years. Since wages and salaries have either risen or remained stationary, the cumulative effect of the price cuts is a considerable rise in the standard of living. True enough, even the higher standard is far below the American and even below the Western European Standard. But a comparison between national standards of living is largely irrelevant to the appreciation of Russia's morale.
To people rising from the lowest depth of poverty it matters little, if at all, that they enjoy none of the elaborate facilities and luxuries available to older industrial nations, that they have no motor-cars, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines, of the existence of which they often hardly know. They are aware that they are much better fed, clad, and shod than ever before; that the State provides their children with the most extensive facilities for education; and that the planned economy guarantees security of employment. They may also hope that, if there is no war, their vigorously expanding industry will soon bring within their reach the choicer goods and utilities as well. Under such conditions popular contentment is bound to grow; and so is popular confidence in a government which at last begins to fulfil the promise of a better life.
Fortified by this mood Malenkov's government evidently trusts in its ability to depart from the Stalinist regime without provoking dangerous unrest and exposing itself to effective counter-blows from its opponents.
Besides this positive reason the new rulers have a negative and less obvious reason for self-confidence.
Authoritarian governments initiating liberal reforms have often found that such reforms endangered their very existence, and have rapidly retraced their steps. But sometimes, although much more rarely, reform carried out in time disarmed popular resentment and strengthened the existing order. When resentment is deep, strong, and politically articulate an authoritarian government cannot save itself by reformist concessions. Each concession is seen as a sign of its weakness and encourages its irreconcilable opponents. Such, for instance, was the position of Nicholas II, the last Tsar. In 1905 he initiated an ‘era of reform’, but was compelled to bring it to an abrupt close. Towards the end of Tsardom all roads led to revolution: reform strengthened the hands of the revolutionaries; suppression intensified popular resentment and prepared the eventual explosion.
In contrast to this, the reforms decreed by Alexander II in 1855-61 isolated the radical opponents of Tsardom and made revolution impossible for half a century. Social discontent had been strong enough to demand reform; but it was not widespread and articulate enough to use the government's concessions as the startingpoint for an all-out onslaught. Revolutionaries who, in the reign of Alexander II, went to the peasants to tell them that the Tsar had cheated them, were manhandled by the peasants and taken to the nearest police station.
20
The Ministry may have aimed even further. The arrest of the doctors may have been intended as a preliminary to the arrest of Malenkov himself. The doctors were said to have speeded the death of Zhdanov. Since it was widely believed that Zhdanov had been Malenkov's rival, it would have been easy at the next stage to point to Malenkov as the chief instigator of the ‘assassins’. But this is only a hypothesis. The special role of the military leaders in the whole affair is, however, not hypothetical, although certainly not all those mentioned in the communique are implicated.
21