In Russia After Stalin the supposition was expressed that ‘in the inner councils of the party Beria did not necessarily represent the anti-liberal attitude of the police’, that he may, on the contrary, have acted against the ‘die-hards of the police’ as one of the promoters of reform.
This supposition appears to have been borne out by the facts in the meantime. In the last period of his activity Beria represented the curious paradox of a semiliberal police chief in a totalitarian state. The period up to the East German revolt might indeed be described as Beria's Hundred Days.
Beria took upon himself the responsibility for two major political acts, two unforgivable ‘crimes’ in the eyes of the die-hards of Stalinism and their associates. First, he humiliated the political police when he exposed its practices in connection with the ‘doctors' plot’. Next, he offended, ‘Great Russian chauvinism’ when he, the Georgian, called for an end to Russification in Georgia, in the Ukraine, in the Baltic lands, and in Central Asia.
Both these acts, the former more explicitly than the latter, had ostensibly been endorsed by the other party leaders. But as Minister of the Interior Beria was identified with these acts more closely than anyone else. No wonder that some of the old hands of the political police, resentfully straining to recover their sacred right to extort ‘confessions’ from their victims, and the Great Russian chauvinists, joined hands to wreak vengeance on him.
Beria was less directly associated with the conduct of foreign affairs; but, as a member of the Politbureau (now the Praesidium), he exercized a strong influence in that field, too. Bolshevik foreign policy has never been made by the Foreign Minister of the day, Molotov, Vyshinsky, Litvinov, or Chicherin — it has always been the prerogative of the Politbureau. That foreign and domestic policies are closely interdependent has been an axiom. The man in charge of domestic security must therefore have had a considerable say in foreign affairs as well. Beria certainly had a decisive say in the affairs of Eastern Germany and generally of Eastern Europe, which had a direct bearing on Russia's internal security, on the one hand, and on diplomacy, on the other. Thus his opponents could easily blame him for ‘appeasement’ as well as for the domestic reforms.
From March to June Beria acted in close alliance with Malenkov. Together they swayed the Praesidium, probably against Molotov's and certainly against Khrushchev's opposition or semi-opposition. Jointly they represented the strongest bloc of power within the Praesidium. The new policy aroused great hopes and was undoubtedly very popular; and as long as this was so, nobody could challenge Malenkov's and Beria's joint authority.
(Against this interpretation the old argument may be advanced that under a totalitarian regime the states of the popular mind and the sodal, cultural and moral trends at work in society are of no political importance. In his criticism of Russia After Stalin, Mr. George F. Kennan, for instance, writes that the ‘majority of students of modern totalitarianism … feel that if the ruling group remains united, vigilant and ruthless, it need not defer extensively to, or be seriously influenced by, subjective feelings within the populace at large’. And again: ‘In general, totalitarian leaders who retain their internal unity and their ruthlessness can scoff at subjective states of the popular mind…’ (My italics—I.D.)
Mr. Kennan's words, written before Beria's fall, reflected an assumption that there was no need for Western policy to take into account any genuine divisions within the Soviet ruling group, because no such divisions existed. This assumption has been proved wrong. But what conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that the Soviet ruling group does not ‘remain united’ and does not ‘retain its internal unity’? Surely the ‘subjective states of the popular mind’ do acquire some political significance thereby? And those states of mind may in part even account for the differences within the ruling group itself?)
From the beginning, however, the forces opposed to the Malenkov-Beria policy were formidable. The old hands of the political police were not idle. Some party stalwarts were shocked by the all round break with the old-established canons of Stalinism. Some chiefs of armed forces pondered with alarm the implications of the quasi-liberal reforms: Would the reforms not cause a slump in labour discipline and imperil the armament programmes? By dint of tradition the army has been the mouthpiece of ‘Great Russian chauvinism’ and has viewed with suspicion and hostility the ‘centrifugal’ nationalisms of the outlying Republics. Some marshals and generals could not adopt a favourable attitude towards a foreign policy obviously directed towards an eventual withdrawal of the occupation armies from Germany and Austria.
But the coalition of shocked Stalinist diehards, resentful policemen, and anxious generals was helpless as long as the new policy was triumphantly carried forward on a tide of popular enthusiasm. The first hitches apparently occurred on the home front. To judge from circumstantial evidence, labour discipline did slump in industry, and collective farms lagged with food deliveries. But these hitches were either not serious enough to permit the opponents of the new policy to launch a frontal attack on it, or else they did not provide convenient ground for such an attack.
It was Eastern Germany that gave the opponents of the new policy the opportunity they had eagerly awaited.
The Germans who on 16 and 17 June descended upon the streets, clamouring for the dismissal of the government of Pieck and Ulbricht, assailing the People's Police, and meeting Russian tanks with a hail of stones, did in fact bring about an upheaval; but the upheaval took place in Moscow, not in Berlin.
Almost certainly a cry against ‘appeasement’ went up at once within the walls of the Kremlin. Army chiefs could now argue that it was the army that had to bear the consequences of the neck-breaking political experiments started by the civilians; that order reigned in Eastern Germany as long as General Chuikov ruled there with an iron hand; that the trouble began as soon as the general had been replaced by Semyonov, as High Commissioner, and a civilian regime had been established; and that then it was the army that had to rescue that regime.
Starting from the German issue the critics could turn against the new policy as a whole. They could point out that not only Germany but the West at large was receiving Russian concessions as proof of Russian weakness; and that Washington in particular was using these concessions as the starting point for an intensified on-slaught on Russia's positions in Eastern and Central Europe.
Moreover, the ruling group saw that the new policy was indeed becoming a source of weakness for Russia: it plunged the whole of Eastern Europe into a turmoil; it caused a rapid deterioration in Russia's bargaining position; it tempted American diplomacy to pass from ‘containment’ to ‘liberation’; and it threatened to rob Russia of the fruits of her victory in the Second World War, without any compensating gains.
The ‘appeasers’ may still have argued that the new line had not yet been given a chance; that it would be wrong to abandon it immediately after it had encountered the first difficulties; and that only by persisting patiently in the policy of concessions could the Soviet Government reap its benefits.
But after the earthquake in Eastern Germany, after the tremors in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, after all the calls for a tough policy which resounded from Washington, the argument against ‘appeasement’ carried more weight in the Kremlin.
In Russia as in the United States there exist groups which hold the view that all peace-seeking is futile; these groups regard with Schadenfreude any setback suffered by the conciliators. The position of such groups was now greatly enhanced: the advocates of a tough policy in the West had effectively played into their hands.