Let us briefly survey the trend of Soviet policies since Stalin's death in order to see which are the major issues at stake.
From March to the middle of June one domestic reform followed upon another in close succession. The Stalin cult was virtually abolished. A campaign of ‘enlightenment’ was in progress, designed to make it impossible to replace that cult by the adulation of any other Leader. The administration was being overhauled and shaken from its Byzantine-totalitarian rigidity. A fairly comprehensive amnesty was decreed. The frame-up of the Kremlin doctors was declared null and void. The inquisitorial methods of the political police were bluntly condemned. The rule of law was proclaimed. Strong emphasis was placed on the constitutional rights of the citizen. Newspapers asked almost openly for the abolition of censorship and official control. (The Literary Gazette, for instance, frankly demanded that the Soviet theatre be allowed to manage its own affairs without outside interference, a demand which nobody would have dared to raise during the Stalin era and which obviously set an infectious example to others.) The need for the ‘monolithic’ outlook was implicitly or even explicitly questioned at almost every step. Free expression of views was encouraged; and the holder of unorthodox views was no longer labelled an enemy, a traitor, or a foreign agent. High officials were demoted merely on the ground that they abused their power and acted unconstitutionally; no predatory or counter-revolutionary intent was attributed to them. The relaxation of the over-centralistic method of government was noticeable above all in the dismissal of Russifiers from high office in the Ukraine, in Georgia, and other outlying Union Republics. Russification was emphatically disavowed. Together with the cessation of anti-Semitic incitement these moves promised a new and hopeful beginning in the treatment of the smaller nationalities.
Last but not least, the government ordered a revision of the targets of the current economic plans. Consumer industries were to raise their output. A higher standard of living and contentment of the masses were obviously regarded as vital preconditions for the success of the new policy.
A new spirit made itself felt in the conduct of foreign affairs. Moscow consistently exercised its influence in favour of a truce in Korea; and not even Synghman Rhee's provocations diverted the Russians (or the Chinese or the North Koreans) from this path. In Europe Malenkov's government began, as it was forecast, ‘to explore the lines of retreat from Germany’.[22]
It is enough to recall here the moves made by Soviet diplomacy only during the week which preceded the Berlin revolts:
After General Chuikov had been recalled from Berlin the whole policy of the Pieck-Ulbricht government was dramatically reversed. The ‘iron curtain’ between Eastern and Western Germany was nearly demolished. Labour policy was revised. The struggle between the government and the Evangelical Church was called off; and the Church regained its former privileges. Collectivization of farming was stopped. The farmers who had fled to Western Germany were invited to come back and take possession of their property. Private capital was also invited to return to industry and trade.
From the Russian viewpoint these moves made no sense at all unless they were part and parcel of a policy calculated to bring about the unification of Germany and the withdrawal of occupation armies. There was little doubt in Berlin that Moscow was really prepared to abandon the government of Pieck and Ulbricht. So strongly indeed did Soviet representatives in Berlin encourage this belief and so frankly did they negotiate with non-Communist leaders about a change of the regime that by this alone the Russians themselves unwittingly induced the people of Berlin to descend upon the streets, to clamour for the resignation of the Communist government, and to storm that government's offices. ‘Russia is willing to abandon her puppets — let us remove them at once!’ this was the idea behind the German revolt.
In the same week, on 10 June., Moscow established diplomatic relations with Austria and proclaimed an end to the regime of occupation there. Restrictions on interzonal traffic were abolished in Austria as well. And on the same day, as a sideline, Moscow solemnly renounced all its claims on Turkey, the claims that had played a fateful role in the opening phases of the cold war.
What was surprising in all these developments, domestic and foreign, was their extraordinary consistency and apparently frictionless progress. Stalin's successors showed no sign of hesitation in pursuing the new course. They betrayed no second thoughts. They seemed to bask in the glory of unaccustomed generosity.
Was it possible, one wondered, that the die-hards of Stalinism and other opponents of ‘appeasement’ should be so weak and discredited that they were unable to put a brake upon the new course? Or were they perhaps retreating tactically and merely waiting until the new policy had run into serious trouble?
Where did Beria stand in all this? To which faction did he belong?
In watching the Russian scene it is not difficult to arrive, by processes of deduction and analysis, at a definition of the broad viewpoints and political conceptions contending for acceptance by the ruling group. Nor is it very difficult to see the sectional interests and aspirations reflected in the competing conceptions. The broad forces aligned with, or arrayed against, one another throw their shadows sharply enough even across the veil of secrecy that surrounds them for the outsider to be able to guess the approximate disposition ofthose forces. But only in exceptional cases is it possible to venture even a guess about the attitude of this or that official personality on any specific issue.
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.