The boundaries of permissible difference were revealed in Budapest in November 1956, and were reflected back into Soviet society. But there was no turning back. Molotov persistently struggled against difference, but he, too, was defeated, at the June 1957 CC plenum devoted to the removal of the 'anti-party group'. The next thirty years witnessed a continual contestation of the boundaries of permissible deviation from the Soviet model at home.[222]
In this initial period after Stalin's death, institutionalisation of a discourse of difference did not occur as much as Stalinism was de-institutionalised. Just one day after Stalin's death, for example, the MVD and MGB were merged, so the police were again being supervised by those responsible for internal law and order, not for finding foreign agents. A year later, the MGB and its intelligence functions were severed from the MVD, so the Stalinist conception of criminality as being connected to a foreign threat was deprived of its institutionalised power.53 Only two weeks later, the Gulag was transferred from the MVD to the Ministry of Justice.54 With Georgii Malenkov's demotion in January 1955, Khrushchev packed the CC with his proponents.55 This strategy paid off in the June 1957 CC meeting that removed Molotov, Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovich and Dmitrii Shepilov.
New institutional carriers for the discourse of difference emerged in society more broadly. The custom of readers writing letters to editors of newspapers and magazines became so widespread that media outlets competed for them. The intelligentsia as a social stratum was revived in strength and confidence, making editorial boards of journals and the meetings and directorates of their official organisations platforms for advancing the boundaries of difference both in everyday discussions and in mass publications.56
With regard to foreign policy, the death of Stalin disrupted the institutionalised relationships between East European Communist leaders and their allies in Moscow. And the growing tolerance of difference put them on insecure discursive footing. The abolition of the Cominform in April 1956 was the official end to institutionalised compulsion to adhere to a single Soviet model of socialism.
The new discourse of difference changed Soviet interests in other countries in the world. East Europeans could be good allies without reproducing the Soviet model in detail. NLMs could be good allies just by not being allied with the imperialist West. Russian success at home as vanguard for Central Asia gave Moscow confidence that the Soviet Union could be a surrogate vanguard for dozens of countries trying to become independent of colonial rule. The Soviet Union officially recognised many roads to socialism, including electoral ones.
The recognition of difference was also reflected in relations with the West. The realisation that the US was not the West and that European states, in
Istoricheskii Arkhiv 3 (1993): 73; 'Posledniaia "Antipartiinaia" Gruppa. Stenograficheskii', 21; 'Posledniaia "Antipartiinaia Gruppa"', pp. 33-4; Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, 203; Taubman, Khrushchev, pp. 301-7; and 'Vengriia, Aprel'-Oktiabr' 1956', Istoricheskii Arkhiv 4 (1993): 113.
53 Beda, Sovetskaiapoliticheskaiakul'tura, pp. 45-7. 54 Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 246.
55 Chuev, Molotov Remembers,p. 351. 56 Zubkova, Russia after the War,p. 161.
particular, had interests autonomous from Washington, was reflected in a softer foreign policy on Finland, Turkey, Korea and Austria, and unilateral reductions in armed forces, in part, expected to encourage more European independence from the imperialist centre in the US. Recognition ofdifference dramatically expanded the numbers and kinds of states with which the Soviet Union could develop an interest in allying. Capitalist encirclement was replaced by a zone of peace. And recognition of fallibility, of having made mistakes in the past, made new alliances more probable and rendered existing alliances less problematic.
In Eastern Europe, Soviet confessions that the Doctors' Plot, the anti- cosmopolitan campaign and other purges in the last five years had been misguided put local Communists who had been trying to implement the Soviet model in awkward positions. Those most closely identified with the Stalinist model were discredited; those they had replaced, imprisoned or executed were politically reborn. Wladislaw Gomulka and Imre Nagy, for example, returned to power in Poland and Hungary, respectively. But, less dramatically in the rest of Eastern Europe, Stalinist leaders were compelled to rehabilitate those they had just purged, many posthumously.[223]
One of the most dramatic changes in Soviet foreign policy came in relations with Yugoslavia. Just three months after Stalin's death, the Soviet Union returned its ambassador to Belgrade. Tito was visited by Khrushchev and a large and apologetic entourage in 1955. New Soviet identity relations helped make this alliance possible. Whereas before, Tito's national brand ofsocialism was deemed dangerous, by 1955 it was understood as an example of tolerable difference from the Soviet model. In addition, Moscow remained the centre of the world Communist movement, and therefore, Yugoslavia remained subordinate to that centre, at least from Moscow's perspective. Yugoslavia was understood as a younger Slavic brother to the Russian nation. This Slavic fraternity helped mitigate concerns about deviations from the Soviet model. Finally, the Soviet leadership confessed to having erred in its treatment of Yugoslavia in the past.
Each of these understandings was resisted by Molotov. At the July 1955 CC plenum devoted to Yugoslavia, Molotov branded Tito a dangerous deviant, denied the relevance of ethno-national Russian identity to the Soviet model, defended earlier Soviet actions and concluded that the Soviet conferral of a socialist identity on Tito would only encourage further deviations from the Soviet model in Eastern Europe.[224]
Molotov's fears were justified. Khrushchev's not-so-secret speech enumerating Stalin's errors at the Twentieth Party Congress was followed by unrest in Poland.[225] In the June 1956 Poznan demonstrations, workers demanded religious freedom and made anti-Soviet and anti-Communist speeches. Seventy were killed and 500 wounded. The Polish party was split between supporters of the orthodox Soviet model and proponents of a Polish path to socialism. In August, Gomulka's party membership was restored, and in October he rejoined the Politburo, becoming first secretary once again on 17 October. Two days later, Molotov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich and Khrushchev arrived in Warsaw. Khrushchev refused to shake hands and called Poles traitors. Gomulka greeted Khrushchev by saying, 'I am Gomulka, the one you kept in prison for three years.' The day after the Soviet delegation left, tens of thousands of Poles participated in pro-Gomulka rallies, culminating in 500,000 demonstrators in Warsaw on 24 October.[226] This mass support for the embodiment of Polish difference was noted in Politburo meetings in Moscow, as was Gomulka's assurance that Poland had no intentions of leaving the Warsaw Pact.[227]
Poland had just missed violating the boundaries of permissible difference; Hungary would not, becoming accused of dangerous deviation for the next thirty years.[228] In June 1953 Matyas Rakosi was advised by Moscow to abandon Stalinist methods of rule. Rakosi held out, hoping his allies in the Kremlin would overcome this new tolerance of difference. His hopes were realised. In April 1955, Rakosi had his reformist prime minister, Imre Nagy, removed and expelled from the party.[229] But this return to orthodoxy was short-lived, as Khrushchev was welcoming Tito's Yugoslavia into the ranks of socialist allies. As Molotov recalled, 'the turning point was already completed with the Yugoslav question', not the Twentieth Party Congress.64 Both Poles and Hungarians watched de-Stalinisation carefully, and still more, the rapprochement with Yugoslavia, the Stalinists with Molotovian dread, the discredited reformers, with hope.[230]
222
Zubkova,
223
Murashko and Noskova, 'Repressii kak element', pp. 544-73; B. I. Zhelitski, 'Budapesht- Moskva: god 1956', in Nezhinskii,
225
Unless noted otherwise, my account ofthe Polish crisis relies on A. M. Orekhov, 'Sobytiia i956 goda v Pol'she i krizis pol'sko-sovetskikh otnoshenii', in Nezhinskii,
226
Mark Kramer, 'New Evidence on Soviet Decision-Making and the i956 Polish and Hungarian Crises',
227
' "Malin" Notes on the Crises in Hungary and Poland, 1956',
228
Unless otherwise noted, my analysis of the Hungarian events relies on Zhelitski, 'Budapesht-Moskva', pp. 24i-82; ' "Malin" Notes', pp. 390-9; and Kramer, 'New Evidence', pp. 362-76.