On 4 September 1945 the GKO was dissolved and a month later Stalin left Moscow for his first major break from the capital in almost a decade, leaving affairs of state in the hands of a 'quartet' consisting of Molotov, Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan. While in Sochi the leader closely followed events in Moscow, receivingbetween twenty and thirty documents a day, andbecame increasingly dismayed by what he regarded as the 'independent' political line being pursued by Molotov in relations with the Western powers. Matters reached a head at the beginning of December, when Stalin launched a vicious assault on Molotov: 'None of us has the right to change the course of our policies unilaterally,' Stalin argued. 'But Molotov has accorded himself this right. Why, and on what grounds?' 'I can no longer regard this comrade as my first deputy,' Stalin concluded. Stalin sent the message to the other members of the quartet - but not to Molotov - and asked that they read it out to him. On 7 December the triumvirate reported: 'We summoned Molotov and read out your telegram in full. After some hesitation Molotov admitted that he had made many mistakes but he regarded the lack of trust in him as unjust, and shed some tears.' On the same day Molotov sent his own reply to Stalin. 'Your ciphered message is filled with deep distrust towards me, both as a Bolshevik and as a person, which I take as a most serious party warning for all my further work. I shall try through deeds to regain your trust, in which every honest Bolshevik sees not only personal trust, but also the trust of the party, which is dearer to me than my own life.'[82]
To resurrect the relations of strict subordination of the immediate pre-war years, Stalin visited attacks of similar severity on each member of his quartet.[83]Mikoyan's apology, which Stalin extracted from him in the autumn of 1946, would prove to be quite typicaclass="underline" 'Of course neither I nor others', Mikoyan conceded, 'can frame questions quite like you. I shall devote all my energy so that I may learn from you how to work correctly. I shall do all I can to draw the lessons from your stern criticism, so that it is turned to good use in my further work under your fatherly guidance.'[84]
At the same time, given their qualities either as revolutionary symbols or as hard-working administrators - it was for these reasons that they were in the ruling circle to begin with - Stalin was reluctant to dispense with the services of any member of the quartet altogether. Instead, he sought to curb the independence they had gained during the war and to bring about a return to the status quo ante of the first post-purge years.
The personal subjugation of Stalin's close circle was accompanied by a reorganisation of the country's top decision-making bodies. Within the Politburo itself, Stalin soon re-established the intrinsically fluid and patrimonial arrangements of the late 1930s. Convening the Politburo as an informally constituted 'ruling group' offered Stalin several advantages. Apart from arranging its meetings as and when he wished, Stalin could bypass the tedious procedure for having members formally elected by the Central Committee. It was, for example, nearly five months before Voznesenskii's election as a full member of the Politburo, that Stalin dictated a Politburo resolution that the 'sextet [i.e. the ruling group] add to its roster the chair of Gosplan [the State Planning Commission], comrade Voznesenskii, so that it now be known as the septet'.[85] Often, admission to the ruling group was not accompanied by any formal resolutions as such. Without any official decision to go by, it is only indirectly that we may infer that Kaganovich was admitted to it on his return to Moscow from Kiev in December 1947, so that the 'septet' became an 'octet', and that Bulganin joined in February 1948, swelling the group into a 'novenary'.
As much as it suited Stalin to have relatively informal arrangements at the very highest levels, he and his colleagues did not lose sight of the need for effective administration lower down. Thus the relatively rule-less activity of a Politburo dominated by him went hand in hand with greater institution- alisation elsewhere, most notably at the Council of Ministers (Sovmin), the successor to Sovnarkom. Particularly important in this respect was a resolution of 8 February 1947 'On the Organisation of the Council of Ministers', which laid out a clear division of labour between the Politburo and Sovmin in which the former, led by Stalin, was accorded the right to consider all matters of a 'political' nature, such as governmental appointments, issues relating to defence, foreign policy and internal security, while Sovmin, without Stalin, was expected to deal with all mainstream economic issues and matters of everyday governmental administration. The February resolution also marked the consolidation of a new supra-ministerial order at Sovmin, consisting of a hierarchy of sectoral committees attended by specialists which met at regular intervals and complied with clearly established procedures.[86]
In the post-war period Stalin thus operated through two committees: the Politburo, over which he almost always presided, and the main bureau of the Council of Ministers, which nearly always convened without him. The combination of Stalin's highly personalised leadership, as represented by the Politburo, and the technocratic features of Sovmin, allowed Stalin to marry personal-autocratic features of rule with modern committee-based decision- making.
The consolidation of two key features of the early post-war period - the tightening of Stalin's grip over his deputies and the establishment of a split system of leadership committees - was not an entirely smooth or continuous affair. One flashpoint which would disfigure the leadership system was a purge, orchestrated by Stalin, which would come to be known as the Leningrad Affair.[87] Its immediate trigger was a scandal surrounding a seemingly innocuous all-Russian wholesale fair held in Leningrad from 10 to 20 January 1949. When it emerged that proper authorisation for the fair had not been granted, the three leaders who had organised the fair, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov and the Central Committee secretary, A. A. Kuznetsov, all of whom had long-running ties to the city, were taken to task. To stave off allegations of his own links with this group, the Politburo member Voznesenskii, himself from Leningrad, admitted to Stalin that the previous year Popkov had approached Voznesenskii with a request that the latter act as a 'patron' of Leningrad. This revelation was to have disastrous consequences, for the idea that any leader other than Stalin could exercise 'patronage' over a territory was entirely anathema to the dictator. On 15 February Kuznetsov, along with Popkov and Rodionov, were dismissed, and Vosnesenskii was given a stern warning.
One factor which may have fuelled the Leningrad Affair was the existence of two loose groupings within the leadership, one consisting of natives of the city associated with the deceased former Leningrad first secretary, Andrei Zhdanov, and the other headed by two thrusting young Politburo leaders, Malenkov and Beria.[88] There is little evidence, however, that any member of either group aimed to have their adversaries killed. Ever conscious of Stalin's volatile state of mind, both groups knew that a fresh round of bloodletting at the very highest levels could easily swerve out of control and claim other victims, not least themselves. The key role in taking this affair over the edge and turning it into a mini blood-purge would belong to Stalin.
83
See Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk,
85
O.V Khlevniuket al. (eds.),
86
See Yoram Gorlizki, 'Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet Neo- patrimonial State, 1945-1953',
87
See Robert Conquest,
88
For a different interpretation which emphasises the ideological and policy differences between these groups, see Werner G. Hahn,