Gromyko’s main characteristics were his complete identification with the interests of the state and his faithful service to it. They explain his personal self-effacement and mastery of his ego – things extremely rare for someone who was the linchpin of international diplomacy for twenty-eight years. The West German politician Egon Bahr, who was in charge of foreign affairs from 1968 to 1972, does not conceal his critical admiration for Gromyko. Commenting on the latter’s memoirs, which disclosed so little about his life and work, Bahr remarked:
He has concealed a veritable treasure-trove from future generations and taken to the grave with him an inestimable knowledge of the inter-connection between the historical events and major figures of his time, which only he could offer. What a pity that this extraordinary man proved incapable to the very end of evoking his experience. As a faithful servant of the state, he believed that he should restrict himself to sober, concise presentation of the bare essentials.[1]
We can round off this rapid sketch of Gromyko with reference to a decisive political intervention of his. Having been one of the senior statesmen in the Politburo under Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, he played a crucial role in the election of Gorbachev to the post of general-secretary, knowing full well that it would entail a reformist course, probably in the direction mapped out by Andropov. As Ligachev intimated, the outcome of that Politburo meeting might have been very different.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
Nikita Khrushchev was endowed with a unique mixture of character traits. I still do not know how he survived Stalin and whether he ever entertained doubts about him when making his career under him. His folksy side, and his ability to perform a gopak (a popular Ukrainian dance) during one of Stalin’s banquets (‘when Stalin says dance, you dance!’, he reminisced), may have fooled the chief as to the ambitions and intentions of this ‘simpleton’. One cannot imagine two more utterly contrasting characters.
He certainly became a sensation on the world stage, and not only as a result of such behaviour as banging on his lectern with his shoe during a session of the UN (not terribly diplomatic!), or exclaiming ‘We shall bury you’ to the Americans – a statement that was in fact distorted by a poor translation (My vas pokhoronim also means ‘We shall outlive you’). He knew how to take enormous risks, especially in 1962 during the Cuban episode, when he neither won nor lost. He was also a genuine supporter of peace on the international scene. Those who dealt with him directly in international summits never claimed that he was not master of his brief. But he had a tendency to talk too much, to the point of sometimes disclosing state secrets even when sober – much to the despair of the KGB. Khrushchev was a reformer, not a state-builder; an impatient, impetuous leader with a propensity for large-scale – and sometimes risky – panaceas. On occasion, he could be truly bold. The ‘secret speech’ against Stalin at the Twentieth Congress was his own initiative; he stuck with it and imposed it on recalcitrant colleagues without regard for the rules or niceties. And thus the Congress suddenly learnt that the icon, the idol, the glorious symbol of the country’s superpower status was a bloody mass murderer. For the anti-Stalinists, it was a shocking revelation. As for the Stalinists of various hues, they were more than embarrassed and claimed that the picture was exaggerated, when in fact it was very incomplete. For inveterate Stalinists, the most embarrassing thing was to see so many high-ranking leaders evince their astonishment: how could they pretend that they knew nothing about the scale of the atrocities? In fact, only a few insiders were aware of the true scale of things: Stalin’s personal secretariat, a handful of Politburo members, and the MVD chiefs who had conducted the operations.
The denunciation of Stalin and his cult was preceded by a wave of rehabilitation of innocent victims, who were subsequently restored to party membership. This made the Stalinist terror a crucial issue for the first congress to be convened after his death.[2] Even before the ‘secret speech’, by a Central Committee decision of 31 December 1953 the Presidium created a committee of inquiry, including Pospelov, Komarov, Aristov and Shvernik (it became known by the name of its chairman, Pospelov). Its brief was to determine how the mass repression had struck members and candidate members of the Central Committee elected by the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934. It was assisted in its work by KGB chief Serov and by a group of departmental heads from the same body: secretariat, personnel, archives and special inspection. The Prosecutor’s Office was represented by the deputy of the chief military prosecutor. Naturally, all of these were party members. On the eve of the Congress the Presidium of the Central Committee heard the testimony of the prisoner Boris Rodos, who had been the investigator in some highly sensitive cases and a key figure in the political trials of the late 1940s. In his affidavit he testified that Stalin had directed matters personally. He (Rodos) had interrogated victims and constantly demanded higher execution quotas. Khrushchev insisted on foregrounding Stalin’s personal responsibility and demanded that the issue be raised during a session of the Twentieth Congress. During the debates in Presidium meetings, Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich argued for stressing Stalin’s greatness despite his crimes. But Mikoyan and Saburov argued against this: ‘If all this is true, it cannot be pardoned’ (Saburov). On 8 February 1956, the committee presented to the Presidium a terrifying picture of the systematic extermination of countless party and state cadres by Stalin.
With the eviction of Khrushchev in 1964, a more conservative line re-emerged. Reformist circles were anxious lest Stalin’s rehabilitation was envisaged. But notwithstanding some efforts in this direction by members of the new team, neither the spirit of Stalin nor Stalinism ever returned. Following Khrushchev’s bold moves, the term ‘Stalinism’ ceased to apply to the Soviet system. His decision to remove Stalin’s body from the mausoleum and rebury it elsewhere did prevent the evil spirit from returning – proof that popular beliefs sometimes count. Even if there were still Stalinists at the summit of power harbouring secret hopes, and even if some pernicious features of the old system endured, Stalinism as such belonged to the past.
The shock therapy applied by Khrushchev cost him dearly politically. But he survived the various after-shocks of de-Stalinization, if not without difficulty and even if it may be that he had second thoughts about the whole enterprise. In any event, the denunciation of Stalin was not restricted to words, but was preceded and succeeded by deeds: a large-scale process of ‘rehabilitation’ and the dismantling of the MVD’s industrial complex which, as we have seen, was the core of the Stalinist machinery of repression.
Khrushchev’s style and passion can be explained by the authenticity of his populism, but also by an emotionalism he did not always control. But over and above the joke about his ‘goulash socialism’ (he actually did say that goulash was preferable to empty phrases about popular well-being), he was convinced that an improvement in living standards was more than a political imperative: it was a matter of justice and ‘socialism’. His folksiness was authentic. He was proud of his working-class origins and even his rural roots. He had been a shepherd’s apprentice prior to his industrial career as a metal-worker and miner. There was a direct connection between this past and his language, his aversion for the military, his loathing of bureaucrats, and his preference for production-oriented secondary schools. If he tried to promote such a reform, it was (he said) because the existing secondary schools were educating wimps who knew nothing about physical labour in factories or fields. The reform was abandoned under pressure from public opinion – that is to say, from the better off, the better educated, and bureaucrats, who were indignant and lobbied against this ‘industrialization’ of secondary schools. As it happened, they were right. But we may assume that this was a crowd of people for whom Nikita had no time: they had never held a pick in their hand!
1
E. V. Nesternko, ed.,
2
See R. G. Pikhoia,