The same mentality was at work in his turbulent relations with the creative artists. He liked The House of Matrena and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and allowed their publication. Both novels depicted profoundly moral characters from the countryside: Matrena, a peasant woman, has a strong, impressive personality; Ivan, also a peasant, preserves his human dignity despite the humiliating reality of the camps.
Here we must once again mention Tvardovsky, the editor of literary journal Novyi Mir, who had published Solzhenitsyn’s first two novels and fought to publish more. The friendly relations between Khrushchev and Tvardovsky were literally based on common ground. Tvardosvky was the son of a dispossessed, persecuted kulak. He knew the rural world well and had remained in touch with rural realities despite his elevated position in Moscow’s intellectual elite. It is likely that Khrushchev could accept political criticism if it was presented in a down-to-earth manner by people of popular extraction – but not when urban intellectuals said the same thing in their sophisticated idiom. He was also capable of crude, even indecent outbursts against works he did not understand or artists whom he suspected of being hostile to the regime.
Tvardovsky was different in Khrushchev’s view. During the war, he had written a long poem about the adventures of a soldier of popular extraction, Vasilii Terkin. After the war, he returned to his now demobilized hero in a poem entitled ‘Terkin in Heaven’. In it, Terkin is sent to heaven, where he observes (and endures) the celestial bureaucracy, before deciding to return to earth: at least the bureaucracy down there is breathing. As soon as he learnt of the existence of this scathing satire of the Soviet bureaucracy and hence of the system, which was also turned into a play, Nikita called his son-in-law, who was editor of Izvestiia, to tell him to publish it forthwith. Had it been written by a modish intellectual, he would probably have dialled a different number.
Here we might insert a symptomatic detail. The famous film director Mikhail Romm and the no less celebrated sculptor Ernst Neizvestny had both been subject to Khrushchev’s irascible outbursts; and both had reacted sharply and uncompromisingly. Later, however, they both referred to him fondly, defending his historical role. Khrushchev’s tombstone was sculpted (free of charge) by Neizvestny – against the will of those in power. Romm’s later assessment was likewise warm. Manifestly, Khrushchev emitted contradictory signals, but both these artists accentuated the positive ones. Similarly, as we shall see, Anastas Mikoyan, after weighing up the pros and cons, ended up judging Khrushchev ‘a somebody’.
Here we must restate two important historical facts discussed in Part One. First, in 1945 Soviet Russia was a mighty state, but in reality a shaky one. It was hungry, devastated, exhausted, terrorized, ruled by a decaying power complex: a needy, ailing superpower. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union experienced dramatic improvements in the 1950s and early 1960s. Whatever experts might say about not exaggerating the results given the low starting point, Soviet citizens felt the difference in their lives. Russia succeeded in recovering its great power status, while healing the wounds of the Second World War and overcoming the ravages of Stalinism. It found the reserves to ensure its future growth and the functioning of its institutions at all levels. Thus the regime possessed reserves and muscle: to recover from such ruination demanded enormous vitality.
The second fact is that, while undoubtedly talented, shrewd, and capable of learning, Khrushchev was still a ‘non-modern’ leader – a new version of the khoziain (‘master’), rather than a contemporary statesman and political strategist. The khoziain model was still widespread among the leadership, with its sense of owning the state in rather the same way that one owns a farm, meddling in every detail. Khrushchev and most of the other leaders were products of a deeply ingrained patriarchalism – as is indicated, for example, by their impatience with other people’s opinions. This is confirmed by observers like F. M. Burlatsky, who spent many years in the Soviet press and apparatus. Although the impetuous populist ruler was no despot by comparison with Stalin, he too had a tendency to want to run everything personally – institutions and people alike. After all, Stalin was the only big chief Khrushchev (and others) had known; and he must have served as a model, even if Khrushchev rejected many of his practices. Unlike the generalissimo, for example, he deeply disliked the military and their pompous uniforms. He enraged them, and especially the KGB’s top brass, who were so attached to their uniforms and titles, with his ‘We are going to tear off their epaulettes and trouser stripes’ – a threat he actually began to implement in the case of KGB generals. Some of his ideas were very dangerous for the apparatchiks, especially the proposal to introduce mandatory rotation of officials at all levels after a certain age. Some say that the Brezhnevites ousted him on account of this. For others, the ‘conservatives’ never forgave him for ‘de-Stalinization’, and the loss of prestige and disorientation it occasioned in the communist world and elsewhere. Both these factors were at work, together with others – particularly the new ‘hare-brained’ ideas he was entertaining, and which the 1964 plotters nipped in the bud.
ANASTAS MIKOYAN
Anastas Mikoyan was a quite remarkable personality – a veritable résumé of the Soviet regime, or rather of its leadership. A Politburo member for something approaching forty years, he was known for being ‘unsinkable’. A master in the art of survival, he proved capable of retaining a degree of humanity and a sense of reality, despite his participation in many atrocities that were not necessarily down to his initiative. In his memoirs he emerges as a Stalinist from the very beginning. His reflections on his early years as a leader are deeply and naively indulgent towards Stalin, hostile to all the anti-Stalinist oppositions, and utterly ignorant of what was really at stake.
As a member of the Politburo, Mikoyan would not have survived had he not signed the death sentences circulated by Stalin or made the requisite speeches about ‘counter-revolutionary traitors’. In his memoirs he claims that he was once forced to co-sign arrests and death sentences because convincing ‘proof’ had been presented. In charge of trade issues in the Politburo, in a country suffering constant shortages, he accomplished remarkable feats in a domain which, though vital, was not a real priority for the regime most of the time. His talent as an organizer is beyond dispute, but he was also a skilful politician. While considerable flexibility on his part was to be expected, his steadfast support for Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization comes as a surprise. He even claims to have initiated it. At any rate, it was he who supervised the work of the rehabilitation commission in his capacity as President of the Supreme Soviet. He was also the only person to support Khrushchev during the Central Committee session that deposed him: a lone voice among the howling pack. Reading his personal file reveals that the conservatives resented him well into the 1970s. But he was too strong for them.