Mikoyan’s book has a wealth of detail on Stalin’s final days. Stalin had decided to eliminate – and probably execute – Molotov and Mikoyan: both were sure of it. This might help explain the anti-Stalinist ardour of the post-Stalinist Mikoyan. While Stalin was dying in March 1953, the Politburo’s main players were almost permanently in touch, meeting in the Kremlin or in attendance every day at Stalin’s home. Discussions occurred and alliances began to take shape. Initially, Mikoyan was not a prime mover. The Malenkov-Beria-Khrushchev trio took the lead. Mikoyan’s sketch of how things played out in the room used for Politburo meetings is worthy of Ionesco. The whole Politburo was present, but the heavyweights – Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria, who were respectively General-Secretary, Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister (Beria was also head of the secret police and a massive industrial-military production complex) – huddled together in a corner of the room to discuss the agenda for the meeting that was due to be held. The lesser figures were reduced to observing, not without some disquiet, the formation of a new clique that would decide their fate. The suspense was to continue for some time, because the clique did not last: Malenkov and Khrushchev allied with Molotov to remove Beria. And that was only the beginning. Shifting alliances were endemic and manifestly inherited from Stalin’s modus operandi.
Mikoyan describes Khrushchev’s turn against Beria approvingly, as well as other alliances, realignments and coalitions. His narrative illuminates a further feature of the way the Politburo functioned: its inability to establish fixed rules, with genuine debates in which disagreement could be expressed, followed by a majority decision, before proceeding to the next item on the agenda. Once again, this was part of Stalin’s legacy. Engaging in an argument and losing it could be lethal under Stalin, who deliberately kept everyone in a state of permanent insecurity. When the Politburo finally found itself liberated from his sinister tutelage, it had no idea how to construct a working arrangement – i.e. the very ‘collective leadership’ it proclaimed. Everything continued to revolve around the general-secretary (still called chairman of the Presidium of the Politburo), and no political measure could be adopted without the approval of the general-secretary and his followers. Before Stalin, leadership bodies – and especially the Politburo – definitely did have a constitution (written and unwritten). Depending on the issue, majorities could switch. The then leader (Lenin) was used to being in a minority and yet pursuing the business in hand: an altogether different set-up. We shall return to the absence of any constitution for the Politburo.
The main problem posed by Mikoyan’s memoirs lies in his argument about Stalin and Stalinism. He was a staunch supporter of the man, his ideology and policy. He was on good terms with him, deemed him a highly able leader, and often argued with him (mostly on economic policy). But when Stalin began to eliminate the people around him, and particularly after Kirov’s unexplained death, he began to ask himself questions. He pleaded with Stalin on behalf of arrested people whom he knew personally, or would say to him: ‘But you know very well that he couldn’t have been a spy.’ Stalin would then show him alleged ‘confessions’ or sometimes accede to his plea for clemency. When it comes to the great terror of 1937–8, Mikoyan’s text strikes a disingenuous note: ‘We other members of Politburo did not know the truth [they were always shown the documents adduced as “proof’], or the scale of the repression.’ He claims to have learned the true facts only from the rehabilitations commission he supervised. Even more troubling is that Mikoyan proceeds to no critical reflection on this type of rule or ‘party’ (which had actually ceased to be one). He argues that Stalin had displayed rationality and greatness during the war, but had become ‘unpredictable’ again thereafter, refusing the democratization expected by a victorious people. Without pressing his critique any further, he merely declares that after Stalin’s death he constantly hoped for a democratization that never occurred.
It may be that such criticism is misplaced in the case of a politician who was no political thinker. It may be more relevant to identify character traits that serve to distinguish one type of Stalinist from another. In other words, ‘structural’ Stalinism was not common to all Stalinists. Thanks to the high position he had attained, the young Mikoyan adapted to the system well before the definitive triumph of Stalinism. Subsequently, he had no difficulty shedding Stalinist practices and attitudes and genuinely adopting a different perspective, even a different world-view. ‘Structural’ Stalinists like Molotov and Kaganovich were completely identified with the Stalinist model and Stalin personally, and they never reneged on their commitment. A third breed of Stalinist might change – or pretend to have changed – allegiances, while remaining Stalinist in their make-up and behaviour. Dogmatism and the habit of exclusion, absolute condemnation, rigid argumentation and the perception of conspiracies everywhere were integral parts of their personality. Mikoyan was not of this stamp.
What Mikoyan has to say about Khrushchev is revealing (we shall pass over his all too predictable assessment of Brezhnev). Reviewing the changes introduced by Khrushchev after his assumption of power, he endorses some of them but criticizes many others. Naturally, he also challenges what Khrushchev had to say about him in his memoirs, where Mikoyan’s merits are ignored and he is even attacked. Even so, Mikoyan’s appraisal of Khrushchev’s personality and activity is measured, offering a veritable balance sheet of his qualities and faults. Khrushchev often irritated Mikoyan, who lists his errors meticulously. But he ends up with a positive assessment. In fact, Mikoyan supported Khrushchev on many crucial issues and in difficult situations. But he draws a portrait of an inconsistent, disloyal character who more than once lost his sense of reality. As other witnesses have also testified, his rule was a story of reckless initiatives and an incomparable capacity for turning everything upside down. Mikoyan offers a good inventory of Khrushchev’s zigzags. He understood full well that Khrushchev had antagonized just about everyone and was heading for a fall. And yet he defended this chaotic general-secretary because he had numerous things to his credit and the alternative was unappealing. His conclusion is that the irascible Nikita was ‘someone’ and that after he had been sacked his abilities should have been utilized in a different post. This judgement relates to a little-known episode. Some time before his removal, Khrushchev, who had become disillusioned with the party, had mused about revitalizing the Supreme Soviet, transforming it into something like an effective parliament. The first step would have been for Mikoyan to become President (not merely Chairman) of the Supreme Soviet and then seriously to empower this body. Khrushchev had made some initial moves in this direction and the prospect enthused Mikoyan, but Khrushchev’s fall signalled the burial of the project. This episode clarifies Mikoyan’s closing remarks. At all events, if this final initiative petered out, other irreversible changes had been introduced thanks to Khrushchev.
One point in Mikoyan’s critique merits separate examination. He criticizes Khrushchev for having yielded to the conservatives (or his own misgivings) by abruptly terminating the policy of rehabilitating the victims of Stalinism, which Mikoyan supervised by virtue of his position in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Mikoyan and liberal public opinion wanted to cap the process by rehabilitating the victims of the show trials: Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and so on. But Khrushchev balked, despite Mikoyan’s insistence. For the latter, all the accusations were false and the executions belonged in the category of Stalin’s crimes. However, for as yet minimally de-Stalinized party stalwarts, those accused, even if it was on the basis of false charges, were the leaders of an ‘anti-party’ opposition. In an earlier chapter of his book, Mikoyan himself refers to them scornfully and does not conceal the fact that he supported Stalin’s moves against them. In his fervour for de-Stalinization, Mikoyan seems not to appreciate that to have rehabilitated the victims would have been to restore these oppositionists – erstwhile ‘Trotskyists-rightists’ – to the status of critics of Stalin and Stalinism.