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Politburo Images of Stalin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Nathan Leites ,
Elsa Bernaut  and
Raymond L. Garthoff
Nathan Leites
Affiliation:
Yale University
Elsa Bernaut
Affiliation:
Yale University
Raymond L. Garthoff
Affiliation:
RAND Corporation.
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Extract

Hypotheses regarding differences (or lack of differences) in policy-orientation or in degrees of influence between the various members of the Soviet Politburo have always been of great interest to students of politics. Thus there have been frequent speculations regarding alleged differences in foreign policy lines and on the problem of succession. The absence of confirming or disconfirming data for any of these hypotheses is striking, and obvious in view of the secrecy that enshrouds the internal operations of the Politburo. Published statements of any kind by members of the Politburo have become infrequent in recent years. Such statements as are available for analysis have usually dealt with different subjects and have been made at different dates, so that they were difficult to compare from the point of view of testing hypotheses regarding differences in policy of influence. Through Stalin's seventieth birthday, December 21,1949, however, a rare opportunity for comparative analysis did occur.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , April 1951 , pp. 317 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1951

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References

1 As far as is feasible, quotations are given from the translations in Volume I, No. 52, of The Current Digest of the Soviet Press (hereafter cited as Digest). Other passages have been translated from December 1949, No. 24, Bolshevik. All italics, unless otherwise indicated, are by the authors of this paper.

2 A “statement,” for the purposes of this table, means each incidence of an explicit idea, and may vary from a phrase to a paragraph. The examples cited in the text should clarify this point.

3 The groupings within the Politburo are self-explanatory; Shkiryatov and Poskrebyshev are separated from the “bottom group” because of their non-Politburo status.

4 The longest Pravda article on the occasion of Stalin's fiftieth birthday, December 21, 1929, was by Stalin's old friend and later victim, Abel Yenukidze. Instead of presenting the couple Lenin-Stalin, he told about the activities of Stalin-Yenukidze. As to Stalin himself, Yenukidzesaid: “It is difficult to write about him. He always was, and will remain to the end of his life, a real Bolshevik.”

5 Stalin, in a letter published in Bolshevik, No. 3, Feb. 1947, said: “Lenin … did not consider himself an expert on military affairs not only in the past, before the October Revolution, but even after the October Revolution down to the end of the Civil War. In the Civil War Lenin obliged us, then still young comrades of the Central Committee, ‘to study military affairs precisely.’ Asto himself, he frankly told us that it was already too late for him …” (P. 3.)

6 When Stalin put forward this new position in the middle twenties, it was, of course, necessary for him to present it as one already taken byLenin. The top group in the Politburo preserves thisline after a quarter of a century; the others do notdeny it but stress it less and even tend to imply Stalin's creativeness in this matter.

7 December 21, 1929, Molotov wrote more specifically that Stalin had been a “man of practice” (praktik i oraanizator) up toLenin's death, after which he became a “theoretician.” Even in 1949 Molotov has not quite surpressed his tendency to deny that Stalin was manifestly perfect from the start. He begins his speech by saying: “It is now particularly clear how very fortunate it was … that after Lenin the Communist Party of the USSR was headed by Comrade Stalin.” (Digest, p. 6.) In the Bolshevik atmosphere of veiled language, this is bound to be understood, to some extent, as conveying: It was not always clear.

8 Although Molotov and Beria both praise Stalin as the theorist, they do not state explicitly (or clearly implicitly) that Stalin is as great a theorist as Lenin, to say nothing of the statementthat “Marxist-Leninist philosophy has reached its apex” in Stalin's work.

9 On the other hand, when someone who exhibits a predilection for the popular image attributes to him Bolshevik traits, there is often an allusion to the impossibility of imitation. Thus Mikoyansays: “The power of Stalinist [Stalin's] foresight of revolutionary events is most uncommon, and is one of the basic qualities of our great leader.” (Bolshevik, p. 46.) “It is impossible not to wonder at the wise patience, the temperance and the inimitable endurance and boldness displayed by Comrade Stalin in his appraisal of facts and events …” (Digest, p. 20.) There is, for those accustomed to older Bolshevik language, a jarring note in the juxtaposition of the classical Bolshevik stress on “the appraisal of facts and events” with largely non-Bolshevik virtue-words.

10 “Extraordinary personal charm” belongs to neither the Bolshevik nor the popular images. “Considerateness” (chutkosf) (the Digest's translation of this word has been altered) and paternal solicitude (otecheskaya zabota) are popular image traits.

11 “Loving his people” also belongs to the popular image. These occasional popular image terms in a moderate picture may be the effect of reverse seepage of exoteric propaganda into the constantly assaulted esoteric integrity of the top group.

12 The extent to which this is a reversion (presumably not very conscious) to the pre-Revolutionary mass image of the Tsar as the “little father” of his people, who helps them despite his bureaucracy, will not be discussed here.

13 These examples were drawn at randomfrom the large number used by the top group.

14 For analysis of this term, the Current Digest translation should not be used, asthe Russian slalinski is fiequently translated by them as “Stalin's” or “Stalin” (Constitution, etc.). The Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow also translated thisterm as “Stalin's” in some instances.