THE ODD COUPLE

Catherine the Great has several separate entries and numerous references to her in this book, which comes as no surprise, of course. Not so her royal husband, which is no surprise either. This entry, however, brings them together, as befits a married couple, but an odd couple, at that. Whereas the great Catherine is great by all standards, her husband has been portrayed as a degenerate, Russia-hating pervert obsessed with Prussian military discipline, crude fun, and childish games. There has been another opinion of him creeping out of the woodwork of more recent historiography, but it has to compete with the authoritative opinion of the likes of Klyuchevsky and, of course, Catherine’s own depiction of him in her celebrated and, even though admittedly biased, still definitive memoir.
I grant that it will be rather naïve to accept as Gospel truth the following assertion from Catherine’s memoir, attempting to confirm the legitimacy of her assumption of power, as opposed to usurping power in a palace coup:

“During the illness of Elizaveta Petrovna, I heard that her successor is feared by all; that he is unloved and unrespected by all; that the Empress herself complains about who the throne should be entrusted to; that a definite inclination is found in her to disinherit the incapable heir who had caused her herself grief, and to pick his seven-year-old son [that is Catherine’s son and future Emperor Pavel I Petrovich] and to me [that is to Catherine!] leave the government…”

Klyuchevsky, highly unsympathetic to Peter III, gives this virtual justification of the subsequent palace coup (please note that it was quite exceptional in Tsarist Russia to talk favorably about coups and revolutions that by definition implied violence against the ruling power, and thus anathema!)---

“Society saw in the government’s action mischief and caprice, an absence of unified thought and clear-cut direction. It was obvious to all that the government mechanism was in disarray. All this caused unanimous discontent, which was spilling from the highest spheres down, becoming all-popular. Tongues were untied, as if fearless of the policeman; in the streets discontent was expressed openly and loudly, denouncing the sovereign without any circumspection whatsoever.”

I shall not quote any more critical and often vicious details regarding Peter III. Today’s historians are trying to restore some balance to his portrait, claiming that he was not an idiot, but a well-educated and splendidly accomplished man, who loved music and played the violin pretty well, was a patron of the theater and of the arts. His domestic reforms reached well beyond the Prussification of the Russian army (which, many would argue, could not be such a bad thing, considering that the Prussian army could well have been the best in the world). His sponsorship of Russian sciences, and especially of Russian cartography, which performed a giant leap on his watch, speaks rather well of him, too, if only we are prepared to take just these pluses in isolation from the great multitude of minuses.
But, on the other hand, his pro-Prussian leaning was indeed excessive. Most importantly, he was a foreigner in a foreign land, and had no love for Russia. It is not a biased view, but an objective recorded fact that when in 1751 (a decade before Peter became Russia’s Emperor) his uncle ascended the throne of Sweden, Peter openly and bitterly complained:

“They’ve dragged me into this wretched Russia, where I must consider myself a state prisoner, when, had I been left alone, I would now have been sitting on the throne of a civilized people!”

To be honest, I can well understand, and even sympathize with, poor Peter. Imagine a frustrated young man who could now well have been the legitimate monarch of a very respectable country, being, in the meantime, relentlessly put down by the two women in his life: the all powerful Empress of Russia, deeply disappointed in her erstwhile protégé, and his own betrothed wife, looking more than slantwise, and certainly wishing him ill. Having said that, this was Karl Peter Ulrich von Holstein-Gottorp, alias the future Peter III Fedorovich of Russia, speaking, and not some wicked tongues biased against him. Not surprisingly, the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna was keeping him under virtual house arrest at that time, even if she would repent of it later. And it is also true that Elizaveta Petrovna’s definite bias against her own chosen successor cannot be dismissively separated from Catherine’s bias against her husband, later on; and, likewise, the 1762 palace coup disposing of Peter and installing Empress Catherine II on the Russian throne, cannot be seen as a mere result of some royal love “quadrangles,” or lovers’ ambitions turning gory. In Peter’s case, there had to be much more than that, and there surely was.

In my general opinion, I am not swayed by the revisionist reassessments of Peter III. On the one hand, there are too many objective negatives in his character and proclivities, to give in to a historian’s will to revision, just for the sake of originality or balance. On the other hand, I firmly believe that Catherine the Great was a far-far better alternative for Russia, and having Peter III on the throne instead of her, after 1762, would have been a calamity, whereas her enlightened autocratic reign was a blessing. There is too much to be said about her that actually need not be said, because Catherine has always been a large part of Russia’s “monumental history,” which means that it is impossible to talk about Russia without talking about her, as an integral part of Russian history, tradition, and culture. Concluding this entry, I may quote Catherine’s own quirky epitaph to herself written in 1788, that is, eight full years before her actual death. By the time of her death she would spend over half-a-century in her adoptive country, and her reign would become known as the “Golden Age” of Russian history. Read it carefully.---

“Catherine The Second rests here, born in Stettin on 21st April, 1729. She spent 44 years in Russia (written in 1788) and there married Peter III. At the age of 14 she devised a three-prong plan: to please her husband, Empress Elizabeth, and the people of Russia. And she used every single chance to succeed in this. Eighteen years of boredom and loneliness made her read many books. As she ascended the Russian throne, she strove to do good, desired to give her subjects happiness, freedom, and property. She forgave easily, and hated no one. She was charitable, easygoing in life, cheerful by nature, with the soul of a republican and a kind heart. She had friends. Work came easy to her. She took pleasure in social life and the arts.”

The only thing now left to me, is, in the spirit of this rather light-hearted epitaph, to say “amen” with a faint, but totally sincere, smile.

DEARLY BELOVED

The jocular title of this entry refers to Peter’s daughter and Empress of Russia for two decades (1741-1761) Elizaveta Petrovna. While I am omitting from a separate consideration the daughter of Tsar Ivan V Empress Anna Ioannovna (who will surely be discussed here anyway), Empress Elizaveta Petrovna does deserve our "undivided title" attention, and, no matter what, she is an interesting figure in her own right.
The very first question to ask, regarding Elizaveta Petrovna, is why she had to wait fourteen years to become Russia’s Empress, when she was clearly mentioned in the will of her mother Catherine I as her choice of heir to the throne.
In a nutshell, Catherine’s will was forged at the time of her death by the all-powerful Alexander Menshikov for the following reason: He correctly assumed that the country would not support the daughter of Catherine I, a “Shvedka” foreigner, at that time considered illegitimate herself, and her daughters even more so. Peter’s son Peter Alexeevich by his first wife Eudokia Lopukhina, however, had been a legitimate child, even if his treason had been acknowledged and his violent death amply justified, which meant that Alexei’s son Peter’s status as Peter’s grandson was irreproachable. Moreover, Menshikov had a plan to marry Peter II to his own daughter Maria… Well, Menshikov was already a “semi-tsar,” in Pushkin’s words, and the court elite soon rebelled against his further advancement, had him arrested and exiled to Siberia with his family, by Peter II’s next powerful handler Prince Vasili Dolgorukov, who, in his turn, wanted to marry the young tsar to his niece Catherine, and nearly succeeded, when Peter II suddenly died of smallpox at the age of fourteen, in 1730.
His death spelled havoc at the Russian court, as the power struggle for influence raged anew and could only be resolved by a compromise. The compromise happened to be yet another issue of Tsar Ivan V, namely, his daughter Anna Ioannovna, Duchess of Courland. Unlike all other potential contenders to the Russian throne, Anna had no fan club at the Russian court, and having signed off on her German connections, she arrived at Saint Petersburg as a presumed patsy in a domestic free-for-all. But she turned out nothing of the kind.
Utterly incompetent as a ruler, she was however a mean-spirited and capricious woman, who never intended to keep her written promises and broke them all right away. Turning virtually all authentic Russian courtiers into miserable buffoons, or else, personae non gratae, she brought her own foreign crowd with her, and from then on relied exclusively on her German advisers and henchmen. Her reign was Russia’s nightmare, which was to teach the Russians a lesson on how not to choose their monarch.
Fortunately for the Russians, Anna Ioannovna did not last for more than one decade, but shortly before her death she adopted her eight-week-old German grand-nephew “Ivan Antonovich,” yet another descendant of Ivan V, and quickly proclaimed him the next Emperor of Russia Ivan VI, with Count Biron as Regent, with the rest of the German cabal well entrenched. This was, however, far too much for the Russian nobility, and thirteen months later, the baby Ivan VI was overthrown, and everybody of his entourage with him, and only now was Peter’s daughter from the “Shvedka,” Elizaveta Petrovna, allowed to make a comeback, but what a comeback was it, a coup d’état and all!Clever, but incurably lazy, she had no promise in her to make a good and capable Empress, but, sick and tired of the rule of foreigners, the Russians welcomed her with wide-open arms, as she was immediately loved and cherished not for her special talents, but merely for the fact that she was Peter’s daughter, and not a foreigner.

There is a funny discrepancy about the exact years of her two-decade reign. In the West, 1741-1762 are the commonly recognized years, whereas the Russians are more accustomed to the years 1741-1761, which is due to the discrepancy between the Western chronological style (Gregorian Calendar) and the Russian old style (Julian Calendar), which lasted until the Bolshevik Revolution and was updated to the European standards only as late as in 1918.

Among her doubtless accomplishments, aside from wrestling the power from the German clique and giving it back to the Russians, was her patronage of arts and sciences. She was instrumental behind Lomonosov’s establishment of Moscow University in 1755, and the founding by Count Ivan Shuvalov in Saint Petersburg, of the Academy of Arts in 1757. Her greatest accomplishment in the eyes of many, however, is that she had given a pledge to put a stop to executions in Russia, and kept it, by never signing a single death warrant, on her watch.
Dearly beloved that she was, she still could not escape the foreigner curse in Russia’s sovereign power, and, as early as in 1742 already, to eliminate the threat of the imprisoned baby Ivan VI (whom she categorically refused to do harm to, even at the expense of a huge political inconvenience) being brought back to power, she invited to Russia her fourteen-year-old nephew Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, son of Peter the Great’s daughter Anna Petrovna, and publicly anointed him as Russia's undisputed future Emperor Peter III.

PETER AND HIS EMPRESS WIFE

There are so many entries in this book already directly or indirectly linked to Peter the Great that there is no terrible need to add an extra one, except to fill in Peter’s legitimate space in the chronological sequence of my Russian historical entries in this subsection. I am however naturally compelled to imbue it with a different substance, which in this case is Peter’s connection to his wife and future Empress Catherine I.

First a few words about Peter in profuse addition to all those already said about him. Just like with Comrade Stalin, it is demonstrably uninstructive to seek an objective opinion of him among Peter’s contemporaries--- either among his apologists, or among his victims and detractors.
Among his foreign admirers in later times, Voltaire stands out not so much by the abundance of his praise as by the intellectual quality and authority of his assessment. His writings about Peter are voluminous. In 1759, he published the first volume, followed by the second volume in 1763, of his History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, where he summarizes his historical assessment of Peter as follows (this isn’t a quote, but a mere paraphrase):
The greatest value of Peter’s reforms is that the progress that the Russians were able to achieve in 50 years could not have been achieved by other nations in 500 years.
Voltaire and Rousseau had a famous disagreement about Peter and his reforms, which obviously reinforces the importance of their subject as a high value subject.

Generally speaking, it is not at all surprising to find glowing assessments of Peter’s reign in historiographies, both East and West. Sergei Solovyev in that sense adds little intrigue to the debate about Peter’s legacy. It is all the more unusual that the great historian of pre-revolutionary Russia Nikolai Karamzin (1766- 1826) is unequivocally critical of the great Peter. He accuses him of an inordinate infatuation with things foreign, of his determination to turn Russia into a Netherlands. He complains that the radical change of the old way of Russian life was not always justified, and that as a result, Russia’s educated classes “became citizens of the world, but stopped being, in some cases, citizens of Russia.” Karamzin’s complaint is in fact understandable as an emerging nationalist reaction to the excesses of cosmopolitanism, at the expense of the natural allegiance to Russia and all things Russian, but in my view, it shows a certain loss of objectivity, when reacting to the contemporary problems by blaming them on a historical precedent that may have indeed given rise to some negative phenomena in subsequent Russian life, but cannot be held responsible for them in isolation from its positive contribution to Russia’s enlightened future.
The great historian Klyuchevsky (1841-1911), considered by many the greatest, gives Peter a most curious, and actually quite subtle and intellectually stimulating characterization, which some critics see as a negative assessment, but I see it as a nuanced judgment, free from excessive praise, but hardly disparaging to Peter’s historical legacy:

“[Peter’s] reform emerged by itself from the vital needs of the state and the nation, instinctively perceived by an authoritarian man with a discerning mind and strong character and talents… The reform realized by Peter the Great was not directly designed to overhaul the political, social, or moral order established in this state, nor was it guided by the task of shifting the Russian life to the unaccustomed Western European foundations, of injecting it with some new borrowed basics, but was limited to the desire to arm the Russian state and its people with ready-made Western-European means, intellectual and material, and thus to bring the state up to the proper level with its achieved status in Europe… Started and conducted by the sovereign power, the customary leader of the people, it assumed the character and methods of a violent coup d’état, a revolution of some kind. It was a revolution not in terms of its objectives and results, but only in terms of its methods and the impressions it produced on the minds and nerves of its contemporaries.”

I am confident that this excellent characterization of Peter’s reform equally applies to Peter’s person as well and equally well characterizes the magnitude of his historical achievement from the objective perspective of a great historian, whose findings cannot be dismissed or contested, either by Peter’s greatest admirers or by his bitterest foes.

With Peter’s death in 1725 begins the so-called “age of women” on the Russian throne. In the 71 years, from 1725 to 1796, women-empresses reigned for the total of sixty-six years, leaving just five measly years in that stretch to men. For the record, all of the previous Russian rulers had been men, and, ever since the death of Catherine the Great, all the subsequent rulers of Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia were men as well, which makes the eighteenth century in Russian history all the more remarkable.
Of these women, four in all, Peter’s wife Catherine I was the first, and of all four, her case is certainly by far the most unusual. Her national and family origin has never been credibly established. Her officially credible name Ekaterina Alexeevna Mikhailova was assigned to her at baptism by the Russian Orthodox Church. As for the most familiar original name Martha Skavronskaya, it is considered spurious by several authoritative historians, while even those who casually call her by this name still recognize its contested authenticity. Her nationality is also difficult to establish. It is certain that the nickname “Shvedka,” Swede, is a generic, rather than specific, identification. (Likewise, “nemets” originally applied to all foreigners, and only later became associated with the German nationality per se.) There are historical allegations that she was of Latvian, or of Lithuanian, or even of Estonian stock, but the truth is probably never to be ascertained.
She was obviously very pretty as a girl, allegedly married at a very young age, but this fact again can be an understandable historical embellishment. What could never be embellished, however, was that during the Russo-Swedish Wars her beauty was discovered by a Russian army officer and "taken in" by him, after which she was discovered by that officer’s superior, and so on, until, finally, and luckily for her, she was discovered by Tsar Peter I, who was so much impressed with her that after several years of living together and having children together, he decided to marry her, and made her the Empress of Russia. At the time of Peter’s death in 1725 (she was at his side, as usual, holding his head in her arms) she became the court’s choice by default to become the next Russian monarch, an outrageous choice by all standards except one: everybody dreaded the alternative.

Catherine I reigned for a couple of years until her premature death at the age of forty-three. By all accounts, she was not a good ruler, spending her time partying, and delegating power to her more ambitious courtiers. Here is Sergei Solovyev’s summary opinion of her:

“With Peter she shone not with her own light but with the light borrowed from the great man whose partner she was; she had enough skill to hold herself up to a certain height, exhibit attentiveness and compassion toward the activity around her; she was privy to all secrets, the secrets of personal relationships of people around her; her status and fear of the future kept her mental and moral faculties in constant strong tension. But a clinging plant reaches a great height only thanks to that giant of the woods around which it had been creeping; the giant comes down and the weak creeper spreads down on the ground. Catherine retained her knowledge of persons and their interrelationships, retained her habit of weaving into these relationships; but she had no due attention to state affairs, especially domestic policies and their details, nor a capacity for initiative and direction.”

To summarize the whole thing, Peter the Great was the unquestionable ‘giant of the woods,’ and he deserves to be remembered as one of Russia’s greatest rulers ever, but at the time of death, like with many other great rulers, he was leaving his empire in demonstrably incapable hands, with the bad situation not getting much better even during the twenty-year reign of his fairly capable daughter Elizaveta Petrovna (1741-1761).

In fact it took the young German wife of the half-incompetent, half-demented virtual foreigner Peter III, to turn things around for Russia. It was “Catharina Secunda” (see my earlier entry Petrus Primus Et Catharina Secunda), and not “Catharina Prima,” or even Elizaveta Petrovna, or the other small fry, such as Anna Ioannovna and the accidental men, finding themselves on Peter’s large throne, to measure up to it, and to carry the name of Peter’s rightful successor.

THE SECOND DUUMVIRATE

Unlike the first Romanov Duumvirate, the second Russian Duumvirate of Church and State was not a family affair. There was a continuity there, however, and predictably, a departure from a practice which was not to become a pattern for the future.
As we remember, Patriarch Philaret dominated the first Duumvirate, de facto ruling Russia single-handedly, at the expense of his son Tsar Mikhail I Fedorovich. Now, the latter’s son and the former’s grandson, Tsar Alexei I Mikhailovich was not related to his own Patriarch Nikon, but instantly fell under his magnetic spell, guaranteeing Nikon fast promotion to the highest place in the Russian Church.
Nikon was the ultimate self-made man. Son of a Mordovian peasant, he had an overwhelming urge for good education and wanted to become a monk for that since an early age. Obeying his father, however, he entered into a marriage, becoming a married priest, but later convinced his wife to become a nun, while he himself realized his wish to become a monk. His exceptional qualities were immediately recognized. He was made a hegumen (head of a monastery), and having made a trip to Moscow in this capacity in 1646, was introduced to Tsar Alexei. At the time of their first meeting, Nikon was forty-one, and the young Tsar was seventeen. Alexei was so much impressed by Nikon that he brought him close, and at the time when the Sixth Patriarch Joseph died in 1652 everyone had long known whom the Tsar wished to see as the Seventh Patriarch. Consequently the main contender for this position promptly withdrew his candidacy, and Nikon was naturally proclaimed Patriarch.
Meanwhile, the second Romanov Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was a commendably learned, but mild and soft-spoken man, initially under the control of his childhood tutor and chaperon Boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov (1590-1661). Morozov was himself a well-educated man with a great interest in the technical, military, and cultural advances of the West, which interest he eagerly and fairly successfully cultivated in his young ward. He was, however, a corrupt man, and his excesses resulted in his downfall in 1648 and exile to a monastery, from which he was however soon returned and remained under the Tsar’s protection, privately advising him still, but never having his former position restored to him.

No matter how much influenced was Tsar Alexei by his beloved mentor, the word duumvirate cannot apply to him, as it implies political power, which he lost irretrievably in the fourth year of Alexei’s thirty-one year reign. A different situation developed between the Tsar and Starets/Patriarch Nikon, who was of course the most powerful figure in Moscow almost ever since his arrival in 1646, until his scandalous fall in 1666, and even after that, it must be noted, the Nikonian reforms had a profound and lasting influence on the Russian society, an influence which still exists to present day.

Nikon is most remembered today as the Russian Church reformer. In 1653-1655, as Patriarch, he was given charge over the correction of the Russian Church Books, laying down the rules of uniform religious practice across the land. In doing so, he took the side of the existing Greek practices, overruling the old customs that had existed in Russia for centuries. Although most of the Russian clergy desired to have a balance between the old and the new, Nikon used his authority to go much further, and effectively outlawed most of Russia’s religious tradition, accusing the “starovers” of heresy, unless they repented and converted to the new Greek practice. Amazingly, his was so powerful a push that, even after his fall from political-ecclesiastical power, his reforms survived and flourished, and the leader of the starovers Protopop Avvakum was burned to death as late as in 1682, when his nemesis Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich had already both been dead.

So, to repeat myself, Nikon is mostly remembered today as the most sweeping Church reformer in Russian history. But this is only a part of the story. Having exercised considerable influence on the impressionable Tsar, Nikon would not limit himself to Church matters, but tried to dominate other State affairs, including Russia’s foreign relations. Being smart, he realized that his intrusion would not long remain unpunished, as besides the malleable tsar, there were his very capable and angry courtiers, who would sooner or later unite in their mutual hatred of him and gang up on the insolent intruder. In order to prevent this move, he offered Alexei an explicit Church-State duumvirate, in which he graciously opted to serve a subservient role. What he underestimated, however, was that the Tsar, continually egged on by the angry boyars, was beginning to be annoyed by Nikon’s relentless pushiness and the tension, having not reached a boiling point yet, had been for quite some time on the way there.
Nikon’s eventual fall in 1666 was a result of his own bluff. Sort of emulating Tsar Ivan Grozny, who, at one point, had “laid down” his crown, removing himself to a nearby monastery, so that his terrified “orphans” would rush to the monastery to beg him to come back, Nikon “laid down” his Patriarchal duties, removing himself to a monastery, where he expected the Tsar’s call back to power in a renewed position of strength. But in his short absence the Tsar’s advisors worked on him rather effectively, and instead of begging Nikon to please come back, Alexei Mikhailovich accused him of dereliction of duty and ordered his forcible return to Moscow to face trial. The trial was harsh, stripping Nikon of his Patriarchal title and exiling him forever to a distant monastery, where he was to be treated as a penitent convict, with little deference to his erstwhile glories. Although the Tsar rather badly missed Nikon from then on, the latter was barred from coming back to Moscow during Alexei’s life (Alexei died in 1676), and only shortly before Nikon’s own death (in 1681) was the permission granted, but the decrepit ex-Patriarch fell short of his last wish to reach Moscow to end his life there, dying on his way back to the city of his glory while crossing the Kotorosl river near the city of Yaroslavl.

And finally, summarizing Russia’s accomplishments during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, we are likely to mention the military and monetary reforms and the successes in the further exploration of Siberia, but the most singular event of his reign was the reunification of Russia and Ukraine. Yet it is difficult to ascribe this and other successes to a particular forcefulness of Alexei’s character, which he apparently did not possess to any prominent degree. There was a certain continuity of success, present in Russia since the installation of the Romanov dynasty and leading up to the vibrant revolutionary reign of Peter the Great, but that continuity is more ascribable to the Russian nation’s-as-such spectacular rise from the ashes of the Time of Troubles than to the personal merits of any of the Romanov monarchs before Peter.

THE ROMANOV DUUMVIRATE

Entering now that part of the History section where we are looking at the more noteworthy specimens of the Romanov dynasty, let us consult the findings of the already frequently mentioned Imya Rossiya project, and discover that although most of the Romanovs had been included in the initial 500 List by the Academics (in deference to their royal status mainly, rather than to any undeniable individual accomplishments), only three of them: Peter I, Catherine II, and Alexander II, reached the top List of 12, joined in the intermediate List of 50 by just one more Russian ruler: Nicholas II, not on account of his excellence (after all, he was a very bad tsar: foolish and reckless beyond comprehension!), but on account of his tragic martyrdom, together with all his family, which eventually “landed” him in the hallowed company of Saints of the Russian Church.

In our Romanov subsection, however, we are not governed by the criterion of greatness or notoriety, but by the kind of ‘semi-subjective/semi-objective’ determination of whether or not I have something interesting to say in connection with that particular monarch, and in the case of our very first contestant we are finding an excellent illustration of what I have in mind, which puts everything in its place.

Mikhail I Fedorovich Romanov (born in 1596, reigned, rather than ruled, from 1613 until his death in 1645) was elected to the Russian throne by a consensus among those boyars who survived the Time of Troubles in decent shape, that is, without being compromised by its excesses and constantly changing fortunes. The old Romanov family happened to be related to Ivan Grozny’s first wife Anastasia Romanova, and therefore the new tsar was a relative of Anastasia’s son Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, which constituted some kind of legitimate succession, to adhere to the unwritten laws of royal propriety. What was even more important, the Romanov family had suffered severe persecution during the reign of Boris Godunov and the ensuing Time of Troubles earning for itself a respectable aura of martyrdom. The only major surviving male relative, father of the kind-of-inept sixteen-year-old tsar-elect, former boyar Fedor Nikitich Romanov, had been forced to become a monk and was at the time languishing in Polish captivity.
The sixteen-year-old first Romanov tsar was not only young, but weak as well, and so there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that he would never become an independently-minded, ergo unpredictable, ruler. Indeed, in the thirty-two years of his reign he was continuously controlled first by his nun mother, then famously by his monk father, and after the latter’s death by his advisers. Nothing spectacular was achieved during his reign, but at least the person of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was providing Russia with the much needed stability, and his rather controversial marriage (ironically, the most contentious part of his reign revolved around his choices of spouse) to Eudokia Lukyanovna Streshneva propitiously produced, among ten children altogether, the next Russian Tsar Alexei I Mikhailovich Romanov.

…Well into this entry already, and no mention yet of its title focus: the Romanov Duumvirate. So, here now comes our other dramatis persona, by far the most influential actor of Russian history in the reign of the first Romanov Tsar, his father Fedor Nikitich, also known as Patriarch Philaret.
As nephew of Ivan Grozny’s beloved wife Anastasia, Fedor Nikitich Romanov (1554-1633) had been considered one of the strongest contenders to the Russian throne, vis-à-vis the other powerful contender Boris Godunov. Fedor’s mighty rival obviously saw him and the other members of his family as the greatest threat to himself in his steady ascent all the way to the top. In order to remove this threat, in 1600 he exiled Fedor and Xenia, his wife, and forced them to become monk and nun, thus depriving them of any chance of success in secular pursuits. But Fedor was an exceptionally capable man. Although he had loved “the world” and had dreamed of a secular career, he managed to make the most of his ecclesiastical “change of venue,” returning in 1619 to Moscow to be enthroned as the Patriarch of the Russian Church.
His son the Tsar now playing a feeble second fiddle to his formidable father, Patriarch Philaret immediately became the actual ruler of Russia, and remained such until his death in 1633. He dominated all government functions and often exercised his absolute authority without even bothering to enlighten his son about what he was doing. Yet officially a duumvirate it was: Mikhail was the Tsar, and Philaret was the Patriarch, even if he signed all official papers as “Great Sovereign Philaret Nikitich” (a very unusual practice, by the way, of adding one’s secular patronymic to the self-sufficient ecclesiastical single name).

Casting an attentive general look at this picture, we may readily conclude that Philaret was indeed in charge in Russia for a full fourteen years, although we can by no means go any further than that, to assume that the Russian Church was necessarily on top in this arrangement. To a large extent, Philaret/Fedor Nikitich was a man of the world, rather than a man of the cloth, and remained such to the end of his life. The affairs of the State surely interested him much more than the matters of the Church, and it is well known that he delegated most of his ecclesiastical functions, knowing, or even eager to understand, little about them, in the first place. In other words, Philaret was a secular statesman forced into the position of churchman, and there was little immediate gain in this arrangement for the Church itself.
But there was still a very serious consequence in this for the future heads of the Russian Church. There was a precedent created, in the person of Philaret, for the Patriarch to get involved in the ostensible prerogatives of Russia’s secular rulers. Patriarch Nikon would soon thereafter try to emulate Philaret, in his own effort to dominate the next Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and give the Tsar’s other counselors such headaches that they eventually conspired to depose him, and they did depose him, using Nikon’s arrogance against him (see my next entry titled The Second Duumvirate), although the Tsar later repented of the harshness of this measure and chose to reconcile with his by then powerless friend and ex-Patriarch. Still later, Patriarch Adrian would lock horns with none other than Peter the Great, who was by far the stronger of the two in this third and last confrontation, forcing the Patriarch to back down. Their enmity, however, did not thrill the Tsar, leading to the eventual abolition of the Patriarchate, after Adrian’s death in 1700.
The basically secular Holy Synod, established by Peter as the State’s governing authority over the Church, kept the Church down for two centuries. Ironically, it was the much-maligned Bolshevik Revolution that, at least chronologically, takes the credit for the reinstitution of the Patriarchate (in 1918), by now in a clearly subsidiary role to the State.

I cannot say that the new post-Soviet duumvirate of Church and State in Russia has exceeded expectations, in terms of its effectiveness so far in returning the Russian nation as a whole to Christian, or rather Orthodox, morality and social practice. The historical tension between the State and the Church remains unresolved, in a number of ways, although the State under Vladimir Putin and the Church under the late Patriarch Alexius II had come a long way toward embracing each other as complementary and necessary to each other parts of Russia’s governing wholeness. My hope is that the State-Church duumvirate will continue to develop along positive ethical and practical lines under the new Patriarch Cyril I and his successors, and whoever succeeds Presidents Putin and Medvedev in the secular arm of power in Russia. Indeed, in numerous entries already I have explained the tremendous importance in my view of the Russian Church-State duumvirate which alone safeguards Russia’s moral and spiritual compass on her arduous road toward the fulfillment of her historical Destiny.

Having said that, or rather having reminded the reader of one of the leitmotifs of my whole book, the reason why I attach such importance to the Church-State relationship in Russia is quite clear, and giving a separate historical entry to the very first Romanov Duumvirate ought to be taken for granted, and serve as substantial food for further thought.

GRISHKA OTREPYEV

The traditional designation of Russia’s Time of Troubles refers to the fifteen years between 1598 and 1613, seeing the death of Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, the last official Rurikid, as its beginning, and the enthronement of Tsar Mikhail I Fedorovich, the first Romanov, as its end. There is a certain logic in such identification on the part of those who wish to delegitimize the reign of Boris Godunov, while upholding the pitiful reign of the dimwitted last tsar of the Rurik dynasty as apparently an integral part of a seven-hundred-plus-year-long “business as usual.”

Curiously, in providing its list of Russian rulers from Ivan IV to modern times, Time Almanac offers its own, ruler-oriented, so to speak, chronology for Russia’s Time of Troubles: from the 1610 overthrow of Vasili IV Shuisky to that incontestable 1613 date of the advent of the first Romanov. True, that the three years between 1610 and 1613 were indeed a period of total chaos and misery in Russia, and, strictly speaking, there was no identifiable ruler in Russia during that time, but it wouldn’t be accurate of course to limit the normally used historical term The Time of Troubles to just these three rulerless years alone.

Thus dismissing the terribly restrictive, albeit logically sustainable, designation provided by Time Almanac, we are returning to the traditional designation as the fifteen years from 1598 to 1613. There is a huge illogic hidden here, though, in this presumably established historiographic designation. In my previous entry Boris Godunov, I noted that Boris’s rule (rather than reign) lasted for nineteen years (1584-1605), that is, from the death of Ivan IV Grozny until Boris’s own death in 1605. Thus it doesn’t make much practical sense to start counting the Time of Troubles from somewhere in the thick of Boris’s rule. There were certainly calamities occurring during the official reign of Boris, such as the terrible famine of 1601-1603, giving rise to a series of mutinies and the rumor accusing Boris Godunov of the murder of Tsarevich Dmitri Ivanovich. Illogically, of course, False Dmitri’s rise, resurrecting the corpse of the deceased son of Ivan Grozny, never put to rest the legend of Dmitri’s murder at the hands of the hapless Godunov, but managed to coexist with it. Boris’s guilt firmly established, there were no brows raised concerning the incongruity of the ‘fact’ that the notorious corpus delicti had been presently pressing toward Moscow, on the strength of a sizable Polish army, swelling every day with reinforcements from the ranks of Boris’s numerous foes.

Therefore, having said all this, and considering that the famine occurred three years into Boris’s reign, while the invasion of False Dmitri’s army dates to the year 1604, we must necessarily conclude that the date 1598 given as the official beginning of Russia’s Time of Troubles has no other merit than to besmirch the already much besmirched reputation of the designated villain Boris Godunov. But in all fairness, had it been up to me, I would have designated the beginning of the Time of Troubles starting at the time of Boris’s death. His son Fedor’s super-short reign was already a full-fledged “time of trouble” and it certainly ought to fall under that practical designation.

To be sure, it is the eight years from the death of Tsar Boris Godunov (1605) to the ascent of Tsar Mikhail I Fedorovich Romanov (1613) which were by any standard the eeriest and weirdest period of Russian history, no question about it. This eight-year period, in its entirety, is particularly deserving to be called The Time of Troubles, in my estimation, and I am going to add a few words, mostly for historical reference, about those hard and confusing years.

As I said before, the last years of Boris’s reign had already been marred by an impending and later authentic civil war, unleashed by the forces supporting the probably illegitimate claim of False Dimitri, buttressed not so much by a sincere albeit mistaken belief in his legitimacy, as by a desire to erase the much-hated intrusion of the Godunov family from the Russian royal dynastic continuity. It is a well-known historical fact that the infamous boyar dignitary Vasili Shuisky and others were quite explicit in laying out their strategic priorities: first to support False Dmitri against the Godunov clan and its minions; then to get rid of Dmitri and come to an accommodation among the boyars.

The terrible fate of the hapless seven-week Tsar Fedor II Godunov, an otherwise bright and capable youth, was a part of that strategy. False Dmitri, next, may have been delusionally optimistic about his own chances to rule Russia, but even under the luckiest of circumstances he could not have lasted for more than a year. It was actually some luck for him that he had lasted that long.

Tsar Vasili IV Shuisky (1606-1610) was a despicable rat and unscrupulous intrigue-weaver, whose treason and incessant double-dealing could put him on the Russian throne, but couldn’t keep him there for too long. What followed his overthrow was a real tragicomedy. Unable to install a single credible ruler on the throne, a group of seven most prominent boyars who had survived the peripeties of Russia’s changing fortunes, was quick to established the so-called “Semiboyarshchina,” the “Seven-Boyar Rule,” whose immediate task was to fight the next “False Dmitri” in line, by countering his threat with the help of the Polish Crown Prince and future King of Poland Wladyslaw IV Wasa, whom they disingenuously invited to pick up the Russian throne lest False Dmitri II gets it first.

A scandalous situation therefore developed, in which the fate of the Russian throne was decided by Russian patriots led by Kuzma Minin and Prince Pozharsky, at the head of a patriotic militia, eventually triumphing, and installing Mikhail Romanov on the Russian throne, thus putting an end to the Time of Troubles. (These dramatic events would much later become the basis of Mikhail Glinka’s great first opera Ivan Susanin.

…Having now completed a flittering overview of our subject matter, it is time to focus our attention on just one personage, namely on the person of False Dmitri I, Ruler of Russia from 21 July 1605 to 17 May 1606. We actually know him already as “Grishka Otrepyev” from Pushkin’s drama and Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov. Incidentally, are Grishka and False Dmitri I historically the same?

One shouldn’t be surprised that this and other similar questions about the identity of this man are impossible to answer. Too much bias on the part of the participants of his historical record, to the point that some of the recorded “facts” about him are utterly incongruous and ridiculous, to put it mildly.

It is even impossible to say whether he might have been the real Tsarevich Dmitri Ivanovich, Ivan Grozny’s youngest son, semi-miraculously escaping death at Uglich and taken into protective custody by some brave and bold strategic planner. History gives us no definitive answers, and because we have sharply conflicting testimonies from both his biased Western friends and Russian foes, a reasonable composite picture of him is simply unavailable.

We know that he was smart and well-educated, but this gives us no key to his real identity. As the Tsar, he seems to have done a lot of good things for a lot of people, but all of them apparently for the selfish motive of gaining himself supporters in a place where he had more sworn enemies than he could handle. In essence, we can say that he was used and then disposed of, these two stages corresponding to his rise and fall.

Most Russian historians are hostile toward him, pointing out his selfishness, reckless disregard for Russia’s customs and basic sensibilities, etc. Other historians, probably simply out of the spirit of ad contrarium are suggesting that he may have been a good ruler, opening up Russia to the West, and thus envisaging Peter’s reforms a century later, which looks to me like a very big overstatement.
My opinion of him remains objectively negative: I see no good coming to Russia on the sharpened points of Polish pikes. To me, he is Grishka Otrepyev of Pushkin and Mussorgsky, but not because I am eager to buy this particular version over all others. All others are moot to me, and historically even the Grishka Otrepyev version is trivial to me as well. (But of course not so aesthetically, as the reader knows already.)

Yet "Grishka Otrepyev" carries certain intrinsic connotations which are completely in tune with the concept of the Time of Troubles as such. I believe that this concept refers to a difficult transitional period in the history of Russia, which is so much negatively charged that nothing positive can be ascribed to it, except that Minin and Pozharsky, and Ivan Susanin, and so many other Russian national heroes, had helped to bring an end to it, and good riddance!

Thus, I repeat, the sordid name of Grishka Otrepyev, associated in the Russian language with “filthy rags,” and even “trash,” has become for me an apt metaphor for this whole bizarre period of Russian history which has been chronologically imprecisely, and rather confusingly, labeled as “The Time of Troubles.”

BORIS GODUNOV

One does not have to be a student of Russian history to recognize the title name as familiar. Mussorgsky’s great opera, based on Pushkin’s historical drama, and on Mussorgsky’s own historical research, has been an exotic and fascinating attraction of all opera lovers for generations, and an immensely gratifying Wagnerian challenge for the greatest bassos of the world, from Chaliapin to Ruggiero Raimondi, for whom the title role has long become a proving ground to show off both their vocal, and especially acting prodigiousness.
But we are here now not to discuss opera or drama. We are here to take advantage of the fact that the name of Boris Godunov rings a loud bell to our well-educated reader, much louder than this name could ever have hoped to elicit under purely historical, that is, non-operatic circumstances.
Pity, though, as Tsar Boris was a truly fascinating figure in his own right, historically speaking. Descendant of a minor branch of an old Tatar family, his father Fedor Ivanovich was quite undistinguished, but his uncle Dmitri Ivanovich was a trusted servant of Tsar Ivan Grozny, from whose great fortune Boris Godunov was able to benefit a lot. But, otherwise, young Boris’s rise was largely of his own doing. Since an early age, he was clever and calculating, using every opportunity as a stepping stone in his spectacular career. At the age of eighteen he became Tsar Ivan Grozny’s dreaded Oprichnik, marrying the daughter of Ivan’s most vicious henchman Malyuta Skuratov. He further benefited from his sister Irina’s marriage to Ivan’s feeble-minded son Fedor, the future Tsar Fedor Ioannovich. (A historical curiosity: as a result of a boyar compromise, on her husband’s death in 1598, Irina Fedorovna Godunova suddenly became the next ruler of Russia, as Irina I, but she was never crowned, removing herself to a monastery as a nun just one week after her accession to the Russian throne.)
Having soon become one of Ivan’s most trusted courtiers, Boris may have played a role, at least according to some accounts, in Ivan’s physical retirement by strangulation, after which he became the most powerful man in Russia, alongside the four-man Regents Council, established to conduct the affairs of the state under the nominal monarch Tsar Fedor, who was of course Boris’s brother-in-law. By very careful intrigue, Boris managed to undermine the four members of the Council, ending up as the sole Regent of Russia during the last thirteen (1585-1598) out of the total fourteen years of Fedor’s reign. Thus the total years of Boris’s stay in power cannot be limited to his official tenure as Tsar (1598-1605), but in fact cover the last twenty years of his life.
There were several truly world-historical events taking place under Boris’s extraordinary rule both as regent and as tsar. The year 1589 marked the official establishment of the Russian Patriarchate, when the factually independent from Constantinople Metropolitan Job [Iov] was finally recognized by Constantinople, and thus by all Eastern Orthodox Christendom, after a hundred years of non-stop bickering, as Patriarch, rather than Metropolitan, settling this matter forever from then on.
Among other earth-shattering events was an unprecedented level of building and construction across Russia. Towns and fortresses were being built along the Volga to protect the Kazan-Astrakhan water route. Existing towns were fortified and beautified. Two fortification walls were built around the center of Moscow. These walls actually convinced an advancing army of Crimean Tatars to turn back, to be eventually defeated by a pursuing Russian army. The most famous fortification of all, however, was the great Stone Wall of Smolensk also known as the Stone Necklace of the Russian Land. A magnificently beautiful national monument, it was to play a vital role in Russia’s Western defenses, and, despite centuries of direct assault and destruction, of which it was the focus, many parts of it have endured up to this day as a testimony to the inspired sturdiness of its engineering and construction.
It was also during the 20-year rule of Boris that foreign merchants and craftsmen started pouring into Russia from the West, bringing trade and numerous technological advances, thus envisaging Peter’s activities more than a century before Peter.
In foreign affairs Boris Godunov was an enlightened ruler preferring peace to war and brains to muscle. His Peace with Sweden, closing down this rather unfortunate legacy of Grozny’s time, was beneficial to Russia, returning to her all the assets previously lost in the Livonian War, and at least temporarily restoring peace to the “Western Front.”
It was very unfortunate, in terms of Boris’s historical legacy, that his last years were marred by pathological fears and suspicions, which finally rose to the level of wholesale paranoia. Ironically and tragically, he was much unliked by the later generations, who did not even blink accusing Boris of murdering Ivan Grozny’s youngster son Dimitri, which would of course become a dominant theme in the Mussorgsky opera. It is true that the death of Ivan’s epileptic son, who was indeed standing between Boris and the throne after the death of Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, was very convenient for Boris, however. the actual evidence is pretty shoddy and under normal circumstances Boris should not have been accused of this crime.
But the reason for such prejudice against him is easy to see. Quite obviously, after his death, the succession of False Dimitris would never accuse him of murdering the boy whom they were now impersonating. But it was different and personal with the Romanov dynasty coming to power in 1613, and ruling Russia for more than three hundred years. The Romanov family could never forgive Boris for persecuting the Romanovs in a power struggle. In 1601, the eldest Romanov Fedor Nikitich was arrested and exiled to a monastery, where he was forced to become a monk under the name of Philaret (the future Patriarch Philaret of Russia). His wife Xenia Ivanovna Romanova-Shestova was also exiled and forced to become a nun, and also exiled was their little son Mikhail, the future first Russian tsar of the Romanov dynasty.

IVAN GROZNY AND THE ALTERNATIVE

Ivan IV Grozny has entered history as one of the greatest Russian rulers, and all serious historians recognize this as a fact. Yet it is the odious side of his reign that has captured the imagination of the history buffs, and there is no denying that the most astonishingly positive aspects of Ivan’s historical legacy are by no means as well-known to the reader as Ivan’s proverbial savage cruelty, atrocious willfulness, and explosive temper. It is probably because of this latter dark side of his reign that his nickname Grozny [fear-inspiring] has been famously mistranslated as The Terrible.

There is no denying, of course, that Ivan’s reign, particularly during its later period, was marked by terrible cruelty, which may have been exceptional even against the backdrop of the all-pervasive inhuman cruelty of those times, generally speaking, prominently including the most civilized and supposedly humane nations of the contemporary world. I would not have liked to live in those times in Russia, when even the sincerest and most loyal supporters of the Tsar could suffer a most horrific torture and death, maliciously slandered by an envious rival for the monarch’s attention or simply on the Tsar’s wild whim. Yet, fortunately, I’m not living in those days, I have no memory of any close relatives coming to harm at the hand of the Tsar, and there is a great enough distance separating us to be able to look at Ivan’s reign from the broad world-historical, rather than personal perspective.
I am not going to relate Ivan’s biography and curriculum vitae here, as these can be gleaned from any good reference book. It is enough to say that he was the key figure in Russian history to establish and validate the mighty Russian Empire. Formally, he was the first Russian “Tsar,” using the specific term characterizing an absolute and unconditional ruler. (Jesus Christ has always been referred to, in Russian Church literature and liturgy, as “Tsar Nebesnyi,” “Tsar of the Heavens.”) Ivan effectively created the system of administration of the Russian State and formed the first permanent Russian army, the “streltsy.”
In terms of his foreign policy, he is occasionally denigrated by his detractors for suffering several defeats in his “Livonian” wars waged against Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, and other Western foes. But it must be noted that in these Western wars, he was an “aggressor,” trying to win Russia a broad access to the Baltic Sea, and in “winning some--losing some” he did not actually surrender any significant Russian territory to the enemy, whereas his successes in the “eastward push” were spectacular. Subduing the mighty Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates and conquering Siberia, he doubled the size of Russia during his long reign, turning it into a giant power greater than all of Europe in size and leaving to his successors, including Peter I and Catherine II, the relatively modest task of expansion by accretion.

…So far so good, but I have not explained the significance of my title yet. Ivan Grozny and the Alternative. What is “the alternative,” and how does it fit into the context of this entry?
There was a highly significant episode during Ivan’s reign, when in 1575 he suddenly “relinquished” power and forced the boyars and the nation to accept a certain Russified Tatar nobleman Sainbulat-Khan, renamed Simeon Bekbulatovich, as… the Grand Prince (mind you, not Tsar!) of all Russia, while he himself seemed to retreat from secular life to a humble monastic abode, where he ostensibly intended to spend the rest of his life. The charade would last for almost a year, frightening and dispiriting the Russian people, until the Tsar presumably repented of his action and, like a conquering hero saving his nation, restored himself to absolute power…
This totally bizarre episode is brilliantly depicted and cleverly interpreted in the Stalin-sponsored Eisenstein movie Ivan Grozny, Part I (1944), where the terrified nation, left “fatherless,” embarks on a pleading march to the Alexandrov Monastery, where the Tsar-monk appears to be hiding, to bring him back to the Kremlin, back to absolute power. No longer is it important that the Tsar is a sadistic monster torturing and killing his own long-suffering people. What is important now, what is in fact the only thing that is important, is that the alternative is unconscionable. Come back, they plead, come back and rule again over us with an iron fist, to the greater glory of Mother Russia, and to the greater dread of Russia’s sworn enemies…

So, what is the moral of the story of Ivan Grozny, both as a historical figure and as the symbolic centerpiece of the Stalin-Eisenstein film? Let Ivan’s triumphs stand on their own, but let his savagery and debauchery be weighed against the alternative of a Russia without a strong leader… The alternative which is unthinkable...

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

Between November 1963 and October 1964, in a stretch of less than one year, the two superpowers of the world lost their high-profiled leaders, one to a physical assassination, the other, to a political one.

One year after the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy was assassinated… They say that Hitler, in the final agony of his imminent crushing defeat at Stalin’s hand, had become exuberant at the news of FDR’s death in April 1945, just because President Roosevelt was one of his three biggest enemies, admittedly not the biggest one. And now, the man who had humiliated Khrushchev so much by calling his Cuban bluff was dead. Why then wasn’t Khrushchev gloating? The in-your-face, shoe-thumping, vulgar peasant was in tears. He grieved over the loss of his enemy-in-chief. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been business. President Kennedy’s death was Khrushchev’s personal tragedy.
Khrushchev had huge respect for President Kennedy. He had found him strong against bullying and clever in his ability to manipulate circumstances and events. Besides, he had an irresistible personal attraction to his youthful American counterpart. In fact, this American tragedy was no less a Russian national tragedy, the loss of Russia’s idealistic American dream, somehow embodied in the person of JFK.

But when Khrushchev was briefed on the background of President Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who in the recent past had lived in the Soviet Union, he immediately flew off the handle:
“***!!! Devil’s ***!!! They are pinning it on us!!!”
He rushed to give orders to deliver the Soviet plea of “not guilty” to the American side, using all available means, including the dispatch of a high-profile Soviet KGB “defector” Yuri Nosenko, son of a senior Soviet government official, whose main purpose of defection was apparently to personally convince the American side that the Russians had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination.
Khrushchev was terribly concerned that even though Moscow had indeed absolutely nothing to do with it, the choice of Oswald, who had defected to Russia several years before, but then had become disappointed and re-defected back to the United States, was a clear indication of the dirty plan to blame it on the Soviet Union.
The American authorities were never to go so far as to connect Oswald to any Soviet-backed conspiracy but still the shadow was hanging out there, and Khrushchev found it offensively unfair. He was crushed. He had felt like he could do business with Kennedy improving the US-Soviet relations and negotiating arms control agreements. But he had a deep personal dislike, for some reason, for the new President Lyndon B. Johnson, and this relationship did not look like it was going anywhere.

Besides, Comrade Khrushchev’s own political clock was ticking away. Not that he was getting too old. He was not yet seventy, and some active life was still left in him. But he must have felt all alone in the world, and he realized that there were people out there, plotting against him all the time.
Ironically, President Kennedy had looked like the only friend he had, but now even he was gone. Everyone in Moscow hated Khrushchev for a long litany of egregious offenses. Like trampling the laurels of Russian glory by his denunciation of Stalin, and by removing his body from the Mausoleum. Like betraying his old Presidium buddies, and making a fool out of Russia’s national treasure Marshal Zhukov. Like humiliating the whole military establishment by his “cult of the missile” and his disrespect for the brain capacity of the military commanders. And of course, like allowing the USSR to be seen as the loser by the world public in the Cuban Missile Crisis... Too many indictments and too many thumbs-down for one old man. Too many personal animosities from active political players, like Gromyko, and so on, and on, and on.
Everybody knew that Khrushchev was a goner. The only question now was who would replace him. And just because this question had not been answered yet, throughout 1963 and 1964, the battle royal of power succession was raging around Khrushchev, while allowing him to enjoy a deceptive stillness, and even to celebrate a noisy, if tense, seventieth birthday, surrounded by some mawkish, and unmistakably mocking, adulation.
But the end was nevertheless just around the corner, and in October 1964 Khrushchev was gone.

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: AN INSPIRED IDIOCY

(Part III of the Cuban triptych.)
…So far, it had looked like Fidel had to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of deal beneficial to Soviet interests. But in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the impulsive Barbudo suddenly erupted with this shocking double dare: Would the Russians like to build a military base on Cuba, and put nuclear weapons on Cuban territory?
...Defense Minister Raúl had no desire to become Refugee Raúl. He seemed genuinely scared now that his brother’s recklessness might just result in a direct military invasion of Cuba by the United States.
His outrage was, however, grievously misplaced, because this was not how the situation was being viewed by Comrade Khrushchev. He and Fidel were birds of a feather, which should explain a certain unmistakable chemistry between them. But sentimental attraction alone was not enough to do the trick. It so happened that some time prior to Fidel’s brave offer, Khrushchev had been struck by an exceptionally bright idea of his own. For some time now, whenever he visited his Black Sea dacha in the Crimea, Khrushchev was by no means a happy man. He liked to sit on the beach in his comfortable folding chair, looking at the sea. While thus reclining he would now frequently sit up, hit his thigh with his fist, and start complaining, muttering the same thing over and over again, pointing his finger to the sea, toward the horizon, in what, to him, would be the approximate direction of the country of Turkey:
“Them *** rockets, like, always look at me across the water, and make me sleep bad at night!”
He was complaining about the American nuclear missiles, recently deployed in Turkey under the NATO accord. Anybody who knew him well enough, also knew that it was not some clever metaphor on his part, but the real thing. He was genuinely upset at such an invasion of his privacy, and particularly concerned about the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch over the Black Sea.
Aside from Turkey, there were, of course, other American missiles, deployed in Western Europe, but those did not concern Khrushchev so much. After all, Russia was nicely padded from them by a belt of foreign tissue: the Socialist satellites of Eastern Europe. There was a time, not long ago, when young Russian lads had been spilling their blood defeating Hitler and liberating his captives. Khrushchev’s own son Leonid had been killed in that war. So, should Eastern Europe be slightly nuked today by the West, in a freak accident, no sweat! It would be their time to return the favor.
But Turkey was different. There was no padding between the American rockets and the Russian soil here, except for a stretch of water and Comrade Khrushchev’s semi-naked body reclining in a chaise longue on the deceptively peaceful beach. For this reason, he could no longer enjoy his Black Sea vacations, and was always dreaming of devising something special to put an end to this distressing situation. And now, yes, he did have an idea!
...During Khrushchev’s “glorious decade” of ruling over Russia, there was a very popular joke about Nikita Sergeyevich rising from his drunken stupor and mumbling, “Idea!” which in drunken Russian is virtually indistinguishable from “Where the hell am I?” Wherever his famous pearls were coming from, the idea of using Cuba to make Washington shut down its missile installations in Turkey, was certainly Khrushchev’s historic masterpiece. This is how he presented its essence:

So, our Barbudo Fidel is offering Cuba as a Soviet military base? Wonderful. Let’s now hit the Americans straight between the eyes! No, not on the battlefield, God forbid!, but at the negotiating table. Now, if we tell Kennedy “Get the hell out of Turkey!” he will ask “What’s in it for me?” and we have nothing to give him in exchange. All we’ve got is neatly tied up in a package, and we don’t want that package to unravel, should we start pulling something out of it, for Mr. Kennedy’s pleasure.
But if we accept Fidel’s invitation, here’s some quick loose change for you, Mr. Kennedy, “You get out of Turkey, and we get out of Cuba, and everybody is happy!”

When Raúl heard of Moscow’s decision to send missiles to Cuba, he was in disbelief. Yes, Raúl knew the cover story: Khrushchev was ostensibly giving his bearded friend deterrence against a repeat of the Bay of Pigs. What he could not understand was why Moscow was ready to oblige Fidel to such an incredible and dangerous extent.
Nor did Raúl or his brother know the little secret that the Soviet missiles sent to Cuba would not be... well, operational. Should an American armed aggression against Cuba suddenly occur, none of these ‘sausages’ would be capable of being fired back, to cause an escalation. Besides, calling them nuclear also stretched the point. Khrushchev sincerely counted on the Americans to figure it out easily by themselves. After all, they were spending billions on defense. They surely had the equipment to tell a nuke from a dummy!
By the same token, the Cubans were never explicitly informed about the Presidium’s decision on complete Soviet neutrality in case of any armed conflict between Cuba and the United States. Such information was available only on the “need to know” basis, and Havana did not need to know.

On Soviet side, the secret of Khrushchev’s bargaining ploy was concealed beyond all reasonable measure. Very few people including those directly involved in the missile operation had any knowledge of what was going on, and why. Not that many of those left in the dark couldn’t find out, but they rather preferred it that way. This was strictly Khrushchev’s baby: if the bluff succeeds, more power to him, but if it flops, then let him alone be left to blame.
One of the many incredible features of this operation was that Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko had been completely left out of the loop. (Incredible, as it may sound, he wasn’t a member of the Presidium/Politburo until 1973!) No question, of course, that he was one of those who “did not want to know,” anyway. But that was already after the fact. Ever since his dealings with the Castro regime had begun, Khrushchev never really bothered to consult his Foreign Minister on what would be the best course of action. Soviet Ambassador to Havana Alexander Ivanovich Alexeev (his real name was Shitov, but it was changed for the obvious reason) was Khrushchev’s hand-picked man, and he reported directly to him, bypassing the regular channels. Either unintentionally or by design, Gromyko found himself looking like a fool...
Andrei Andreevich Gromyko was an intensely sensitive man hiding his shyness behind that proverbial stony façade. He was also one of the most decent men in the Soviet leadership. No matter what opinion others had of Gromyko, this was my mother’s personal impression of him, and it was also mine.
A man like Gromyko could never forgive Khrushchev a humiliation of such magnitude as he had suffered in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he had very good reasons to be upset. Not only was he an authority on Cuba, where, as I have mentioned, he had served as the Soviet Ambassador just ten years before. Gromyko also had a brilliant mind. He had shown his exceptional abilities from an early age. Stalin ipse had appreciated his talents and had carved for him a niche as a major player. And now this erstwhile Stalin’s clown had put a dunce cap on the head of the prodigy!
Khrushchev had made himself many enemies. From now on, Gromyko was second to none...

The Soviet weapons flotilla slowly heading across the Atlantic in the direction of Cuba, was like an insane fire-belly frog, camouflaging her back against its own home base in Moscow, yet deliberately exposing her you-can’t-miss-me belly to its adversaries in Washington.
General Anatoly Ivanovich Gribkov, who had been given the command of the Soviet missile shipments to Cuba, could not comprehend the glaring breaches of secrecy, like the lack of elementary camouflage both for the cargo, and for the ground installations in Cuba, in the course of the otherwise super-secret operation. Privately venting his angry bewilderment on a friend of his, General Gribkov was, nevertheless, a man of military discipline. Throughout the whole affair he remained resolved to obey his orders, even when they made no sense. In spite of all the irregularities of his mission, he was still patriotically committed to following his specific doomsday instructions that, in case of an American attack, he would do nothing. Nothing at all... These instructions were of course standard Soviet Cold War practice. It was better to lose a few good men than risk an escalation of a single hostile incident into a real military conflict.

So here was the gist of Khrushchev’s ploy. Any day now he was expecting an angry call from the American Ambassador. Soviet Ambassador in Washington Dobrynin had already been instructed, over Gromyko’s head, to raise the issue of the American missiles in Turkey at the first sound of alarm.
But the angry call was not coming, and Ambassador Dobrynin was reporting business-as-usual to a baffled Khrushchev. He could not help asking whether the American side knew precisely what was going on. It was confirmed to him that the Americans could have no doubts about it. They had certainly known what was going on since the weapons shipments had begun in July 1962. Their low-flying military planes had been seen overhead, obviously taking pictures, and signaling to the Russians, in the unmistakable sign language of the pilots, “Yes, we know what you guys are doing, and we are going to make you sweat!”

It must have dawned upon Khrushchev then what Washington was up to. The good news was that America was feeling safe and secure, in the knowledge that the Russians were not going to start any silliness, like a World War Three. The bad news was that Khrushchev’s bluff had been recognized as such, and called.

On October 22, 1962 Khrushchev finally got his confirmation that President Kennedy intended to play the Cuban missile show in the theater of world public opinion. At the same time, as a little token of American generosity, Khrushchev was privately informed through Ambassador Dobrynin that the American missiles would be withdrawn from Turkey!!!

...So, shame on those ignoramuses who say that substance is more important than form!!! Why was nobody applauding Comrade Khrushchev, the big winner on substance in the Cuban Missile Crisis? His ploy had worked! Russia was getting her dream deal on Turkey at the price of loose change.
Alas, in the real world of spins and reflections nobody gives a damn about “substance.” Only impressions are real. In the story of the Cuban missiles, Khrushchev suffered such a public relations fiasco that all his Turkish success was put to shame. The whole world saw Khrushchev succumb under President Kennedy’s pressure, and did not pay the slightest attention to the small print.
America taught Khrushchev a lesson he would never forget. There was a big mess in Moscow. Everybody blamed him for the harebrained scheme, which had succeeded like a classic Pyrrhic victory. Fidel, furious, was now in a hurry to show the world that he was a leader, not a puppet of Moscow. He contributed to the general humiliation of Khrushchev by overruling him in the very public matter of UN inspections in Cuba to which Khrushchev had hastily agreed, forgetting for the moment that he, Khrushchev, had never been the real man in Havana.

…No, except for the Turkish missiles, Khrushchev’s loose change didn’t buy anything nice at all! Ironically, it was probably the best Soviet purchase of the whole Cold War, comparable only to his sale of a seemingly doomed West Berlin back to the West just in the previous year, 1961, with the reluctant construction of the Berlin Wall... (See my earlier posted Berlin Wall entries.)

CUBA: KHRUSHCHEV'S DANGEROUS WINDFALL

On the first day of 1959, a rather insignificant event, from the Soviet standpoint, took place far away, in the Western Hemisphere: yet another Latin-American dictator bit the dust, on the island of Cuba.
So what? The Russians were always joking that in Latin America no captain deserved a promotion to major unless he had conducted a successful coup d'état. Yet, the ouster of Fulgencio Batista would unexpectedly precipitate an utterly bizarre Cold War adventure that would deeply involve my father, and have a profound effect on the lives and thoughts of every American family, and, although far less significant to the ordinary Russians at home, would be absolutely devastating to Russia’s image abroad.

Strategically Cuba was not worth one iota of Soviet attention. Contrary to conventional Cold War wisdom, Moscow did not harbor any political aspirations in that part of the world. As the Soviet strategists used to banter, they wholeheartedly supported the Monroe Doctrine in its improved, Moscow rendition: “America for the Americans, and Eurasia for the Eurasians.” Indeed, the day when the American troops left Europe for good, would be a dream come true for Soviet foreign policy.
So, no Russian in his own mind would want to mess with the Americans in their own back yard. Moscow followed the movements of Latin-American revolutionary zealots, like “Ché” Guevara, with a wary eye. Although publicly unable to dissociate from these troublemakers completely, the Russians, privately, tried to keep them at a good distance, making sure that this attitude was known in Washington.

What made the new Cuban dictator Fidel Castro somewhat different from other Latin-American dictators was his brother Raúl, a remarkably shrewd political opportunist, who claimed to be a Communist. Unlike “Comrade Ché” (a delightful tautology!) there was not one drop of lunacy in Raúl’s blood. His goal in life was very much down-to-earth: he wanted to play in major leagues. While his brother Fidel played the rebel-desperado, waging his relentless war against Batista, Raúl was weighing his options, and putting out feelers. What can Raúl do for Moscow? Look at him, he is not insane like the rest of them. He can be useful!

Moscow appreciated Raúl’s cool head and political astuteness. Alas, there were too few Communists like him in the countries which mattered. Those claimed to have “convictions,” and always tried to shove them down Moscow’s throat. But Moscow hated Communists with convictions. It only needed “bright” soldiers, who knew what was good for them, who would come, like Raúl, and ask their Soviet Comrades, “What can I do for you?”
So, if Raúl wanted to come and live in a nice apartment in Moscow, welcome. They would surely find ways for Raúl to be helpful there. But not in Cuba, ninety miles off the coast of Florida, not as a pesky mosquito on Uncle Sam’s nose. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, sort of.
Raúl remained undaunted by the cold shower: he knew that, with a brother like his, sooner or later, his time was bound to come.

Unlike Raúl, Fidel Castro was a revolutionary maverick, far less at home with the subtleties of politics. He was once called a fascist, and was said to have admired Hitler. In his early moment of triumph, he had no interest in Moscow whatsoever. All his politics were necessarily local. As Raúl would later explain to my father, Fidel had initially expected a quick round of negotiations with the United States, followed by the official recognition of his regime. However, as time went by and that recognition had for some reason not been forthcoming, adversely affecting Cuban business, Fidel was beginning to get very mad.
At last, exasperated, he turned to his brother Raúl: You talk to the Russians. Ask them if they are going to support me, should I retaliate against the Americans. Let’s negotiate.

Now that Raúl Castro’s little island was becoming somewhat more important to Moscow, than before, the ever impulsive Khrushchev remembered that Artem could speak Spanish, and decided to put him on this case. Thus, starting on a luxurious transatlantic pleasure cruise, a string of remarkable tête-à-têtes was conducted between Fidel’s Communist brother Raúl, and my father, who had reluctantly relinquished his habitual General’s uniform, for civilian clothes, to rise to that particular occasion.

Concerning Khrushchev’s decision to take Castro seriously, Artem was convinced that the idea of using Cuba as a bargaining chip against the United States may have visited him in some inchoate form already at this early date. Khrushchev himself, however, privately explained that his special interest in Fidel had a far more mystical origin. As soon as Uncle Nikita found out that the brothers’ full name was Castro Ruz, he allegedly felt the hand of destiny. In Russian, the name Ruz is pronounced very much like Rus, the historical name of Russia, loaded with great meaning, deep in the Russian psyche. So, here was your vintage Khrushchev!
But whatever it was, Cuba suddenly loomed large, and Raúl Castro Ruz’s wish to play in major leagues was in the process of being fulfilled.

Artem made no effort to encourage Raúl’s ambitions. Instead, he delivered to Raúl Moscow’s prepackaged message: Let Fidel retaliate against the Americans in any which way he pleases, and he can always count on Soviet support at the United Nations, as long as he agrees not to associate himself with Communism in any shape or form.
Raúl was quick to understand the hidden message. In order for Moscow to start taking the Castro regime in Cuba seriously enough to support it, openly and directly, thus risking grave political complications with the United States, it must be given an absolutely compelling reason to do so.

…A satisfactory history of the Cuban Triangle, that is, of the trilateral relationship of the Castro regime and of the two superpowers, is yet to be written. But one thing stands out for sure. The Soviets found in Fidel an unusually tough customer. Although in the summer of 1959 Fidel ousted his Western-style liberal President Manuel Urrutia for his failure to lure the United States, his new appointment of the prominent Cuban lawyer Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado as President didn’t make Moscow particularly happy. As Raúl would explain this choice, Fidel’s old loyalty to the man, who had been helping him with money in the past, when he needed it, could not be shaken now that he didn’t.

Khrushchev deserves some credit for instantly becoming rather fond of the gutsy Barbudo Fidel, whose robust physique Uncle Nikita especially admired. In late 1959, Khrushchev arranged a visit to Cuba by Anastas Mikoyan (whom my readers may well remember from my earlier entries), to meet with Fidel personally. Not without reason, Khrushchev considered Mikoyan a grand wizard of diplomatic arts, and sending this player to Cuba was an indication of Fidel’s rapidly surging stock. My father’s own odd relationship with Raúl Castro was, consequently, marked down from the lead to the supporting cast.

Mikoyan’s first trip to Cuba in February 1960 was certainly an unusual event, in the absence of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Havana. It was also an affront to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Khrushchev chose to ignore him, even though Gromyko was the most knowledgeable man about Cuba in the whole Soviet leadership, having been Ambassador to Cuba in the 1940’s, while also Ambassador to the United States.

Only after Comrade Mikoyan had “straightened out Fidel’s brains” (that Fidel could not play it both ways forever), were diplomatic relations between Moscow and Havana finally reestablished. It happened in May 1960, after eight years of severance, and more than sixteen months into Castro’s revolutionary regime. But, as they say, better late than never. With Moscow pushing harder and harder, and Washington continuing to treat him with undisguised hostility, Fidel finally made the right move: He nationalized. In other words, he seized American property in Cuba, as well as the property of the other foreigners, and of rich Cubans living in the United States, and declared it public property.
The expropriated community cried foul, and, in the absence of a direct military intervention by the United States, organized, in April 1961, their own Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which infamously flopped.

After this attempt to overthrow his regime, Fidel Castro became genuinely concerned. The Bay of Pigs invasion might well be repeated with an active involvement this time of the US military. In that case, his regime would certainly be toppled. He badly needed Soviet help, and he rushed to declare himself a longtime Communist, and the Cuban Revolution, a “socialist revolution.” He went so far as to repeat his declaration several times in a row, assuming that the more the Russians heard him declare it, the better they would be satisfied. Raúl, always the cynic, was now warning that his brother’s words were cheap. Even though Fidel had agreed to unify several existing political groups into his own version of a one-party system in Cuba, he would never agree to make the next step of resurrecting the name and the symbolism of the long-abolished Communist Party of Cuba, founded back in the 1920’s. He explained that Fidel had a soft spot for his 26th of July Movement Party, and would never allow this sentimentally loaded name to be retired. (He was of course mistaken on this account: after a series of name changes, Fidel's Party became the Communist Party in 1965.)
But by now the Soviet-Cuban relations had progressed so unexpectedly far, and so quickly, that such small potatoes as the name of Fidel’s Party did not matter. After all, the Germans had a Unified Socialist Party, the Poles had a United Workers’ Party, and so on. They did not need to be called Communists, as long as they were all toeing the line.
But somehow few people in Moscow chose to believe that Fidel would ever be capable of toeing the line. It was a general consensus that the charismatic barbudo intended to use the Soviet superpower connection to his utmost advantage, but was not at all eager to be used.
...To be continued in the next entry The Cuban Missile Crisis.

¡VIVA FIDEL!

With the forty-ninth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis approaching, it is only natural that these next three postings will be dedicated to Cuba, where, hopefully, not only will the reader learn a few new things, but will be able to better understand a few other things which have always been public knowledge, yet never quite made any sense. We start with a short but fitting panegyric to Fidel Castro, a genius malgré lui, yet an authentic world-historical genius nevertheless. I guess that an overwhelming majority of political geniuses in history have been just like him: geniuses malgré eux…


Fidel Castro has long emerged as one of the most outstanding legendary heroic leaders in world history. The fact that from his little island ninety miles away from Florida he succeeded in elevating his stature to one of the most formidable enemies of the great American superpower, and stayed in power for half-a-century, no matter what; the fact that no coup against his authority had been allowed on his watch; the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, his protector, Fidel was easily able to survive on his own; the fact that, having peacefully retired from power, he left behind more than a governable stable entity, but a nation everybody in the world, including the United States, is eager to do business with; the fact that today so many countries of Latin America are recognizing his spiritual and ideological lead and developing after his political mold--- all these facts point to Fidel’s foremost position among the political geniuses of modernity, and, perhaps, of all time.

Therefore no matter what I have said about him elsewhere, usually quite irreverently, regarding his exceptionally good luck and circumstances malgré lui conspiring to keep him alive and well (none of which I am taking back or even revising) to all this I ought to add a lavish panegyric to Fidel’s natural formidable genius and conclude with the title words of this entry: ¡Viva Fidel!

KHRUSHCHEV: POLITICS AND "MARSHAL" ARTS PART II

...The situation became particularly interesting in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, denouncing Stalin, in February 1956.


That “speech” was not so much intended to become a blow to Stalin’s memory or legacy, as it was a ploy to disassociate him publicly from the old guard of the Presidium, displaying himself as a new, different kind of leader. What he most certainly succeeded in demonstrating was independent force, an ability to surprise and shock, in other words, far greater qualities of leadership than anyone else in the Presidium had been capable of. In its peculiar outcome, even those who hated Khrushchev for “raping public consciousness,” were now ready to give him a chance to show his mettle.

Artem was very upset by the Speech, although by now he was all too familiar with Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin diatribes. Konev reacted more cautiously, trying not to commit himself to either side of the controversy. But Zhukov had made up his mind to stick with Khrushchev, and supported his bold move unequivocally. Now, Khrushchev could count on the strength of Zhukov’s immense popularity and also on his military support of Khrushchev’s political actions. Thus, in June 1957, during the famous (many would say infamous) Plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Zhukov essentially reshuffled the deck in Khrushchev’s favor. Some of the votes in this bloodless palace revolution were clearly influenced by the tanks under Zhukov’s command, stationed outside the building, and reminding everyone of their presence by some very impatient roars. To make a very long story short, Khrushchev’s detractors in the Presidium lost, and Khrushchev won, wasting no time to start putting his house in order.

Poor Zhukov! He had thought he was so smart demanding a seat on the Presidium, while his tanks were still roaring outside the conference hall. He got it all right, but so what? Alas, he couldn’t keep the tanks roaring forever. As soon as the tanks were sent away, Marshal Zhukov became… well, vulnerable.

His story encapsulates one of life’s supreme ironies. To the public, to the West, to any historian looking at the Marshal's personal résumé, he reached the peak of his power in June 1957: one of the greatest national heroes in Russian history, Soviet Minister of Defense, and now Member of the all-powerful Presidium!! But underneath the surface, things were very different!

Zhukov was a bad politician, but as a military genius he had an excellent nose for smelling trouble. He knew he had been had, when the members of the new Presidium whom he had personally helped to install, refused to honor their payback time and kept turning down his political initiatives, one after another. As a Presidium Member, he was rendered scandalously ineffectual. He had been accustomed to commanding armies, but his new position of power was a sickening joke. Yes, he was a great military commander. However, his manner of doing business did not sit well with the politicians in the Presidium. Everything he demanded to be done, regardless of its merit, was just turning dead.

What a terrible thing for a genuine colossus to feel that he had become a political sham, an impotent puppet, after having built with his own hands the fortune of his deceiver! “Khrushchev” had now become the dirtiest word in his rough lexicon.

He painfully regretted his renunciation of Stalinism, by the fact of his support of this renegade Stalin-basher Khrushchev. At last, he was able to understand how he had shot himself in the foot. The Stalinist appeal: an intense national thirst for the strongman-hero, who would lift Russia out of misery and confusion, had been Zhukov’s only hope to make it big. But Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization was effectively a “de-Zhukovization” too. Those new people, whom Zhukov had brought to power, were all his ideological detractors. As for his prized Presidium membership, “you could not even wipe your ass with it,” as Zhukov would philosophically remark later, looking back at his life.

Ironically, the same people whom Zhukov had helped to oust: Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov would later all become, in their common misery of political disgrace, his ideological comrades. They would all end up admiring the good old days of Stalin and Stalinism, even though, under their enemy Khrushchev, they were enjoying state pensions, excellent housing, and government dachas, while under Stalin their disgrace would have meant certain death.

Before the eventful summer of 1957 was out, Zhukov invited Artem to a private meeting, where during their lovely walk in the woods he unloaded on him his fury against Khrushchev. Having brought Stalin down, this “reckless opportunist” was trashing Russia's great achievements of the past thirty years, undermining Soviet morale and tarnishing Russia’s superpower image in the world!

Zhukov was somehow convinced that what had been done could just as easily be undone. There were too many people deeply offended by Khrushchev. Besides, Zhukov’s image was still riding high and his grip on the military personnel was still unshakable. When push came to shove, there was no doubt as to whom they would rather follow. In his new effort to unseat Khrushchev, he had spoken to the old-timers. Mikoyan and Prime Minister Bulganin pledged their support. President Voroshilov looked scared, and was vague, but he had shaken Zhukov’s hand, which privately meant that he could be counted in.

Zhukov needed Artem’s help too. He knew that Artem had been critical of his behavior and had said some far from nice words about him in his conversations with many friends. Zhukov would never stoop down to apologize for his actions, but he was ready to admit that they had been a mistake. He just wanted Artem to know that in his opinion now, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization was a travesty and wanted Artem to take this into consideration, so that he and his friends would no longer be confused by Zhukov’s mixed signals.

Had it been someone else, Artem would have hesitated to accept such a repentance. But Zhukov’s appeal was still powerful, and Artem pledged to him his support. However, Khrushchev was not sitting out there like a patsy waiting for an angry Zhukov to strike back at him. Before the conspirators had their chance to act, in October 1957, Zhukov was going on a State trip to Eastern Europe, totally unsuspecting of any foul play on Khrushchev’s part. On the contrary, Zhukov felt super-confident and quite secure.

But he was wrong again. While he was abroad, his persona suffered a swift political “assassination,” which reduced him to a non-person overnight. On his return to Moscow, his “retirement” was personally handled by none other than his dear old “friend” Marshal Konev.

Of the two old-timers who had pledged him their unequivocal support, Prime Minister Bulganin reaped the consequences soon thereafter, early next year being dismissed from all his posts as an anti-Party element. Mikoyan, on the other hand, fared extremely well under Khrushchev, and eventually he became President of the USSR. They didn’t call Mikoyan The Great Survivor for nothing. Most insiders believed, then and later, that it was he, who had stabbed Zhukov in the back by spilling the beans to Khrushchev, and thus caused Zhukov’s abrupt removal from office.

KHRUSHCHEV: POLITICS AND "MARSHAL" ARTS PART I

When, after Beria’s sudden demise, Khrushchev was voted into the position of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in September 1953, this was seen as a purely temporary measure of convenience. The other members of the Presidium were looking down on him, especially, his predecessor Malenkov, who had never given up the hope of recapturing his top Party spot, which, he believed, he had lost only through a very unfortunate misconception of his alliance with Beria.

It was, of course, the old-timers’ lingering bias against Malenkov which had allowed Khrushchev to capture the top title: otherwise, it would have been Malenkov all the way. But, no matter how clever Khrushchev’s mask of dissimulation was, sooner or later everybody was bound to realize that this man had a mind of his own, that he was capable of playing very sophisticated political games, and would turn out much harder to dislodge than originally expected.

The third contender for Party Leadership was Molotov, who for a while, after the war, had mistakenly been considered among Stalin’s likely successors. However, among those who knew him, it was well-understood that Molotov’s forte was playing the second fiddle. He was the perfect follower, hardly the leader. Besides, shortly before Stalin’s death, he and Mikoyan had been pushed out of the nine-man magic circle, known as the Bureau of the Presidium since 1952. Both men had suffered some unpleasantness, as a result of Beria’s intrigues on behalf of his reluctant protégé Malenkov, and, oddly, on behalf of Defense Minister Bulganin. The latter was never a contender for leadership, but Beria had led him to believe that unless those two were out, there would be no room for him within the Bureau.

…After Stalin’s death, Beria continued playing Machiavellian games with his Kremlin colleagues. For this reason, he made sure that Molotov and Mikoyan would be readmitted, in a somewhat diminished capacity, to the inner circle of the Presidium, thus producing a rather confusing situation:

Molotov and Bulganin could not quite overcome the bad blood between them, caused by the latter’s relaxed reaction to Molotov’s temporary disgrace. Yet, Bulganin was by no means interested in joining Malenkov’s team, which, besides Malenkov, included his fast-rising, but soon-to-fall cronies Saburov and Pervukhin, all of whom (including Malenkov himself) Bulganin intensely disliked. For a while, after Beria’s assassination, this standoff was bound to perpetuate a strained alliance between Bulganin and Khrushchev, for the simple reason that Bulganin needed to belong somewhere and had nowhere else to go. But as soon as he had aided and abetted Khrushchev in defeating the Malenkov-Molotov-Kaganovich coalition, in July 1957, he started plotting immediately with Marshal Zhukov against Khrushchev (about which later) and was ousted from all his lofty posts early next year.

But that would happen later. For the time being, the members of the Presidium were modestly counting on Khrushchev’s speedy self-destruction due to his heavy drinking habits, and his great propensity for finding himself in hot water whenever he opened his mouth, while conversing with foreign leaders. But, incredibly, Khrushchev managed to survive his foreign trips to China, India, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, and Great Britain with blunders galore, but without a major scandal that might have ruined his political career.

In the meantime, Khrushchev was astute enough to realize that his chances of building his own coalition within the Presidium were nil. In a very clever move, he decided to profit from his image as a combatant in World War II, where he had certainly seen more action than any other member of the Presidium. With this in mind, he turned his hopes to the military.

One of the men, Khrushchev was cultivating with a particular intensity was the legendary Marshal Zhukov, the greatest Soviet military hero of his time. By the time he took Berlin and received Germany’s surrender in May 1945, he was regarded almost as a saint, and threatened to win the popularity contest against Stalin himself!

Zhukov was often compared to Napoleon, both in his military skills and in his huge opinion of himself, but, unlike Napoleon, he was a miserable politician. He saw national adulation and believed that it was enough, totally ignoring the political downside of his elevated status. Like every tyrant, Stalin did not welcome any real or potential competition. But Stalin did not want to be personally belittled by Zhukov’s demotion either. Sending Russia’s greatest living hero literally down south to an inferior position in Odessa, straight after the war, Stalin disingenuously shifted the blame from himself to the “other comrades’ insistence.” Naturally, he immediately planted the rumor through the grapevine that it was actually Beria who had wanted to get rid of Zhukov. But no matter how Stalin wished to play it, Zhukov was gone.

It was none other than Khrushchev who revived him preciously soon after Stalin’s death, and, as he would be quick to point out to Zhukov, it was on his personal insistence that Zhukov had been catapulted out of his obscurity back to prominence. In 1953 Zhukov was made First Deputy to Defense Minister Bulganin. Then, in 1955 he became Defense Minister.

He learned nothing from his recent disgrace. Having become Defense Minister, he immediately demanded to be also promoted to the full membership of the Presidium, but was turned down. Khrushchev privately complained to Zhukov that he had voted for him, but had been overruled, and Zhukov believed him. Thus, already in 1955, Khrushchev succeeded in creating a false impression in Zhukov’s mind that the question of his Presidium membership had drawn the battle lines, pitting the two of them together against the rest of the top Soviet leadership.

There was yet another Marshal of the Soviet Union, another war hero, whom Khrushchev also cultivated in a very clever fashion. He was Marshal Konev. Konev, naturally, had his strong points, but he was also vain, and not very bright. From my personal impressions of him, he liked to wear a mask of stone-faced dignity, but whenever he was relaxed, which with us was very often, his vanity showed in his face and in his whole demeanor, to the point of silliness. A man like Konev was suitably transparent, and easy to manipulate.

There was awfully bad blood between Zhukov and Konev. At the end of the war, as if his legitimate military laurels had not been good enough, Marshal Konev launched his own political career by openly kissing up to Stalin and Beria and by venomously denouncing people who had already been under the cloud of suspicion. In 1946, everybody was privately saying that Konev “had used Zhukov’s bones as his stepping stone,” when Zhukov was demoted, and Konev elevated to the post of Deputy Defense Minister and Commander in Chief of the Soviet Land Forces. Although Konev never dared to assault Zhukov directly to get his promotion, the latter was terribly humiliated, blamed Konev, first and foremost, and regarded him as nothing short of being a backstabber.

In his “Memoir,” Khrushchev draws a rather unsympathetic portrait of Konev, but, as always, he is horribly disingenuous. He had always cultivated Konev, and eventually he used him in late 1957 to destroy Zhukov, who, after helping Khrushchev defeat the other members of the Presidium, had outlived his usefulness.

Khrushchev played beautifully on Konev’s vanity, claiming a long-standing friendship between them, on the grounds that, before the war, they had been working together in Ukraine. Considering that Khrushchev had been the boss of Ukraine, such flattery was a sugarplum which Konev just could not help but swallow.

When Zhukov was made Defense Minister in 1955, he was eager to take Konev’s head off, but that was not so easy now. In his turn, Konev was made Supreme Commander of the Armies of the Socialist Nations of Eastern Europe, the so-called Warsaw Pact, and thus, not entirely Zhukov’s subordinate. Zhukov had the power to yell at First Deputy Defense Minister Konev as much as he wanted, in his Moscow office, but had no power at all to demote Warsaw Pact Supreme Commander Konev from his new Kremlin-level post.

It is simply amazing how these two military heroes had allowed themselves to become toys in the hands of a smart peasant, and helped him, in an uphill battle, to change the odds of Soviet history...

To be continued in the next posting...