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...
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...
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