Roy MedvedevCritiques
Auteur de Le stalinisme (Origines, histoire, conséquence)
Critiques
Khrushchev: The Years in Power (Norton Library… par Roy A. Medvedev
A good survey also of the Russian revolution of 1917 and preceding events. Good portraits of the more important Bolsheviks and their various fates at the hands of Stalin. Well-organized with information from many cited sources. Apparently an excellent translation.
The point of view is troubling. Much that happened within the USSR is not mentioned, such as anti-Jewish pogroms encouraged and ordered by Stalin. There is little or nothing about the sizable aid in food and military supplies shipped, at a high cost in western lives (U-boat sinkings) and goods, to Russia in World War II by the U.S. and Great Britain which likely saved hundreds of thousands of Soviets from starvation and additional battle losses in a prolonged war. Not mentioned is the forced building of cities and factories in Siberia at arbitrary and economically unsuitable locations resulting in continual drains on the rest of the economy.
There is discussion of the heroic work done in the Gulag (labs within prison grounds!) by wrongly imprisoned Russian scientists developing the A- and H-Bombs, but no hint that Russian spies in the U.S. and Great Britain had stolen detailed plans of both bombs several times over, so that the Russians had only to implement the discoveries made in the U.S. by the world's most brilliant scientists over a period of years and costing billions.
As the writer had access to secret Soviet files, it is remarkable that there is nothing about massive Russian spying the world over, particularly in the United States, some revealed by defecting spies and the extensive intercepts assembled by U.S. intellegence of covert coded Soviet espionage transmissions (the recently declassified Venona Project; see also Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers and Igor Gouzenko) which eventually fingered Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Julius Rosenberg and other highly placed U.S. (and British and Canadian) officials and scientists as Soviet spies who implemented and expoited numerous grave security breaches over many years. Other important subversive Soviet operations in other countries go unmentioned as well. All of this changed geopolitical balances and therefore the history of the 20th century.
In short, the author's research and book appear to have been tailored especially to satisfy a Russian view, and there was much else that I was interested in but did not find.
Medvedev recounts the lives of these men in a most effective manner, given his purpose. He demonstrates that all became involved with Lenin's Bolsheviks early in life and participated in some way in the October Revolution. All served the new Soviet government under Lenin and then Stalin. It is their careers under Stalin, and the parts that they played in the repressions and terror of the Stalin régime which is most significant to the account. With the exception of Suslov, their subsequent disgrace after the death of Stalin serves as a footnote to Medvedev's commentary on the nature of the Soviet system.
For purposes of analysis, it would seem best to divide these six men into two categories. The first category, and that which encompasses the first three chapters of the book, would contain Voroshilov, Mikoyan and Suslov. It is clear that Medvedev holds these men responsible for complicity with Stalin in his crimes against humanity, but it is also significant to note that this group is singled out for less harsh condemnation than is the next group of three. This second group consists of Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov. These three, as three in the 'Soviet Gang of Four' (to include Shepilov because of his association with them), are reserved for particularly harsh vilification by Medvedev, as if their denunciation by Khrushchev were not enough.
Voroshilov, the red marshal, is introduced first. Portrayed by Medvedev as never having achieved the skills of a professional soldier, he is also characterized as rather unintelligent. This was, as Medvedev argues, exactly what endeared him to Stalin. Despite the fact that, as People's Commissar for Defense, Voroshilov did a miserable job during the Finnish campaign and then again during the defense of Leningrad, Stalin protected him from his attackers. But after the war, Stalin turned on Voroshilov- -as he was to turn on virtually all of the six- -as the great dictator approached the last days of his life.
Medvedev does, however, roundly denounce Voroshilov's passive complicity in the military purge that preceded WWII. He argues, and this is a characteristic argument-by-association employed throughout the book, that because Voroshilov was in a position of responsibility at the time of the purges he must have signed the orders that condemned his comrades-in-arms to death. If not complying actively in Stalin's depredations visited upon the Soviet peoples, then these six should have registered some protest. This, even if it cost them their lives, would be the only means of exoneration in Medvedev's eyes. This is the weak link in Medvedev's argument, since there is no concrete evidence for this type of passive complicity.
Mikoyan is introduced next. Of the six, he receives the least condemnation by the author's pen. He complied in the Stalinist terror, especially in that, as People's Commissar for Trade and Commerce during the 1930s, he registered no objection to the executions of untold numbers of employees of the food industry and in commerce. He also demonstrated the dullness and insipidity that was characteristic of the six by selling some of the finer art works from the Hermitage and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s in an attempt to help finance the first five year plan. Offered as an example of political durability in the Soviet system, Mikoyan was narrowly to escape a new purge because of Stalin's death. He survived the denunciations of destalinization to serve in important capacities for the Soviet government during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later as emissary to the USA at the funeral of President Kennedy. Politically, Suslov survived Stalin's death in much the same manner, but only he was to have much greater longevity at the height of power.
Suslov fits into Medvedev's analysis as the one of the six who survived at the reigns of power right up until the time of his death in 1982, at which time he was still the number two man in the party apparatus. Medvedev describes him as an extremely efficient apparatchik, and he provides evidence that Suslov's title as "ideologist-in-chief" is well deserved. None of his speeches are quality reading, and his collected writings books many long months to sell out in Soviet bookstores, but it is in his use of ideology as a political tool that Suslov earns this title. In Stalin's administration, Suslov distinguished himself as a writer of vulgar party line speeches and as a sycophant, participating vigorously in the ruthless ideological campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitans" and in the pogroms of the late Stalinist period. He understood well, remarks Medvedev, that mediocrity and monotony in an ideological speech would make him a target for no one. This endeared him to Stalin, and it enabled him to survive at the pinacle of Soviet power for almost thirty years after the dictator's death.
Such fortune was not the lot of the three accomplices of Stalin whom Medvedev next describes. Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov were all to occupy powerful positions under Stalin, but to fall ignominiously from Party favor after his death. At the time the book was written, all three of these members of the 'Soviet Gang of Four' were alive and living in Moscow, mostly unrecognizable to the younger Soviet generation, but hardly forgotten by the older generation who survived the crimes of Stalin. There is some justice in this, argues Medvedev. He cannot resist the temptation to express, ever-so-subtly, his glee at the encounters these men have with the victims of the terror, once these men have been disgraced and forced to live as pensioners in Moscow.
Molotov displayed all of the ignorance of Voroshilov, the insipidity of Mikoyan and the sycophancy of Suslov. He was valued especially by Stalin for his bureaucratic efficiency. Molotov would do anything for the good of the Party, and thus obeyed Stalin to the nth degree. His hands were covered with the blood of millions. Not only did he direct the forced requisition of grain in the Ukraine in 1932, which led to the starvation of millions, but he was present personally at the questioning under torture of many of the purge victims.
Though this link between Molotov and Stalin, establishing Molotov's guilt, is all presented rather clearly, it is here that Medvedev digresses from his main theme and does much damage to the readability of his narrative. In recounting the meeting of Stalin with Metropolitans Aleksii and Nikolai, Medvedev does give insight into Stalin's character. But Stalin's character is not actually the topic of the book. He spends far too much time on this needless digression.
On the more positive side, he does identify the source of Stalin's appreciation of Molotov. Not only was Molotov a hard worker, but he was also small and unattractive physically, and therefore did not make the short pockmarked Stalin feel uncomfortable. According to Medvedev, Stalin always felt inferior in the presence of stronger and more handsome men. This mutual admiration society came to an abrupt end when Stalin died. Molotov was removed from party leadership and sent off on two diplomatic missions. Granted, these were sensitive diplomatic positions, but it is important to note that he no longer held the reigns of power nearly so tightly as he had under Stalin. After returning from Vienna he was reduced to a Moscow pensioner. Stalin's daughter's account of a meeting with the Molotov family during the late 1960s, which Medvedev includes in his narrative, is revealing. She saw the great Molotov eating with his family, now subdued to the authority of his wife, just as he had been to Stalin. Indeed, Molotov was a weak man, as were Kaganovich and Malenkov.
Kaganovich, the quintessential Stalinist commissar, demonstrated Mikoyan's insensitivity to Russian cultural heritage by destroying many of Moscow's architectural treasures during the 1930s in his attempt to modernize Moscow. He was, however, also a hard worker. Stalin appreciated the vivacity with which he undertook the building of the Moscow subway system. But, as Medvedev points out, Kaganovich's hands were covered in innocent blood also. As Commissar of Rail and Heavy Industries, he figured prominently into the purge of 1936-8. He was, additionally, argues Medvedev, a relatively avid anti-Semite, and figured prominently into the prosecution of the 'Jewish Doctors' Plot.' Medvedev argues cogently that Kaganovich was far too dependent upon the dictator's favor to pose any opposition to his plans. Kaganovich was, nonetheless, one of those whom Medvedev thinks Stalin was to purge had he only lived longer.
The most virulent criticism is leveled by Medvedev against Malenkov. He offered active and willing complicity especially in the purge of 1936-8, as he was then the head of the Personnel Section of the Central Committee. He was heartless and cruel, as Medvedev argues. He was present, as was Molotov, at the interrogation under torture of countless party members. The very fact that he forced his own daughter to divorce her Jewish husband belies his anti-Semitism, and he was one of the chief engineers of the falsified "Doctors' Plot." Medvedev takes strong issue with A. Avtorkhanov over the assertion that Malenkov opposed this cruelty, arguing that Malenkov was far to dependent upon Stalin's favor to exhibit such independence. Malenkov proved himself to be completely and totally an extension of Stalin's power, and he fell rapidly and with great disgrace from power once Stalin died.
In the conclusion of this book, what impresses one the most is Medvedev's desire that justice be done, either in this life or in the next. This is seen most vividly in his conclusions about Malenkov. Calling him" precisely fitted to the time" and a "squalid, evil man who has lived a squalid, evil, unworthy life," he notes that his rumored religious conversion will hardly make atonement so late in life. Indeed, "his crimes will not be forgotten, however devoutly he prays (p. 163)." Medvedev has convincingly demonstrated that these last three living accomplices of Stalin's terror have remained largely unrepentant. He has shown the inherent injustice in the Soviet system that allows such criminals to live out the rest of their lives quietly as pensioners in Moscow's back streets. One can not help but agree with Medvedev in his epilogue that the Soviet people will not be safe from another Stalin, so long as democratic mechanisms and institutions do not exist in the Soviet Union. One is left with the impression after reading the book that, even today, the USSR could well breed the same types as those six who were the recipients of Medvedev's wrath.
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mdobe | Jul 24, 2011 |
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