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A New Look at an Aging Tyrant

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A New Look at an Aging Tyrant Yoram Gorlizki, Oleg V. Khlevniuk. Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 248 S. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-516581-4. Reviewed by James Voorhees Published on H-Diplo (November, 2004) Until the Soviet Union fell, scholars saw the sible to open the archives, there could be no cer‐ Soviet Union, at best, through a glass, darkly. Reli‐ tain answers to questions like these. able information about the country was hard to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk have reached into get; about Stalin and those surrounding him, al‐ those archives to construct a picture of Kremlin most impossible. Long after Stalin's death, schol‐ politics after World War II. It is a highly valuable ars and analysts had to make do with public docu‐ work that dispels some of our earlier notions and ments, tainted by the needs of the totalitarian confirms others. It provides new insights into the state, and interviews with refugees and with for‐ nature of the Soviet state during Stalin's last eigners who had met Soviet leaders. The archives years, a period long thought to be the apotheosis were closed; memoirs, non-existent; the leaders of Soviet totalitarianism. The authors' basic argu‐ themselves, unavailable. Ingenious methods were ment is that Stalin behaved according to a clear devised that took advantage of the Kremlin's need political logic in the last eight years of his life. to communicate, however obscurely, with party That logic had, in essence, two goals. The frst was members and others. But there was no way to to preserve his own power. The second, related to know how the senior members of the leadership the frst, was to strengthen his position as the dealt with each other, either personally or politi‐ leader of a respected, powerful world socialist cally. Were they rivals? Did they differ over poli‐ system with the Soviet Union at its head. cy? Did they share the consensus that propaganda They found evidence for this in the official assured us existed? Did Stalin manipulate rival‐ records of Politburo meetings and, more impor‐ ries to reach his goals? Did he simply give orders tantly, in the draft records of that body. They sup‐ that his companions faithfully carried out? Later plemented these and other archival materials, Stalin's daughter and the deposed Khrushchev many of which have been used rarely if at all, by gave us glimpses into life in the Kremlin.[1] But interviewing senior functionaries of the period. until the collapse of the Soviet Union made it pos‐ H-Net Reviews They limit their work to the period between wanted, when he wanted, where he wanted. It is the end of World War II and Stalin's death in 1953. telling that the full Politburo met only twice be‐ Their analysis is focused on the politics and policy tween September 1946 and Stalin's death. Instead, of the period rather than on the personal rela‐ Stalin met with a group of between fve and seven tions between the members of the inner circle. In men to discuss and approve decisions, often at the that respect, the title may be somewhat mislead‐ seemingly endless dinners held at one of Stalin's ing, particularly if one comes to this book after dachas that began late, often lasted until 4:00 a.m. seeing Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red or later. They were marked by the consumption of Tsar, the other major, recently published, volume prodigious amounts of alcohol and, often, the hu‐ on Stalin.[2] That book is focused on the personal miliation of Stalin's ministers. The decisions made lives of the members of the circle, rather than in the midst of this debauchery were circulated their political activity. Because of their different among the members of the Politburo for their ap‐ foci, the two books complement each other, proval "by correspondence." though the latter covers the entire Stalin period In contrast, Stalin had no formal role in the rather than just the last few years. Council of Ministers (SovMin), which developed As World War II ended, Stalin was faced with into a formal administrative structure. Its inner the task of rebuilding his devastated country in a cabinet, the SovMin Bureau, met regularly, almost world much different from the one he faced be‐ weekly. Decisions were made by its committees, fore the German invasion. The emergency mea‐ the bureaus, that were given responsibility for sures required by the war were no longer needed, running the economy. The party's Central Com‐ which meant that there could be a return to some mittee and Orgburo came to adopt this model as kind of Soviet normality. But there were new do‐ well. One result of the adoption of this model for mestic and international challenges that had to be administration was that leaders such as Malenkov met as well. Moreover, he had also changed. Not and Khrushchev gained experience working in a only had he grown older; the rigors of his more formal milieu. It was not enough to simply wartime regimen had taken their toll. Physically give orders. They had to prepare for and attend weaker, he was compelled to leave more tasks to meetings; they had to make decisions collectively. others. The need to reach decisions collectively and Gorlizki and Khlevniuk argue that Stalin collaborate in doing so became especially clear af‐ adopted a dual approach to governance to meet ter the Leningrad affair showed that Stalin had these requirements of the post-war period. The not completely abandoned the murderous meth‐ authors describe this dual system as neo-patrimo‐ ods of the 1930s. Whereas the members of the in‐ nial. It is a useful concept, and perhaps the most ner circle had competed more or less openly with important contribution of this study. each other before 1948, the competition became On the one hand, when dealing with the inner muted from then until after Stalin died. The au‐ circle, Stalin fell back on the patrimonial methods thors also suggest that an agenda for post-Stalin that had served him well in the 1930s and before. reform began to build after 1950. They point out After the war, he was the patriarch. He had no ri‐ that information on how the system was dysfunc‐ vals; no one acted independently of Stalin. No pol‐ tional began to reach the people around Stalin. icy was enacted that was contrary to his thinking. These changes helped prepare both for the succes‐ The Zhdanovshchina, the Leningrad Affair, and sion and for the adoption of less "heroic" efforts Lysenko's domination of Soviet biology were all by the successors to develop the Soviet Union. products of Stalin's will. He met with whom he 2 H-Net Reviews The authors clarify much of what happened in the period they cover, yet their portrait of the dictator remains but a sketch. In part this is be‐ cause the authors focus on policies and institu‐ tions rather than psychology. Montefiore, who re‐ lies more on memoirs and has a novelist's con‐ cern with character, is helpful here. In general, personal factors and personality were probably more important than Gorlizki and Khlevniuk sug‐ gest. For example, while the authors argue, con‐ vincingly, that Stalin had no rivals, they also con‐ tend that Stalin saw Mikoian and Molotov as chal‐ lengers at the time of the XIX Party Congress in 1952 and threw these long-time companions out of the inner circle. Yet he did not kill them, as he did Vosnesensky and Kuznetsov in the Leningrad Affair, and he allowed them to stay in Moscow. A full explanation for the episode must lie in Stalin's psychology; no political imperative seems ade‐ quate. In sum, however, this is a highly valuable book. It adds significantly to our understanding of Stalinist dictatorship, presents new evidence for what happened in the Soviet Union, and analyzes it insightfully. [1]. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); Svetlana Alliluyeva, Only One Year, trans. Paul Chavchavadze (New York: Harper and Row, 1969); Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers trans. and ed. Strobe Tal‐ bott (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970); Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament trans. and ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974). [2]. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). Khlevniuk, a Senior Researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, provided sig‐ nificant assistance to Montefiore. 3 H-Net Reviews If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-diplo Citation: James Voorhees. Review of Gorlizki, Yoram; Khlevniuk, Oleg V. Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. November, 2004. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9979 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 4.
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