I APPROVED FOR RELEASE DATE: JUN 2007 DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE Intelligence Report HR70-14 (U) Anntx To CAESAR XXXlX (Andrey Ki&nko and the Soviet PoIitiGdl Sd) (IRejkm Titk: WARXL) I I June 1971 PORTRAIT OF A NEO-STALINIST ANNEX TO CAESAR XXXIX (ANDREY KIRILENKO AND THE SOVIET POLITICAL SUCCESSION) MEMORANDUM TO RECIPIENTS: This Annex to CAESAR XXXIX (March 1971) traces the rise of a tough apparatchik, Andrey Kirilenko, to a top position within the Soviet system. Although the Annex is published especially for those interested in the Soviet leadership question in some depth, the general reader will find profit in the patterns -- of leadership style, policy, and proteges -- which continue to produce more Stalins than Khrushchevs. The analysis and judgments of this Annex are consistent with those of CAESAR XXXIX, and have simi- larly met general agreement among Soviet specialists within the Central Intelligence Agency. Comments on this Annex are welcome, and should be addressed to its author, Mr. Albert L. Salter, of this Staff. Hal Ford Chief, DD/I Special Research Staff PORTRAIT OF A NEO-STALINIST Contents Page A NOTE ON SOURCES PREVIEW.. .3 I. CASE STUDY OF A NEO-STALINIST ON THE RISE. .7 A. Learning the Ropes: In the Ukraine (1938-55) . .8 B. Joining the Fray: The Sverdlovsk Years (1956-62) . 17 C. In Khrushchev's Service: The RSFSR Bureau (1962-64) . 22 C. In Brezhnev's Service: The RSFSR Bureau (1964-66) . 35 11. KIRILENKO'S CAREER As DEPUTY GENERAL SECRETARY.47 A. Sharing Power with Brezhnev's Rivals . 50 B. Toward "Second in Command" Status. 56 C. Outlining the Five-Year Plan . 64 D. Toward the 24th Party Congress . 79 111. POSTSCRIPT ON THE 24th CONGRESS. * . 87 A NOTE ON SOURCES As in the case of CAESAR XXXIX (Andrey Kirilenko and the Soviet Political Succession), there is very little clandestine data available; thus the analvsis* ~~- presented in this Annex is based almost entirely on ' informatign from open sources] I 4 I ficant patterns do evolve, however, in the behavior of a1 leaders an ups of leaders, and occasional illuminate certain important L L nd life-style within the top Soviet leadership. RETI I PORTRAIT OF A NEO-STALINIST P review The attitudes, prejudices, and working style of senior Politburo and Secretariat member Andrey Kirilenko are fairly representative of the neo-Stalinism that has come to mark the Soviet leadership system since Khrush- chev's ouster. This has its deepest roots in the ground of terror prepared by Stalin in the mid-19309, when he sought to consolidate his dictatorship through the methodical elimination of real or imagined opponents. Those purges took an especially heavy toll among the Party elite, and in the Ukraine the sweep was clean. almost all of the leading L I I LIQAL~ ae~v Any LxZZIiine in 1937 had been replaced, by the end of 1938, by previously obscure persons. This was the "new generation" of loyal Communists , many of them previously technicians rather than politicians, whom Stalin and his lieutenants recruited to fill the many vacuums they were creating in the Party's elite corps. In January 1938. Khrushchev arrived in the Ukraine as Stalin's viceroy to wind up tile purge and to oversee the Party recruitment campaign. His political experience set him off sharply against the neo-Stalinist initiates whom he recruited that year. Khrushchev had joined the Communist Party in 1918, and although not technically an Old Bolshevik, he had much in common with the older generation of Party leaders who were directly associated with the October Revolution. He had observed and to some extent participated in the early Leninist regime, with its degree of tolerance for dissident political views and factions and its unifying spirit of enthusiasm for the Communist cause. Khrushchev was also familiar with - 3- '1 I I its more conspiratorial aspects, which were to loom especially large a decade later as Stalin tightened his grip on the Party. By contrast, the new elite which Khrushchev formed in the Ukraine in 1938 comprised young Communists who, variously, were sincere in their devotion to Stalin, or intimidated by his terror, or at least aware of how to survive in the system. In any case, they applied them- selves to advancing the Stalinist cause, Stalin's name having become synomynous with the ideal of world communism. Because of this awesome baptism into the Party's service, and of their relative inexperience of the greater poli- tical diversity Khrushchev and others had known in the 1920s, this "new generation" of leaders acquired many of the political characteristics of Stalin and, in fact, became neo-Stalinists. This distinction between Khrushchev and his younger Ukrainian hirelings was to set the stage for conflict in the post-Stalin period, after Khrushchev as the new Party boss had brought many of these leaders to Moscow for poli- tical support. Although they aided him in his fight against ultraconservatives, especially in the 1950s, these neo-Stalinists were a major force in the coalition of leaders who dumped Khrushchev in 1964, opposing him in large part for his unorthodox, (that is, un-Stalinist) ideas and methods. There is some evidence to suggest that not all of them had endorsed Khrushchev's use of de-Stalinization for his own political purposes, and some of them may even have been surprised and dismayed when he launched the famous attack on Stalin in the "Secret Speech" at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. In any event, most of them deplored the erosion of political and social discipline under Khyushchev, and many probably hoped for and worked toward a revival of more orthodox Soviet rule. In short, the neo-Stalinists of today -- and they include such men as Brezhnev, Podgornyy, Shelest, and Kirilenko, all of whom got their start in the Ukraine 1 I I I I . ___- I I I, during the last years of the great purges, as well as the slightly more "old-line" Stalinist Suslov -- tend as a group toward authoritarian methods of rule. In political and social spheres they promote orthodoxy and conformity, allowing little or no zoom for experiment and dissent. For neo-Stalinists discipline is the watchword, and liberalizing ideas are anathema. In economic affairs they generally favor strict centralization of management for purposes of control, although a certain pragmatism often is visible in attempts to achieve more with limited means. They call themselves Leninists, but they are al- most totally committed to Stalinist methods, except for the general and outright use of terror as an instrument of rule -- and the abandonment of terror apparently has been replaced in recent years by an increasing reliance on the labor-camp system, which had been greatly reduced under Khrus hchev . Kirilenko's career makes a good subject for inquiry into the neo-Stalinism of the present Soviet leadership, in that it illuminates fairly typical salient characteris- tics of the generation of Party leaders who have become the Kremlin policymakers of today. His formative years in Stalin's political machine were marked, especially during the purge period of the 1930s, by an atmosphere of conspiracy in which political protection was a minimum requisite for survival and advance. His ups and downs during the Khrushchev years, when he aligned himself with the "Ukrainian clique, It provide a measure of the infight- ing which waxed within the Party at that time and which continues, to a lesser degree, to impair the smooth func- tioning of the regime, And, Kirilenko's career of ap- prenticeship in the Ukraine, of national prominence in the Russian Federation (RSFSR), and finally at the pinnacle of Party service in the central Secretariat demonstrates the unique closeness of his'assocation during all these years with the present regime's leading neo-Stalinis t, General Secretary Brezhnev. Kirilenko' s activities also give glimpses into how decisions are made within the framework of the - 5- oligarchic leadership in the Brezhnev era, his success in pursuit of political power offering a gauge of the extent of neo-Stalinist influence on present policies. In addition, Kirilenko's entire career -- his develop- ment as an apparatchik, his performance as a decision- maker and technocratic administrator, and his emergence as Brezhnev's possible successor -- reveals the style, personality, and political outlook of a man who is now playing a primary role in shaping the Soviet course and the Soviet leadership of the future. \ - 6- I. CASE STUDY OF A NEO-STALINIST ON THE RISE When he arrived at his first professional Party post in Khrushchev's Ukraine in 1938, Kirilenko had be- hind him relatively scant experience in political work. In fact, his history as revealed in official though in- complete Soviet biographies suggests that as a youth he was anything but political in outlook. A large factor in his enrollment into the ranks of Party administrators probably was his technical ability, combined with his availability at the right time -- the end of the great purge of the Party elite. Kirilenko's official biographic data include the facts of his birth on 8 September 1906 in the family of an artisan in a village of present-day Voronezh Oblast. (Earlier it was territorially part of Belgorod Oblast, which borders on the eastern Ukraine. ) Thus was he born a Russian, despite his Ukrainian sounding name and prob- able descent from Ukrainian stock, and his biographies list his nationality as Russian. After completing a pro- . fessional-technical school in 1925, the 18-year-old Kiri- lenko began a four-year period of work as a machinist and electrician, part of the time in Voronezh enterprises, and part in a mine in the Donbass.