Western Political Science Association

University of Utah

Dismantling the Cults of Stalin and Khrushchev

Author(s): Thomas B. Larson
Source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1968), pp. 383-390
Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/446611
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 DISMANTLING THE CULTS OF STALIN
AND KHRUSHCHEV

THOMAS B. LARSON

Columbia University

W HATEVER ELSE Communist power brought to Russia, it did not

guarantee rule by "good" leaders. The toppling from their pedestals
of Stalin and then Khrushchev forced the introduction of a very sober-
ing note into the treatment of the past history of the Soviet regime. The present
top leaders can point to no honorable predecessors in the chief party and govern-
ment posts for the entire period between Lenin's death in 1924 and the ouster of
Khrushchev forty years later. The list of fallen chiefs included every single chair-
man of the Council of Ministers (formerly Peoples Commissars) of the period.
These government chiefs were not much celebrated during their tenure of office,
however, so the only serious problems of iconoclasm related to Stalin and Khrush-
chev, the principal party secretaries during the four decades. It is now admitted
even by party ideologists that Stalin amassed and retained almost absolute power
despite a long catalogue of costly mistakes and serious abuses. Despite this experi
ence, the system allowed his successor Khrushchev to impose his impulsive ideas
and "hare-brained" schemes on Soviet society without even having to resort to the
terror that stilled opposition to Stalin.
In their effort to lighten the great shadow cast on the "heroic" past of the
Soviet regime, the spokesmen have focused attention on the peerless father of the
Soviet order, Lenin, while doggedly insisting that Soviet institutions remained
basically sound even in the period when errant successors ruled. Nevertheless, it
has not been easy to combine a repudiation of past leaders with glorification of the
Soviet past, and the tension between these seemingly irreconcilable tendencies has
continued to trouble Soviet ideological policy.
These past leaders left, of course, rather different legacies. Stalin could take
years to nourish his "cult of personality." Although it took major form by 1929,
in the succeeding decades it went to lengths far beyond anything achieved (or
perhaps contemplated) under Khrushchev, who attained a lofty eminence at a
much later age and could not have expected to occupy the top post for a period
comparable to Stalin's. Stalin died in honor and only later lost his good standing,
in a gradual shift punctuated by outbursts of accusations at the 1956 and 1961
Party Congresses. Khrushchev was removed from office in silent disgrace as he was
consigned to virtual oblivion. Stalin was always credited with some virtues and
some good deeds, but recognition of these from 1961 became infrequent. In Octo-
ber 1964, there was an abrupt and complete halt to acknowledgement of Khrush-
chev's virtues and an almost complete ban on mention of his name, whether in
a negative or positive context.
These differences in handling the two ex-leaders were due not only to the fact
that one was safely buried and the other still living. Stalin's faults were on a grand
scale, as were the virtues formerly attributed to him. Tragedy did not become
farce with Khrushchev, but certainly the faults laid on Khrushchev were pedestrian

383

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384 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

compared to those of Stalin. To successor-leaders concern

major difference between the Stalin problem and the Khru
the impact of Stalin as the source of practices and policie
Soviet life, of formulas woven into the orthodox ideology, an
ration going far beyond anything fostered under Khrushc
from the gallery of great heroes, pinning errors and crimes
his good deeds to humdrum proportions proved difficult. Fur
of Stalin had traumatic effects on Soviet Communists and cit
foreign comrades, which had no parallels after Khrushche
its suddenness and lack of precedent.
Differences in these leaders' cults of personality must be n
dictated differences in the tactics of deflation. Stalin and Khrushchev were alike
in being presented as overarching leaders who left all their colleagues in the back-
ground. Though attention was occasionally directed (more under Khrushchev
than under Stalin) to the principle of collectivity of leadership at the top echelon,
i.e., the principle that the Soviet party and government were headed by groups and
not by individuals, the role of the individual top leader came to dominate the
symbolism of the regime. Each of these spotlighted leaders was not only accorded
a matchless current role but was also endowed, through a rewriting of history, with
a past full of good deeds and free of errors. Khrushchev's past was, of course, on
a modest scale compared to that attributed to Stalin.
One striking difference between the Stalin and Khrushchev "cults" was that
Stalin --particularly in his later years --was identified with the "permanent"
institutions of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev only with current policies of the
Soviet regime. The latter-day Stalin image was that of a remote and somewhat
mystical being, present everywhere as an immanent but ordinarily invisible force.
Khrushchev's image was that of an active, earthily human leader who traveled
widely inside the country and to other countries, who voiced ideas and policies on a
wide range of questions, who served as the spokesman of the regime.
To take an example, a comparison of Pravda's treatment of Stalin in a fairly
typical month of his last year (September 1952) with the same paper's treatment
of Khrushchev twelve years later (September 1964) illustrates some of the differ-
ences of cult practice. Only one photograph of Stalin appeared in Pravda during
the month, but more than two-thirds of the issues in September 1964 contained at
least one photograph of Khrushchev. In September 1952, Pravda published very
little material specifically tied to Stalin: two messages to leaders of ruling Com-
munist parties (Mao Tse-tung and Chervenkov), a brief account of a visit to
Stalin in the Kremlin on the part of Mongolian leader Tsedenbal, and an account
of the signing in the presence of Stalin of a Soviet-Chinese agreement. The only
other item directly connected with Stalin was an article on the twenty-fifth anni-
versary of a 1927 Stalin interview with an "American workers' delegation." All of
these materials concerned Soviet relations with foreign Communists.
In contrast, Khrushchev material abounded in Pravda of September 1964.
There were numerous lengthy messages to such foreign political leaders as President
de Gaulle and the Communist chiefs of North Vietnam, North Korea, and Bul-

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 DISMANTLING THE CULTS OF STALIN AND KHRUSHCHEV 385

garia. Khrushchev's signature was on messages of some length to four int

meetings. Full texts were printed of seven Khrushchev addresses to va
ences in the U.S.S.R. and of one interview with a Japanese delegation.
of interests, audiences, and countries represented was thus far wider
comparable month involving Stalin.
While this comparison illustrates Khrushchev's far greater involvement
rent affairs, it would be misleading if taken alone. Even in Pravda the na
appeared repeatedly, usually in adjectival form, to associate the leade
country, the U.S.S.R. Constitution, the ideology, and, above all, the C
party. This linkage was almost obligatory in Soviet communications of th
and was designed to place Stalin among the permanent features of th
and physical landscape. It was obviously a conscious decision of p
strategy not to associate Stalin closely with domestic and foreign policy m
transient significance.
In the postwar years Stalin tended to expound in public basic principle
than current policy, or to focus on long-range rather than day-by-d
Examples of major Stalin statements include his well-known speech of Feb
1946, as a candidate for election to the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, his con
to the linguistics discussion of 1950, and the papers on economic prob
public shortly before the XIX Party Congress in the fall of 1952. At the
itself Stalin spoke only briefly and couched his statements on a very broa
In contrast to this style, Khrushchev as party chief was much more o
programs or campaigns, and published no works devoted to general t
problems.
The difference of style is also illustrated in the handling of foreign policy
questions. Sometimes Stalin did express himself on issues in this field, usually in
interviews, but he was somewhat detached from the specific policy pronouncements
which occupied such a large place in Khrushchev's output. The difference can be
seen in the Soviet handling of the Berlin crises of the Stalin and Khrushchev
periods. Stalin personally never identified himself publicly with the effort to force,
through a land blockade on communications between Berlin and West Germany, a
change in Western policy toward Germany. In the second Berlin crisis Khrush-
chev tied his prestige to the Soviet effort to bring about a change in the status of
West Berlin. When the U.S.S.R. acceded to pressure in 1946 to remove its troops
from Iran, nothing in the affair touched any public stance taken by Stalin. When
the U.S.S.R. was forced to remove its IRBM's from Cuba in 1962, the affair
clearly redounded to the discredit of Khrushchev, who publicly involved himself
in the negotiations. Stalin took no prominent role either in the successful effort to
dissuade the Bulgarian leader Dmitrov and other Eastern Europeans from plans
for an Eastern European federation, or in the unsuccessful effort to overthrow Tito
by expelling the Yugoslavs from the Communist camp. In contrast, Khrushchev
engaged himself deeply at one time against the Yugoslavs and later against the
Albanians and Chinese.

Both Stalin and Khrushchev saw to it that their pronouncements were widely
disseminated in propaganda media, but only Stalin's writings dominated the formal

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386 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

indoctrination system. There was much writing about Sta

flattering biography, while writings about Khrushchev were
as compared especially to utterances of Khrushchev. If it
Khrushchev looked out from the pages of the newspape
remembered that Stalin did not need to have his photogr
every day, because representations of him were everywhe
Stalin loomed up outdoors and indoors, in statues, paintin
ceramics, in flower-beds, in carpets. Beginning with Stalingr
of places from villages to cities bore Stalin's name as did the
the U.S.S.R., an important canal, and literally thousands of in
little comparable to this in regard to Khrushchev. He dom
by seizing opportunities to make news and to appear as the s
munist party and - from 1958 - the Soviet government.
A comparison of the treatment given to each leader's s
illustrative. The celebration of Stalin's in December 1949
rose to a tremendous peak on December 21, the anniver
tapered off. To take Pravda again for illustration, the "b
full month in significant volume, and well over a year later
lishing lists of those sending birthday greetings. Although K
birthday celebration in April 1964 was elaborate enough t
Soviet Union had gone toward establishing a new cult ar
was a much briefer affair than Stalin's. Pravda gave it cov
five days before cutting it off completely, and never gave it
These differences in cult-styles were due in part to the rat
alities of the two leaders, one preferring night-work, the
disposed to shield himself from the public, the other to find
action; one leader perhaps suspecting his colleagues too mu
suspecting them too little. The cult-style reflected differenc
and methods of rule of leaders whose general policy orie
emphases.
Because of the differences in the extent and kind of pers
under Stalin and Khrushchev the problems for successor
mantling were not at all the same. However awkward the ope
associates decided simultaneously to oust him from pow
oblivion. None of the major published attacks from Octob
has mentioned Khrushchev's name. As with Stalin, a major el
chevization was the reversal of policies instituted under K
These changes, in economic policy, especially regarding ag
ganization of party and government institutions, and in oth
areas, were usually accompanied by references to "subjectivis
designating Khrushchev; the target was made crystal clea
to the October 1954 plenum of the CPSU Central Commit
subject was the change of leadership.' On a more personal lev

1 The communique announcing Khrushchev's relief was published

papers on October 16, 1964. A Central Committee plenum o

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 DISMANTLING THE CULTS OF STALIN AND KHRUSHCHEV 387

to an end the glorification of Khrushchev's past in accounts of his

activities in Moscow and the Ukraine, in his wartime service on var
councils, and in his postwar assignments in the Ukraine and on the nat
His pre-1953 activities have now been shrunk to modest proportions, w
tioned at all. They have not so far been criticized often, though
wartime role has been denigrated in some writings, for example, t
of the prominent Soviet novelist Konstantin Simonov.2
The very occasional positive or negative references to a named
are among the few exceptions to the rule that Khrushchev's name
mentioned. He is still listed occasionally and inconspicuously among
figures playing a role in the war, and documentary collections perm
to the fact that he gave the Central Committee reports at the X
Party Congresses.3 On the negative side, critical references to Khrushc
occurred at the December 1964 session of the U.S.S.R. Supreme So
excised from the published records) and at the March 1965 plenum of
Committee, as recorded in the stenographic report.4 No stenographic r
been published - or are likely to be published - for the plenums
October and November, 1964, and in September 1965. Certainly the
these must have heard a good deal about Khrushchev's faults. The
borderline cases in which specific acts of Khrushchev, such as speeches
artists, appearances at meetings, and visits to agricultural or other ent
subjected to criticism which stopped just short of mentioning his name.
In view of the role of Khrushchev as the spokesman for the party
in the years before October 1964, the virtual ban on use of his name a
makes the task of propagandists and historians difficult. They have to
to party documents, such as the Program of the CPSU adopted in
or to statements of an unnamed chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of M

to have elected L. I. Brezhnev to Khrushchev's job as Party First Secretary

ing of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet on October 15 to hav
A. N. Kozygin for Khrushchev as chairman of the Council of Ministers.
ment was followed by editorials in Pravda (October 17) and Party Life
which spelled out the criticism of Khrushchev without mentioning his n
these editorials were clearly anti-Khrushchev, the phraseology was routi
principal Soviet public law journal included the following statement: "A
Leninist style of work and of vital initiatives does not have anything in
groundless, hare-brained schemes, with window-dressing and empty talk." A
sounds like an attack on Khrushchev, in fact it appeared in April 1963
P. T. Vasilenko, writing in Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo (No. 4, 1963
followed the sentence cited with another quoting Khrushchev in support o
position.
2 New Times, No. 8, February 24, 1965.
SIn the one-volume history of the "Great Patriotic War," which appeared in July 1965,
Khrushchev was pictured once and mentioned several times. This history was com-
pressed from the five-volume edition, which celebrated Khrushchev's war record in such
a fulsome manner that the first volume had to be toned down and re-issued after
Khrushchev's ouster. The five-volume history gave about equal prominence to Khrush-
chev and Stalin.

4Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, March 24-26, 1965, Stenografiche
Otchet (Moscow 1965), speeches by Novosibirsk Obkom First Secretary F. S. Goriac
p. 83, by Georgian Party First Secretary V. P. Mzhavanadze, p. 89, and by Kaza
Party First Secretary D. A. Kunaev, p. 104.

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388 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

order to cite an untainted source from the period of the

They still confront the task of writing the history of the Kh
a way as to endorse many of the reforms introduced int
simultaneously criticizing the leader who sparked the change
While specific references to Stalin have also become in
never been as complete a blackout on mention of him, either
tive context, as that imposed regarding Khrushchev. De
writings or speeches of Stalin have been discussed, and
individual works or positions taken by Stalin. In the post-Kh
has been a shift toward favorable mention of Stalin. Even to
ment, however, continues to be negative, whether in referen
him or in those condemning the "cult of personality" with o
to Stalin.
The demolition of the Stalin "cult," a process which began in 1953 and under-
went a basic change in 1956 with open attacks on Stalin, gave rise to one problem
which recurred in the disposal of the Khrushchev "cult" after 1964. The leaders
who managed to oust Khrushchev did not want to suggest a general abandonment
of the policies characteristic of the Khrushchev era. Though the Soviet citizenry
in general reacted with equanimity to the fall of the former chief, there was some
apprehension abroad, both inside and outside Communist circles, that the shift in
Soviet leadership meant a resurgence of "Stalinism." The post-Khrushchev leaders
took care to stress the continuity of the policy lines adopted at the three Party
Congresses from 1956, and reaffirmed the general thrust of criticism of the Stalin
leadership. On the topic of de-Stalinization, the authoritative journal Party Life
in its issue No. 2 of 1965 asserted that the general line worked out at the XX and
XXII Party Congresses and the criticism of Stalin's personality cult were irrever-
sible, whatever "fables" might be circulated by "some people" abroad. These post-
Khrushchev reaffirmations of continuity followed the pattern set earlier in regard
to Stalin of distinguishing between praiseworthy developments under the former
regime, for which the ex-leader would no longer receive much credit, and the
errors of the past, which were blamed explicitly (in the case of Stalin) or implicitly
(as with Khrushchev) on the leader then in power.
In the past, when individual leaders within the top echelon have lost their
standing and come under criticism, the dominant party leaders have invested great
effort in securing endorsement of the criticism by the victims. Nothing appeared
to illustrate better the monolithism of the party than the endorsement by victors
and vanquished alike of the wisdom of the former and the deficiencies of the

" Although the 1961 Program is still cited with approval, it is obvious that the current leaders
are dubious about some of the doctrinal innovations, particularly references to "the
Party of the whole people." This formula appears to have been dropped, though the
leaders continue to refer to "the state of the whole people."
6 One attempt to do this is represented in Ocherki Istorii KPSS (Moscow, 1966), pp. 372-
428. This textbook of party history discreetly acknowledges the leading role played by
Stalin and Khrushchev, but is more severely critical of the former than of the latter.
Endorsing the steps to eliminate the personality cult of Stalin, it criticizes the way this
was done as too much of a "campaign," in a one-sided way. The criticism of Stalin's
"mistakes" was presented in a fashion, the book argues, to minimize Soviet successes in
building socialism and in winning World War II.

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 DISMANTLING THE CULTS OF STALIN AND KHRUSHCHEV 389

latter. Such self-criticism marked the settling of accounts after leadership

not only in the 1920's and 1930's, but also in the postwar period with
Malenkov and Bulganin. Although an admission of fault was secured fr
tov in 1955 regarding his underestimation of the advancement achiev
U.S.S.R. in establishing socialism, Molotov stubbornly refused in 1957
vote and his voice to the condemnation of the "anti-Party group." Sub
taking advantage of the improved conditions for "factionalism" which
the post-Stalin period, Molotov made at least two moves to circulate his di
views on post-1957 developments.7 The example of Molotov's recalcit
apparently good enough for Khrushchev, who has not been quoted as endo
low evaluation of his leadership expressed by his successors. Probably
Khrushchev forces employed heavy persuasion to secure an admission o
fact, it seems likely that the awkward solution adopted (retiring Khru
honorable grounds of health and age while avoiding mention of his na
strong criticism of his leadership) resulted from Khrushchev's resistance t
tion in which he would have been shunted from the top job to the accomp
of criticism made unanimous by Khrushchev's participation.
In the criticism first of Stalin and then of Khrushchev the successors have
had to confront the embarrassing question: Where were you? In each case the
successors had been the intimate collaborators of the erring leader. The question
was brought more into the open in regard to Stalin than in regard to Khrushchev.
The answer on Stalin was compounded of references to his standing in the party
and country and of discreet allusions to his use of strong-arm methods. Khrush-
chev's collaborators could not even point to the terror as an explanation of their
acquiescence in his erroneous policies. To the limited extent that they faced up to
this question of their responsibility for errors committed before October 1964, the
answer stressed the seductiveness of some of the innovations which Khrushchev
promoted.8 In any event, the de-personalization of the criticism subsequently
leveled against the former leadership was probably calculated to blunt the effect
of questions embarrassing to those who had been supporters of Khrushchev, his
associates if not his prote6gs.
Brezhnev has paid modest public tribute to Joseph Stalin on occasion since
assuming the leadership. In May 1965, before a Moscow audience he recalled
Stalin's role in the war, and in November 1966, speaking in Georgia, he mentioned
Stalin among early Bolshevik revolutionaries. Neither Brezhnev nor any of the
other leaders has alluded since 1964 to Stalin's errors and crimes. Clearly, however,
Stalin is not to be restored to the gallery of Communist saints, but is to be accorded
a minor role in Soviet history. In this and other areas involving past and present

'According to L. F. Ilichev at the XXII Party Congress in 1961, Molotov on April 18, 1960,
submitted an article on Lenin to Kommunist (apparently for publication in the April
issue commemorating Lenin's birthday). P. A. Satiukov, then-editor of Pravda, told the
Congress that Molotov in October 1961 circulated a letter to the Central Committee,
just before the Congress assembled on October 17, criticizing as "anti-revolutionary"
the new Program which the Congress was to adopt. See XXII Congress CPSU, Steno-
graficheskii Otchet (Moscow 1962), II, 186, 353.
'This note was sounded in a Party Life editorial (No. 23, 1964, pp. 3-8), explaining why
the party had adopted in 1962 the proposal to divide party (and government) organi-
zations into industrial and agricultural components.

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390 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

leaders of the country, de-personalization is the order of the

zation lies behind the almost faceless image presented by
leaders; it dictates the strategy of criticism directed to the K
guides the present efforts to eliminate Stalin - the "good
Stalin - as an issue in Soviet political life.

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