Stalin (34 page)

On the government side, accommodating the commissariats, departments, and committees of the Sovnarkom to the dictator’s needs was more difficult. The Sovnarkom oversaw the entire Soviet economy, which was then laboring under the strain of urgent preparations for war. Stalin sought to make the bureaucracy into something he could steer at will, but the sluggishness and unmanageability of its agencies sent him into fits of irritation and temper. His frustration led to numerous attempts to reorganize how the system was managed by the country’s top leadership. Finally, in March 1941, a new governmental body was created: the Bureau of the USSR Sovnarkom, consisting of Sovnarkom chairman Molotov and his deputies. This bureau was created as a governing group within the Sovnarkom, much like the leading group within the Politburo.

As part of the political intrigue around the reorganization, the relatively young Nikolai Voznesensky became first deputy to the government’s chairman, Molotov. His appointment to such an important post, over the heads of more senior members of the Politburo such as Mikoyan and Kaganovich, heightened tensions within Stalin’s inner circle. Even in memoirs written decades later, Mikoyan could not hide his hurt feelings: “But what struck us most of all about the composition of the Bureau leadership was that Voznesensky became first deputy chairman of the Sovnarkom.… Stalin’s motives in this whole leapfrog were still not clear. And Voznesensky, being naive, was very pleased with his appointment.”
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In giving this important job to Voznesensky, Stalin may have been intentionally pitting him against Molotov, hinting that the Sovnarkom chairman was not able to handle all his duties and needed a younger and more energetic deputy. In any event, the entire government reorganization came with a chorus of reprimands and accusations directed against Molotov’s Sovnarkom leadership. This was a clear sign that Stalin had something up his sleeve.

His plans became evident a month after the Sovnarkom Bureau was established. On 28 April 1941 Stalin sent a memorandum to Bureau members explaining that it had been created for the purpose of straightening out government operations and bringing an end to “chaos” within the economic leadership, which continued to decide “important questions related to the building of the economy through so-called ‘polling.’” As an example of the inappropriate use of polling (having members of a committee vote on a circulated document individually rather than meeting to discuss it in person), Stalin pointed to a draft resolution concerning the construction of an oil pipeline in the Sakhalin area. Molotov had signed the document, he wrote indignantly, even though it had not been discussed by the Sovnarkom Bureau. After labeling this practice “paper-pushing and scribbling,” he issued an ultimatum: “I think ‘management’ of this sort can’t go on. I propose discussing this question in the Central Committee’s Politburo. And for now, I feel compelled to say that I refuse to participate in voting through polling on any draft resolution whatsoever concerning economic questions of any consequence whatsoever if I don’t see the signatures of the Sovnarkom Bureau indicating that the draft has been discussed and approved by the Bureau of the USSR Sovnarkom.”
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This outburst must have taken Molotov by surprise. Polling was standard practice in Soviet decision making. As recently as January 1941, Stalin himself had criticized the Sovnarkom for “parliamentarianism,” by which he meant that its members were having too many meetings. As everyone involved surely noticed, Stalin offered only one example of “incorrect” polling—and not a particularly compelling one, as the question of the Sakhalin pipeline probably did not require detailed discussion at a bureau meeting. The charges leveled in the April memorandum sounded frivolous, and Molotov and the other Politburo members must have realized that they were a pretext. The discussion of Stalin’s memorandum led to a Politburo decision, dated 4 May 1941. It read in part as follows:

I. In the interests of full coordination between Soviet and party organizations and the unconditional assurance of unity in their work as leaders, as well as to further enhance the authority of Soviet bodies given the current tense international situation, which demands every possible effort by Soviet agencies in the defense of the country, the Politburo unanimously resolves:

1. To appoint Com. I. V. Stalin Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars [Sovnarkom] of the USSR.

2. To appoint Com. V. M. Molotov Deputy Chairman of the USSR Sovnarkom and to place him in charge of the foreign policy of the USSR, leaving him in the post of People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

3. Inasmuch as Com. Stalin, who, on the insistence of the Central Committee’s Politburo, retains the position of first secretary of the TsK VKP(b) [Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)], will not be able to allot sufficient time to work in the TsK Secretariat, to appoint Com. A. A. Zhdanov Com. Stalin’s deputy in the TsK Secretariat, relieving him of his duties overseeing the TsK VKP(b) Directorate for Propaganda and Agitation.

No documents or memoirs have been located that shed light on the discussions leading up to this resolution, but some clues are offered by its wording, which equates the reorganizations with a return to the Leninist revolutionary model of leadership. The leader of the party and the country, it states, should head the government, especially at a time of looming war. If Stalin had fully bought into the logic that it was important to adhere to the original Soviet model, he would have had to renounce the post of Central Committee secretary since Lenin was the founder and leader of the party but did not hold that post. But he chose to take both the top party and government posts for himself.

At last the dictatorial system of government was complete. At the top of the hierarchy stood the dictator himself. With the title of general secretary of the party added to that of chairman of the government, the supreme power he had been exercising for some time was made official. The Politburo’s leading group—a subset of its membership hand-picked by Stalin—would serve as his consultative body. One step down the hierarchy were two governing bodies: the secretariat of the party’s Central Committee, headed by Zhdanov, and the Sovnarkom Bureau, headed by Voznesensky. These two bodies served as the dictator’s arms. They took care of the routine running of the country and brought consequential matters to Stalin for approval.

This reorganization was undoubtedly motivated by more than a desire for efficiency. Stalin’s decision to give himself, the leader of the party, the added title of chairman of the government told the country and the world that at a time of international instability, the Soviet Union had consolidated its leadership. Again, Stalin’s personality—his hunger to possess not only real power, but also all of its accouterments and his tendency to regard even his closest comrades with suspicion—also has to be taken into consideration. The latter quality was surely a factor in his decision to accelerate the advance of the younger generation and put Zhdanov and Malenkov in charge of the Central Committee apparat. Voznesensky—not Molotov, the logical choice—was appointed to serve as Stalin’s first deputy in his role as government chairman. Beria, another member of the new generation, oversaw the network of security agencies. Stalin’s old comrades, even those who remained at the upper echelons of power, suffered significantly diminished standing as they made way for their younger colleagues.

Molotov was a particular target of Stalin’s displeasure. After long years of devoted service and exceptional closeness with the
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Molotov was deprived of the Sovnarkom chairmanship and was not even appointed Stalin’s first deputy. Stalin took every opportunity to demonstrate his disdain for Molotov. One of the last recorded manifestations of his irritation toward his longtime comrade occurred not long before the outbreak of war. In May 1941, at a meeting of the newly constituted Sovnarkom Bureau, Stalin took Molotov to task. Yakov Chadaev, the Sovnarkom’s chief of administration, who was taking minutes at the meeting, recalls:

Stalin did not conceal his disapproval of Molotov. He very impatiently listened to Molotov’s rather prolix responses to comments from members of the Bureau.… It seemed as if Stalin was attacking Molotov as an adversary and that he was doing so from a position of strength.… Molotov’s breathing began to quicken, and at times he would let out a deep sigh. He fidgeted on his stool and murmured something to himself. By the end he could take it no longer:

“Easier said than done,” Molotov pronounced in a low but cutting voice. Stalin picked up [Molotov’s] words.

“It has long been well-known,” said Stalin, “that the person who is afraid of criticism is a coward.”

Molotov winced, but kept quiet—the other members of the Politburo sat silently, burying their noses in the papers.… At this meeting I was again convinced of the power and greatness of Stalin. Stalin’s companions feared him like the devil. They would agree with him on practically anything.

What was behind this abusive treatment of a faithful colleague? Perhaps Stalin was taking out his frustrations over the state of Soviet foreign relations. Or perhaps, in the lead-up to war, he was making an example of his old comrade to keep the rest of the leadership in line. In any event, the result was a further centralization of power and a top leadership afraid to voice dissent. Critical questions of war and peace, concerning the fates of millions, rested solely in the dictator’s hands.

On 5 May 1941, the day after his appointment as chairman of the government, Stalin went to meet with members of the Soviet military at a traditional Kremlin reception for graduates of military academies. At a similar event six years earlier, on 4 May 1935, Stalin had come out with the slogan, “Cadres solve everything!” This time the watchword the
vozhd
shared with his military guests was classified and did not appear in the press. In May 1941, just six weeks before the outbreak of war with Germany, he called for a switch from a defensive to an offensive posture enabled by a powerful Red Army.
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While these remarks have attracted the particular interest of scholars, it is important to note that he had made similar comments in the past. In October 1938, for example, he told a gathering the following:

Bolsheviks are not just pacifists who long for peace and reach for arms only if they’re attacked. That’s not true. There will be times when Bolsheviks are the invaders; if the war is just, if the situation is right, and if the conditions are favorable, they will go on the offensive themselves. They are by no means against invading, against any war. The fact that we’re now shouting about defense—that’s a veil, a veil. All countries mask their true selves: “If you live with wolves, you have to howl like a wolf.” [Laughter.] It would be stupid to spill your guts and lay them on the table.

In April 1940, when speaking to the military council in the aftermath of the Winter War, Stalin continued to address this topic. He spent a long time explaining to the officers that “an army that has been cultivated not for attacking but for passive defense” cannot be called modern.
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Obviously when Stalin made these statements, in 1938 and early 1940, he had no intention of invading Germany. But as certain historians and commentators have pointed out, by 1941 the situation was very different. The German Army massed along the Soviet border and ready to pounce on the USSR might very well have convinced Stalin of the advisability of a preventive strike. A variety of arguments and pieces of evidence (albeit circumstantial) have been used to defend this viewpoint.
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For a biographer of Stalin, this question is far from secondary. Are we seeing, in 1941, a “different Stalin”—not the cautious incrementalist who could be drawn into a fight only when he felt himself in a position of strength but a daring leader who believed the Red Army was prepared to challenge the Wehrmacht? Such an assumption is in fundamental conflict with the traditional view of the prewar Stalin, which is based on the reminiscences of Soviet marshals and evidence of his vacillating inconsistency in the months leading up to the war. Convincing evidence that Stalin was firmly resolved to go on the offensive has yet to surface. There is no serious basis for revising the traditional view that Stalin was fatally indecisive and even befuddled in the face of the growing Nazi threat.

It is, however, true that during 1940 and 1941 Stalin worked hard to strengthen the Red Army and prepare the country for the upheaval of war. In 1940, for the fourth year in a row, he did not take a vacation in the south. His primary concern was the army and the munitions industry. The accelerated buildup of heavy industry and its defense branches had been a priority since the late 1920s. The Stalinist approach to industrialization made this buildup especially costly, but in the end, the sacrifice of millions of ruined peasants and Gulag slaves and the expenditure of the vast country’s significant resources did have a military and economic effect. By the time war with Germany broke out, the Soviet Union had more than twenty-five thousand tanks and eighteen thousand fighter planes, three to four times more than Germany.
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Such figures have inspired proponents of the theory of a “preventive war” to claim that the USSR was ready to take on Germany. But statistics often lie. In the Soviet case, the true story was often one of poor quality weaponry and padded figures, made worse by a shortage of well-trained military personnel. In any event, Stalin and the military leadership did not believe all this military hardware was sufficient. Having a military threat right at their doorstep demanded special measures. Ominous rumors of the might of the German Army and the quality of its weaponry were reaching the USSR from vanquished Europe. During the prewar period, the Soviet Union made a desperate attempt to increase output and modernize at the same time. By 1940, military production was two and a half times what it had been in 1937.
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This was an extraordinary increase. Special emphasis was placed on the production of new types of weapons, modern tanks and planes especially. Key to this modernization effort were purchases of military hardware from Germany, enabled under the Nazi-Soviet Pact.