2. The Transformations in Soviet Political Structure under Khrushchev

2.1. Decrease in coercion

This structural transformation, which may be assigned the dates 1953–56 for analytical purposes, had basically two manifestations: the unchaining of the artistic temperament and the subordination of State Security to the Party. The former question involved how much rein the elite would permit to the creative intelligentsia, whose roles are subsumed under the regime and community sectors.[25] The latter move was played out exclusively within the elite, but other sectors also experienced its effects. The literary Thaw came in two qualitatively distinct waves, one in 1953 and one in 1956; between them fell developments regarding the political police. It is instructive to analyze these events chronologically.

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In retrospect, the initial permissiveness concerning artistic expression appears a concomitant of Malenkov’s ascendance, because this entailed the decline of Zhdanov’s cultural hegemony. Although Zhdanov died in 1948, he “continued to be praised and the anniversary of his death was celebrated in the ensuing years …. In 1953,” however, “the anniversaries of Zhdanov’s death, and of his cultural decrees, in August and September, were ignored by Pravda for the first time.”[26] Currents of artistic freedom had begun to percolate through the unions of the creative intelligentsia earlier, but it was not until October 1953 that the first phase of the Thaw was really under way, A year later, at the Second Congress of the Writers’ Union in December 1954, the definition of “socialist realism” was modified to suggest that the Zhdanovist doctrines, if not renounced, would at least be less dogmatically applied.

In response to the demands of rank-and-file (i.e., community-sector) writers, their leaders (members of the regime sector) thus sanctioned a degree of artistic freedom.[27] Since the highest political authorities were still preoccupied with the fluid situation of intra-elite rivalry that followed Stalin’s death, the writers’ demands “to write about life in human terms” seemed hardly threatening. So the liberalization proceeded with only literary purport, concerning only “the substitution of human beings for automata and human conflicts and dilemmas for the mindless opposition of Soviet heroism and bourgeois tyranny.”[28]

The death of Beria, like a sacrifice, consecrated a covenant among Stalin’s heirs to the effect that none of them should use violence as a political resource against the others (in contrast to practices in Stalin’s heyday).[29] This taming of State Security was followed by a campaign to restore socialist legality, signalling “the end both of mass terrorism and of prosecutions of officials for honest failures.”[30] In analytical terms, therefore, it meant (1) an incipient decrease in the coercion of the community sector by the regime and (2) a further decrease in the coercion of the regime sector by the elite.

What were the results of this structural transformation? Relaxed controls from the top down promoted spontaneity from the bottom up. When issues of socialist legality were raised within the community sector by outright prisoners’ revolts, the authorities responded with amnesties and case reviews that eventually almost liquidated the camp empire of the MVD.[31] Administrative, bureaucratic, and procedural reforms, not the least of which was the abolition of summary courts called troikas, “transformed the mood and temper” of Soviet citizens.[32] These reforms in regime-community relations were initiated by the elite in response to demands by members of the community sector, who were encouraged to participate “creatively” in their implementation.[33] This encouragement intensified the demands for further reforms.

Those reforms had effects in the artistic sphere as well. In the late summer of 1956 came the second phase of the Thaw, now concerning “social and, within limits, political criticism.”[34] After Khrushchev’s speech at the Twentieth Party

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Congress, some writers went so far as to advocate institutional changes in the organization of party/state control over the theater, arguing that the idea that ” it is possible to attain success in art by instructions, orders, decrees, and resolutions” derived from Stalin’s personality cult.[35]

The Party did not respond directly to such demands, but it did expand further the range of permissible literary and artistic themes, in response (1) to continued pressure from below after 1953 and (2) to a recognition that Soviet culture had to be reformed.[36]

To summarize, the main effect of the general decrease in coercion throughout the Soviet political system was the eruption of socialist legality and artistic freedoms as issues around which Soviet dissent, as defined, aggregated. Two other issues, propelled into the political arena by the general decrease in coercion, became full-fledged focal points for the aggregation of Soviet dissent only under conditions created by the second structural transformation in the political system. These issues were nationality rights and religious autonomy. It is worthwhile to indicate briefly some factors contributing to their incipience during the period 1953–56.

Symptoms of virulent nationalism appeared after Stalin’s death even within the precincts of the Party, as a result of the appointment of members of native ethnic groups to secrctaryships in a number of non-Russian republics and oblasts. These appointments are associated with Beria’s attempts to gain support within the Party and were rescinded only after Khrushchev had consolidated his own power.[37] The religious movement had been allowed some latitude under Stalin, but it came under increasing restrictions after his death. Moreover, the ranks of its adherents seemed to increase after the Twentieth Congress in 1956 as some Party members, disillusioned by Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin, turned from the icon of the state to that of the church.

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[Note 25]. On the “creative intelligentsia,” see Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard B. Dobson, “The Intellectual as Critic and Rebel With Special Reference to the United States and the Soviet Union,” Daedalus, 101 (Summer 1972), 137–38.

[Note 26]. Robert Conquest, Power and Policy in the USSR: The Struggle for Stalin’s Succession, 1945–1960 (London: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 94, 246.

[Note 27]. For details, see Harold Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946–1959 (Cambridge, [Mass.], 1962), pp. 113–14, 126.

[Note 28]. Edward Crankshaw, Khrushchev’s Russia (Baltimore, [Md.], 1958), chap. 4, provides an excellent overview of the period. Quotations are at p. 102.

[Note 29]. On the situation in the Presidium immediately after Beria’s death, see Conquest, p. 228; and Boris. Nicolaevsky, Power and the Soviet Elite, edited by Janet D. Zagoria (New York, 1965), pp. 130–87 passim.

[Note 30]. Richard Lowenthal, “On ‘Established’ Communist Party Regimes,” Studies in Comparative Communism, 7 (Winter 1964), 343.

[Note 31]. Aleksandr I. So1zhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956, 7 vols. in 3 (New York, 1973–76), III, 279–329, 437–42.

[Note 32]. A short list of other reforms can be found in Alexander Werth, The Khrushchev Phase (London: Robert Hale, 1961}, pp. 45–46. Quotation at p. 45. An excellent analytical treatment of these changes appears in A.K.R. Kiralfy, “Recent Legal Changes in the USSR,” Soviet Studies, 9 (July 1957), 1–19, esp. 11–16; this same author treats those events from an historical perspective in “Campaign for Legality in the USSR,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 6 (October 1957), 625–42.

[Note 33]. Leon Lipson, “Law and Society,” in Allen Kassof, ed. Prospects for Soviet Society (New York, 1968), pp. 104–06.

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[Note 34]. Crankshaw, p. 102.

[Note 35]. See Swayze, pp. 145–47.

[Note 36]. The latter of these elements contributed to the impetus behind the New Soviet Man campaign. For a discussion of other political implications, see ibid., pp. 153–54, 161, 184–86.

[Note 37]. On Beria’s nationality policy, See Conquest, pp. 213–18; John H. Miller, “Cadres Policy and Nationality Areas: Recruitment of CPSU First and Second Secretaries in Non-Russian Republics of the USSR,” Soviet Studies, 29 (January 1977), 3–36 passim; F. F. [sic], “The Fall of Beria and the Nationalities Question in the USSR,” World Today, 9 (November l953), 494–95; and H. Carrère d’Encausse and A. Bennigsen, “Pouvoir apparent et pouvoir réel dans les républiques musulmanes de l’URSS,” Problèmes soviétiques, 1 (April 1958), 57–73.