Soviet Dissent under Khrushchev: An Analytical Study

Robert M. Cutler

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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 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 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.

2.2 Enforcement of conformity

Decreased coercion led to demands that threatened the legitimacy of the political system. In particular, the hierarchical nature of controls seemed under attack from below. In these conditions the authorities sought to inculcate, in the community sector, values designed to reinforce the legitimacy of the system's erstwhile structure. At the same time, Khrushchev sought to secure his own position as primus inter pares by harnessing, with his populism, that same loyalty of the community. These operations were not unrelated. They had two facets: first, the regulation of culture within the community sector; and second, the expansion and regulation of political participation of the community sector. In both cases, the elite's instrument for realizing its goal was the regime sector.

The attempt to regulate the cultural norms of the community took the form of three campaigns: the New Soviet Man campaign, an associated Russification campaign highlighted by the educational reforms of 1958–1959, and a series of antireligious drives. The first two together exacerbated the community− and

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regime-sector nationalism already recrudescent thanks to Beria's nationality policy with respect to lower-level Party appointments in non-Russian republics. The Russification campaign also fomented Russian nationalism, bolstering the growing sentiment against restrictions on the Russian Orthodox church. In particular, Russian nationalism fueled demands that the separation of the church and the Soviet state be observed, as established on paper, in consonance with socialist legality. In this way the issues around which dissent aggregated began in practice to become interrelated. The task of containing the protest became correspondingly more difficult.[38]

The second facet of the attempt to reinforce the legitimacy of the political system, and that of the elite's position in it, coincided with a manifestation of Khrushchev's populism. It comprised initiatives for the routinization of legal procedures and for the expansion of participation in them; as such, it was not without contradictions. The intent was, on the one hand, to institutionalize the functions of the judiciary in the regime sector and, on the other hand, to promote increased participation in judicial affairs by the members of the community. Both these initiatives were animated by "new socialist legality," but they differed in their aims, in their effects, and in the reactions they elicited

The routinizing aspect of the judicial reforms is embodied in twelve texts—a sort of codification of socialist legality—dated December 25, 1958.[39] The popularizing aspect is fairly wall expressed in A.N. Shelepin's speech of February 4, 1959, to the Twenty-first Party Congress, where he emphasized the role of the comrades' courts and of the druzhinniki (a volunteer militia for the control of drunkenness, hooliganism, and the like).[40] These attempts at popularization were on the whole opposed by Soviet lawyers and judges, who considered them extrasystemic controls deleterious to socialist legality. At the same time, higher-ranking lawyers and judges and professors of law as well—all occupying roles in the regime sector—fought in the name of socialist legality to increase their own influence in the formulation of legal codes.[41] That the initiatives for popularization were implemented as successfully as they were attests both to Khrushchev's narodnichestvo (populism) and to his political primacy.

The various campaigns in the name of socialist legality added fuel to two old fires: one stoked by non-Russian nationalists who wanted their union republics to exercise the constitutional right of secession from the U.S.S.R.,[42] the other by the new and old religionists who publicized the violations of law committed in the antireligious campaigns. Khrushchev's creation of the regional economic councils (sovnarkhozy) promoted Russian and non-Russian nationalism, and the resulting "localism" (mestnichestvo) eventually wrecked the economic reform. In ways such as this, the effects of reforms initiated by the political leadership fell at cross-purposes with their own intentions. As that occurred, the concerns of persons who found themselves to be dissidents became more and

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more clearly interdependent. Bociurkiw, for example, has vividly described the evolution of that interdependence in the case of Russian nationalist demands for the observance of the formal separation of church and state:

The decline in the capacity of the regime to terrorize the public into blind obedience to arbitrary commands, the progressive erosion of the official ideology, and the greater sensitivity of the Soviet leadership to foreign criticism, as well as the slow emergence of a domestic public opinion—all this was bound to affect the attitudes and expectations of at least the younger elements of the clergy and believers whose past had not been compromised either by "counter-revolutionary" associations or by embarrassing "deals" with the Stalinist authorities. It was from these strata, as well u from the older opponents of Soviet church policy released from concentration camps during the fifties, that movement of protest emerged within the Russian Orthodox Church and the Evangelical Christian Baptists which ultimately challenged the established notion of church-state relations in the USSR.[43]

2.3. Differentiation of roles

From the late 1950s on, and especially rapidly in the early 1960s, the number of roles increased significantly within both the elite and the regime sectors. The multiplication of roles in the elite sector resulted from (1) the co-optation of technical experts into the highest councils as political decision makers and (2) organizational reforms initiated by Khrushchev, such as the creation of high-level bureaus and special committees. The internal differentiation of the regime sector resulted from (1) the co-optation of technical experts into advisory roles in political decision making and (2) organizational reforms initiated by Khrushchev, such as the bifurcation of the Party into industrial and agricultural branches.

The systematic co-optation of technical experts into political decision-making occurred within elite and regime sectors alike. It was perhaps most noticeable with respect to issues of economic organization and resource allocation. The lines of debate regarding resource allocation were at the time primarily functional (e.g., the interests of the military and heavy industry bureaucracies vs. those of consumer goods and light industry bureaucracies); later, however, the geographic cleavages (e.g., Siberia vs. the European U.S.S.R.) became evident.[44] Experts in other policy areas were also co-opted into policy-setting roles in their respective fields.[45]

The influence of the technical intelligentsia qua occupants of elite roles was not limited to making policy decisions. Nor was their influence qua occupants of regime roles limited to advising the decision makers. Professional groups also had occasion to dissent, qua occupants of regime roles, by fighting against the implementation of policy after it had been formulated.[46] Their power in this regard has grown as the regime-sector predominance of Party-generalist ap-

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paratchiki, having no special area of technical competence (e.g., economic, engineering, or agricultural training), has declined.[47]

Organizational reforms under Khrushchev were many. Often simply designs by which he hoped to consolidate his control of the Party apparatus, they nevertheless produced a differentiation of roles in both the elite and regime sectors. With respect to the former, Khrushchev began by creating the Bureau of the Central Committee for the RFSFR in 1956 after the adjournment of the Twentieth Party Congress. A more significant reform, however, was his 1962 scheme for restructuring the central apparatus. This project "called for the creation of a rather complicated superstructure of special 'boards' and 'commissions' which would watch over the work of the various departments of the central apparatus." Ostensibly only two such bureaus of the Central Committee were to be established (one for agriculture and one for industry, in correspondence with the generalized Party bifurcation), but in the end six such boards were created.[48] Of these only the Ideological Commission, headed by Il'ichev, and the Party-State Control Committee, headed by Shelepin, were given much publicity.[49]

Of Khrushchev's major reforms that multiplied roles in the regime sector, two were organizational and one was related to recruitment. The two organizational reforms were the economic decentralization in 1957, which resulted in the creation of the sovnarkhoz system, and the bifurcation in 1962, which split the Party at many levels into agricultural and industrial sectors.[50] The recruitment reform was the policy of "renovation" (obnovlenie) of the elected bodies of the Party, initiated in 1961. Although the aim of this last reform was to get new blood into the apparatus, especially at the lower levels, one side effect was to multiply the number of positions, and that of persons holding them. Moreover, it seems that many lower-ranking Party secretaries escaped the operation of this rule, simply by finding new positions in different organizations,[51] such as Khrushchev's new district-level Party commissions.[52]

The two issues of dissent catalyzed by the ensemble of these developments were developmental rationality and political democracy. Claims for developmental rationality—i.e., for the "rational" allocation of resources to promote economic development—turned into codes for the advocacy of particular resource allocation or economic reorganization issues.

By diminishing or removing the penalties for economic heterodoxy [starting in the mid-1950s], the party leadership invited opinion group activity. This activity has been slow in developing but, by the mid-1960s, economists generally felt free to participate in economic debates within poorly specified boundaries of ideological legitimacy.[53]

This relative freedom of debate also spread to other policy areas, including criminology, sociology, and foreign relations.[54]

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Claims for political democracy during this period were not identical with those of the democratic movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Under Khrushchev, such advocacy was limited to those segments of the elite and regime sectors in which policy specialists challenged the Party generalists' monopoly on decision-making. Such claims nevertheless shared with the later democratic movement a protest against the monistic justification of unrestricted power in the hands of self-appointed agents.

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[Notes]

[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.

[Note 38]. See Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, "Church-State Relations in the USSR," Survey, no. 66 (January 1968), 4–32, esp. 26–31, for details; also Bociurkiw, "The Shaping of Soviet Religious Policy," Problems of Communism, 22 (May–June 1973), 37–51 passim.

[Note 39]. See John Gorgone, "Soviet Jurists in the Legislative Arena: The Reform of Criminal Procedure," Soviet Union, 3, no. 1 (1976), 1–35.

[Note 40]. Pravda, 5 February 1959, pp. 7–8. There is a brief discussion in Werth, pp. 48–50.

[Note 41]. Harold J. Berman, "The Struggle of Soviet Jurists against a Return to Stalinist Terror," Slavic Review, 22 (June 1963), 314–20; Donald D. Barry and Berman, "The Jurists," in Skilling and Griffiths, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics, esp. pp. 316–330.

[Note 42]. Myroslav Styranka, "Active Forces of Resistance in the USSR," Ukrainian Quarterly, 26 (Spring 1970), 12–23, esp. 22–23.

[Note 43]. Bociurkiw, "Church-State Relations in the USSR," p. 27.

[Note 44]. See, for instance, Leslie Dienes, "Issues in Soviet Energy Policy and Conflicts over Fuel Costs in Regional Development," Soviet Studies, 23 (July 1971}, 26–58.

[Note 45]. For one early study, see Barry, "The Specialist in Soviet Policy-Making: The Adoption of a Law," Soviet Studies, 16 (October 1964), 152–65. More recently and more generally, see Richard B. Remnek, ed. Social Scientists and Policy Making in the USSR (New York, 1977).

[Note 46]. See, inter alia, Joel J. Schwartz and William R. Keech, "Group Influence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union," American Political Science Review, 62 (September 1968), 840–51; and Stewart, "Soviet Interest Groups and the Policy Process," World Politics, 22 (October 1969), 29–50.

[Note 47]. Robert E. Blackwell, Jr., "Elite Recruitment and Functional Change: An Analysis of the Soviet Obkom Elite, 1950-1968," Journal of Politics, 34 (February 1972), 124–52; Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., "Toward A Reconceptualization of Political Change in the Soviet Union: The Political Leadership System," Comparative Politics, 1 (January 1968), 228–44.

[Note 48]. Darrell P. Hammer, "Brezhnev and the Communist Party," Soviet Union, 2, no. 1 (1975), 4.

[Note 49]. The latter is analyzed by Grey Hodnett, "Khrushchev and Party-State Control," in Alexander Dallin and Alan F. Westin, eds. Politics in the Soviet Union (New York, 1966), pp. 113–64.

[Note 50]. See Armstrong, "Party Bifurcation and Elite Interest," Soviet Studies, 17 (April 1966), 417–30.

[Note 51]. Hammer, 2–3.

[Note 52]. Discussed by Paul Cocks, "The Rationalization of Party Control," in Chalmers Johnson, ed. Change in Communist Systems (Stanford, [Calif.], 1970), pp. 167–78, esp. pp. 170–72.

[Note 53]. Richard W. Judy, "The Economists," in Skilling and Griffiths, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics, p. 249.

[Note 54]. On criminology, see Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy: Specialists in Policy-Making (New York, 1978), esp. chaps. 2–3; on sociology, George Fischer, "The New Sociology in the Soviet Union," in Alex Simirenko, ed., Soviet Sociology: Historical Antecedents and Current Appraisals (Chicago, l966), pp. 275–92; on foreign relations, William Zimmerman, "International Relations in the Soviet Union: The Emergence of a Discipline," Journal of Politics, 31 (February 1969), 52–70.

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