Winner Takes All

Nikita Khrushchev, pudgy, hard-drinking son of Ukrainian peasantry, became dictator of Russia last week, grinning and triumphant after carrying out the most sweeping purge of top-level Kremlin Communists in almost 20 years.

At one stroke Party Secretary Khrushchev sent into certain oblivion the three next-most-powerful policymaking Communists in the Soviet Union. Out went his closest rival for leadership, suety, triple-chinned Georgy Malenkov, 55, whom the British, having seen them all, considered the ablest of the Russian leaders. Down went Khrushchev's severest and most obstinate ideological critic, flint-eyed Vyacheslav ("The Hammer") Molotov, one of the old hands who prepared the Russian Revolution of 1917. Another old durable to go was Khrushchev's most influential industrial opponent, beetle-browed Lazar Kaganovich, the only Jew in the top Soviet hierarchy and the man who originally gave Khrushchev his start toward the big time.

The Whole Book. Besides these three, Khrushchev removed a man once regarded as his protege: leonine, lug-eared Dmitry Shepilov, 51, ex-Foreign Minister responsible for the disastrous Soviet buildup in Egypt. For good measure Khrushchev threw out a couple of technocrat Deputy Premiers who had got in the way of his industrial planning: Maxim Saburov and Mikhail Pervukhin.

Not since the great purge of 1936-38 had so many big Kremlin names been dragged in the dirt. The charges against the first four ousted leaders had a Stalinist ring: they were accused of having "resorted to methods of intrigue and formed a collusion against the Central Committee"; i.e.,. they had opposed Boss Nikita, possibly attempted to ease him out of the key job of First Party Secretary. But Khrushchev had won out and, as is the Communist custom, was privileged to hurl the whole book of party crimes at the losers. As is also Communist custom, the ink was hardly dry on Nikita's indictment before the party pack was snapping at the losers' heels. Biggest bark came from the army newspaper Red Star, which denounced Malenkov & Co. for "treacherous" and "conspiratorial action," capital charges in any society. Up from alternate to fill one of the vacancies on the party Presidium went Marshal Georgy Zhukov, indicating that Khrushchev had army support.

The validity of the charges hardly mattered. What mattered was that in the big power picture Nikita Khrushchev was in clear ascendancy. At 63 Khrushchev was five years older than Stalin had been when he had eliminated his rivals in the power struggle. Khrushchev is full of a peasant's energy (despite kidney trouble); he is shrewd, opportunistic, audacious, pragmatic. But he also has a vastly more experienced, stronger and more watchful Communist hierarchy to deal with, and the apparatus of the secret police on which Stalin relied has to some extent been dismantled.

One Man. Paradoxically Khrushchev took full power by denouncing "the personality cult" of Stalinists who (he said) wanted to bring back the hated tyranny; yet it was he who was setting up a one-man dictatorship. Perhaps Khrushchev hoped to avoid a return to the unprofitable nightmare of Stalinist horror. Yet in the deadly Soviet game of power, victory has its own momentum and defeat its own awful logic. The "lose and live" policy, which lasted while the forces of power were in uneasy equilibrium, might not survive now that Khrushchev is in control. The increasing mentions of the "Leningrad Case" (see below) suggested that Malenkov may not be around long.

Khrushchev's proclaimed program had a gentle sound, as he sought to prove the unity and good intentions of Soviet leadership and to re-establish a firm international line instead of the wobbling and confused foreign policy Russia has recently exhibited. But the faggots of denunciation were being gathered, and the smell of flames was in the air.

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