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Page 18 —Griffin Daily News Saturday, December 23, 1972 Russia in war and peace Stalin’s death brought change EDITOR’S NOTE: The death of Stalin in 1953, followed by the arrest and execution of his grim security chief, Lavrenti Beria, brought a new time to the Soviet Union—the time Nikita S. Khushchev. In this seventh chapter of a series on his four decades as a Moscow correspondent, Henry Shapiro tells that story. By HENRY SHAPIRO MOSCOW (UPI)-With Josef Stalin dead and the overly ambitious Beria exe cuted, 1954 ushered in for the Soviet Union what was in effect another Russian revolution. Gradually the concentration camps were opened to disgorge hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, some of whom had languished since the early 19305. During the latter 19505, the lot of the peasantry was substantially improved by for giving old debts, lowering the quotas for compulsory grain deliveries, increasing the fixed prices paid the farmers and pumping more consumer goods into the villages. FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Rev. Dumas Shelnutt Minister Rev. Harry Hawkins nssociaie Minister Morning Service 11:00 A.M. Sermon By Pastor "Christmas Means Joining Hands” EVENING WORSHIP SERVICE Holy Communion Service Five O'Clock In The Chapel ChXs Clearance SALE Starts Thursday Morning 9:30 A.M. gjjg) all fall merchandise REDUCED! WTO FfILL FALL COATS DRESSES WJj & SUITS HI DRASTICALLY 111 VaIU6S t 0 S 3OOO 5 REDUCED \\ JL *— \\ ALSO ON SALE: SWEATERS-SKIRTS-SLACKS-HATS • All Sales Final-No Charges or Refunds Material incentives for work ers and farmers were raised. The dread midnight knock at the door was done away with and arrests for “dangerous crimes against the state” were discontinued. In foreign affairs an effort was made to normalize rela tions with the United States and other capitalist powers as well as Yugoslavia and all of Russia’s neighbors. Ilya Ehrenburg’s novel “The Thaw” (which became the description of a new era), the first of a series of literary works, for the first time frankly described the evils of the Stalin era. The literary magazine, Novy Mir (New World), under the brilliant editorship of liberal poet Alexander Tvardovsky, discovered a constellation of poets and prose writers who brought on a remarkable revival culminating with the publication of Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The latter was the first realistic description of a Stalin era concentration camp. Voices of cultural dissent were apparently too loud, However, and grew too fast for First Secretary Nikita S. Krushchev who, obviously alarmed by the development, began cracking down with speeches against “mavericks” in late 1962 and early 1963. The return to cultural ortho doxy which was to be intensified under Khrushchev’s successors was dramatized by the late premier’s quip against abstract painters: “A donkey with his tail in a pail of paint could do better than these abstractionists,” Khrushchev pronounced, and ended all public display of modern art. I missed two years of the “Soviet thaw.” I took my wife and daughter to America where I spent two years as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, doing some writing and public lecturing. When the Kremlin agreed to participate in the first post-war summit conference with Pres ident Eisenhower and the British and French prime ministers in July, 1955, United Press sent me to Geneva to help cover that historic event. From my transatlantic view point, I had watched what appeared to be the zigzags of Soviet foreign policy reflecting strong disagreements between V. M. Molotov and Khrushchev. At the Berlin conference of foreign ministers which I had attended in February, 1954, it was clear the Germany ques tion —“the problem of prob lems” —could not be immedi ately solved. The Molotov hard line which paralleled the Western policy of “contain ment” and “roll-back” of communism made agreement impossible. Khrushchev at the time was arguing for a more flexible Soviet position only to be told off by Molotov at a central committee meeting: “Waging foreign policy is not so simple as raising corn, Nikita Sergeye vich,” Molotov told him. There was more hope at Geneva than at Berlin. First direct contact between the West and post-Stalin leadership had been made and a dialogue was started which not only prevent ed a new world war but eventually led to East-West detente. On a more human basis what struck me singularly was the free and easy movements of the Soviet delegation. The head was then Premier Bulganin and other members were Molotov and Marshal Georgi Zhukov. The Russians walked and drove about Geneva in open cars shopping and enjoying themselves without the army of bodyguards I had been accus tomed to seeing in Moscow for years. By contrast Eisenhower arrived in a closed car with his usual retinue of Secret Service men. When European newsmen began making the inevitable, invidious comparisons between the informality of the Soviet leaders and Eisenhower’s remoteness and his bodyguards, the U.S. President also began driving about in an open car. After the first Summit session I ran into Charles E. Bohlen whom I had not see for two years. “Bulganin may be the leader of the Soviet delega tion,” the astute U.S. ambassa dor to Moscow said, “but there is no mistaking Khrushchev. He is the boss.” I was to get confirmation of tliis the following year in Ixmdon and later in Finland and elsewhere when I saw the ebullient Khrushchev upstage Bulganin either by interrupting him or insisting on a speech of his own in which he could say "I do not agree with my friend Bulganin.” The friendship lasted until 1957 when Khrushchev made himself prime minister—one of Uie first of his mis-steps which led to his downfall in 1964. Al Geneva, Bohlen filled me in on changes in the Soviet Union since Stalin’s death and new opportunities for coverage which had attracted more Western correspondents to Mos cow than any time since the war. I was easily persuaded by the United Press to return to my Moscow post. Leaving my family behind in Cambridge, Mass., I arrived at Moscow’s 1-eningradsky station in the fail of 1955 where I was handed an invitation from the Canadian Embassy to a recep tion for Foreign Minister Lester Pearson. I could not believe my eyes when I got there and saw about half of the presidium—Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Georgi Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovich and others—chatting, drinking and joking with foreign di plomats. It was a scene that could have occurred only in the early era. In the long Stalin epoch Soviet leaders had become impersonal, faceless and invisible. Khrushchev had already stamped his personality on the Soviet leadership and intro duced a life-style that was to last only as long as he remained in office. His first great coup came at ’die 20th Party Congress in February, 1956, when he launched his famous de-Stalini zation campaign, the full consequences of which are not yet in sight. The published speeches in dicated a universally agreed policy to rectify the notorious injustices of the Stalin era, to rehabilitate the victims, in troduce legality and eliminate abuses of unfettered power. Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich denounced “the personality cult” of Stalin and the “one-man tyranny” as much as did Khrushchev and Mikoyan. But there were differences of degree and method. This became clear a few days later when Moscow started buzzing with reports of a secret speech by Khrushchev in which he branded Stalin no less than a common criminal, an incompe tent war leader and the source of all evil since his assumption of absolute power in 1934. Excerpts of the speech were read to thousands of gatherings of party members and universi ty students. Its highlights became known to me at almost the same time. Censorship killed all references to the speech although there was plenty of material in the daily newspapers about crimes con nected with the personality cult. The full text of the secret speech was never published here. It was released by the U.S. State Department June 4 of that year. Western Commu nist parties suffered the embar rassment of using the American text. The speech was a bombshell. While it encouraged many to believe the evils of the past had been uprooted and better days were in sight, a whole generation of citizens reared in tlie Stalin legend was shocked and traumatized. Khrushchev himself blew hot and cold on the subject—one of his many inconsistencies. Some times realizing he may have gone too far he would say, “We all are Stalinists.” This is what he did in 1957 in a speech to students of Moscow University where he joined the visiting Mao Tse-tung in praising Stalin. Earlier that year he managed to oust Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov and others for alleged “anti-party fac tionalism.” This was when the majority of the Presidium, fed up with Khrushchev's antics and led by Molotov, tried to deprive him of the party leadership. It was the first time the Presidium was defied and defeated in an attempt to purge its ranks. Arguing that he had been elected to the job by the Central Committee and not by the Presidium, Khrushchev hastily called a plenary meet ing at which the Presidium was over-ruled. The former peasant and coal-miner again outwitted such battle-scarred and sophis ticated statesmen as Molotov (whom John Foster Dulles called the ablest foreign minis ter of our age) and came out on top—the unchallenged (as yet) ruler. Marshal Zhukov, at the Central Committee, had defend ed Khrushchev “on behalf of the armed forces,” a persua sive position perhaps in winning over the members to support the First Secretary. But al though the act elevated Zhukov to the Presidium, the first time a professional soldier had reached such heights, it actual ly amounted to his political suicide. The Army had never been permitted to exercise judg ments independent of the party or to speak as a separate instrument of government. From I>enin to Leonid I. Brezhnev the party has been aware of the possible dangers of a “man on horseback” and saw to it that military policy was made by it and not the military leaders. The divergences between Khrushchev and his associates revived talk abroad of an imminent takeover by the army especially after Zhukov, war hero number’ one, became a member of the Presidium. During a short trip to Cambridge in 1956 I got myself involved in a discussion with two eminent Harvard Krem linologists who offered to bet me SIOO that within a year Zhukov would seize power and establish a military dictator ship. My reply then: “Khrush chev can get rid of Zhukov in five minutes.” Which is exactly what he did less than a year later. Upon returning from a trip to Yugoslavia and Albania in late 1957, Zhukov was greeted at the airport with a report that he had been discharged as defense minister. The act was followed by a violent press campaign against Zhukov accusing him of trying to place the army above tlie Party. Khrushchev success fully emulated Stalin who, too, after tlie war, had downgraded Zhukov and relegated him to a relatively minor provincial command. He was brought back to Moscow only after Stalin’s death. A few weeks after Zhukov’s ouster Khrushchev gave me his first exclusive interview to a resident correspondent. I had had many talks with Khrush chev. I had developed a good rapport with him. and could ply him with questions at diplomat ic and Kremlin receptions which in the early years he attended frequently. Often he would desert a group of ambasadors encircling him and come over to me to exchange quips and answer questions. Perhaps one of the reasons was that I was one of the few Western correspondents who spoke Russian although I did not know as many anecdotes as my interlocutor. Since these conversations were public I shared the information with my col leagues, but I also had several private opportunities to talk with the premier and his aides IA Gkemiids | “Hello" to our many friends and neighbors Wfl ° ave d° ne mUC h W S' kWra' to make the ®* past year a 3 §■ memorable one Ig ML ly JBfe*'" iforus.we <w thank y° u « most heartily. & l&fcf « i i f !• t | GENE HAYES MOTOR CO. INC. i 9 Your Dodge Dealer $ 228 North Expressway £ «tr liere and abroad. However, it took me two full years before I persuaded him to give me an exclusive interview. Following his political successes in 1956 and 1957 that put him in full control, Nikita S. Khrushchev was riding high at the Kremlin. It was in this circumstance that he gave me a long-sought exclusive interview. I raised with him the question of government stability in the Soviet Union, noting that within a matter of a few weeks more than half the Presidium had been ousted, including the Defense Minister, Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov. “Stability?” Khrushchev re peated with a twinkle in his LATE SHOPPERS SPECIAL! The Lighthouse Album by: Hie Fellowship Trio & Gospel Baid has just arrived. Buy one or two or three for Christmas presents. The Lord will bless you. 227-9588. Baker's Restaurant Jo Ann Nix & the Employees Wish Each Os You A Very MERRY CHRISTMAS Sunday Dec. 24 Menu Baked Turkey & Dressing Fordhook limas p nr i, Early June peas Squash casserole Bacon Wrapped Sirloin Macaroni & cheese Stuffed Deviled Crab Potato Salad Candied yams Banana pudding We Will Close 3:00 P.M. Sunday. Dec. 24th, Re-Open Tuesday, Dec. 26, 6 A.M. eye. “We easily removed (V. M.) Molotov, the man who for so many years was second to Stalin alone, and (Lazar) Kaganovich and all the others. You call this instability? “As for Zhukov,” the premier went on, “he fancied himself a Stalin. What a man Stalin was. Well, Zhukov was not even half a Stalin or a quarter of Stalin.” The question of the position of the military is frequently raised again whenever the present Defense Minister Mar shal Andrei Grechko makes a diplomatic trip or a political speech. His appointment at the death of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky in 1967 was inter- (Continued on page 20)