The Struggle for the Soviet Succession

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JOSEPH STALIN was dead six hours and ten minutes before the Kremlin flag was lowered and the radio announced that the Dictator was no more. In an age of split-second announcements of death, there is something strange in this delay. No less strange were the official communiqués on his last illness. "The best medical personnel has been called in to treat Comrade Stalin. . . . The treatment is under the direction of the Minister of Health. . . . The treatment is under the continuous supervision of the Central Committee and the Soviet Government. . . ." Nine doctors watching each other; the Minister of Health watching the Doctors; the Central Committee and the Government watching the Minister. And all of this, by an inner compulsion, announced to the world. Who can fail to sense that the laws of life and death are somehow different behind the Kremlin walls?

Early on the morning of March 6, with all the morning papers missing from the streets, the radio announced that the Vozhd had died at 9:50 the night before. The communiqué included a call to maintain "the steel-like unity and monolithic unity of the ranks of the Party . . . to guard the unity of the Party as the apple of the eye . . . to educate all Communists and working people in high political vigilance, intolerance and firmness in the struggle against internal and external enemies." This call was repeated hourly all through the day.

Shortly before midnight the Party chiefs, in continuous session since their leader's death, announced that a joint session of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet had come to the conclusion that "the most important task of the Party and the Government is to ensure uninterrupted and correct leadership of the entire life of the country which demands the greatest unity of leadership and the prevention of any kind of disorder and panic."^[i] "In view of the above," the Communiqué continued, it was necessary to make at once a sweeping series of changes in the personnel and organizational structure of the leading Party and Government bodies. The changes completely undid all the personnel and structural arrangements made less than five months earlier by the Nineteenth Congress under the personal direction of the man who was not yet dead 24 hours...