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Soviet Myths and Realities

By Philip E. Mosely
April 1961
Article Summary and Author Biography

PHILIP E. MOSELY, Director of Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; former Director of the Russian Institute, Columbia University; Adviser to the U.S. Delegation, Moscow Conference, 1943, Potsdam Conference, 1945, and Council of Foreign Ministers, Paris, 1945-46; Political Adviser to the European Advisory Committee, London, 1944-45

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IT may be useful, on the eighth anniversary of Stalin's death, to review some of the misconceptions and mirages that have plagued Western efforts to interpret the changing Soviet scene under his successors. A stock-taking, even though brief and incomplete, may help Americans to understand better the international environment in which a new Administration will have to cope with old and new challenges to its hopes and purposes.

One persistent theme of Western analysis has been the concept of a debilitating and perhaps fatal struggle for supremacy within the Soviet apparatus of dictatorship. One widespread view runs somewhat as follows. A totalitarian system, by its very nature, cannot be legitimate. It cannot provide for the orderly transmission of absolute power. It is bound to be caught in a dog-eat-dog struggle for supreme control. On this premise, the top Soviet leadership is inevitably riven by a continuing and desperate rivalry among competing leaders and cliques. Hence, it is assumed, Khrushchev is constantly engaged in a struggle against multiple challengers within his own apparatus, and the function of "Kremlinology" is to identify his rivals for power by reading the obscure portents of personnel changes and turgid ideological hints.

One extreme interpretation of this alleged instability was current in May and June 1960. Supposedly, Khrushchev's vehement behavior at the abortive summit conference was dictated to him by unseen forces within the top Soviet hierarchy, perhaps by a ganging up of military leaders and Stalinist ideologues. Supposedly, Khrushchev had initially been willing to overlook the affront of the U-2 flights, with its drastic violation of the Soviet passion for secrecy, and proceed with the summit meeting and President Eisenhower's visit to the Soviet Union, but was forced by a coalition of rivals within the Party apparatus to take a stiff line. According to this view, he was actually enjoined to read to the Paris press conference a statement prepared for him in Moscow, while the Minister of Defense, Marshal Malinovsky, sat beside him to make sure that he did not deviate from the text!

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