Mark Perakh
CONTEMPORARY DISSENT IN RUSSIA:
RISE, DEVELOPMENT, TRENDS
It was on March 5, 1953 that the news media of the USSR
broadcast the death of its "greatest leader of science," "best friend of
Soviet sportsmen," "dear father and teacher," etc., etc.
It
was the day of
the passing of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. On that day power in the
Kremlin passed to the "companions-in-arms" of the late lord, all of
whom had taken an active part in the terror and purges and hence had
no reservations about them. Nevertheless, this group could not afford
to continue to apply Stalin's methods. Indeed, Stalin's technology of
power had some unique features, and one of the most important was
that no one, even his closest adherents, possessed any power or
independence except for what the Boss issued. One was aware that the
Boss could cancel at any time the authority granted and thus, the
immunity against the merciless hand of the security organs. In the
thirty-year history of Stalin's sway, cases of cruel annihilation of the
tyrant's closest aids and coworkers were a matter of record.
Quite naturally, the ruling clique that inherited the apparatus of
power created by the dead tyrant strove first of all to destroy the feeling
of inseucrity among the new rulers. One of their first actions was to
abandon Stalin's method of terror. Most likely, not one of Stalin's heirs
was able to take over his throne by himself. The principal force behind
the events that followed, however, was apparently not the absence of an
appropriate legatee, but a spontaneous struggle of the entire top
echelon to ensure themselves against possible loss of power, arrest and
execution.
With an unstable equilibrium of power in the Kremlin group, its
members were compelled first to eliminate the pressure of the Cheka on
themselves. This led eventually to a decrease in Cheka power, to its
tranformation from a superpower, higher than the Party, into a
mechanism subordinate to the Party's directives. The history of this
degeneration of the KGB from country boss to Party servant has not yet
been written .
