Stalin’s legacy left a formidable challenge to his successors, none of whom could hope to fit into his oversized shoes. They inherited from him a sullen empire, which he had acquired by extending his power to Eastern Europe as the main safeguard of Soviet security as he understood it. His manner of doing so, however, had precipitated confrontation with the world’s most powerful nation, the United States, thus making the Soviet Union more insecure. As the Cold War became militarized, the buildup of nuclear weapons, whose
24. Soviet leaders at Stalin's funeral: in this heavily doctored photo we see, from left, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentii Beriia, Georgii Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin, Kliment Voroshilov, and Lazar Kaganovich.
Supposed utility was but dimly understood, added to the challenge. Tantalizing fragments of evidence suggest that the despot's timely demise may have saved not only most of his entourage but also much of the outside world from possible destruction because of the far-fetched military schemes he may have been entertaining in the twilight of his life.
Stalin's successors acted with a palpable sense of emergency. Premier Georgii M. Malenkov tried swiftly to reassure the West by proclaiming that there were no international problems that could not be resolved peacefully. As their first foreign-policy priority, the new men in the Kremlin decided to terminate the potentially explosive Korean War, which Stalin had preferred to keep festering, and subsequently brokered an armistice. How much farther were they willing, or able, to go in winding down the East-West confrontation? On the answer to this question hinges the claim that a unique opportunity to terminate the Cold War was lost because of a lack of Western response at this critical time.
The return to the Foreign Ministry of Viacheslav M. Molotov did not inspire confidence. He had been a most conscientious executor, rather than creator, of Stalin's policies, which had brought the country into the Cold War, during which time he gave scant evidence of independent thinking. In acting now to improve relations with Yugoslavia, Molotov tried to undo one of Stalin's most egregious mistakes, in which he had been deeply complicit. To an internal party audience, he explained his "so-called peace initiative" as a tactic to sow "confusion in the ranks of our aggressive adversaries."429 This was vintage Stalin.
Another member of the new ruling team, Nikita S. Khrushchev, later vividly described its predicament: "Terribly vulnerable, we went on as before, out of inertia. Our boat just continued to float down the stream, along the same course that had been set by Stalin, even though we all sensed that things were not right."430 He was alluding to the interdependence of their foreign and domestic policies, in which the internal and external dimensions of their insecurity were intertwined. Their overriding priority of preserving the system that kept them in power while cautiously moderating its excesses was not conducive to embarking upon risky initiatives abroad.
In May, one such initiative nevertheless caused a commotion in the ruling party presidium in connection with its debate on a "New Course" of controlled reform the leadership was trying to introduce in Eastern Europe. Lavrentii P. Beriia, the head of the Soviet security services, floated the unorthodox idea that the creation of a unified and neutral Germany by sacrificing Communism in its eastern part would be in the Soviet Union’s best interests. Such a way of tackling the crucial German question would have altered radically the premises on which the Cold War was being fought - the reason for Beriia’s retrospective reputation as a statesman allegedly capable of bringing about a breakthrough that might have led the conflict to an end.
A person less qualified to accomplish such a feat can hardly be imagined. He was the most blood-stained of Stalin’s former henchmen, justly feared even by his peers for his ruthlessness and utter lack of principles. His position as the nation’s top spymaster, steeped in deceit and suspicion, was a hindrance rather than an advantage in his trying to gain the confidence of Western interlocutors. In any case, there is no evidence that he ever tried to do so before an uprising in East Germany intervened in June.
The revolt was not of Western making but was instead the consequence of the kind of system Moscow had imposed upon the country and was now belatedly trying to rectify. No sooner did the uprising break out than Beriia closed ranks by joining the rest of the presidium in a unanimous decision to crush it, thus showing that his deviation from orthodoxy did not go very far. The reversal did not save him from being arrested a few days later in a plot devised by his colleagues to strip him of the arbitrary power he had acquired within the Soviet system; he was subsequently tried on trumped-up charges and summarily executed.
Among those charges, any blame for the East German crisis was conspicuously missing. The responsibility for it, as well as for Beriia’s downfall, lay ultimately with the workings of the system. The emergency highlighted the vulnerability of the embattled Kremlin leaders, making them even more reluctant to take risks in foreign affairs than they had been before. The fleeting chance for winding down the Cold War thus disappeared before it could even emerge.
World History
