When the hall began buzzing and crying that Stalin had to stay at the post of the Secretary General and hold the Central Committee Office, Malenkov’s face (I remember it very well) was the face of a man who had escaped a direct, real mortal danger, as this was he who had made the summary report at the party Congress, who had been holding almost all the Central Committee Office sessions and who was presiding at this plenary session. This was he who in case of another reaction to Stalin’s request would have been the only candidate[341] to the third post of comrade Stalin, who said he wanted to resign from it because of his old age and fatigue. And in case Stalin had felt that behind his back or in front of his eyes there were people who could agree with his request, I think, Malenkov would have been the first to pay for it with his life. It’s difficult to imagine what it would come to» (K. Simonov, «With the Eyes of a Man of My Generation. Reflections on J. Stalin», Moscow, News Agencies publishers, 1988, p. 239 — 246 minus the parts of the text, the sites of which are marked with omission points in brackets).
In fact, this episode shows that J. Stalin’s initiative — to delegate his commission of the party Central Committee Secretary General to a successor on the basis of open nomination of candidates, their discussions at the plenary session and election of a new Secretary General in a quite democratic way,- was carelessly and irresponsibly rejected by the Central Committee members, who had been elected at the 19th Congress, and who let one of the state machine leaders — G. Malenkov, who was presiding the plenary session, — push themselves around. This is uncontradicted evidence that even 13 years after that crowd-“elitist” 18th Congress, the crowd-“elitist” character of the party and its Central Committee members still remained[342]. Though as K. Simonov wrote in 1953, he understood that the Congress and the plenary session were summoned for work and not for their participants to express their feelings to J.V. Stalin (this confession of his we set off in bold type when citing).
Anti-Stalinists, whose impudent resourcefulness of their “astuteness” and “intellectual might” has no limits, affirm in their commentaries to this episode (as well as K. Simonov) that the plenary session presidium members sitting behind J.V. Stalin and the Central Committee members sitting in the hall suspected at once that guileful Stalin was looking for the next «party favorite», who could take his place with time — the place of the «mundane god» (i.e. as if immortal) — the post of the leader of the state and the party. And what’s more, anti-Stalinists affirm that Stalin was looking for that «party favorite» in order to begin a new wave of «unjustified» repressions.
We believe that everything was simpler: J.V. Stalin was the only Bolshevik in the hall, the rest were cowardly, self-seeking, and thus shameless and careless frightened time-servers, lackeys by their psychology, who after the Great October Socialistic Revolution formed a new haughty class and considered themselves the true “elite” of the soviet society.
This lackey-careless attitude to the Motherland with claims on haughtiness is not only seen in K. Simonov’s description of the plenary session, but is also obvious from his personal attitude to life during the post-Stalin period. In fact we have cited such a huge extract in order make our assertion not unfounded, and for readers to feel the spirit of the frightened party-nomenclature servility conveyed by K. Simonov, which became apparent at that plenary session.
What J.V. Stalin thought about the results of the plenary session only he and God could know. The intra-system mafia members frightened of Stalin’s first illegitimate (as they thought) attempt to delegate his commission of the Central Committee Secretary General, decided not to wait for further initiative demonstration of Stalin and the party in this course and «eliminated» J.V. Stalin in less than half a year, carrying out «coup d’etat».
But as a result of such a conduct of the plenary session — of its every participant-bolshevism deserted the CPSU organizational structures during the next decade, the way it had deserted the hierarchy structures of the Russian Orthodox biblical church before.
Bolshevism really deserted the CPSU organizational structures, but didn’t disappear from the society. And it won’t appear in the organizational structures of any other party, construction organizational principles of which prevent personal development of a man.
J. Stalin’s speech at the Central Committee plenary session in October 1952 was published neither when he was alive, nor after his death. Due to this fact in many respects the myth about J. Stalin’s dictatorial absolute power and about his thirst for power for the sake of power could exist. Someone may think that J.V. Stalin didn’t want to publish his speech himself. But such a supposition would mean that J.V. Stalin was a defeatist, coward himself, i.e. it’s controversial to K. Simonov’s evidence concerning the events at the plenary session.
Many things indicate that during all his activity as the party and the state leader J.V. Stalin was surrounded by the system mafia, which used his name and Socialism and Communism slogans as a cover for its self-seeking activity[343]. This situation still remained in 1952, that’s why the speech without any prepared text delivered at the Central Committee plenary session was unexpected for the State machinery and the «guardians» present at it. This speech was nearly the only opportunity for J.V. Stalin to run the informational blockade and let the rest of the society[344] know (through the Central Committee members and candidates) his true opinion, which he expressed directly and not with the help of hints or by implication.
But as for opportunities to publish his speeches, there existed a multilevel system of self-censorship of the crowd-“elitist” society: from direct official bans and direct collusion of the «world backstage» periphery to the pressure upon the minds of individuals and gregarious effects begotten in the society by the cult of Marxism and cult of J.V. Stalin’s personality, owing to which false ideas about him were developed. J.V. Stalin had no power over this multilevel censorship system, thus he had to adapt himself to it and evade it, as well as all other ones in his public activity.
The difference in this timeserving between J.V. Stalin and the majority of other time-servers to the system was in the fact that J.V. Stalin adapted himself to it directing his efforts to the strategy of transformation of the global civilization life on the basis of the ideals of the righteous liberal society — communism. And the majority of time-servers pursued their selfish ends of the present day and near-term outlook: their minimum aims were to survive in the system and the maximum ones — to join to the system “elite” by way of repressing other people’s lives[345].
The story concerning the cessation of the edition of his collected works also confirms the fact that J.V. Stalin had no opportunity to be published. From 1941 through 1951 the first 13 volumes including his books, articles and speeches up to 1934 inclusive were published. But the edition of the 14th — 16th volumes took so much time that it can be considered that edition of J.V. Stalin’s collected works was actually ceased in 1951 — when the supposedly «all-powerful dictator» was still alive. There were no announcements about the cessation of the editions of the works of the soviet people leader. There was just an inexplicable delay in the edition of the regular volumes of the subscription publication[346]. The only explanation of the delay is that the work at the edition was ceased by retardation and corrective action as though to improve it[347].