Library:The Khruschevites
The Khruschevites
Introduction
Two decades have gone by since the Meeting of 81 communist and workers’ parties of the world, which has gone down in history as one of the most important events in the struggle which is being waged between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism. At this Meeting our Party opened fire on the revisionist group of Khrushchev which was ruling in the Soviet Union and struggling in every way to subjugate the entire international communist movement, all the communist and workers’ parties of the world, and set them on its road of betrayal.
Our open and principled attack on Khrushchevite modern revisionism at the Meeting in November 1960 was not a surprise move. On the contrary, it was the logical continuation of the Marxist-Leninist stand which the Party of Labour of Albania had always maintained, was the transition to a new, higher stage of the struggle which our Party had long been waging for the defence and consistent application of Marxism-Leninism.
From the time the Khrushchevites took power to the moment when we came out in open confrontation with them, the relations of the Party of Labour of Albania with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union passed through a complicated process, with zigzags, with periods of exacerbation and periods of temporary normalization. This was the process of each getting to know the other through encounters in the course of the struggle and the continual clash of views. After the Khrushchevite revisionist putschists came to power, our Party, basing itself on the events that were taking place there, on certain stands and actions, which were ill-defined at first, but which, step by step, were becoming more concrete, began to sense the great danger of this clique of renegades, which hid behind a deafening pseudo-Marxist demagogy, and to understand that this clique was becoming a great threat both to the cause of the revolution and socialism as a whole, and to our country.
We became more and more aware that the views and stands of Nikita Khrushchev on important questions of the international communist movement and the socialist camp differed from our views and stands. The 20th Congress of the CPSU, in particular, was the event which made us adopt a stand of opposition to Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites. As Marxist-Leninists and in a Marxist-Leninist way, time after time we had pointed out to the Soviet leaders our reservations and objections to their conciliatory stands towards the Yugoslav revisionists, about many aspects of their unprincipled foreign policy, about many of their wrong and completely un-Marxist stands and actions on major international problems, etc. Although they sometimes feigned a retreat, they continued on their course, while we refused to swallow what they served up to us, but on the contrary, defended our views and implemented our internal and external policy.
With the passage of time this brought about that we became better acquainted with each other’s positions, and neither side trusted the other. For our part, we continued to preserve our friendship with the Soviet Union, with its peoples, continued to build socialism according to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin, continued as before to defend the great Stalin and his work and to fight unwaveringly against Yugoslav revisionism. Our existing doubts about the Soviet revisionists increased and deepened from day to day, because day by day Khrushchev and company were acting in opposition to Marxism-Leninism.
Khrushchev was aware of our reservations about the 20th Congress, and about the policy which he followed with the Titoites, imperialism, etc., but his tactic was not to hasten to exacerbate the situation with us Albanians. He hoped to profit from the friendship which we displayed for the Soviet Union to take the Albanian fortress from within and to get us into the bag through smiles and threats, through giving us some reduced credits, as well as through pressure and blockades. Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites thought: “We know the Albanians. However stubborn they are, however hot-tempered they are, they have nowhere else to turn to, because we have them pinned up and, if they prove difficult, if they don’t obey us, then we will show our teeth, we’ll cut them off and boycott them, and overthrow all those who oppose us.”
The Khrushchev group prepared this course of action, promoted and deepened it, thinking that it would achieve its aim “quietly and gently” and “without any fuss”. However, the reality was convincing them that this tactic was yielding no fruit, and thus their impatience and arrogance began to emerge. The situation became tense. Then it was “eased” only to grow tense again. We understood where this course would lead Khrushchev and company, therefore we strengthened our vigilance, and while replying to manifestations of their despotism, we tried to prolong the “peace” while safeguarding our principles.
But the moment came when the cup was full to overflowing. The “peace”, which had seemed to exist before, could continue no longer. Khrushchev went openly on to the attack to subjugate and force us to follow his utterly opportunist line. Then we told Khrushchev bluntly and loudly “No!”, we said “Stop!” to his treacherous activity. This marked the beginning of a long and very difficult struggle in which our Party, to its glory and the glory of the people who gave birth to it and raised it, consistently defended the interests of its socialist Homeland, persistently defended Marxism-Leninism and the genuine international communist movement.
At that time many people did not understand the stand of the Party of Labour of Albania; there were even well-wishers of our Party and country who considered this action hasty, some had not yet completely understood the Khrushchevites’ betrayal, some others thought that we broke away from the Soviet Union to link up with China, etc. Today, not only the friends, but also the enemies of socialist Albania have understood the principled character of the uninterrupted struggle which our Party has waged and is waging against opportunists of every hue.
Time has fully confirmed how right the Party of Labour of Albania was to fight the Khrushchevites and refuse to follow their line. To this fight, which demanded and still demands great sacrifices, our small Homeland owes the freedom and independence it prizes so highly and its successful development on the road of socialism. Only thanks to the Marxist-Leninist line of our Party did Albania not become and never will become a protectorate of the Russians or anyone else.
Since 1961 our Party of Labour has not had any link or contact with the Khrushchevites. In the future, too, it will never establish party relations with them, and we do not have and will never have even state relations with the Soviet social imperialists. As up to now, our Party will consistently wage the ideological and political struggle for the exposure of these enemies of Marxism-Leninism. We acted in this way both when Khrushchev was in power and when he was brought down and replaced by the Brezhnev clique. Our Party had no illusions, but on the contrary, was quite certain that Brezhnev, Kosygin, Suslov, Mikoyan, etc., who had been Khrushchev’s closest collaborators, who had jointly organized and put into practice the revisionist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, would persist in their former line.
They eliminated Khrushchev with the aim of protecting Khrushchevism from the discredit which the master himself was bringing upon it with his endless buffoonery, eliminated the “father” with the aim of implementing the complete restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union with greater intensity and effectiveness.
In this direction Brezhnev and company have proved to be “worthy pupils” of their ill-famed teacher. Within the Soviet Union they established and strengthened the dictatorial fascist regime, while they turned the foreign policy of their state into a policy of great-state chauvinism, expansion and hegemonism. Under the leadership of the Brezhnev Khrushchevites, the Soviet Union has been turned into an imperialist world power and, like the United States of America, aims to rule the world. Among the bitter evidence of the utterly reactionary policy of Soviet social-imperialism are the tragic events in Czechoslovakia, the strengthening of the domination of the Kremlin over the countries of the Warsaw Treaty, the deepening of their all-round dependence on Moscow and the extension of the tentacles of Soviet social-imperialism to Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
The correct assessments and forecasts of our Party about the reactionary internal and foreign policy of Brezhnev have been and are being constantly confirmed. The most recent example is Afghanistan, where the Brezhnev Khrushchevites undertook an open fascist aggression and now are trying to quell the flames of the people’s war with fire and steel in order to prolong their social imperialist occupation.
The fact that our small Homeland and people have not suffered the tragic fate of all those who are now languishing under imperialist or social imperialist slavery is the best testimony to the correctness of the consistent, courageous and principled line which our Party of Labour has always followed.
The merit for this correct course belongs to the whole Party and, in particular, to its leadership, the Central Committee, which, imbued with and loyal to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, our guiding theory, has always led the Party and the people correctly. In the great tests which we have had to withstand, the unity of the Party with its leadership and the unity of the people around the Party have been brilliant and have become further tempered. This steel unity gave the Party support and strength in the difficult but glorious struggle against the Khrushchevite revisionists, too. This unity has been and is the foundation of the stability and confidence with which Albania has marched and is marching forward, withstanding the pressure and blackmail, the blandishments and demagogy of enemies of all hues.
As a communist and leader of the Party, I, too, have had to take part actively and make my contribution to all this heroic struggle of our Party. Charged by the Party and its leadership, since the liberation of Albania, and especially during the years 1950-1960, I have headed delegations of the Party and the state many times in official meetings with the Soviet leaders and with the main leaders of other communist and workers’ parties. Likewise, many times we have exchanged reciprocal visits, I have taken part in consultations and international meetings of communist parties at which I have expressed and defended the correct line, decisions and instructions of the Party. In all these meetings and visits I have become closely acquainted with glorious, unforgettable leaders, like Stalin, Dimitrov, Gottwald, Bierut, Pieck and others, and likewise, I have had to enter into contact with and know the Khrushchevite traitors, who, through a long and complicated process, gradually usurped power in the Soviet Union and in the former countries of people’s democracy respectively.
The relations with them and the stands maintained by our Party during this period have been reflected in the documents of the Party, in my writings which are being published by decision of the Central Committee, as well as in other documents which are found in the Central Archives of the Party. Now I am handing over these notes for publication as my reminiscences and impressions from the many contacts and clashes with the Khrushchevites, which cover the period from 1953, after the death of Stalin, to the end of 1961, when the Khrushchev group broke off diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of Albania. Taken together with other published materials and documents covering that period, these notes, too, I believe, will serve to acquaint the communists and working masses better, both with the counter-revolutionary activity of the Soviet revisionists inside and outside the Soviet Union, and with the always correct and consistent struggle of our Party in defence of Marxism-Leninism, the people and our socialist Homeland.
1. In-Fighting Among the Top Soviet Leaders
Stalin dies. Next day the top Soviet leadership divides up the portfolios. Khrushchev climbs the steps to power. Disillusionment from the first meeting with the “new” Soviet leaders in June 1953. Ill-intentioned criticism from Mikoyan and Bulganin. The end of Beria’s short-lived reign. The meeting with Khrushchev in June 1954: “You helped in the exposure of Beria.” Khrushchev’s “theoretical” lecture on the roles of the first secretary of the party and the prime minister. The revisionist mafia spins its spider’s web inside and outside the Soviet Union.
The way in which the death of Stalin was announced and his funeral ceremony was organized created the impression amongst us, the Albanian communists and people, and others like us, that many members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been awaiting his death impatiently.
One day after Stalin’s death on March 6, 1953, the Central Committee of the party, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR were summoned to an urgent joint meeting. On occasions of great losses, such as the death of Stalin, urgent meetings are necessary and indispensable. However, the many important changes which were announced in the press one day later, showed that this urgent meeting had been held for no other reason but . . . the sharing out of posts! Stalin had only just died, his body had not yet been placed in the hall where the final homage was to be paid, the program for the organization of paying homage and the funeral ceremony was still not worked out, the Soviet communists and the Soviet people were weeping over their great loss, while the top Soviet leadership found the time to share out the portfolios! Malenkov became premier, Beria became first deputy premier and minister of internal affairs, and Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Molotov shared the other posts. Major changes were made in all the top organs in the party and the state within that day. The Presidium and the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the party were merged into a single organ, new secretaries of the Central Committee of the party were elected, a number of ministries were amalgamated or united, changes were made in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, etc.
These actions could not fail to make profound and by no means favourable impressions on us. Disturbing questions arose automatically: how were all these major changes made so suddenly within one day, and not just any ordinary day, but on the first day of mourning?! Logic compels us to believe that everything had been prepared in advance. The lists of these changes had been worked out long before in suspicious secrecy and they were simply waiting for the occasion to proclaim them in order to satisfy this one and that one . . .
It is never possible to take such extremely important decisions within a few hours, even on a completely normal day.
However, if at the start these were only doubts which shocked and surprised us, later developments, the occurrences and the facts which we were to learn about subsequently, made us even more convinced that hidden hands had prepared the plot long before and waited the opportunity to commence the course of the destruction of the Bolshevik Party and socialism in the Soviet Union.
The lack of unity in the Presidium of the Central Committee was made quite obvious at Stalin’s funeral, too, when there was strife among the members over who would take pride of place and who would speak first. Instead of displaying unity at a time of misfortune before the peoples of the Soviet Union and all the communists of the world, who were deeply shocked and immensely grieved by the sudden death of Stalin, the “comrades” were competing for the limelight. Khrushchev opened the funeral ceremony, and Malenkov, Beria and Molotov spoke before Lenin Mausoleum. The conspirators behaved hypocritically over Stalin’s coffin and rushed to get the funeral ceremony over as quickly as possible in order to shut themselves up in the Kremlin again to continue the process of the division and redivision of the posts.
We, and many like us, thought that Molotov, Stalin’s closest collaborator, the oldest and the most mature bolshevik, with the greatest experience and best known inside and outside the Soviet Union, would be elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. But it did not turn out so. Malenkov was placed at the head, with Beria in second place. Behind them in those days, a little more in the shade, stood a “panther” which was preparing itself to gobble up and liquidate the former two. This was Nikita Khrushchev.
The way in which he rose was truly astonishing and suspect: he was appointed only as chairman of the central commission to organize the funeral ceremony for Stalin, and on March 7, when the division of posts was made public, he had not been appointed to any new post, but had simply been freed from the task of first secretary of the Party Committee of Moscow, since “he was to concentrate on the work in the Central Committee of the party”. Only a few days later, on March 14, 1953, Malenkov, “at his own request”, was relieved of the post of secretary of the Central Committee of the party(!) and Nikita Khrushchev was listed first in the composition of the new Secretariat elected that same day.
Such actions did not please us at all, although they were not our responsibility. We were disillusioned in our opinions about the stability of the top Soviet leadership, but we explained this with our being totally uninformed about the situation developing in the party and the leadership of the Soviet Union. In the contacts which I had had with Stalin himself, with Malenkov, Molotov, Khrushchev, Beria, Mikoyan, Suslov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and other main leaders, I had not seen even the smallest division or discord amongst them.
Stalin had fought consistently for and was one of the decisive factors of the Marxist-Leninist unity of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This unity in the party for which Stalin worked, was not created by means of terror, as Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites claimed later, continuing the slanders of the imperialists and the world capitalist bourgeoisie, who were striving to destroy and overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, but was based on the triumphs of socialism, on the Marxist-Leninist line and ideology of the Bolshevik Party and on the indisputably great personality of Stalin. The trust which all had in Stalin was based on his justice and the ability with which he defended the Soviet Union and Leninism. Stalin waged the class struggle correctly, dealing merciless blows at the enemies of socialism (and he was quite right to do so). The concrete daily struggle of Stalin, the Bolshevik Party and the whole Soviet people proves this squarely, as do the political and ideological writings of Stalin, the documents and decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and also the press and the mass propaganda of those times against the Trotskyites, Bukharinites, Zinovievites, the Tukhachevskies, and all other traitors. This was a stern political and ideological class struggle to defend socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the party and the principles of Marxism-Leninism. For this Stalin has great merits.
Stalin proved himself to be an outstanding Marxist-Leninist with clear principles, with great courage and cool-headedness, and the maturity and foresight of a Marxist revolutionary. If we just reflect on the strength of the external and internal enemies in the Soviet Union, on the manoeuvres and unrestrained propaganda they indulged in, on the fiendish tactics they used, then we can properly appreciate the principles and correct actions of Stalin at the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. If there were some excesses in the course of this just and titanic struggle, it was not Stalin who committed them, but Khrushchev, Beria and company, who for sinister hidden motives, showed themselves the most zealous for purges at the time when they were not yet so powerful. They acted in this way to gain credit as “ardent defenders” of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as “merciless with the enemies”, with the aim of climbing the steps in order to usurp power later. The facts show that when Stalin discovered the hostile activity of a Yagoda or a Yezhov, the revolutionary court condemned them without hesitation. Such elements as Khrushchev, Mikoyan, Beria and their apparatchiki hid the truth from Stalin. In one way or another, they misled and deceived Stalin. He did not trust them, therefore he had told them to their faces, “. . . when I am gone you will sell the Soviet Union.” Khrushchev himself admitted this. And it turned out just as Stalin foresaw. As long as he was alive, even these enemies talked about unity, but after his death they encouraged the split. This process was being steadily extended.
From the visits which I made from time to time to the Soviet Union after 1953, for consultations over the problems of the political and economic situation, or over some problems of international policy which were raised by the Soviets, who allegedly sought our opinion, too. I saw more and more clearly the sharpening of contradictions among the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
A few months after Stalin’s death, in June 1953, I went to Moscow at the head of a party and government delegation to seek an economic and military credit.
It was the time when Malenkov seemed to be the main leader. He was chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. Although Khrushchev had been listed first among the secretaries of the Central Committee of the party since March 1953, apparently he had not yet seized power completely, had still not prepared the putsch.
We normally made our requests in advance in writing, thus the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the party and government of the Soviet Union had long been aware of them and, indeed as it turned out, they had decided what they would give us and what they would not give us. They received us at the Kremlin. When we entered the room the Soviet leaders stood up and we shook hands with them. We exchanged the normal greetings.
I had met them all in the time of Stalin.
Malenkov looked just the same—a heavy-built man with a pale, hairless face. I had met him years before in Moscow, during meetings I had with Stalin, and he had made a good impression on me. He worshipped Stalin and it seemed to me that Stalin valued him, too. At the 19th Congress Malenkov delivered the report on behalf of the Central Committee of the party. He was one of the relatively new cadres who came into the leadership and who were liquidated later by the disguised revisionist Khrushchev and his associates. But now he was at the head of the table, holding the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Beside him stood Beria, with his eyes glittering behind glasses and his hands never still. After him came Molotov, quiet, good-looking, one of the most serious and most honoured comrades for us, because he was an old bolshevik from the time of Lenin and a close comrade of Stalin’s. We still thought of Molotov in this way even after Stalin’s death.
Next to Molotov was Mikoyan, his dark face scowling. This merchant was holding one of those thick pencils, half red half blue (something you could see in all the offices of the Soviet Union), and was keeping the “score”. Now he had taken even greater authority into his hands. On March 6, the day the posts were shared out, it was decided that the Ministry of Foreign Trade and that of Internal Trade should be combined in one, and the Armenian wheeler-dealer grabbed the portfolio.
Finally there was the bearded Marshal Bulganin, with white hair and pale blue eyes, sitting a little bit bemused at a corner of the table.
“Let us hear what you have to say!” said Malenkov in a very grave tone. This was not at all a comradely beginning. This was to become the custom in talks with the new Soviet leaders, and no doubt this behaviour was supposed to show the pride of the great state. “Well, say what you have to say to us, we shall listen to you and pronounce our final opinion.”
I did not know Russian well, I could not speak it, but I could understand it. The talk was conducted through an interpreter.
I began to speak about the problems that were worrying us, especially about military questions and the problems of the economy. First, I gave an introduction about the internal and external political situation of our country, which was causing us some concern. It was essential to give solid reasons for our needs, to back up our requests in both the economic and military sectors. In connection with the latter, the aid which they provided for our army was always insufficient and minimal, regardless of the fact that in public we always spoke very highly of the value of that small amount of aid which they granted us. Together with the arguments in support of our modest requests, I also portrayed the situation of our country in connection with our Yugoslav, Greek and Italian neighbours. From all around our country the enemies were carrying out intensive hostile work of diversion, espionage and sabotage from the sea, the air and the land. We were having continual clashes with armed bands of enemy agents and needed aid in military materials.
My concern was to make my exposé as concrete and concise as possible. I tried not to go on at too great a length and I had been speaking for no more than twenty minutes, when I heard Beria, with his snake’s eyes, say to Malenkov, who was sitting listening to me as expressionless as a mummy:
“Can’t we say what we have to say and put an end to this?”
Without changing his expression, without shifting his eyes from me (of course, he had to maintain his authority in front of his deputies!), Malenkov said to Beria:
“Wait!”
I was so annoyed I was ready to explode internally, but I preserved my aplomb and, in order to let them understand that I had heard and understood what they said, I cut down my talk and said to Malenkov:
“I have finished.”
“Pravilno!”[1] said Malenkov and gave Mikoyan the floor.
Beria, pleased that I had finished, put his hands in his pockets and tried to work out what impression their replies were making on me. Of course, I was not satisfied with what they had decided to give us in response to the very modest requests we had made. I spoke again and told them that they had made heavy reductions in the things we had asked for. Mikoyan jumped in to “explain” that the Soviet Union itself was poor, that it had gone through the war, that it had to assist other countries, too, etc.
“When we drafted these requests,” I told Mikoyan, “we took account of the reason you have just given, indeed we cut our calculations very fine, and your specialists who work in our country are witnesses to this.”
“Our specialists do not know what possibilities the Soviet Union has. We who have told you our opinions and possibilities know these things, ” said Mikoyan.
Molotov was leaning on the table. He said something about Albania’s relations with its neighbours, but he never raised his eyes. Malenkov and Beria seemed to be the two “cocks of the walk”, while Mikoyan who was cold and bitter, did not say much, but when he did speak, it was only to make some vicious and venomous remark. From the way they spoke, the way they interrupted one another, the arrogant tone in which they gave “advice”, the signs of discord among them were quite clear.
“Since this is what you have decided, there is no reason for me to prolong matters,” I said.
“Pravilno!” repeated Malenkov and asked in a loud voice: “Has anyone anything to add?”
“I have,” said Bulganin at the end of the table.
“You have the floor,” said Malenkov.
Bulganin opened a dossier and, in substance, said:
“You, Comrade Enver, have asked for aid for the army. We have agreed to give you as much as we have allocated to you, but I have a number of criticisms. The army ought to be a sound weapon of the dictatorship of the proletariat, its cadres loyal to the party and of proletarian origin, the party must have the army firmly under its leadership . . .”
Bulganin went on for a very long time with a “moralizing” speech, full of words of “advice”. I listened carefully and waited for the criticisms, but they did not come. In the end he said this:
“Comrade Enver, we have information that many cadres of your army are the sons of beys and aghas, of dubious origin and activity. We must be certain about those into whose hands these weapons, with which we shall supply you, will be put, therefore we advise you to study this problem deeply and carry out purges . . .”
This made my blood boil because it was a slanderous accusation and an insult to the cadres of our army. I raised my voice and asked the marshal:
“What is the source of this information which you give me with such assurance? Why do you insult our army?”
The atmosphere of the meeting became as cold as ice. They all lifted their heads and looked at me while I waited for Bulganin to reply. He found himself at a tight spot because he had not expected this cutting question, and he looked at Beria.
Beria began to speak, the movements of his hands and eyes revealing his embarrassment and irritation, and said that according to their information, we allegedly had unsuitable and dubious elements, not only in the army, but also in the apparatus of the state and in the economy! He even mentioned a percentage. Bulganin sighed with relief and looked around, not concealing his satisfaction, but Beria cut short his smile. He openly opposed Bulganin’s “advice” about purges and stressed that the “elements with a bad past, but who have since taken the right road, must not be purged but should be pardoned.” The resentment and deep contradictions which existed between these two were displayed quite openly. As it turned out later, the contradictions between Bulganin and Beria were not simply between these two persons, but were the reflection of deep contradictions, quarrels and opposition between the Soviet state security service and the intelligence organs of the Soviet army. But we were to learn these things later. In this concrete case we were dealing with a grave accusation raised against us. We could never accept this accusation, therefore, I stood up and said:
“Those who have given you this information have committed slander, hence they are enemies. There is no truth in what you said. The overwhelming majority of the cadres of our army have been poor peasants, shepherds, workers, artisans and revolutionary intellectuals. In our army there are no sons of beys and aghas. Or if there are perhaps ten or twenty individuals, they have abandoned their class and have shed their own blood, and by this I mean that during the war they not only took up arms against the foreign enemies, but rejected the class from which they emerged, and even their parents and relations, when they opposed the Party and the people. All the cadres of our army have fought in the war, have emerged from the war, and not only do I not accept these accusations but I am telling you that your informers are deceiving you, are concocting slanders. I assure you that the weapons that we have received and will receive from you have been and will be in reliable hands, that the Party of Labour, and no one else, has led and still leads our People’s Army. That is all I had to say!” and I sat down.
When I had finished, Malenkov began to speak to close the debate. After stressing that he agreed with what the preceding speakers had said, he issued a load of “advice and instructions” for us, and then dwelt on the debate which we had with Bulganin and Beria about the “enemies” in the ranks of our army.
“As for undertaking purges in the army, I think that the problem should not be presented in this way,” said Malenkov, opposing the “advice” which Bulganin gave me about purges. “People are not born ready-formed, and they make mistakes in life. We must not be afraid to excuse people for their past mistakes. We have people who have fought against us with weapons, but now we are bringing out special laws to pardon them for their past and in this way to give them the possibility to work in the army and even to be in the party. The term ‘purge’ of the army is not suitable,” repeated Malenkov and closed the discussion.
Utter confusion: one said irresponsibly, “You have enemies” and “carry out purges”, the other said. “We are bringing out laws to pardon them for their past”!
However, these were their opinions. We listened to them carefully and openly expressed our opposition to those things over which we disagreed. Finally, I thanked them for receiving me and, in passing, told them that the Central Committee of our Party had decided that I should be relieved of many functions and retain only the main function of General Secretary of the Party. (At that time I was General Secretary, Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. These functions had remained in my hands since the time the country was liberated, when many difficulties caused by external and internal enemies had to be overcome.)
Malenkov found this decision correct and twice repeated his favourite “pravilno”. Having nothing more to say, we shook hands and left.
My conclusion from this meeting was unpleasant. I saw that the leadership of the Soviet Union was ill-disposed towards our country. The arrogant way they behaved during the meeting, their refusal to give those few things that we sought, and their slanderous attack on the cadres of our army were not good signs.
From this meeting I observed also that there was no unity in the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: Malenkov and Beria were predominant, Molotov hardly spoke, Mikoyan seemed to be on the outer and spouted venom, while what Bulganin said was bullshit.
It was apparent that the in-fighting had begun among the leaders in the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. However hard they tried to avoid giving the impression outside that the “changing of the guard” was taking place in the Kremlin, they were unable to hide everything. Changes had been and were being made in the party and the government. After he kicked out Malenkov, leaving him only the post of prime minister, Khrushchev made himself first secretary of the Central Committee in September 1953. It is evident that Khrushchev and his group of close cronies hatched up the intrigue in the Presidium carefully, by setting their opponents at loggerheads and eliminating Beria and apparently “taming” the others.
There are many versions about the arrest and execution of Beria. Amongst others it was said that men from the army, headed by General Moskalenko, arrested Beria right in the meeting of the Presidium of the CC of the party. Apparently Khrushchev and his henchmen charged the army with this “special mission”, because they did not trust the state security, since Beria had had it in his hands for years on end. The plan had been hatched up in advance: while the meeting of the Presidium of the CC of the party was being held, Moskalenko and his men got into a nearby room unobserved. At the given moment, Malenkov pressed the bell and within a few seconds Moskalenko entered the office where the meeting was being held and approached Beria to arrest him. It was said that Beria reached out to take the satchel he had nearby, but Khrushchev, who was sitting “vigilant” by his side, was “quicker” and seized the satchel first. The “bird” could not fly away, the action was crowned with success! Precisely as in a detective film, but this was no ordinary film: the actors of this one were members of the Presidium of the CC of the CPSU!
This is what was said, took place and Khrushchev himself admitted it. Later, when a general, who I believe was called Sergatskov, came to Tirana as Soviet military adviser he also told us something about the trial of Beria. He told us that he had been called as a witness to declare in court that Beria had allegedly behaved arrogantly towards him. On this occasion Sergatskov told our comrades in confidence: “Beria defended himself very strongly in the court, accepted none of the accusations and refuted them all.”
In June 1954, a few months after Khrushchev’s elevation to the post of first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. together with Comrade Hysni Kapo, we had to go to Moscow where we sought a meeting with the Soviet leaders to talk about the economic problems over the solution of which they were proving uncooperative. Khrushchev received us, together with Malenkov, who was still prime minister, in the presence of Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Suslov and one or two others of lower rank.
I had had occasion to meet Khrushchev once or twice in the Ukraine before the death of Stalin. We had just emerged from the war and at that time it was natural that we had great trust not only in Stalin, the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was indisputable, but also in all the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From the first meeting Khrushchev had impressed me as a “good capable fellow, full of vigour and talk” who did not fail to speak well of our war, although it was apparent he knew nothing about it.
He gave me a rather superficial account of the Ukraine, put on a dinner for me, from which I remember a kind of soup which they called “borsch” and a bowl of yoghourt so thick that you could cut it with a knife and I was not sure whether it was yoghourt or cheese; he presented me with an embroidered Ukrainian shirt and begged my pardon because he had to go to Moscow where they had a meeting of the Bureau. This encounter was in Kiev, and all the time he was with me, Khrushchev poured out every kind of praise for Stalin. Of course, seeing only the trips by air back and forth to Moscow of leaders who were so ably guiding this great country which we loved so much and hearing all those fine words they said about Stalin, I was very pleased with them and enthusiastic about the successes they had achieved.
But Khrushchev’s unexpected and rapid rise to power did not make a good impression on us. Not because we had anything against him, but because we thought that the role and figure of Khrushchev was not so well-known either in the Soviet Union or in the world, that he could so rapidly take the place of the great Stalin as first secretary of the Central Committee of the party. Khrushchev had never appeared at any of the meetings we had had for years on end with Stalin, although nearly all the top leaders of the party and Soviet state took part in most of those meetings. However, we did not express this and never mentioned our impression about this promotion of Khrushchev so high. We considered this an internal matter of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, thought that they knew what they were doing, and wished with all our heart that things would always go well in the Soviet Union, as in the time of Stalin.
And now the day had come for us to meet Khrushchev face to face in our first official meeting.
I spoke first. I briefly presented the economic, political and organizational situation of the country, the situation in the Party and our people’s state power. Knowing from the meeting a year earlier with Malenkov that the new leaders of the Soviet party and state did not like to listen for long, I tried to be as concise as possible in my exposé and put the emphasis mainly on the economic questions about which we had sent a detailed letter to the Soviet leadership two months earlier. I remember that Khrushchev intervened only once during my speech. I was speaking of the very fine results which had been achieved in our country in the recent elections of deputies to the People’s Assembly and about the powerful party-people-state unity which was manifested during the elections.
“These results should not put you to sleep,” interjected Khrushchev at that moment, drawing our attention to the very thing which we had not only always been aware of, but which I had stressed in the exposé I had given them, emphasizing particularly the work we did to consolidate unity, to build up the love of the people for the Party and the state, to strengthen vigilance, etc. However, it was his right to give as much advice as he wished and we had no reason to resent this.
Khrushchev spoke immediately after me and right from the start displayed his clownish nature in the treatment of problems:
“We are informed about your situation and problems from the materials we have studied,” he began. “The report which Comrade Enver gave us here made matters clearer to us, and I describe it as a ‘joint report’, yours and ours.
But, he continued, “I am still a bad Albanian and I am not going to speak now either about the economic problems or about the political ones, which Comrade Enver raised, because, for our part, we have still not exchanged opinions and reached a common view. Therefore, I am going to speak about something else.”
And he began to give us a long talk about the importance of the role of the party.
He spoke in a loud voice with many gestures of his hands and his head, looking in all directions without concentrating on any one point, interrupted his speech here and there to ask questions, and then, often without waiting for the reply, went on with his speech, hopping from branch to branch.
“The party leads, organizes, controls,” he theorized. “It is the initiator and inspirer. But Beria wanted to liquidate the role of the party,” and after a moment of silence he asked me: “Have you received the resolution which announced the sentence we passed on Beria?”
“Yes,” I replied.
He left his discourse about the party and started to speak about the activity of Beria; he accused him of almost every crime and described him as the cause of many evils. These were the first steps towards the attack on Stalin. For the time being, Khrushchev felt that he could not rise against the figure and work of Stalin, therefore, in order to prepare the terrain he started with Beria. At this meeting, moreover, to our astonishment, Khrushchev told us:
“When you were here last year, you assisted in the exposure and unmasking of Beria.”
I stared in amazement, wondering what he was leading up to. Khrushchev’s explanation was this:
“You remember the debate which you had last year with Bulganin and Beria over the accusation they made against your army. It was Beria who had given us that information, and the strong opposition which you put up in the presence of the comrades of the Presidium, helped us by supplementing the doubts and the facts which we had about the hostile activity of Beria. A few days after your departure for Albania we condemned him.”
However, in that first meeting with us Khrushchev was not concerned simply with Beria. The “Beria” dossier had been closed. Khrushchev had settled accounts with him. Now he had to go further. He dealt at length with the importance and the role of the first secretary or general secretary of the party. “To me it is of no importance whether he is called ‘first’ secretary or ‘general’ secretary,” he said in substance. “What is important is that the most able, qualified person with the greatest authority in the country must be elected to that post. We have our experience,” he continued. “After the death of Stalin we had four secretaries of the Central Committee but we had no one in charge, and thus we had no one to sign the minutes of meetings!”
After going all round the question from the aspect of “principle”, Khrushchev did not fail to launch a few gibes which, of course, were aimed against Malenkov, although he mentioned no names.
“Imagine what would occur,” he said in his cunning way, “if the most capable and authoritative comrade were elected chairman of the Council of Ministers. He would have everyone on his back, and thus there would be a danger that the criticism put forward through the party would not be taken into account and hence the party would take second place and be turned into an organ of the Council of Ministers.”
While he was speaking I glanced several times at Malenkov who sat motionless while his whole body seemed to be sagging, his face an ashen hue.
Voroshilov, his face flushed bright red, was watching me, waiting for Khrushchev to finish his “discourse”. Then he began. He pointed out to me (as though I did not know) that the post of prime minister was very important, too, for this or that reason, etc.
“I think,” said Voroshilov in an uncertain tone, as though he did not know with whom to side and whom to oppose, “that Comrade Khrushchev did not intend to imply that the Council of Ministers does not have its own special importance. The prime minister, likewise . . .”
Now Malenkov’s face had become deathly pale. While wanting to soften the bad impression which Khrushchev had created, especially about Malenkov, with these words, Voroshilov brought out more clearly the tense situation which existed in the Presidium of the CC of the party. Klim Voroshilov went on with this lecture about the role and importance of the prime minister for several minutes!
Malenkov was the “scapegoat” which they displayed to me to see how I would react. In these two lectures I saw clearly that the split in the Presidium of the CC of the CPSU was growing deeper, that Malenkov and his supporters were on the way out. We were to see later where this process would lead.
At this same meeting Khrushchev told us that the other sister parties had been told of the Soviet “experience” of who should be first secretary of the party and who prime minister in the countries of people’s democracy.
“We talked over these questions with the Polish comrades before the congress of their party,” Khrushchev told us. “We thrashed matters out thoroughly and thought that Comrade Bierut should remain chairman of the Council of Ministers and Comrade Ochab should be appointed first secretary of the party . . .”
Hence, right from the start Khrushchev was for pushing Bierut aside in the leadership of the party (and later for his elimination), since he had insisted that Ochab, “a very good Polish comrade”, as he stressed to us, should be elected first secretary. Thus they were giving the green light for all the revisionist elements, who, up till yesterday, were wriggling and keeping a low profile, awaiting the opportune moments. Now these moments were being created by Khrushchev who, with his actions, stands and “new ideas”, was becoming the inspirer and organizer of “changes” and “reorganizations”.
However, the congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party did not fulfil Khrushchev’s desires. Bierut, a resolute Marxist-Leninist comrade, of whom I have very good memories, was elected first secretary of the party, while Cyrankiewicz was elected prime minister.
Khrushchev “reconciled” himself to this decision because there was nothing he could do about it. However, the revisionist mafia, which had begun to stir, was thinking about all the ways and possibilities. It was creating its spider’s web. And although Bierut was not removed from the leadership of the party in Warsaw, as Khrushchev wanted and dictated, later he was to be eliminated completely by a sudden “cold” caught in Moscow!
2. Khruschev’s Strategy and Tactics within the Soviet Union
The roots of the tragedy of the Soviet Union. The stages through which Khrushchev passes towards seizing political and ideological power. The Khrushchevite caste corrodes the sword of the revolution. What lies behind Khrushchev’s “collective leadership”. Khrushchev and Mikoyan—the head of the counterrevolutionary plot. The breeze of liberalism is blowing in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev and Voroshilov speak openly against Stalin. Khrushchev builds up his own cult. The enemies of the revolution are proclaimed “heroes” and “victims”.
One of the main directions of Khrushchev’s strategy and tactics was to seize complete political and ideological power within the Soviet Union and to put the Soviet army and the state security organs in his service.
The Khrushchev group would work to achieve this objective step by step. At first, it would not attack Marxism-Leninism, the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union and Stalin frontally. On the contrary, this group would base itself on the successes achieved and, moreover, would exalt them to the maximum, in order to gain credit for itself and create a situation of euphoria, with the aim of destroying the socialist base and superstructure later.
First of all, this renegade group had to get control of the party, in order to eliminate the possible resistance of those cadres who had not lost their revolutionary class vigilance, to neutralize the waverers and win them over by means of persuasion or threats, as well as to promote to the key leading positions bad, anti-Marxist, careerist, opportunist elements of whom, of course, there were some in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the apparatus of the Soviet state.
After the Great Patriotic War some negative phenomena appeared in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The difficult economic situation, the devastation and destruction, the great human losses which occurred in the Soviet Union, required a total mobilization of the cadres and the masses for its consolidation and progress. However, instead of this, a falling-off in the character and morale of many cadres was noticed. On the other hand, through their conceit and boasting about the glory of the battles won, through their decorations and privileges, with their many vices and distorted views, the power-seeking elements were overwhelming the vigilance of the party and causing it to decay from within. A caste was created in the army which extended its despotic and arrogant domination to the party, too, altering its proletarian character. The party should have been the sword of the revolution, but this caste corroded it.
I am of the opinion that even before the war but especially after the war, signs of a deplorable apathy appeared in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This party had a great reputation and had achieved colossal successes in the course of its work, but at the same time it had started to lose the revolutionary spirit and was becoming infected by bureaucracy and routine. The Leninist norms, the teachings of Lenin and Stalin had been transformed by the apparatchiki into stale platitudes and hackneyed slogans devoid of operative worth. The Soviet Union was a vast country, the people worked, produced, created. It was said that industry was developing at the necessary rates and that the socialist agriculture was advancing. But this development was not at the level it should have been.
It was not the “wrong” line of Stalin which held up the progress. On the contrary, this line was correct and Marxist-Leninist, but it was frequently applied badly and even distorted and sabotaged by enemy elements. Stalin’s correct line was distorted also by the disguised enemies in the ranks of the party and in the organs of the state, by the opportunists, liberals, Trotskyites and revisionists, as the Khrushchevs, Mikoyans, Suslovs, Kosygins, etc., eventually turned out to be.
Before the death of Stalin, Khrushchev and his close collaborators in the putsch were among the main leaders who acted under cover, who made preparations and awaited the appropriate moment for open action on a broad scale. It is a fact that these traitors were hardened conspirators, with the experience of various Russian counter-revolutionaries, the experience of anarchists, Trotskyites and Bukharinites. They were also acquainted with the experience of the revolution and the Bolshevik Party, although they learned nothing of benefit from the revolution, but learned everything they needed to undermine the revolution and socialism, while escaping the blows of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In short, they were counter-revolutionaries and double-dealers. On the one hand, they sang the praises of socialism, the revolution, the Bolshevik Communist Party, Lenin and Stalin, and on the other hand, they prepared the counter-revolution.
Hence, all this accumulated scum carried out sabotage with the subtlest methods, which they disguised by praising Stalin and the socialist regime. These elements disorganized the revolution while organizing the counter-revolution, displayed “severity” against internal enemies in order to spread fear and terror in the party, the state and the people. It was they who created a situation full of euphoria which they reported to Stalin, but in reality they destroyed the base of the party, the base of the state, caused spiritual degeneration and built up the cult of Stalin to the skies in order to overthrow him more easily in the future.
This was a diabolical hostile activity which had a strangle-hold on the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Stalin, who as the historical facts showed, was surrounded by enemies. Almost none of the members of the Presidium and the Central Committee raised their voices in defence of socialism and Stalin.
If a detailed analysis is made of the political, ideological and organizational directives of Stalin in the leadership and organization of the party, the war and the work, in general, mistakes of principle will not be found, but if we bear in mind how they were distorted by the enemies and applied in practice, we will see the dangerous consequences of these distortions and it will become obvious why the party began to become bureaucratic, to be immersed in routine work and dangerous formalism which sapped its strength and strangled its revolutionary spirit and enthusiasm. The party became covered by a heavy layer of rust, by political apathy, thinking mistakenly that the head, the leadership, operates and solves everything on its own. From such a concept, the situation was created that in every instance and about everything they would say, “this is the leadership’s business”, “the Central Committee does not make mistakes”, “Stalin has said this, and that’s all there is to it”, etc. Stalin might not have said many things, but they were covered with his name.
The apparatus and the officials became “omnipotent”, “infallible” and operated in bureaucratic ways under the slogans of democratic centralism and bolshevik criticism and self-criticism, which were no longer bolshevik in reality. There is no doubt that in this way the Bolshevik Party lost its former vitality. It lived on with correct slogans, but they were only slogans; it carried out orders, but did not act on its own initiative; with the methods and forms of work which were used in the leadership of the party, the opposite results were achieved.
In such conditions bureaucratic administrative measures began to predominate over revolutionary measures. Vigilance was no longer operative because it was no longer revolutionary, regardless of all the boasting about it. From a vigilance of the party and the masses, it was being turned into a vigilance of bureaucratic apparatus and transformed, in fact, if not completely from the formal viewpoint, into a vigilance of the state security organs and the courts.
It is understandable that in such conditions, non-proletarian, non-working class feelings and views began to take root and to be cultivated in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the consciousness of many of the communists. Careerism, servility, charlatanism, unhealthy cronyism, anti-proletarian morality, etc., began to spread. These evils eroded the party from within, smothered the feeling of class struggle and sacrifice and encouraged seeking the “good life”, with comforts, with privileges, with personal gains and the least possible work and effort. In this way the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois mentality was created, and this was expressed in such words and thoughts as: “We worked and fought for this socialist state and we triumphed, now let us enjoy the benefits from it”, “we can’t be touched, the past excuses us for everything.” The greatest danger was that this outlook was becoming established even in the old cadres of the party with a splendid past and proletarian origin, even in the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, who ought to have set an example of purity to the others. There were many such people in the leadership, in the apparatus, and they made adroit use of the revolutionary words and phrases and the theoretical formulas of Lenin and Stalin, reaped the laurels of the work of others and encouraged the bad example. Thus, a worker aristocracy made up of bureaucratic cadres was being created in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Regrettably, such a process of degeneration developed under the “joyful” and “hopeful” slogans that “everything is going well, normally, within the laws and norms of the party”, which in fact were being violated, that “the class struggle is still being waged”, that “democratic centralism is safeguarded”, “criticism and self-criticism continues as before”, that “there is steel unity in the party”, “there are no more factional, anti-party elements”, “the time of Trotskyite and Bukharinite groups is passed”, etc., etc. Generally speaking, even the revolutionary elements considered such a distorted concept of the situation to be a normal reality and, this is the essence of the drama and the fatal mistake, therefore, it was considered that there was nothing to be alarmed about, that the enemies, the thieves, the violators of morality were being condemned by the courts, that the unworthy members were being expelled from the party, and new members admitted to it, as usual, that the plans were being realized although there were some that were not being realized, that people were being criticized, condemned, praised, etc. Hence, according to them, life was proceeding normally, and thus it was reported to Stalin: “Everything is going normally.” We are convinced that if Stalin, as the great revolutionary he was, had known the reality of the situation in the party, he would have struck a crushing blow at this unhealthy spirit and the entire party and the Soviet people would have risen to their feet to support him because, quite correctly, they had great trust in Stalin.
Not only did the apparatuses misinform Stalin, and bureaucratically deform his correct directives, but they had created such a situation among the people and in the party that even when Stalin went among the masses of the party and the people, to the extent that his age and health permitted, they did not inform him about the shortcomings and mistakes which were occurring, because the apparatus had implanted the opinion amongst the communists and the masses that “we must not worry Stalin”.
The great hullabaloo the Khrushchevites made about the so-called cult of Stalin was really only a bluff. It was not Stalin, who was a modest person, who had built up this cult, but all the revisionist scum accumulated at the head of the party and the state which apart from anything else, exploited the great love of the Soviet peoples for Stalin, especially after the victory over fascism. If one reads the speeches of Khrushchev, Mikoyan and all the other members of the Presidium, one will see what unrestrained and hypocritical praises these enemies poured on Stalin as long as he was alive. It is sickening to read these things when you think that behind all this praise they were hiding their hostile work from the communists and the masses who were deceived, thinking that they had to do with leaders loyal to Marxism-Leninism and comrades loyal to Stalin.
Even for some time after Stalin’s death, the “new” Soviet leaders, and Khrushchev above all, still did not speak badly about him, indeed they described him as a “great man”, a “leader of indisputable authority”, etc. Khrushchev had to speak in this way to gain credit inside and outside the Soviet Union, in order to create the idea that he was “loyal” to socialism and the revolution, a “continuer” of the work of Lenin and Stalin.
Khrushchev and Mikoyan were the bitterest enemies of Marxism-Leninism and Stalin. These two headed the plot and the putsch which they had prepared long before, together with anti-Marxist, careerist elements of the Central Committee, of the army, and leaders at the base. These putschists did not show their hand immediately after the death of Stalin, but, when it was necessary and to the extent it was necessary, continued to administer the poison along with their praises for Stalin. It is true that Mikoyan, in particular, in the many meetings I have had with him, never boosted Stalin, irrespective of the fact that in speeches and discourses the putschists heaped praises and glory on Stalin on every occasion. They fostered the cult of Stalin in order to isolate him as much as possible from the masses, and, hiding behind this cult, they prepared the catastrophe.
Khrushchev and Mikoyan worked to a plan and after the death of Stalin found an open field for their activity, also because of the fact that Malenkov, Beria, Bulganin and Voroshilov proved to be not only blind, but also ambitious, and each of them struggled for power.
They and others, old revolutionaries and honest communists, had now turned into typical representatives of that bureaucratic routine, of that bureaucratic “legality”, which developed, and, when they made a feeble attempt to use this “legality” against the obvious plot of the Khrushchevites, it was already too late.
Khrushchev and Mikoyan, in complete unity, knew how to manoeuvre amongst them and to set one against the other. In a few words, they applied this tactic: split and divide in the Presidium, organize the forces of the putsch outside, continue to speak well about Stalin in order to have the millions strong masses on their side, and thus bring closer the day of the seizure of power, the liquidation of opponents, and of a whole glorious epoch of the construction of socialism, the victory of the Patriotic War, etc. All this feverish activity (and we sensed this) was aimed to create the popularity of Khrushchev inside the Soviet Union and outside it.
Under the umbrella of the victories which the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had scored under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, Khrushchev did his utmost to make the Soviet peoples and the Soviet communists think that nothing had changed, one great leader had died, but a “greater” leader was rising, and what a leader he was! “As principled a Leninist as the former, if not more so, but liberal, popular, smiling, all humour and jokes!”
Meanwhile the revisionist viper, which was becoming active, started to pour out its poison about the figure and work of Stalin. At first this was done without attacking Stalin by name, but attacking him indirectly.
In one of the meetings which I had with Khrushchev, in June 1954, in an allegedly principled and theoretical way he began to expound to me the great importance of “collective leadership”, and the great damage which comes about when this leadership is replaced by the cult of one person, and mentioned isolated excerpts from Marx and Lenin, so that I would think that what he was saying had a “Marxist-Leninist basis”.
He said nothing against Stalin, but he fired off all his batteries at Beria, accusing him of real and non-existent crimes. The truth is that in this initial stage of Khrushchev’s revisionist assault, Beria was the appropriate card to play to advance the secret plans. As I have written above, Beria was presented by Khrushchev as the cause of many evils: he had allegedly underrated the role of the first secretary, damaged the “collective leadership”, and wanted to put the party under the control of the state security apparatus. On the pretext of the struggle against the damage caused by Beria, Khrushchev, on the one hand, established himself in the leadership of the party and state and took control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and on the other hand, prepared public opinion for the open attack which he was to undertake later on Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, and on the real work of the Bolshevik Communist Party of Lenin and Stalin.
Many of these surprising actions and changes made an impression on us, but it was too early to be able to grasp the true proportions of the plot which was being carried out. Nevertheless, even at that time we could not fail to notice the contradictory nature of various actions and opinions of this “new leader”, who was taking over the reins in the Soviet Union. This same Khrushchev, who was now parading before us as a “disciple of collective leadership”, a few days earlier in a meeting which we had with him, when he spoke to us about the role of the first secretary of the party and the prime minister, presented himself as an ardent supporter of the “role of the individual” and the “firm hand”.
After Stalin’s death, it seemed that an allegedly collective leadership was established by these “adherents to principle”. The collective leadership was publicized to show that “Stalin had violated the principle of collective leadership”, that he “had degraded this important norm for Leninist leadership”, and that the leadership of the party and the state had been transformed from collective leadership into individual leadership. This was a big lie, publicized by the Khrushchevites to prepare the ground for themselves. If the collective leadership principle had been violated, the blame for this must be laid, not on the correct ideas which Stalin expressed on different problems, but on the hypocritical flattery of those others and on the arbitrary decisions which they themselves took, distorting the line in the various sectors which they led. How could all the activity of these anti-party elements who worked around Stalin be checked upon, when they themselves spread the idea that “Tse-Ka znayet vsyo”?![2] In this way they wanted to convince the party and the people that “Stalin knows everything that is going on”, and “he approves everything”. In other words, in the name of Stalin, and by means of their apparatchiki, they suppressed criticism and tried to turn the Bolshevik Party into a lifeless party, into an organization without will and energy, which would vegetate from day to day, approving everything that the bureaucracy decided, concocted and distorted.
In the campaign allegedly for the establishment of the collective leadership Khrushchev was trying to perform a slight-of-hand trick, under cover of a deafening clamour about the struggle against the cult of the individual. There were no more photographs of Khrushchev on the daily press, no more big headlines boosting him, but another stale tactic was used: all the newspapers were filled with his public speeches, his discourses, reports about his meetings with foreign ambassadors, his nightly attendances at diplomatic receptions, his meetings with delegations of communist parties, his meetings with American journalists, businessmen and senators and Western millionaires, who were friends of Khrushchev. The aim of this whole tactic was to make a contrast with Stalin’s method of “working behind closed doors, of “his sectarian work”, which, according to the Khrushchevites, had allegedly been so harmful to the opening of the Soviet Union to the world.
The purpose of this Khrushchevite propaganda was to show the Soviet people that now they had found the “genuine Leninist leader who knows everything, who settles everything correctly, who has extraordinary vigour, who is giving the proper reply to everyone”, whose irresistible activity “is putting everything right in the Soviet Union, cleaning up the crimes of the past, and assuring progress”.
I was in Moscow on the occasion of a meeting of the parties of all the socialist countries. I think it was January 1956, when a consultative meeting was held about the problems of economic development of the member countries of Comecon. It was the time when Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites were advancing in their hostile activity. We were together with Khrushchev and Voroshilov in a villa outside Moscow, where all the representatives of the sister parties were to have lunch. The others had not yet arrived. I had never heard the Soviet leaders openly speak ill of Stalin, and I, for my part, continued as before to speak with affection and deep respect for the great Stalin. Apparently these words of mine did not sound sweet in Khrushchev’s ears. While waiting for the other comrades to come, Khrushchev and Voroshilov said to me:
“Shall we take some air in the park?”
We went out and strolled around the paths of the park. Khrushchev said to Klim Voroshilov:
“Do tell Enver something about Stalin’s mistakes. ”
I pricked up my ears, although I had long suspected that they were crooks. And Voroshilov began to tell me that “Stalin made mistakes in the line of the party, he was brutal, and so savage that you could not discuss anything with him.”
Voroshilov went on, “He even allowed crimes to be committed, and he must bear responsibility for this. He made mistakes also in the field of the development of the economy, therefore it is not right to describe him as the ‘architect of the construction of socialism’. Stalin did not have correct relations with the other parties . . .”
Voroshilov went on and on pouring out such things against Stalin. Some I understood and some I didn’t, because, as I have written above, I did not understand Russian well, but nevertheless I understood the essence of the conversation and the aim of these two and I was revolted. Khrushchev was walking ahead of us, carrying a stick with which he hit the cabbages that they had planted in the park. (Khrushchev had planted vegetables even in the parks in order to pose as an expert in agriculture.)
As soon as Voroshilov ended his slanderous tale I asked him:
“How is it possible that Stalin could make such mistakes?”
Khrushchev turned to me, his face flushed, and replied:
“It is possible, it is possible Comrade Enver, Stalin did these things.”
“You have seen these things when Stalin was alive. But how is it that you did not help him to avoid these mistakes, which you say he made?” I asked Khrushchev.
“It is natural that you ask this question, Comrade Enver, but you see this kapusta[3] here? Stalin would have cut off your head just as easily as the gardener will cut this kapusta and Khrushchev hit the cabbage with his stick.
Everything is clear!” I said to Khrushchev and said no more.
We went inside. The other comrades had arrived. I was seething with anger. That night they were to serve up to us smiles and promises for a “greater” and “more rapid development” of socialism, for “more aid” and for “more extensive” and “all-round collaboration”. It was the time when the notorious 20th Congress was being prepared, the time when Khrushchev was advancing more rapidly towards the seizure of power. He was creating the figure of a “popular” moujik leader, who was opening the prisons and concentration camps, who not only did not fear the reactionaries and the condemned enemies in the prisons in the Soviet Union, but by releasing them, wanted to show they had been condemned even when they were “innocent”.
Everyone knows what Trotskyites, conspirators and counter-revolutionaries Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, and Pyatakov were, what traitors Tukhachevsky and the other generals, agents of the Intelligence Service or the Germans, were. But to Khrushchev and Mikoyan they were all fine people and a little later, in February 1956, they were to present them as innocent victims of the “Stalinist terror”. This was being built up slowly, public opinion was being carefully prepared. The “new” leaders, who were the same as in the past, with the exception of Stalin, were posing as liberals in order to say to the people: “Breathe freely, you are free, you are in genuine democracy because the tyrant and the tyranny have been eliminated. Now everything is proceeding on Lenin’s road. Plenty has been created. The markets will be so full that we won’t know what to do with all the products.”
Khrushchev, this disgusting, loud-mouthed individual, concealed his wiles and manoeuvres under a torrent of empty words. Nevertheless, in this way, he created a situation favourable to his group. Khrushchev let no day go by without indulging in unrestrained demagogy about the development of agriculture, transferring people and changing methods of work and making himself the only “competent boss” of agriculture, the one who undertook such personal “reforms”.
Khrushchev had even “inaugurated” his elevation to the post of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with a long report on the problems of agriculture, which he delivered at a plenum of the Central Committee in September 1953. This report, which was described as “very important”, contained those Khrushchevite ideas and reforms which, in fact, damaged Soviet agriculture so severely that their catastrophic consequences are being felt to this day. All the boastful clamour about the “virgin lands” was empty advertising. The Soviet Union has bought and is still buying millions of tons of grain from the United States of America.
However, the “collective leadership” and non-publication of Khrushchev’s photographs in the newspapers did not last long. The cult of Khrushchev was being built up by the tricksters, the liberals, the careerists, the lick-spittles and the flatterers. The great authority of Stalin, based on his immortal work, was undermined inside and outside the Soviet Union. His place and authority was usurped by that charlatan, clown and blackmailer.
3. Not Marxist-Leninists But Hucksters
Mikoyan, a cosmopolitan huckster and inveterate anti-Albanian. Difficult talks in June 1953 on economic matters—the Soviet leaders are bargaining over aid for Albania. Khrushchev’s “advice” one year later: “You don’t need heavy industry”, “We shall supply you with oil and metals”, “Don’t worry about bread grain, we’ll supply you with all you want." Quarrels with Mikoyan. Discontent in Comecon from the revisionist chiefs. Ochab, Dej, Ulbricht. The June 1956 Comecon consultation in Moscow Khrushchev: “. . . we must do what Hitler did.” Talks with Khrushchev again. His “advice”: “Albania should advance with cotton, sheep, fish and citrus fruit.”
We were determined to carry on and develop even further the practice, which was begun at the time when Stalin was alive, of exchanging opinions with and seeking the aid of the Soviet leadership over our economic problems. In the first 8-9 years of the people’s power, we had achieved a series of successes in the economic development of the country, we had taken the first steps in the fields of industrialization and the collectivisation of agriculture, had created a certain base in this direction and gained a certain experience, which would serve us to carry our socialist economy steadily ahead. But we had not become conceited over what we had achieved and neither did we conceal the problems, weaknesses and great difficulties which we had. Therefore we felt the need for continual consultation with our friends, and first of all, with the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; likewise we felt the need for some material aid and credits from them. These we never considered as charity and never sought them as such.
However, in this field of our relations and contacts with the post-Stalin Soviet leadership, too, we very soon saw the first signs that things were no longer going as before. There was something wrong, there was no longer that former atmosphere, when we would go to Stalin and open our hearts to him without hesitation and he would listen and speak to us just as frankly from his heart, the heart of an internationalist communist. More and more each day, in his successors, instead of communists, we saw hucksters.
Mikoyan, in particular, was the most negative, the most dubious element and the greatest intriguer among the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This huckster, who was constantly grinding and clicking his false teeth, was also ruminating on diabolical anti-Marxist, conspiratorial, putschist plans, as was proved later. This individual, with an unpleasant face and a black heart, behaved in a very menacing way, especially towards us Albanians. Our relations with this tight-fisted dealer and money-changer were economic and commercial. Everything in connection with Albania, both in according credits, and in commercial exchanges, this individual looked at simply from the angle of a trader. The friendly, internationalist socialist feelings had been wiped out as far as he was concerned.
To Mikoyan, Albania was a “geographical notion”, a country with a people of no value. I never heard him say one word about our war, our people, or the efforts we made in the struggle with the great difficulties for the revival of the country and our economy ruined by the war. He who had visited nearly every country, never once said that he would like to come to Albania. It seemed that the Soviet leadership based itself on the “great economic experience” of this cosmopolitan huckster, who, as history showed, plotted with Nikita Khrushchev against Stalin, whom they had decided to murder. He admitted this with his own mouth to Mehmet and me in February 1960. After the putsch they linked up with American imperialism, and set about the destruction to its foundations of the great work of Lenin and Stalin, socialism in the Soviet Union. It was Mikoyan who decided what aid the Soviet Union would provide for Albania, as for the other countries.
In relations with us Mikoyan was not only the most miserly but also the most insulting. This anti-Albanian line of his was permanent, even when Stalin was alive. In my memoirs “With Stalin” I have written of an occasion when Stalin, speaking to me about the internationalist aid which the Soviets would give us, smiled and asked me:
“But the Albanians themselves, are they going to work?!”
I immediately sensed why Stalin asked me this. Two or three days earlier we had had a long debate with Mikoyan in connection with our economic situation and the request for aid which our side presented to the Soviet leadership. Mikoyan had said insulting things about our situation and affairs, going so far as to say to us: “You are basing your development on foreign aid alone!”
“No,” I retorted. “It’s not so. We are working day and night, we hardly sleep, but these are the conditions and the difficulties we have.” And I went on to speak about the tireless and self-sacrificing work which the workers, the working peasantry, the youth, the women and the whole population, young and old, in Albania were doing.
“But,” said the huckster, making a retreat, “you want to set up industry. Industry is difficult for you and there is nowhere for you to find it, except by seeking it from abroad, from us. Employ the forces in agriculture, improve the life of the countryside, and don’t expect to achieve development through industry alone.”
We continued to argue with the Armenian trader for a long time, and as usual, he closed the discussion by saying to us: “Very well, I shall put this before the leadership.” In fact, Stalin approved all our requests, and neither on this nor on any other occasion did he make criticisms of us like those of Mikoyan. However, he had poured out his poison against us to Stalin, too.
With all our economic delegations Mikoyan behaved like the hard-faced trader he was.
“We haven’t got it to give you. You are asking for big credits. We cannot help you to build the rice husking factory, cement factory, etc.,” he told us, although our requests for credits had been pared to the bone.
The modesty of our requests and our hesitation in making them were typical of the poor who know what suffering, sweat and toil are, and showed that we knew the colossal needs of the Soviet Union devastated by the war and its international obligations. As to the majority of the factories and other projects, which they accorded us on credits and which we were building; the way to supplying them had been paved when Stalin was alive. In vain we explained to Mikoyan the deplorable situation of our war devastated country, which did not inherit even the smallest factory from the bourgeoisie, and which had not a tractor to work with, so that it was not fair to treat us on the same footing as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc. Once I had a real quarrel with Mikoyan because he saw fit to scold me over the fact that our cows gave 500 to 600 litres of milk a year.
“Why do you keep them?” he said. “Slaughter them!”
I said angrily:
“Our road will never be to slaughter our animals, but to feed them better and improve their breed. You ought to know that our people are still short of food, let alone the animals.”
“In our country one cow gives . . . ” he boasted, mentioning so many thousand litres of milk.
“Excuse me,” I said, “you are an old cadre of the Soviet state and ought to know: immediately after the October Revolution, say in 1920 or 1924, did your cows give as much milk as they give today?”
“No,” he said. “Things were different then.”
“And this is the case with our country now,” I said. “We cannot reach your level within 4 or 5 years of liberation. The main thing is that we have set to work and we are eager for development and progress. We lack neither the desire nor the will. But we have to assess matters correctly.”
After the death of Stalin the anti-Albanian nuances in the attitude of the wheeler-dealer minister of the Soviet Union became a permanent line. However, now he was no longer on his own. His pencil, which always tended rather to mark crosses and write “no” to our modest requests, now found backing and support among the others. I have spoken above about the meeting in June 1953 with Malenkov, Beria, Mikoyan, and others in Moscow. Apart from other things, from the way they behaved towards us and how they handled the economic problems which we raised, I felt that now it was not only the body of the unforgettable Stalin that was missing in the Kremlin, but also his generous humane spirit, his attentive, friendly behaviour and his outstanding Marxist-Leninist thought.
I hadn’t spoken for more than a few minutes about the socio-economic situation in Albania, and the unprecedented mobilization of the working masses, the communists and cadres in work, when Malenkov interrupted me:
“Nu, tovarish Enver,”[4] he said, “you are presenting the situation in Albania to us as good, but the facts are not so. Therefore listen to our observations. ”
And they delivered a cart-load of criticism about our situation and work. We do not know from what source they had obtained these “data”, but the fact is that things were exaggerated and inflated to an astonishing degree. Two of their “criticisms”, in particular, have stuck in my mind.
The first was about our state apparatus.
“Your apparatus,” the Soviet leadership had allegedly observed, “is so extended and inflated that not even Rockefeller and Morgan would dare to maintain it!”
And immediately after dubbing us Rockefellers and Morgans, in the next criticism they went to the other extreme:
“Your peasants are short of food, have no oxen, have no flocks, have not even a chicken (only they know how they had counted the chickens in Albania!), let alone other things of prime necessity.”
Rockefellers on the one hand, and poverty-stricken on the other! How was I to understand this logic?!
But the voice of Mikoyan did not allow me to ponder longer . . . As the man of figures he was, Mikoyan was speaking with percentages, numbers, comparisons and graphs. And he went on:
“Your economic situation is bad, your agriculture is in a miserable state, you have less livestock than before the war, you import 20 per cent of your bread grain, the collectivisation is proceeding slowly, the peasantry is not convinced about the collectivisation. You are exploiting the peasants. Financial matters are going badly with you. You do not know how to conduct trade,” the Armenian prattled.
Despite the respect which I had for the Soviet leaders, I could not remain silent.
“We are not feasting and dancing,” I replied. “We are toiling and sweating, but everything can’t be put right immediately. You have gone through this phase, too, don’t forget.”
“No,” he said, “we don’t forget, but we ourselves worked.”
“And we, too, are ourselves working,” I continued, “because there are no serfs in our country. We are not begging, but we are asking you for internationalist aid.”
My sharp replies made him soften his tone a little. Nevertheless he continued:
“Your plans are always unfulfilled. Let us take building. You are doing a colossal amount of building within your country. But these buildings are not being completed, in the first place, because you are short of labour power, and have not created suitable conditions, and second, because you are engaged in building many factories which are not necessary. You are doing all this building without taking account of the real conditions of Albania. You are building a hydro-power station in Mat. We ask you: where are you going to use the electric power? We do not see where you will use it. You have no need for so much electric power.”
His reasoning seemed very astonishing to me, and I objected:
“When it is finished, the hydro-power station on the Mat River will provide about 25,000 KW. Does this seem a large and unnecessary amount to you?! Bear in mind, Comrade Mikoyan, not only that we need electric power just now, but also that the planned development of our economy in the future cannot be guaranteed without taking timely measures to ensure the necessary supply of electric power.”
“You are not exact in your planning. The hydro-power station is costing you an enormous amount and you won’t know what to do with the current,” he persisted. “Likewise you have planned to build unnecessary factories, like those for steel, timber-processing, paper, glass, linseed, bread, etc. Does Albania need all these factories? Why are you building the refinery?[5] Have you enough oil or will you build this refinery to have it lie idle? Have a good look at these things and remove what is unnecessary. The question of agriculture is very critical, therefore reduce your investments in industry and strengthen agriculture!”
I listened to him saying this and for a moment it seemed to me that I was facing. not a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet deputy prime minister, but Kidric, Tito’s envoy, who with his associates, seven to eight years earlier, had done everything possible to convince us to abandon industry and not set up any industrial project. “Agriculture, agriculture” insisted the men of Belgrade. “Agriculture, only agriculture,” I was hearing them advise me now, in Moscow in 1953 . . .
This whole meeting, which set out to examine our economic problems, continued in this spirit to the end.
A few days later, we sat down again with Mikoyan and one or two other Soviet officials and again “thrashed out” the economic problems. Seeing the unhelpful predisposition of the friends, we ourselves cancelled many of our requests. We restricted ourselves to the most essential things and, regardless of their “advice”, I dug my toes in and managed to secure a small credit for industry, especially for the oil industry and the mines.
I shall never forget the moment when we met Malenkov and Mikoyan for the final talk.
“Acting on your advice,” I said, “I talked things over with my comrades and we decided that the paper mill, as well as the glass, steel and bread factories, from our former requests, should be postponed until the coming five-year plan.”
“Pravilno!” said Malenkov, while Mikoyan hastened to put a cross on the list with his big pencil.
“We’ll postpone the building of the hydropower station in Mat until 1957!”
“Pravilno!” repeated Malenkov and Mikoyan quickly crossed that out, too.
“We’ll remove the construction of the railway and the bitumen plant . . .”
“Pravilno, pravilno . . .”
And so this meeting came to an end.
Come back again!” they told us when we were leaving. “Consider matters well and write to us!”
We thanked our friends for those things they had given us, and returned to Albania.
Although the least that could be said about our impressions from this trip to the Soviet Union is that they were not good, still we continued to preserve our feelings of friendship with and love for the great land of the Soviets, for the Homeland of Lenin and Stalin. Those things in their actions and gestures which had an unpleasant sound to us we kept strictly to ourselves, discussed them anxiously with one another, but in our hearts we did not want things there to take a wrong direction. We said to one another that the Soviet comrades themselves had great economic difficulties in their own country, the loss of Stalin had undoubtedly confused them a little, it was not so easy for them to take over the work of leadership completely, and we ardently hoped that these would be transient manifestations that would be put right in time.
A few months later, however, we again experienced something unpleasant and not correct on their part.
On December 22, 1953, we sent the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a long letter in which, after speaking about the measures we had taken for the strengthening of the people’s power, our economic development, the improvement of life in the village and the progress of agriculture, we also presented a series of problems for consultation and some modest requests for aid and credits for our coming five-year plan. We had drafted this letter according to their instructions, based on an extensive study we had carried out over several months and our opinion was that its requests were very well founded and accurate.
The Soviet specialists and advisers who had come to our country in the framework of the aid and collaboration between our two countries were of the same opinion.
No more than five to six days after we sent our letter to Moscow, the reply of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union arrived in Tirana. The whole letter consisted of 15 or 20 lines. “You have not presented the situation well”, “you have viewed the situation hastily”, “you have not gone into things deeply”, “you have not taken the necessary measures”, “prepare the plan better and write to us again”. This was the entire content of those few lines signed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The disdainful and insulting tone of the new Soviet leadership could not fail to hurt us. We could not fail to ask in astonishment: “How can those people in Moscow know whether we have presented our problems rightly or wrongly, when it is we who live and work in Albania and not they?!”
However, the earlier meetings, especially with Mikoyan, had already taught us what should be done to make our letter pleasing to the Soviets: we cut out many of the requests we had presented, removed from the draft of the future plans some of the things we had envisaged and proposed, especially in the field of industry, and second “edit”, or more accurately, mutilated our letter. We were not mistaken: they informed us they were awaiting us in Moscow to “consult with and help us”.
We held the first meeting with the Soviet leaders on June 8, 1954. It was precisely that meeting at which Khrushchev did not want to speak about our economic problems, since he was still “a bad Albanian”, as he told us, but gave us a lecture about the role of the first secretary of the party and the prime minister.
Nevertheless, at the end of his lecture, Khrushchev also spoke about economic problems, in general, allegedly in the form of orientation and advice, especially about the line we should follow in our economic policy.
“In the development of your economy,” he said, “you must be careful with your calculations. Let us take oil, for example: Is it in your interest to invest so much for oil?!” he asked.
I understood immediately what he was getting at. Despite the “instructions” that they had given us previously, that we should give up prospecting for and extraction of oil in Albania, in the second letter which we sent them, we persisted in our opinions and asked them to assist us in this sector. Now, since he raised the matter, I took the opportunity to put forward our opinion once again.
“As you know from the letter which we sent you,” I said, “the government and the Central Committee of our Party, faced with a major economic and political problem, came to the conclusion that we must continue the extraction of and prospecting for oil at all costs, although this is a heavy burden and will continue to be a heavy burden on our economy for some time yet, if the flow of oil is not increased. We must continue to prospect for and extract oil,” I continued, “because this is a substance of great strategic and economic importance for our country and our camp. However, the existing wells bored for prospecting and exploitation are utterly inadequate. The output of the existing wells is steadily falling off, and this not only causes considerable deficits in production and burdens our economy, but causes major fluctuations in the balance of our exports.”
“Are you certain that you have oil deposits?” asked Khrushchev.
“Allow me to tell you that the expedition of the geological studies for oil, led by Soviet specialists, which has been working since 1950, is optimistic about the presence of oil in many parts of our country, apart from the existing fields. However, the assessment of new reserves in both the existing fields and the new fields requires investments. We have made large expenditure in this sector, are building the refinery, have the most militant part of the working class there and have trained oil-worker cadres. In all this process,” I continued, “we cannot but honestly acknowledge many shortcomings and weaknesses on our part in the organization of the work. But we are struggling with all our might to eliminate them. However, here we are still in the dark about the reserves of oil. The reserves known up to now are minimal and they could run out within a period of 2 or 3 years if we do not intensify our prospecting.”
“That should not worry you,” interjected Khrushchev, “we have plenty of oil, we will supply you.”
“Yes,” I replied, “during the years 1948-1953 we were compelled to import refined oil and lubricating oils which cost millions of rubles. But you understand that this was and still is a very heavy burden for us and just think what funds will be freed if we find and use the oil which lies underground in our country.
“Apart from these very cogent reasons,” I went on, “there is another major reason for the necessity of the work with oil: in case of a threat to our country, if it is impossible in practice for our friends to supply us with fuel, we shall find ourselves without a drop of oil, and everything in our country will come to a standstill.
“Bearing in mind all these circumstances,” I said to Khrushchev, “we decided that we must continue the work for the extraction of and prospecting for oil. However, we need your aid for this. On the basis of the data from Soviet and Albanian experts, if we continue to extract oil and carry on our prospecting with the means we have at present, and in those places where we have those small reserves, we cannot go on for more than two or three years. After this period, we will again be facing very grave difficulties.
“Therefore, on the basis of this situation, we ask the Soviet government to study our request about granting us a credit for the oil sector for the next three years. I would like to add that the machinery we have and will receive will be used by our own cadres, as well as a very small number of Soviet engineers.”
“Very well, very well,” said Khrushchev “but the thing is that calculations must be made well, in detail and you must see whether it is worthwhile. I know that your oil is not in demand, it contains many impurities, especially bitumen and a high percentage of sulphur, and processing it makes it even less profitable. Let us give you an example of what has occurred to us with our oil at Baku. We have invested billions of rubles there. Beria always sought sums for investment for the development of oil in Baku from Joseph Vissarionovich, since Stalin, having worked in Baku in the past, knew that there was oil there. However, from the discoveries we have made today, other places of our homeland and from the analyses we have made, it turns out that the exploitation of the oil at Baku is not profitable.”
After giving me a good lecture with figures about the “profitability” and “non-profitability of the extraction of oil, with the aim that I “should not make mistakes” like Stalin(!), Khrushchev came round to the point:
“Hence we must make our reckoning economic questions very carefully, both in our country and in yours, and if you have profitable sources of oil, fine, we give you credits. However, reckoning things this way, it turns out that it is more profitable for us to supply you from our oil . . .
“We must have regard for profitability in everything,” continued Khrushchev. “Let us take industry. I am of the same opinion as you that Albania should have its own industry. But what sort of industry? I think that you ought to develop the food industry, such as preserving and processing fish, fruit, vegetable oil, etc. You want to develop heavy industry, too. This should be looked at carefully,” he said and after mentioning that we could set up some engineering plant for repair work and spare parts, he added:
“As for the mineral-processing industry, for the production of metals, this is unprofitable for you. We have metals and we can supply you with what you want. If we give you one day’s production from our industry, your needs will be fulfilled for the whole year.”
“Likewise in agriculture. In your country,” he continued, “you should plant those crops which grow best and are more profitable. In this direction, too, we have made mistakes, as in Georgia, for example. We had taken the decision to plant bread grain there, to plant cotton in the Ukraine, etc. But calculations show that in Georgia we should grow citrus fruit, grapes, and other fruit, and should grow grain in the Ukraine. Now we have taken other decisions and have eliminated those crops which don’t grow well, both in Georgia and other places. Thus, in Albania, too, those crops which do best and yield the greatest production, such as cotton, citrus fruit, olives, etc., should be developed. In this way Albania will become a beautiful garden and we will fulfil each other’s needs.”
“One of the main directions of the development of agriculture in our country,” I said, “is that of increasing bread grain production. Bread has always been and still is a great problem for us. ”
“Don’t worry about growing bread grain,” interjected Khrushchev immediately. “We shall supply you with all the wheat you want, because even one day’s over fulfilment of the plan in the Soviet Union is sufficient for Albania to live on for three years. We are advancing rapidly in agriculture,” he continued. “Let me read you some of the statistics about the fulfilment of the plan of the spring sowing in our country: the planting has been fulfilled . . . per cent, . . . hectares of land more than last year have been planted, . . . million hectares above the plan . . .,” and he went on to stuff us with figures, which he rattled off, one after the other, to give us the impression that we were dealing not with any sort of leader, but with one that had the situation at his fingertips.
As for his figures, we had no reason to doubt their accuracy, therefore we were pleased and wished the Soviet Union the greatest possible progress. As to the opinions and “directions” which he gave us for the development of our economy, however, we could not agree with Khrushchev at all. I do not want to say that as early as this first official meeting with him, in June 1954, we managed to realize that we were facing the future chief of modern revisionism. No, we were to realize this later, but at this meeting we noticed that his ideas, both about oil and the orientation of industry and agriculture in our country, were not correct, did not respond to the needs of our country, and were not compatible with the basic principles of the construction of socialism in a country or with the teachings and experience of Lenin and Stalin. Therefore, we decided to oppose his ideas and defend our own views. At this meeting, however, Khrushchev left no room for debate.
“I expressed these opinions so that you will bear them in mind,” he said in conclusion. As to the discussion of the concrete questions you raised here in connection with the development of your economy, for our part, we have appointed a group of comrades headed by Mikoyan. Finally, we shall meet again and make the decision jointly. ”
For several days on end we battled with Mikoyan, who now set to work with his pruning shears. In order to reject our requests for the development of industry, which were modest enough, but on which we insisted, he and his comrades, as usual, repeated the same old refrain:
“Why do you need industry?! Don’t you see the state of your countryside?”
Naturally we knew the situation in our countryside much better than they, knew the backwardness of our agriculture inherited from the past, and precisely because we knew these things well, we had always devoted special attention to the progress of agriculture and to the raising of the standard of living in the countryside. We had made and were making very big investments for our possibilities in land improvement, irrigation, opening up new land, etc.; we were supplying the peasantry with selected seeds and farming machinery, had set up a number of state farms, had progressed well in the collectivisation, had continually taken measures to facilitate and encourage the increase of agricultural production and the raising of the standard of living in the village, etc. But you can’t achieve everything overnight. Moreover, we were well aware of the Marxist-Leninist truth, and we felt it in our daily practice, that agriculture could never advance without the development of industry, without the creation and strengthening of those basic branches which would favour the harmonious development of the whole of our people’s economy. Therefore, in these meetings with the Soviet leaders we stuck to our opinions and persisted in our requests.
“Despite all the progress it has made,” we told them among other things, “today our industry produces only a limited range of products and is quite unable to fulfil the needs of the working people. In many cases, too, securing our products depends on the delivery of many goods from abroad, such as fuel, steel, rolled steel, tyres, chemicals, chemical fertilizers, spare parts, instruments, and many other things.
“Hence, our country is heavily dependent on imports. Our industry still produces very little, and being remote from friendly countries, frequently production is suspended in whole branches of industry because of the lack of some raw material, supplementary material or instrument. Our state has never possessed even the smallest reserve in any kind of material—from bread to pencils. It is necessary for us to import not only the main goods, like grain, fuel, etc., but also every kind of machinery and equipment, instruments, spare parts, textiles, footwear, thread, needles, nails, glass, rope, string, sacks, pencils, paper, razor blades, matches, medicaments, etc.
“Such a grave situation, comrades.” we went on, “does not make us pessimistic, but this is the reality. We have to strive might and main to overcome the difficulties in order to improve the situation. But how to achieve this?
“The Central Committee of the Party and our Government think that the existing situation cannot be altered, except by developing industry along with agriculture, the industry which, step by step, will relieve us of that great burden of imports, which we are obliged to cope with at present,” we told them.
In the end Mikoyan and his group gave way.
“All right,” he said, “we shall refer those things on which we have not reached agreement to the leadership and decide on them jointly at the final meeting.”
At the final meeting of this visit, which was held two or three days before we left for Albania, Khrushchev’s behaviour was more friendly and more open. After our insistence on those things we were seeking (undoubtedly Mikoyan had informed him of the debates we had had), Khrushchev showed himself “more generous”, repeated several times, “We will assist little Albania”, and agreed that some of our requests for credits and aid would be fulfilled.
At this meeting he spoke well about our Party, the Central Committee and me, and, as usual, was unsparing in his “boastful promises”. We were soon to understand why he acted like that: it was still the beginning of the elevation of him and his group, and for this he needed popularity, good opinion, the idea within the Soviet Union and abroad that we had to do with a jolly good fellow, a warm-hearted, skilful and wise leader, who knows how to put up opposition, but can also back down, who is not tight-fisted, but prudent and a consummate accountant.
Thus, it was the time when Khrushchev was “making investments” in favour of his secret action, and to this end, according to the occasion, he had to appear “generous”, “friendly” and “humane”. However, behind this fine, “friendly” façade, the guard of the Mikoyans and other functionaries of commerce was extremely active, and both with us and with others, they behaved like real hucksters in the talks over economic problems. They were Khrushchev’s men who, with his knowledge and on his instructions, employed all kinds of pressure and trickery during “working meetings” and “the concrete examination of matters” to prune our requests and to “smooth” matters over in such a way that when we finally met Khrushchev, all that remained for him to do was to smile, flatter and propose toasts.
Once we had a bitter wrangle with Mikoyan in connection with granting us a credit for mass consumer goods. There is no need here to dwell on what a grave situation we had during those years for such goods, or on the urgent needs which our country had in this direction. The Soviet leadership was aware of the situation, but, in support of our request for the credit I mentioned, we had written it a letter in which we gave a brief outline of how we fulfilled the needs of the population. However, before beginning the examination of our request, Mikoyan levelled the following charge against us:
“You are using up the credits we have granted you for the development of the economy in other sectors. You buy mass consumer goods with them. ”
I replied: “We have had and still have very great needs for consumer goods, but I am not aware of what you charge us with. We have never permitted the credits for the development of industry or agriculture to be used to purchase commodities.”
“Yes, you have!” repeated Mikoyan. “You have used up . . . million rubles,” and he mentioned a figure which I don’t remember precisely, but which amounted to more than ten million.
“I’m hearing this for the first time,” I said, “nevertheless, we shall look into the matter.”
“I shall convince you!” said Mikoyan in a stern and angry tone and ordered one of the nearby functionaries to bring in the documents.
A little later he came in, looking pale, and laid the accounts before Mikoyan.
“There is no violation,” he said. “The Albanian side has bought the goods you mentioned with the credit which our side accorded it precisely for consumer goods.”
Mikoyan, in a tight spot, muttered something between his teeth, and then, in connection with our request for a new credit for the purchase of consumer goods, he replied:
“We can no longer give you such credits, because we make deals over these things: you give us something, we give you something in return.”
“I am sorry that you present the question in this way, when you are well aware that our country is in difficulties and when the Italian, Yugoslav and Greek enemies have us encircled and are plotting against us,” I replied. “What else do you want us to give you? We supply you and the countries of people’s democracy with the chrome, oil and copper we extract. Do you expect us to give you the bread from the mouths of our people, who still have insufficient food? I do not consider your reasoning in order,” I told the Armenian, “and I ask you to re-examine the matter.”
They did re-examine it, but they accepted our requests after making big cuts. They gave us some limited credits, but they gave us arrogant criticism wholesale with lashings of “advice”.
All these stands, and others like these, in our relations with them, continued up to the time of the Meeting of the 81 parties, which was held in Moscow in November 1960.
During this time we had many bilateral meetings with the Soviet leaders, at which we discussed economic problems with them and sought some aid and credits, and we also had many contacts with them in the meetings, talks and consultations which were organized in the framework of the Council of Mutual Economic Aid.
The way in which these meetings were organized and our friends behaved towards us, towards the problems we raised and the difficulties we had, more and more impelled us to ask ourselves: are we dealing with Marxist-Leninists or hucksters? Ulbricht, Novotny, Ochab, Dej, Kadar, Gomulka, Cyrankiewicz, Zhivkov, and the others, were at one another’s throats; each of them complained that he was in dire straits; they all called for “more aid” from their friends, because they had “pressure from below”; they tried to elbow one another out, presented all kinds of “arguments” and figures; they tried to dodge their obligations and to grab as much as possible at the expense of others. Meanwhile Khrushchev or his envoys would get up, deliver lectures on the “socialist division of labour”, support one or the other, according to their own interests in a given situation, and demand “unity” and “understanding” in the “socialist family”. And in all this wrangling Albania went almost unmentioned, as if it did not exist for them.
The talks and consultations went on for two, three or four days on end, whole dossiers were filled with speeches, requests, decisions, balances, but socialist Albania was treated with disdain by the others as if we were a nuisance. We were well aware of the situation in our country, were conscious that our economic potential was nowhere near that of the other countries; we knew also that these countries had their own big problems and difficulties, but these should never have served as a reason for them to underrate and ignore us. With great efforts, after many meetings and talks, we managed occasionally to squeeze some aid or credit out of them. We thanked them whole-heartedly for what they gave us, thanked the fraternal peoples, first of all, and for our part, not only did we fully repay the credits on time, but with what we had, we honestly fulfilled every other obligation of ours towards our friends. It was precisely sincerity, the genuine internationalist spirit, that was lacking amongst them. When it came to practical fulfilment of their commitments to provide aid for our country, each of them would make excuses:
“We have shortages and needs ourselves,” said Ulbricht, “we have pressure from Federal Germany, therefore we are unable to help Albania.”
“The counter-revolution caused us damage,” was Kadar’s justification. “We cannot fulfil our commitment about aid.”
All of them, one after the other, acted in this way. And in the end the “solution” was found:
“The Council of Mutual Economic Aid recommends to the Albanian comrades that the problems raised by them here should be solved with the Soviet government through bilateral meetings.”
Among many such meetings of the Comecon countries, the one that was held in Moscow in June 1956 has stuck in my mind. Now Khrushchev was going headlong down his road of betrayal, but the others, too, were galloping after him. The 20th Congress of the CPSU, about which I shall speak later, was having its effect. Lack of unity, division and contradictions are the natural outcome and concomitants of revisionism.
This was apparent at this meeting, 3 or 4 months after the 20th Congress.
Ochab, who had become first secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, got up and declared:
“We have not fulfilled the obligations with which we have been charged for coal and are not going to do so. We cannot fulfil the plan, its targets are set too high and must be reduced. The coal workers live badly, they work to exhaustion.”
As soon as he finished, Gerö, Ulbricht and Dej got up, one after the other, and levelled every kind of charge against the Poles. The atmosphere was very heated.
“If you want coking coal, invest in Poland,” replied Ochab. “We must improve the standard of living. Things have reached such a state that the Polish workers are about to go on strike and abandon the mines . . .”
“Where should we invest first?!” replied the others. “In the steel plants of the Soviet Union or in your coal mines?!”
“We must examine these things,” said Khrushchev, trying to cool the tempers. “As for the question of workers, if you Poles have insufficient, or those you have walk out, we can bring workers from other countries.”
At this Ochab jumped up.
“It is not fair,” he shouted. “You must help us. We are not going back to Poland without settling this matter. Either reduce the plan or increase the investments . . .”
“Once taken, the decisions must be carried out,” interposed Dej.
“The decisions are not being carried out,” said Gerö, adding fuel to the flames. “We have several factories in which we have been told to produce arms and special equipment, but no one is buying the products from us.”
“They don’t take them from us, either,” said Ochab, jumping up again. “What are we to do with them?!”
“Let us not speak here like factory managers,” said Khrushchev to Ochab. “Things can’t be discussed in this way. You must look at the profitability. We, too, have changed direction in many plants. For example,” continued Khrushchev, “we have turned some arms plants into plants producing water pumps. I have some suggestions: about these problems,” continued Khrushchev, and he began to bring out those “gems” which he had on the tip of his tongue:
“In regard to a number of special products of industry,” he said among other things, “we must do as Hitler did. At that time Germany was, alone and he produced all those things. We must; study this experience and we, too, must set up joint enterprises for special products, for example, weapons.”
We could not believe our ears! Could it be, true that the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union wanted to learn from the experience of Hitler and even recommended it to others?! But this is what things were coming to. The others listened and nodded approval.
“You must provide us with designs,” said Ochab.
“You don’t deserve to get them,” shouted Khrushchev angrily, “because the West steals them from you. We gave you the patent of an aircraft and the capitalists stole it from you.”
“That occurred,” admitted Ochab, and pulled in his horns a little.
“We gave you the secret report of the 20th, Congress and you printed it and sold it at 20 zloty a copy. You don’t know how to keep secrets.”
“Right!” whispered Ochab, and drew in his horns even further.
“We have given you another four top secret documents and they have flown from you,” added Bulganin, numbering them off one by one to his face.
“Yes,” said Ochab, and now his voice could hardly be heard. “Someone stole them from us and fled to the West.”
“The situation in Poland is not good,” continued Khrushchev. “You are following an opportunist policy towards the Soviet Union and the countries of people’s democracy, let alone within your own country.”
“In the context of collaboration,” interjected Ulbricht, “we must collaborate with all, especially with the social-democrats.”
For a moment Khrushchev was at a loss for words. “Collaboration with all”, rehabilitations, a gentle policy towards enemies, were his ideas, the continuation of his opportunist and pacifist policy, the very policy which he was following in the Soviet Union. The others were not lagging behind, indeed, some of them were trying to outstrip him.
“Agreed, collaboration,” shouted Khrushchev, “but not to rise against the Soviet Union and our camp. This is what is happening in Poland.” He turned to Ochab and Cyrankiewicz, who during the whole time had sat smoking French Gauloises, without saying a single word. “You must improve the situation. You must build up the people’s trust in you.”
“We have released all the imprisoned social-democrats,” said Ochab.
“You should have kept some of them,” said Saburov ironically. “To whom are we going to drink the toast today, to the social-democrats?!”
Khrushchev provided the answer:
“Let us drink to collaboration!”
It was quite obvious that things in the camp were taking the wrong road. The “demons” which Khrushchev released from the bottle were stirring and poking out their tongues even at their liberator. He tried to manoeuvre, to get them on side, to set the others on to one (this time Ochab was in the dock), and then, when he saw that the quarrel was not dying down, he poured out threats and warnings to all. And as the inveterate trickster he was, he knew how to find the best means of pressure. This time he used the weapon of bread. One of the Soviet chinovniki[6] of Comecon reported briefly on the state of agriculture in the camp and sounded the alarm about the deficits in bread grain.
Khrushchev got up at once and exploited the opportunity:
“Bread is a vital problem,” he said in a grave tone, in which both the pressure and the threat were clear. “We have given you what we had to give. Now we have no more to give you. Therefore, think well about bread, there is no other way . . .”
After continuing for several minutes to wave the whip of bread, suddenly his face brightened and he hopped with great pleasure to his favourite theme - maize! I cannot remember any of the meetings I have had with him, even those purely for political and ideological problems, in which Khrushchev did not eulogize the plant so dear to his heart.
“In recent years,” he said, “we have given importance to maize and have achieved marvellous results. With maize,” he continued, “we solved the problem of meat, milk and butter.”
“Without meat, milk and butter there is no socialism,” put in Mikoyan to sweeten up his “chief”.
“No, there is not!” replied Khrushchev and continued, “Every leader must give importance to maize ! Look, I took my native village under my patronage, and allow me to report to you the results: I found 60 pigs in the first year, increased them to 250 two years ago, and now there are 600 of them.”
And after this “colossal” report, imagine how befitting this was in the mouth of the number one leader of the Soviet Union, he hurled criticism at all of them—Ulbricht, Hegedüs, Cyrankiewicz in turn.
“As to Albania,” he added, “I have nothing to say because I do not know it.”
I seized the opportunity and interjected:
“Come for a visit and get to know it.”
“I can’t give you an answer now, we shall meet separately,” he said, and pressed on with his lecture, afraid that the inspiration might escape him.
He spun out the problem at great length, brought up examples, made criticisms, and finally added:
“In regard to Bulgaria and Albania, which are countries with a large peasantry, but especially about Albania, we must think somewhat more deeply and help them.”
As usual, the Council decided that we should solve the problems we raised there with the Soviets. A few days later we met Khrushchev and talked for about an hour.
“First of all,” I said, “we would like you to visit Albania. Your visit will have great importance for enhancing the authority and prestige of our country.”
“I, too, would like to come,” he told me, “but there are certain difficulties. How far is Albania from Moscow?”
He deserved to be told, “Just another twenty minutes beyond Belgrade,” since he had become accustomed to that line long ago, but I bit my tongue. I told him that on a TU-104 the flight from Moscow to Tirana would take about 3 hours, and added:
“Let us establish this line. ”
“But the TU-104 has many seats. Would there be enough passengers to fill it?!” he asked me, quick to catch at the “profitability”.
“Our comrades and yours are always travelling from Moscow to Tirana and back and there is no reason for the aircraft to travel empty,” I said.
“I would like to come,” he repeated to excuse himself. “Indeed I told Tito that I wanted to visit Albania, but first I must take a holiday.”
“You can have your holiday in our country” I said. “We have very fine beaches, as well as mountains.”
“Oh, if I come I won’t be able to rest!” he said to close this question.
There was no reason for me to persist any further.
“As you wish,” I said, and went on into economic matters. I gave him a brief outline of the situation and presented some of the problems, which were causing us most concern.
“The problem is,” said Khrushchev, “that from now on we must think how to find sources of income so that Albania can advance. This is how the friends, also, should look at this problem. The question of Albania has great importance,” he continued, “because by means of your country, we want to attract the attention of Turkey, Greece and Italy, that is, to have them take you as an example. Now this matter must be well thought out and we must find the proper ways. ”
He was silent for a moment, apparently in order to find one of these roads, and I thought that he would come up with maize. But I was wrong.
“Do you grow cotton?” he asked me. “What area do you employ for this crop? What yield do you get?”
I replied to his questions.
“That is nothing,” he said to me, and went on: “We think that you should develop the cotton crop, and in such a way that it will become a great asset, because it brings in a handsome income for you and our friends, for the countries of people’s democracy which do not have cotton. Hence, you have great possibilities to profit from cotton. This is the first thing,” he said, and raised one finger.
“Secondly,” he continued, “the question of sheep raising is a problem for you,” and he asked me about the number of sheep, the yield of wool, milk, meat, etc. After my replies he continued:
“Sheep must become another great asset for you. You must breed fine-woolled sheep. You have pastures and the sheep can be developed. Therefore you must find the most suitable breed, commence artificial insemination on a broad scale, and increase them.”
After giving us his “second road” of development, Khrushchev began on the “third road” that would lead us to salvation. This had to do with fish.
“Fish,” he said, “is another great asset for you. In the Scandinavian countries, in Norway, for example, they have created such a great wealth with fish, that not only do the people eat plenty of it, but they also export large quantities. They catch fish not only in their territorial waters, but also in the open seas. This is what you must do, too,” instructed Khrushchev, “so that fish becomes a great asset for Albania. You must do these things without fail, and we shall help you, and send you specialists, a fishing fleet, etc.”
Since the first three “roads” were leaving my mind boggling, all curiosity I awaited a “fourth road” and he did not fail to make this clear to me also.
“The question of citrus fruit is important for you,” he said. “They, too, should become a great asset for you, because lemons, grape fruit, oranges, etc., are in great demand.”
These were his instructions for the “construction of socialism” in Albania ! Finally he added
“Thought must be given to other assets, too, for instance, to minerals, but the main ones are those I mentioned.
“We will assist you to develop cotton, fishing, citrus fruit and sheep. Both you and we must study these things,” he concluded, “and we are convinced that in this way Albania will quickly become an example for Greece, Turkey and Italy.”
It was useless to enter into discussion about the “gems” of wisdom he presented to us. I thanked him for his “advice” and we parted.
Now everything was becoming more clear. The Council of Mutual Economic Aid recommends that we solve the economic problems with Khrushchev. Khrushchev recommends that we solve them with cotton, sheep and with . . . “the miracle of fish”.
All these stands and actions, seen in the complexity of political, ideological, military and other problems, were making us more than ever convinced that in our camp, first of all in the Soviet Union, things were on the decline. Other events were to follow and we, living through them intensively, would learn and would prepare ourselves more for the coming battles.
4. The Touch-Stone
5. The “Mother Party” Wants to be the Conductor
6. The Official Proclamation of Revisionism
7. Designing the Empire
8. My First and Last Visit to China
9. The “Demons” Escape From Control
10. Temporary Retreat in Order to Take Revenge
11. “The Carrot” and “The Stick”
12. From Bucharest to Moscow
13. The Final Act
Notes
- ↑ “That’s right” (Russian in the original)
- ↑ “The Central Committee knows everything” (Russian in the original).
- ↑ “cabbage” (Russian in the original).
- ↑ “Well, Comrade Enver” (Russian in the original).
- ↑ This refers to the oil refinery which was going up in Cërrik at that time.
- ↑ Bureaucratic functionaries of Czarist Russia (Russian in the original).