AFTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH CONGRESS The twenty-fifth congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) began on February 24, the anniversary of Khrushchev's secret speech to the twentieth congress in 1956, and ended on March 5, the anniversary of the death of Stalin. Two crucial dates in the history of the bureaucracy. But they were not even referred to in the congress, and that is the least one can say. The congress was a dreary affair lacking any high points, in the image of the people involved. It was a stage of bureaucrats speaking to an audience of bureaucrats. Of the 4, 900 delegates present, a maximum of 60 were workers in factories or collective farms, an absolutely ridiculous figure, even from the standpoint of window dressing. It was a congress of self-satisfaction and bureaucratic good conscience. The activity of the party was justified at all levels. Economic difficulties? Brezhnev absolved the party of all responsibility, throwing all the blame onto the ministries, which allegedly had not applied the "correct line" and decisions of the preceding party congress. It was a congress of stagnation. The only solutions put forward to deal with the economic difficulties were to go back to the previous policy, with a virtual stagnation in the standard of living of the Soviet masses. It was a congress of immobilism. The composition of the new Politbureau is the most striking illusstration of this. In spite of the canonical age of most of the members (Pelsh is 78, Suslov 75, the others close to 701, only one member was removed, and that was Polyansky, because someone had to be found to take the blame for the catastrophic situation of Soviet agriculture. Brezhnev's position was strengthened, and the praise he received from some of the delegates was an occasion for bits of Flattery reminiscent of the Stalin period. There was only one discordant note inside the congress: the open quarrel with the majority of the Western Communist parties, which dealt a sharp blow to the already badly shaken unity of the "international" Communist movement. A second discordant note, this one from outside the congress, was the hunger strike of eighty political prisoners in the camps. Here again, the tranquility of the bureaucrats was not at all disturbed. The dossier we are publishing below is composed of two parts. The first is devoted to a balance-
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sheet of internal policy during the Brezhnev period. This balance-sheet seeks to analyze what lies beneath the still waters of the twenty-fifth congress. The proceedings of this congress constitute the last manifestation of the apparent stability that has characterized the Brezhnev period, unlike the preceding period, which was marked by many shakeups, Ever since 1964, the primary concern of the Brezhnev team has been to consolidate and maintain the monolithic power of the bureaucracy. This policy has paid off in the short run, but the price that has to be paid today is high, for this stability has been obtained only by postponing basic economic and political decisions, the various representatives of the bureaucracy being unable to reach a consensus on the basis of the lowest common denominator. The composition of the new Politbureau testifies to the degree of conflict among the various factions, at a time when the increasing age of the leading team objectively poses the problem of succession. This succession threatens to come up in a framework of a new and massive rise of discontent among the masses in foce of the total inability of the bureaucracy to assure any rise in their living standard. From this standpoint, the twenty-fifth congress marks the opening of a period of transition, a period that threatens to be much more dangerous
What does it mean to draw a