The following article appeared in the May 26 issue of the French Trotskyist daily Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
"Mr. Podgorny has been relieved of his functions as a member of the Political Bureau."
By means of this very curt statement, millions of Soviet citizens learned May 24 that the Soviet chief of state had lost all power now that he was no longer a member of the only genuine decisionmaking body in the Soviet Union, the only body where votes have any meaning-the Political Bureau of the single party.
In theory, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (ie., Nikolai V. Podgorny, the chief of state), who is elected by the soviets, which are supposed to be organs of popular sovereignty, should have been the most "powerful" man in the country. In reality, his functions were purely formal. It can be assumed that the next session of the Supreme Soviet (the Soviet parliament) will ratify Podgorny's eclipse and divest him of the chairmanship.
No Soviet citizen will be surprised by a turn of events that seems paradoxical for a regime claiming to be based on the "soviets." Everyone knows that the soviets-theoretically organs of people's power-have long been nothing but organs of bureaucratic administration and a rubber stamp for the decisions of the party at all levels. [French Communist party head Georges] Marchais made a very revealing slip in this respect, when he said on television that "the soviets are... the municipal governments."
Still, Podgorny's mandate as chief of state was supposed to come from the people alone, through the medium of socalled free elections. No problem-sham elections will be organized so that no one can say that the constitution was not respected. Similarly, we will soon see those who unanimously elected Podgorny to office divest him of it with the same degree of unanimity, though no one will be exactly sure of the reason. It will probably be only much later that the people will be informed, not surprisingly, that Podgorny had suddenly revealed himself to be an "antiparty element," or that he suffered from "subjectivism" or "voluntarism"- take your choice-unless, of course, they say he "violated the norms of collective
G pam
PODGORNY: Loser in Kremlin dog fight.
labor." Or perhaps they will not give any explanation whatever. After all, this is a lot easier, and does not risk sowing confusion in the people's minds. After a while, Podgorny will die, in some remote retirement home for minor officials, forgotten by everyone, since all traces of his political career will have been erased.
The Problem of Brezhnev's Succession
However, if in the Byzantine atmosphere of the Kremlin this type of ouster reflects a change in the relationship of forces between rival factions, it also reveals the existence of different responses by the bureaucracy to real political problems.
All the commentators will observe that, from the standpoint of selecting the successors of the current leadershipwhich will soon be disabled by senility, since the average age of members of the Political Bureau is 68—Brezhnev has taken a new step forward in consolidating his power.
In a regime in which a small ruling caste an absolute the exercises an absolute dictatorship, the matter of "individuals" unquestionably plays a certain independent role in politics that can affect the stability of the bureaucratic government itself. Moreover, such questions arise with special acuteness as the time approaches when the problem of "succession" will have to be solved. The personal image of individuals, their respective positions, and their conflicts not only reveal the internal struggles for power, but also the acuteness of political problems, behind which loom the fundamental forces that move society, as well as the international relationship of forces.
The case of the ouster of Pyotr Shelest, the Ukrainian representative to the Political Bureau, in 1973 is typical. At the time, Shelest was opposed to the rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the German Federal Republic and the United States. He is even said to have protested Nixon's visit to Moscow in the middle of the bombing of Hanoi in 1972. But he was ousted for "Ukrainian nationalism," for having opposed concentrating on the development of Siberia.
Shelest's ouster enabled Brezhnev to complete the purge of the Ukrainian party, and thus discourage the local bureaucracy from being tempted to try to assume the slightest autonomy. In fact such inclinations only reflected the strong popular opposition to the policy of Russification of the Ukraine, and the explosiveness of the national question in the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev Head of State?
An early hypothesis offered to explain Podgorny's ouster was that Brezhnev wanted to do away with the "abnormal" situation that arose because the party general secretary has held no important position in the state bodies. It is plausible that Brezhnev, following the example of his cohorts in
Romania, Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, sought to combine the functions of party head and head of state, which would greatly simplify matters when Brezhnev makes official visits abroad, receives foreign heads of state, or signs international treaties. However, while this hypothesis appears plausiit does not account for the real ble, divisions that existed between the party head and the head of state. These conflicts surfaced with the presentation of the draft for a new constitution at the last Central Committee plenum.
The New Constitution
The new legal system that is going to be to replace the "world's most adopted democratic" constitution of 1936 is an old idea that was first proposed by Khrushchev and later taken up by Brezhnev. The draft has been in preparation for more than ten years under Brezhnev's personal supervision, but it has not yet seen the light of day because of the political resistance the general secretary encountered within the state apparatus and the governments of the various republics.
actually
What the new constitution involves, to judge from what is known about the draft, the full text of which has not been made public, is officially proclaiming a transition from the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to the "stage of advanced socialism." Since the previous stage was simply referred to as "socialism," it is purely for reasons of modesty that they have not presumed to characterize the latest stage as the "stage of communism," but the "logical" consequences drawn are the same as if they had.
As the great Marxist theoretical genius Leonid Brezhnev himself says: "The differences between the various social layers are disappearing. The course of life itself is bringing all the nations and ethnic groups in our country closer together." The new constitution should therefore consummate the "systematic coming together of all the nations and nationalities in the land of the soviets."
The two problems that are masked by this doubletalk-and which were solved at Podgorny's expense-are the expanded powers of the central government relative to those of the federal republics, and the expanded powers of party bodies at all levels relative to the state bodies (the soviets). For Brezhnev, as the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the revolution approaches, what is involved is the crowning achievement of his careerproviding a legal basis for the policy of redoubled Russification, total centralization, and repression, which has been applied in all spheres since the failure of the 1965 economic reform.
In the economic sphere, the intention is to increase the prerogatives of the central ministries at the expense of the corresponding ministries in the various republics. Needless to say, this policy met with fierce opposition from the local bureaucrats who stand to lose some of their power. This problem has been solved by carrying out vast purges in the apparatuses of the most troublesome republics, such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
In the area of "national rights," the article of the constitution that grants each republic the right to independence seems to have been withdrawn. It never had much effect anyway, but the fact of withdrawing it from the new text helps legitimize the policy of forced Russification used by the bureaucrats to combat the nationalist demands of the various peoples, which the local authorities were forced to take into account if they wished to base their power on the slightest degree of credibility.
Finally, the new constitution provides for an expanded role of the party at all levels of the state executive bodies, of which Podgorny was a representative.
The new constitution will promote
Brezhnev's concept of "socialist democracy." In any case, it has sealed Podgorny's doom in the true Stalinist tradition. There are now only fourteen old men on the Political Bureau, including one Ukrainian, one Byelorussian, Brezhnev, and few pretenders to the throne.