BIOGRAPHY=

SusIov: Practical Ideoloaist J

Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov-member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) since 1941, member of its all-powerful Secretariat since 1947 and uninterruptedly of its Prae- sidium since ig55-is a career Communist with a stable and unmarred record in the top hierarchy of the party. This is the man who will lead the Soviet delegation to the Sino- Soviet negotiations in Moscow beginning July 5.

A Volga peasant by birth, at 16 Suslov joined the Komsomol (Young Communists League) shortly after the Bolshe- viks seized power in Rus- sia, and at 19, in 1921, he joined the Communist Party.

His devotion and dedication to his Party was publicly recognized on the occasion of his 60th birthday, when he was awarded the title of “Hero of Socialist Labor,” his third “Order of Lenin” and a gold “Hammer and Sickle” medal for “his great services to the Communist Party and to the Soviet State.” He was described in the official citation on that occasion as a “prominent leader of the CPSU and of the international communist move- ment.“’ By professional training, Stislov is an econo- mist. His 60th birthday celebration happened to coin- cide with a plenary session of the Central Committee that dealt primarily with the development of Soviet economy and the Party’s leadership in that field.

Suslov was born Nov. 20, igo2 in the Volga village of Shakhovskoye, Khvalynski county, Saratov province, which in honor of Lenin was subsequently renamed Ulyanovsk province. But whereas the Ulyanov family were intellectuals and members of the gentry, the SJs- lovs were apparently poor peasants? and perhaps even serfs before that.

Komsomol Work Wins Him Attention

As a teenage member of the Komsomol, Stislov was active in the “class struggle” on the local level during 1918-20 in the Committee of Poor Peasants (komitet bednoty) -a somewhat less hazardous occupation than fighting in the ranks of the Red Army during the civil war, in which teenagers more venturesome and sturdier than he engaged. His efforts as a Komsomol organizer, agitator and propagandist in Khvalynsk county (subse- quently: Pavlovsk rayon) led to his admission to full membership in the Communist Party itself in 1921 and to his being sent to the Prechistensky rabfak, an ac- celerated preparatory school in Moscow from which he graduated in 1924. Four years later he graduated from

1Pravda, Nov. 21, 1962. ‘Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (2nd edition, MOSCOW,

1956) Vol. 41, pp. 319-320 and Malaya Sovyetskaya Entsiklopediya (3rd edition, Moscow, 1960) Vol. 8, pp. 1255-56.

the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy and pro- ceeded to graduate studies at the Economic Institute of Red Professors in Moscow. At the same time, late in 1928, he began to teach at Moscow University and at the Industrial Academy.

For many years, beginning shortly after his arrival in iMoscow in i 92 i, Suslov was increasingly active as a propagandist and leader of propaganda groups at var- ious Moscow industrial enterprises. He sided consist- ently and unswervingly with Stalin in the factional struggle against Trotsky, Zinoviev and various other groupings of the Left Opposition as well as later against the Right Opposition of Bukharin-Rykov-Tomsky. In 193 I, Stislov was rewarded with a responsible post in the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party and a parallel governmental position in the People’s Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ In- spection. These organs were originally conceived by Lenin as means of providing some measure of control over the proliferating bureaucracy. Under Stalin they became yet another lever of power, their primary func- tion being to eliminate from political (and later, from physical) life those who dared to deviate from the pa- tern imposed on the Party and the State by the dictator.

As Stalinist, He Rises to Central Committee

Suslov like Khrushchev thus became one of the Stal- inist purgers. In this capacity he was sent in 1933 and 1934 to the Urals and then to the Chernigov region in the Ukraine to “purify” the Party organizations there. His loyal and evidently faithful service was further rewarded when in 1937, at the very height of the purges, SJslov was appointed Secretary of the Rostov regional Party committee. Two years later came still another promotion-First Secretary of the Stavropol territory (krai) Party committee, a post he retained until 1941. At the 18th Party Congress in 1939 he was elected to the Central Auditing Commission. At the 18th Party Conference in 1941 he became a member of the Central Committee.

During the German invasion, SJslov-in common

with many other Soviet leaders-was made a Party watchdog over military operations in his sector. He was appointed a member of the Military Council of the North Caucasian Front and Chief of Staff of the Stavro- pol krai partisan forces. S6slov’s partisans were cred- ited with killing some 2,000 German soldiers, destroy- ing enemy trains and supplies and capturing a quantity of arms. When the Stavropol territory was liberated, the ex-partisan chieftain devoted his energies to restora- tion of the Soviet regime there and to economic recon- struction.*

For his wartime activities he was awarded the Order of the War for the Fatherland, 1st Class. The Red Army offensive continued to roll westward. In Novem-

SIston’ia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voinny Sovetskovo Soy- 1941- 1945, (Vol. 3, Moscow, 1961) pp. 8g-go, 189.

25

ber 1944 Stislov was sent to Lithuania as Moscow’s spe- cial plenipotentiary to head the newly created Central Committee’s Bureau (i.e., executive committee) for that country. Aided by over 6,000 functionaries, \vho wrrc dispatched from Russia, SLiSlOV’S assignment \VilS It-1 sovietize once independent Lithuania..’ For two years (1944-46) he was engaged in mass purges5 and deporta- tions from Lithuania. Although he performed his tasks ruthlessly, not all of the native Lithuanian patriotic sentiment was eradicated. Returning to Lithuania in 1960, Suslov warned his audience against “hostile in- trigues” of “American imperialists” who “are hoping to activate remnants of bourgeois nationalism in the Soviet Baltic republics.“s

His mission to Lithuania accomplished, Stislov was recalled in 1946 to Moscow as a member of the Organ- izational Bureau of the Central Committee.’ A year later he achieved the coveted rank of Central Commit- tee Secretary, a position he occupies until this very day. His earlier experience in propaganda served him in good stead when in 1948 he was put in charge of the Propaganda-Agitation Department (A&t-Prop) of the Secretariat. In 1949-50, he also served as editor-in-chief of Pravda, that fountainhead of Communist propaganda. This stage of his career was capped by election to the Praesidium by the 19th Party Congress in 1952. But only for a few months. When Stalin’s successors re- duced the membership of the Praesidium, which Stalin had deliberately inflated in size, Stislov was one of the newcomers eliminated. But at the March 14, 1953 plenum of the Central Committee he was confirmed as one of its five secretaries and in July 1955 he again be- came a member of the Party Praesidium, to remain in that post to this day.

Suslov Supported Khrushchev in Power Struggle During 1950-54 SJslov was a member of the Praesid-

ium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet. During the first session of the Supreme Soviet in 1954 he was elected Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Council of the Union-a post corresponding in form only, but hardly in power, to the post of Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States Sen- ate. It is not from this post but rather from his position in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Com- munist Party of the Soviet Union that Suslov derives his political power and influence.

During the crucial days of June 1957, when the struggle for power among the top contenders was joined, S6slov threw his support to Khrushchev who, though temporarily outvoted in the Praesidium by the Malenkov-Molotov coalition, emerged eventually vic- torious when he took his case to the Central Committee. Since it was the defeated “anti-party” group which op- posed many anti-Stalinist reforms, Stislov can hardly be considered as the moving spirit of neo-Stalinism. S6slov specializes in two areas of activities: ideology

4Zbid, Vol. 4 Moscow 1962, pp. 619-20. 6Who’s Who in the U.S.S.R., 1961-1962, New York: (Scarecrow

Press, lg62), p. 750. ~Pravdu, July 22, 1960. ‘The Orgburo along with the Politburo were abolished by Stalin

in 1962, at the 19th Party Congress and replaced by the Praesid- ium; vide: Leonard Shapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, (New York: Random House, lg6o), p. 619.

and r&lions with foreign Communisl Pal-lies. Rccrnl- ly, he seems to be primarily preoccupied with the lat- ler set of problems. As the formulator of the ideological lilac, he Iccturrd Soviet historians, rcononiists and phi- losophers 011 Ihc hrsl wirers to ovcrcoiiie lhe “gravr harm” inllictrtl on ~hosr disciplines during Stalin’s rule. He ordered them to be on guard against Western “hos- tile ideology” and, at the same time, to expose the devi- ationists on both the left (Chinese “dogmatists”) and on the right (Yugoslav “revisionists”) .’ This, of course, is the official formula of which Khrushchev is the fore- most exponent.

He Is Faithful Executioner of Party Line

Similarly, in supervising relations with the non- Soviet Communist parties, Stislov proved himself to be a faithful executor of the Party’s “general line.” Un- der Stalin, he was active (with A. Zhdanov and G. Mal- enkov) in Cominform activities, especially during the fight against the Titoist heresy. Under Khrushchev, he extols the virtues of “peaceful coexistence” with the West and of “equality” among the members of the Communist bloc. Speaking in November 1956, for ex- ample, he professed his dedication to the “principles ol equality and mutual respect” among the bloc members.” These sentiments did not prevent him from descending a few weeks later (with Anastas Mikoyan) on Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution. Slislov appeared at the tenth anniversary celebration of the Chinese Com- munist regime to preach, to the obvious distaste of his hosts, the doctrine that “wars must be prevented be- cause in our age-the age of the atom and of rocket technology-they threaten mankind with countless suf- ferings and disasters.“1° This policy-which ran count- er to Mao’s-was further elaborated by Khrushchev, who arrived in Peking a few days later, having just concluded a friendly visit to the United States.

Suslov was active in Moscow meetings which brought forth the Declaration of the 12 Communist Parties in November 1957 and of the 81 parties in November 1960, which engaged in the not very successful attempt to minimize their differences and to formulate a com- mon policy. He often attends, as the head of Soviet delegation, congresses of various “fraternal” and Com- munist parties. To cite a few examples, he spoke to the Italian Communists in February 1960, to the Mon- golian Congress in July 1961 and to the Communist Party of Bulgaria in November 1962. During that last meeting he was a witness to, and perhaps also an insti- gator of the purge of prominent Bulgarian “Stalinists.”

SJslov’s activities and public views are on the record. Whatever his innermost convictions may be, he emerges as a loyal supporter of Khrushchev’s policies. SJslov is certainly a powerful and dedicated Communist, but hardly a man of mystery and not likely, as far as the record shows thus far, to be a leader of the mysterious inner opposition to Khrushchev-a favorite theme of some Kremlinologists and of overly imaginative jour- nalists.

*Cf. his speech to the All-Union Conference of Heads of Depart- ments of the Social Sciences of Higher Educational Institutions, Pravda, Feb. 4, 1962.

oPmvdu, Nov. 7, 1956. 10Pravda, Sept. 29, 1959.

26