Most people don't know who Litvinov was. If they did, they'd probably regard him in a similar way. But it is also true that however collective the leadership was, Stalin was far for than primus inter pares. He was the Vozhd -- the Boss, that's what they called him. The evidence is clear that at Politburo meetings he'd sit and listen while others made suggestions, and then he'd decide. I mean in the end it was up to him.
Of course his cronies were pretty much birds of a feather, murderers with blood up to the elbows. There were differences. Litvinov and Kalinin were colorless apparatchiki. No one ever accused Khrushschev of being colorless and he was a complex man. His legacy includes not only assisting (at great personal danger) the defense of Stalingrad but ultimately the initial dismantling and exposure of the system that made him the chief. Malenkov had less flair and speed than K, which he way he got elbowed out, but shared K's reformist impulses.
Oddly enough, some scholars think that Beria did too. I doubt it, but he was brought into modulate the extremes of 1937, still called the Yezhovshchina after that other maligant dwarf (I don't mean Alberto Gonzales), N. Yezhov, the GPU (under Beria NKVD, later KGB, now FSB) chief who overaw and was finally devoured by the Great Purge. Loathsome as Beria was he was better than Yezhov or his predecessor G. Yagoda.
Molotov was coldly competent, a good lieutenant.
Vyshinsky was an oppotunistic lying sack of shit of the lowest order. Possibly I hate him some much because he degraded the legal profession, but go read the transcript of Great Purge Trial or selected parts of it, it's actually entertaining in the way that Weegee's crime scene photos are entertaining, and reading the doomed Bukharin's testimony is moving, B never actually quite lost his sense of humor, even facing torture and death in the cellars of the Lubyanka.* Vyshinsky's tirades are sick-making though.
It's sort of odd to reflect that this gang of murderous, lickspittle, lying hoodlums somehow, despite their own best efforts to screw things up, ans with the sacrifice of more than 25 million lives, actually saved the world.
Of course they had (eventually) some highly competent military assistance, such as Zhukov, Chuikov, and countless brave Soviet soldiers and citizens who fought impossible odds against their own government's evil and incompetence as well as against the far great evil of Nazi Germany.
* Close parahrase from the transcript of the Bukharin trial.
Vyshinsky: What about THIS!? (Referring to some piece of falsified evidence supporting one the phony charges to which Bukharin evasively confessed.
Bukharin: "This" is the most difficult word in the philosophy of Hegel. (Quite true, btw.)
In summation, much later:
Vyshinsky: Defendant Bukharin throws Hegel in the face of state like ground glass!!
--- wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>> Doug Henwood
> > [the irrepressible Grover Furr reports to the MLG
> list]
> >
> > Dear MLG friends:
> >
> > ^^^^
> > CB: I wonder why Litvinov, Kalinin, Molotov and
> other members of the
> > "National Board" all along with Stalin don't have
> the same reputation
> > as Stalin ? I think there actually was a
> collective leadership through
> > all of "it".
> > ___________________________________
>
> I think that there are probably many reasons.
> Probably the most relevant
> within the states is that the figure of Stalin
> allows for a sort
> parallelism of totalitarians argument of which
> probably Arendt's is the
> most sophisticated version. The sort of 'cold war'
> thinking that you are
> so quick to reference. There is also a version of
> history created by
> Kruschev that is neccessarily directed towards
> shrinking his role in the
> time period. The Trots pick up the sort of
> animosity towards Stalin
> through the hatred of the old man. Finally, it's
> not totally wrong. I
> think that the authority that Stalin took in the
> party is much stronger
> than the first amongst equals role that Lenin
> played. I don't think that
> the Thermidor thesis is completely wrong in its
> emphasis of the
> destruction of the party. Robert Wood
>
> ___________________________________
>
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>
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