He had a clear understanding of this. He had deliberately promoted the young and working-class cadres to high postings. Whereas in France and Britain the old clung to power, Stalin had brought on a fresh generation to replace the ageing veterans of the October Revolution — and he was pleased with his achievement.8 He had promoted young adults to all rungs on the ladder of party and government. This had long been one of his objectives, and he had attained it by the most brutal methods. At the end of the Great Terror he sought to keep the promotees on his side. The system of graduated perks and privileges was maintained. The higher the rung, the greater the reward. Stalin bribed them into murderous complicity. The administrative beneficiaries of the purges had a fixed higher income and guaranteed access to goods and services denied to the rest of society. Even if they did not literally step into dead men’s shoes, they certainly took possession of their apartments, dachas, paintings, carpets and pianos. They hired their tutors, chauffeurs and nannies. The promoted officials belonged to a privileged elite.
Stalin wished to sedate the minds of officials still fearful that he might resume the terror. At the celebratory Eighteenth Party Congress in March 1939, his general report picked up the theme:9
The correct selection of cadres means:
Firstly to value cadres like the gold reserve of party and state, to cherish them, to show them respect.
Secondly to know the cadres, to make a careful study of the virtues and defects of each cadre official, to know how to facilitate the official’s capacities.
Thirdly to cultivate the cadres, to help each growing official to rise higher, not to begrudge time in handling these officials patiently and hastening their growth.
Fourthly to promote new, young cadres boldly and in a timely fashion, to avoid letting them stand around in the same old place or letting them go stale.
His appeal to the recent promotees was fervent. Unnamed discussants, he declared, thought it better for the state to ‘orientate itself to the old cadres’ with all their experience. But Stalin insisted that the wiser course was the one he had chosen.10 Not for the last time he gave the impression that the promotees had no firmer friend than himself.
Having created a new administrative elite, he wanted their allegiance. It was for them more than for any other group in society that he had ordered the publication of the Short Course. Indeed the whole ‘technical– scientific intelligentsia’ was in his sights. Recognising that they had limited time to do any reading at the end of the working day, he had supplied them with an easily assimilated text which explained and justified the existence of the Soviet order.11 This was also the group in society which, after the Great Terror, he and Zhdanov sought to recruit to the party. No longer were workers to be given privileged access to membership. Recruitment should take place on merit and usefulness for the socialist cause.12
A technocratic imperative was being proclaimed, and Stalin was putting himself forward as the Leader of the newly reformed USSR. With typical false modesty — and even self-pity — he pretended that the burden of individual leadership had somehow been thrust upon him. At times he complained about this. While other Soviet leaders tended the business of their assigned institutions, he gave consideration to the entire range of affairs. At a supper party in 1940 he was quite mawkish:13
But I alone am occupied with all these questions. Not one of you even thinks about it. I have to stand alone.
Yes, I can study, read, follow things up each day. But why can’t you do that? You don’t like to study, you go on living complacently. You waste Lenin’s legacy.
When Kalinin protested that they were always short of time, Stalin exclaimed: ‘No, that’s not the point! People wet behind the ears don’t want to study and re-study. They listen to me and then leave everything as it was before. But I’ll show the lot of you if I lose my patience. And you know how I can do that!’ This was a charade: Stalin would have locked up any Politburo members poking their noses into what he regarded as exclusively his business.
While wanting his policies to be followed, however, Stalin demanded that his subordinates should give frank, instant opinions. Every so often he got each of them on his own and enquired about options. For Stalin, Politburo members were useless unless they could come up with ideas for fresh measures. His period of rule was characterised by constant emergency. This made for an arena of discussion which would have driven most men crazy. Stalin was incessantly looking for signs of weakness or treachery. If they seemed shifty, he told them so; and he had a knack of catching them off guard. Always Stalin was querying whether a subordinate was ‘sincere’. He could not abide what official propaganda referred to as ‘double-dealing’. His ideal communist party associate was ruthless, dynamic, straightforward and utterly loyal. He liked, too, individuals who came ‘from the people’. Not all his subordinates, even after the Great Terror had spent itself, were working class or peasant in origin. Indeed Molotov, Zhdanov and Malenkov were distinctly middle class by parentage. But the general tone in Stalin’s entourage was never genteel, and all his subordinates had to join in displays of the crude masculinity which the Boss liked.
Like all bullies, Stalin acted out his fantasies. If ever any of these Soviet leaders was insincere in his behaviour to his intimates, it was the Boss himself. His was the least straightforward personality of all of them. He would have hated to be asked the piercing questions with which he skewered others. In identifying personal treachery as the most heinous offence, he was externalising a worry about his subordinates reflecting a cardinal feature of his own character. At last his gross personality disorder was functioning without restraint. He could indulge his paranoiac, vengeful proclivities to the utmost and nothing except a successful internal coup, military conquest or his premature death could save others from his murderous whims.
Across the 1930s Stalin had dominated the Politburo and the rest of the Soviet political leadership; but the Great Terror had elevated him to an unprecedented height above the other leaders. In all but name he was despot. His associates continued to respect him, even to admire him. But they also existed in mortal dread. Few dared to contradict him even in private conversation. Only Molotov had sufficient confidence to disagree with him about policies — and even he had to exercise caution in his phrasing and demeanour. The others were even more circumspect. It was a fiendishly difficult task because Stalin often deliberately disguised what he really thought. Politburo members were compelled to reveal their opinions without foreknowledge of his intentions. Always they were kept edgy by the master of intimidation and mystification. He had killed Kaganovich’s brother Moisei and demoted Molotov’s wife from office. He went on to arrest her as well as the wives of Kalinin and Andreev. Physical danger did not disappear from the Politburo. By devouring other members of their families, the Kremlin shark signalled that his appetite for victims had not been satisfied. They could take nothing for granted.