Significant changes to economic policy were made within weeks. Unwieldy construction projects were scaled down, and the rush to “build communism” and expand Soviet military capabilities that was putting such a strain on the economy was brought to a halt. The resources thus freed up were directed toward alleviating the crisis in agriculture and meeting the needs of ordinary citizens. The prices paid for agricultural products were raised, and the tax burden on peasants was reduced. A marked improvement in output, especially in the area of livestock, came with amazing speed.15 Soon there would be ambitious programs to ease the plight of ordinary citizens, including a massive effort to expand housing.
Domestic reforms were accompanied by a moderation of foreign policy. On 19 March 1953 the Council of Ministers passed a resolution calling for “an end to the war in Korea as soon as possible.”16 After tense negotiations, an armistice treaty was signed on 27 July 1953. Moscow gave its blessing to a liberalization of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. On 2 June 1953 a Council of Ministers directive spelled out Soviet objections to the policies of the East German government and called for measures to improve the republic’s political situation.17
In short, Stalin’s “ungrateful” heirs had little trouble eliminating many of the excesses for which the vozhd bore sole responsibility. Their reforms fundamentally changed the Soviet regime. It was no longer “Stalinist”; it was less brutal and more predictable and flexible. Dictatorship, as a form of government in the Soviet Union, had been dealt a blow from which it never recovered. Internal struggles at the upper reaches of government would more than once lead to power changing hands, but never again would a Soviet leader wield the sole power exercised by Stalin.
THE FUNERAL
The Vozhd, the System, and the People
For three days beginning on 6 March 1953, the Soviet Union said its ceremonial farewells to Joseph Stalin. His coffin was put on display in the very center of Moscow, in the House of Unions’ Hall of Columns, the traditional site for public mourning of Soviet leaders that had earlier served as the House of Receptions for Moscow’s nobility. At four o’clock on the afternoon of the sixth, the public was let in to pay its final respects. The viewing of the body was poorly organized, and the provisions made for the crush of people who headed toward the House of Unions were not conducive to public safety. Those trying to get one last look at the dictator streamed into narrow streets filled with police and trucks meant to serve as barriers. In the chaos and panic many suffered disabling injuries or were crushed to death. The files of investigations into these events have yet to be made accessible to historians. In remarks made to a small gathering in 1962, Khrushchev said that 109 people in the crowd died that day.1
No information about this addition to the long series of Soviet tragedies appeared in newspapers, which were filled with grandiloquent expressions of sorrow and grief for the late vozhd. People’s true feelings came out in a flood of letters, as eyewitnesses to the tragedy registered their complaints with various government offices:
This is not the first time that during the movement of a large crowd the police were transformed into a helpless organization, or rather into violators of order. How distressing it was when—in front of a crowd of hundreds and foreigners darting about with their cameras—they began to retrieve the injured and crushed and send them off in ambulances. A simply shocking scene.2
For five hours people were herded all over Moscow, and none of the police knew where the line was! The police were running into columns made up of many thousands of people, with their cars causing casualties, cries, and groans. Hundreds of thousands of people were walking around the blocked-off streets leading to the Hall of Columns and could not find the way in! … Only a wrecker could announce that access would begin at four but announce the route at nine.3
In many ways these letters captured the essence of the Stalin era, both in their lexicon—with references to foreigners “darting about with their cameras” and “wreckers”—and in the events they describe: the police turning into violators of public order. Relying on brute force, the dictatorship had attained its goals at the expense of countless victims. The boundary between rational order and destructive chaos was blurred. Those charged with maintaining order wound up wreaking havoc.
Perhaps the tragedy in Moscow forced Stalin’s heirs to ponder the police state’s shortcomings, but for now they had no option but to rely on the institutions and methods bequeathed to them. Stalin’s funeral, set for 9 March, was prepared much as the viewing in state had been, but possibly with a bit more care. The top priority was security, ensured by 22,600 secret police agents, policemen, and soldiers. Thirty-five hundred vehicles were commissioned to block streets.4 The government approved a minute-by-minute schedule of funeral events: the carrying of the coffin from the House of Unions, its placement in front of the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square, a mourning gathering for the public, the carrying of the coffin into the mausoleum. Several hours before the ceremony, six thousand soldiers and fifteen thousand members of a “delegation of workers” were brought to Red Square.5 This time everything went according to plan.
Although incompetent officials bear much responsibility for the casualties in Moscow, another cause of the tragedy was the sheer number of people wanting to catch one last glimpse of the vozhd. What drove them? Was it love, curiosity, mass psychosis, or a rare opportunity for a spontaneous display of emotion? Apparently all these elements were present, along with many others. The few available documents that shed light on the public mood reveal a complex range of responses to the vozhd’s illness and death. On 5 March 1953, State Security Minister Ignatiev presented the Soviet leadership with a report on soldiers’ reactions to the news that Stalin was ill. The document described a certain pattern in the reaction of the “faithful.” One common thread was sympathy toward Stalin the man, who, according to Soviet propaganda, was the embodiment of goodness and benevolence: “My family takes this news as a terrible sorrow befalling our country”; “He worked very hard, and that took a toll on his health.” “Positive” responses often involved expressions of concern over the future of the country and the responder’s own future. Two points long emphasized by Soviet propaganda played a part in such positive responses: Stalin was irreplaceable and war was looming: “It’s kind of scary. Who will take his place after his death?”; “Maybe this will speed up the onset of a Third World War.” The chekists also reported on “negative” and “hostile” statements: “Serves him right”; “That’s just fine”; “Stalin won’t hang on for long, and that’s even better. You’ll see that everything will immediately change.”6 All such letters led to arrests or at least an investigation.
March 1953 saw a surge in arrests and convictions of people charged with “anti-Soviet agitation” for expressing satisfaction with Stalin’s death or otherwise denigrating him. A forty-four-year-old Muscovite named S. M. Telenkov, who worked at a scientific institute, drunkenly proclaimed in a commuter train, “What a fine day it is today; today we buried Stalin. There’ll be one less scoundrel around and now we can get back to living.” R. S. Rybalko, a twenty-eight-year-old working-class woman from Rostov Oblast, was convicted of using profanity in regard to Stalin. Ya. I. Peit, who had been forcibly resettled in Kazakhstan, was sentenced for destroying and stomping on a portrait of Stalin after an official mourning ceremony. Upon hearing of Stalin’s death, P. K. Karpets, a thirty-two-year-old railroad worker from the Ukrainian city of Rovno, swore and exclaimed, “Smell that? The corpse is already stinking.” Ye. G. Gridneva, a forty-eight-year-old female railroad worker from Transcaucasia, was not able to contain herself and commented to a coworker, “A dog dies a dog’s death. It’s good that he died. There won’t be any kolkhozes and life will be a little easier.”7