In addition to their duties serving on these top government bodies, each of Stalin’s associates had his own individual “portfolio.” As the war persisted, this system of putting members of the leadership in charge of particular areas became embedded. For example, in February 1942, the following purviews were assigned to members of the State Defense Committee: Molotov was placed in charge of the production of tanks, Malenkov of aviation, Beria of armaments, Voznesensky of ammunition, and Mikoyan of supplying the army with food and uniforms.139 These portfolios could change over time. Whatever assignments were given to these top leaders, under the pressures of war and by sheer necessity they operated with significant administrative latitude. What mattered were results. If they met their production targets, they were successful. This system worked, and Stalin had neither the time nor the desire to change it.
The increased autonomy enjoyed by Stalin’s associates inevitably spilled over into the political sphere and affected their interactions with the vozhd. As Mikoyan attests, “During the war there was a certain solidarity among our leadership.… Stalin, who understood that during this difficult time an all-out effort was required, fostered an atmosphere of trust, and every member of the Politburo carried a tremendous load.”140 This understanding, of course, did not mean that Stalin’s dictatorial dominance over the Politburo was replaced by oligarchic rule. Stalin set the rules of collective leadership. As the situation stabilized at the front and victory over the enemy approached, there were signs that he intended to do away with the slight liberalizations that circumstances had forced upon him. For Mikoyan, the first such sign was a slap on the wrist he received from the vozhd. On 17 September 1944 he sent Stalin a draft resolution on advancing grain to a number of oblasts.141 Although the proposal was rather moderate and did not give the oblasts everything they were asking for, Stalin made a display of his anger, writing onto Mikoyan’s resolution: “I vote against. Mikoyan is behaving in an anti-state manner and is being led around by the oblast committees and is corrupting them. He has completely corrupted Andreev.142 The procurement commissariat should be taken away from Mikoyan and given to Malenkov, for example.”143 The Politburo did so the following day.144
Another sign of coming changes at the top was a shake-up within the military leadership undertaken by Stalin in late 1944. In November the Politburo appointed Nikolai Bulganin to serve as Stalin’s deputy at the defense commissariat and made him a member of the State Defense Committee.145 Bulganin was also given important powers in interacting with the army.146 His expertise lay in civilian affairs, but during the war he served on the councils of a number of fronts, thus acquiring some military experience and even the rank of general. His assignment to the defense commissariat, and the broad powers he was given, could only mean that Stalin was creating a new counterweight to the military, in particular to the deputy defense commissar and deputy supreme commander, Marshal Zhukov. Evidence can be seen in the demonstrative dressing-down given to Zhukov just two weeks after Bulganin’s appointment. In December 1944 Stalin accused Zhukov of exceeding his authority in approving artillery field manuals and issued him a reprimand. The order criticizing Zhukov was circulated to all top military leaders.147
As painful as this lashing out must have been for Stalin’s subordinates, his attacks did little to roil the upper echelons of power or change his relative moderation in dealing with the members of the Politburo or the military leadership. Lower down the hierarchy, however, there was no sense of liberalization. The war lent a certain legitimacy to Stalin’s brutality, especially given the extreme ruthlessness of the enemy. The intensity of state violence during the war years was comparable to that of the Terror. In addition to the general hardships of war, the front suffered (as noted) from executions, anti-retreat units, and penalty battalions, while members of the civilian population suffered arrest, execution, mass deportations, mobilization, and the mass starvation that resulted from forced grain requisitions by the state and the collapse of agriculture in some of the Soviet Union’s most productive areas. While the context of these hardships differed from those experienced in the late 1930s, to those enduring them they must have felt very much the same. As they mounted, just as he had done toward the conclusion of the Terror, Stalin made certain concessions to the populace that cost him little but brought certain tactical advantages.
The best known concession was a reconciliation with religious institutions and the faithful, most important the country’s Orthodox majority. This departure from the anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s, from the destruction of churches and the mass executions of clergy members and believers, in favor of the opening of cathedrals and relative freedom of religion, was part of an overall adjustment in official ideology. Russian patriotism was being encouraged before the war, and a revival of images of the heroic past, many placed on a par with the legacy of Bolshevism and the revolution, became more pronounced during the war years.148 Under Stalin’s orders, portraits of the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century generals Aleksandr Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov were placed alongside the photograph of Lenin that hung in his office. To medals based on the symbolism of the revolution were added those commemorating Suvorov, Kutuzov, Prince Aleksandr Nevsky, and Admiral Pavel Nakhimov. At the front, those who had fought in World War I were allowed to wear their tsarist medals along with their Soviet ones.
The new attitude toward religion received a stunning stamp of approval in September 1943, when a previously unimaginable meeting between Stalin and the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church was publicly announced. Three metropolitans were brought to Stalin’s Kremlin office during the night of 4–5 September. They talked with the unusually amiable vozhd for one hour and twenty minutes.149 After an eighteen-year prohibition, they were granted permission to appoint a patriarch for the Russian Orthodox Church and were even offered the option of using airplanes to bring bishops to Moscow so as to accelerate the selection. Stalin consented to the opening of courses in theology to prepare priests and even proposed organizing theological seminaries and academies. He also supported requests to open new churches and free arrested priests, and he proposed that church leaders improve priests’ material well-being by setting up special food stores and assigning them cars. He gave the future patriarch the gift of a three-story house with a garden in the center of Moscow, formerly the home of the German ambassador, including all its furnishings. After discussing a few more items, Stalin escorted the metropolitans to the door of his office.150 The next day, the meeting with church leaders and the upcoming election of a new patriarch were reported in newspapers.