These reports gave Stalin more than enough ammunition to charge Molotov with scheming against him. On 5 December the vozhd sent Molotov, Beria, Mikoyan, and Malenkov a telegram demanding that the matter be investigated.32 The following day the four sent Stalin a detailed response. The New York Times article had a simple explanation. It had gone through censorship on 30 November, three days before Stalin asked Molotov to tighten control. The explanation for the Reuters report was just as persuasive. Molotov really had ordered a relaxation of censorship in November since the censors “often unnecessarily marked out individual words and expressions in the telegrams sent by foreign correspondents.” As for the conversation at the 7 November reception, Molotov claimed that “words were attributed to him that he did not say.”33
After receiving this response, Stalin went into a rage, either genuine or feigned. That same day, 6 December, he sent a sharply worded telegram to Moscow. Ignoring all the reasonable arguments offered by the four, he stated that Molotov bore the blame for the appearance of “libels against the Soviet government” in the foreign press. Furthermore, Molotov’s liberal attitude toward foreign correspondents represented an intentional effort to change “the course of our policies.” After accusing Malenkov, Beria, and Mikoyan of connivance, Stalin directed extremely harsh words at Molotov. “I am convinced that Molotov does not care about the interests of our state and the prestige of our government,” he wrote, “so long as he gains popularity within certain foreign circles. I can no longer consider such a comrade to be my first deputy.” To add insult to injury, Stalin sent his telegram only to Malenkov, Beria, and Mikoyan, asking them to summon Molotov and read him its contents but not give him a copy. The reason he gave was extremely insulting to Molotov: “I did not send [the telegram] to Molotov since I have doubts about some of those close to him.”34
This telegram contained the strongest accusations Stalin had ever made against a member of his inner circle (unless, of course, we include the Politburo members whom he had executed). The four men were undoubtedly frightened. On 7 December Beria, Malenkov, and Mikoyan sent Stalin a coded telegram in which they reported on the firm approach they had taken in dealing with their associate. “We summoned Molotov to us and read him the telegram in full. After pausing to think, Molotov said that he had made a lot of mistakes but felt that mistrust toward him was unjust, and then he began to cry.”35 There is no way to know whether they were describing this confrontation accurately. This was a drama played out for one spectator who was not even in the theater. What mattered was not the drama itself but the account of how the confrontation was handled, which had to be designed to satisfy Stalin. Molotov played along. That same day he sent Stalin his own telegram: “Your coded telegram was filled with deep mistrust toward me as a Bolshevik and a man, which I take as the most serious party warning for all my work going forward, wherever that might be. I will try through my deeds to earn your trust, in which every honest Bolshevik sees not simply personal trust, but the trust of the party, which is dearer to me than my life.”36 Judging by the correspondence that followed, Stalin felt that he had achieved the desired effect. He clearly knew that Molotov’s “crimes” had no significance, and his underling had never disobeyed any direct instruction. Molotov had simply used his own discretion on occasions when Stalin’s long-distance guidance was intermittent and vague.
The Molotov scandal was dropped quickly because its true purpose lay elsewhere: Stalin wanted to make changes to the top leadership. He began this reorganization as soon as he returned to Moscow. On 29 December 1945 he brought his old comrade Andrei Zhdanov into the inner circle. The Five were now Six. In October 1946, Nikolai Voznesensky was also admitted to the group, meaning that the country was now governed by the Seven.37
The return of the “Leningraders”—Zhdanov and Voznesensky—into Stalin’s inner circle provoked competition within the Politburo. Malenkov and Beria, who had pushed the Leningraders aside during the war, were now forced to concede power to them. In May 1946 Stalin removed Malenkov from the post of Central Committee secretary, accusing him of covering up irregularities in the aviation industry, which had been his portfolio during the war. Malenkov’s responsibilities overseeing the Central Committee apparat were handed over to Zhdanov. Around the same time, a blow was struck against Beria. Stalin forced Beria’s protégé, Minister for State Security Vsevolod Merkulov, to resign his post in disgrace.38 A dangerous development was that Stalin appointed the former head of military counterintelligence, Viktor Abakumov, with whom Beria did not get along, to take Merkulov’s place.39 According to the rules of Stalinist shake-ups, the new minister was expected to uncover misconduct or—better yet—crimes by his predecessor. Abakumov was well suited to this role. Both Merkulov and Beria were clearly in danger. As Merkulov attested after Stalin’s death, “The story of my departure from the Ministry of State Security gave Beria a number of unpleasant moments. Beria himself told me that because of me he was in trouble with Comrade Stalin.”40
Beria’s and Malenkov’s ordeals were relatively painless. Both remained within the top leadership. Presumably they were just being shown who was boss and reminded that they were dispensable. Stalin clearly had no intention of dismantling the system of supreme power that had taken shape. He just wanted to create new counterpoises, new centers of competition.
Stalin was just as calculating in dealing with the military leadership. By the war’s end, the status of the Soviet Union’s marshals and generals was understandably sky-high. For Stalin, who cherished his own reputation as a commander, their popularity was politically undesirable: the victory could be the work of only one genius. Stalin was also concerned about possible conspiracies. The generals, intoxicated by thoughts of their own brilliance, made matters worse. State security, which was always in competition with the military, reported to Stalin on conversations at celebratory dinners where generals lavished one another with praise and made disparaging comments about their vozhd. Stalin’s natural response was repression. Inevitably his first target was Zhukov, the most famous and influential of the wartime military leaders. Zhukov’s life now hung by a thread. Stalin ordered the arrest of a number of generals close to Zhukov and had a case opened against Zhukov himself. A month later, after Malenkov’s demotion and Merkulov’s firing, Zhukov and other military leaders received a dressing down. A 9 June 1946 order, issued by the minister for the armed forces of the USSR and signed by Stalin, described the wartime commander’s transgressions as follows: “Marshal Zhukov, having lost all modesty and carried away by a sense of personal ambition, felt that his services had not been sufficiently valued and took credit in conversations with subordinates for designing and carrying out all of the Great Patriotic War’s major operations, including those operations with which he had nothing to do.”41 This condemnation was obviously motivated by Stalin’s jealousy and anger at a lack of proper deference from this national hero and other military leaders and his desire to cut them down to size. But he was not prepared to go so far as to physically annihilate Zhukov, who was too symbolic a figure and too closely associated with him. Public discrediting and demotion would suffice. The order relegated Zhukov to a secondary post commanding a military district. Given the fate of some of Stalin’s other close associates over the years, such a command might even be considered a reward. Zhukov had lost a great deal but not everything. Toward the end of his life, Stalin agreed to readmit Zhukov to the Central Committee, a sign that he was finally back in the vozhd’s good graces.