TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1950s) Stalin Dies </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights </history> <link 08186> <link 08187> <link 08188> <link 08189> <link 00028> <link 00114><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Stalin Dies </hdr> <body> [When Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin died in March 1953 after 28 years in absolute power, the Communist world reeled. Even those who were most oppressed by his totalitarian terror felt bereft. At first, his heirs dutifully lined up behind Stalin's chosen successor, Georgy Malenkov, with every sign of unity.] (March 16, 1953) For millions, he was the infallible all, "Uncle, Big Brother, Great Father, Leader, Teacher" and--as a Soviet poet said of him--"Chief of all the people, Who callest men to life Who takest the earth." But he was just another human animal. Some time before 10 o'clock last Thursday night, March 5, Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, alias Koba (The Indomitable) alias Stalin (The Man of Steel), died. He died as he had lived, shrouded in dark and oriental mystery. On Friday afternoon, a motor hearse rolled to the ornate House of the Trade Unions. There, where Lenin lay in state in 1924, the neatly arrayed remains of Joseph Stalin were placed. In sallow, impassive dignity, Stalin's body lay in the glare of spotlights, the huge grey head resting on a silken pillow, the chest of his simple, military tunic adazzle with medals and ribbons; others glinted on a pillow laid at the foot of his bier. Through the great hall floated the sickish scent of massed flowers, from Peking and all the conquered capitals of Eastern Europe, from Communist Parties all over, from Stalingrad and Stalino and Stalinbad and Stalinogrosk. The heirs themselves--Premier Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Marshal Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich--stood the first honor watch at the bier. Then the huge doors were thrown open. For 60 hours, the men women & children of Moscow marched into gaze, in awe, in curiosity, or in grief, at the powerful little man so few had seen in life. [But a power struggle had been gong on in the Kremlin even before Stalin died. It was not long before feared Police Chief Lavrenty Beria met the fate he had meted out to thousands of others.] (July 20, 1953) The unannounced appearance of the Soviet leaders at the Bolshoi was one of their rare public demonstration of solidarity since the death of Stalin. Counting the heads, the audience found one missing: the cruel, slyly epicene face of Lavrenty Beria, first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (police), boss of atomic energy, was not among those in the state box. Unknown to the foreigners at the time, and to all but a few Russians, a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party was held ten days later, somewhere in Moscow. On this committee sit Russia's 200 mightiest Communists, men with great rank and great fears. They gathered to hear the most significant news since Stalin's death 93 days before: the struggle for power among the Kremlin's titans had begun. It was suety Georgy Malenkov, the Premier, who got to his feet before them, to put the finger on Comrade Beria. This trusted man, said Malenkov, had committed "criminal anti-party and anti-state actions, intended to undermine the Soviet State in the interest of foreign capital." How had his criminality been manifested? In "perfidious attempts to place the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Internal Affairs above the government and Communist Party." The power to make the charge was the power to make it stick. Did any of these feared and fearing men challenge Malenkov, demand to know what evidence there was to sustain so grave a charge, or rise to Comrade Beria's defense? The subsequent communique said only that the Central Committee had decided to expel Beria from the party as "an enemy of the people." [Beria confessed to "most serious crimes" and was tried and executed in December. His fall set off a broad purge of his followers. Meanwhile, there were those in the satellite empire who were moved to take advantage of the weaknesses of the power transition. Workers in East Berlin and other East German cities went on strike and rioted against their oppressive regime, giving the lie to the myth of monolithic Communist solidarity.] (June 29, 1953) By 7 a.m. the streets of East Berlin were alive with workers who would not work. Barehanded, they gathered in the grey morning rain. They wore the uniforms of their trade--masons in white overalls, carpenters in traditional black corduroy smocks, day laborers and factory hands in hobnailed boots and raveled suits. Many were youths; some were peasants from outside the city. In mumbling columns that suggested disconnected centipede legs groping for the body, they streamed from all directions toward the center of East Berlin, where the Communist proconsuls rule. Along Stalinallee, the newly constructed showplace of the East German workers' paradise, one band of 10,000 fell into ragged cadence. "We don't want a People's Army. We want free elections," cried one man, and others took it up. The mumble became a shout. Then it suddenly stopped--at the end of the street, in front of a cordon of dark green riot trucks, stood a wall of People's Police, their grey raincoats agleam, their arms locked elbow to elbow. For a moment the front of the column hesitated and the marchers in the rear piled up in comic confusion. Then the 10,000 plunged ahead, disregarding thudding truncheons. The wall of police broke, and with a roar the marchers poured forward. The columns and the sounds swelled, "Down with the People's Army! We want butter!" "Freedom! Freedom!" Shopkeepers hurriedly clanged down shutters of their stores and peered through the slits. From side streets and cluttered curbs, hundreds of others drifted into the march. Other columns melted into the one from Stalinallee. But at Leipziger and Friedrich Strasse, where the chief government buildings stood, the mob's suppressed feelings broke out. Anger scudded in like a rain cloud. "Freedom!" they chanted. "Freedom!" "We demand the overthrow of the government." "We want the overthrow of Ulbricht." Thousands began chanting the forbidden anthem: "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles. Uber alles in der Welt." Then over the din came a new sound--the metallic clatter of tank treads on the cobblestones. A woman shrieked, "The tanks! The tanks are coming." Along Friedrich Strasse rolled eight field green T-34 medium tanks emblazoned with the Red Star, their 85-mm. guns ominously traversing the mob. Along other big streets came more, about 200 in all. For a while they rocked and snarled past and through the crowds. But one band of young rioters scooted close to a T-34 and jammed a log into its tracks, leaving it crippled with its crew inside. Others tossed sticks and big stones into the tracks of tanks. At the six-columned Brandenburg Gate on the East-West border, two men climbed to the top and to a billowing cheer tore down the Red flag and tossed it to the ground. The crowd gleefully burned it. On other squares and corners, the Red flag was ripped down, spat upon. It was past noon. In a half a dozen places at once, the machine guns and submachine guns began chattering. Witnesses in the West sector reported that the Soviet soldiers seemed to aim above the crowd; the Vopos fired point-blank at their countrymen. On the squares, the crowds broke. Hundreds threw themselves into gutters and doorways, and down subway stair wells to dodge the bullets. But not all made it. Throughout all East Berlin, a city of 1,700,000 ordinary life was at a standstill while at the center violence went its course. More Soviet troops poured in, and so did reinforcements of the Volkspolizei. Gradually, East Berlin's rebellion guttered out in the rain. By 2:30 most of the shooting had stopped and the drenched crowds had melted away. A police sound truck circled the riot area, booming: "The Soviet commander of troops...has ordered a (9p.m.) curfew...Prohibited is the gathering of groups of more than three..." [A month later came another manifestation of Communist weakness in Berlin, one that the West gleefully exploited.] (August 10, 1953) Like locusts descending on a desert oasis, the hungry people of Communist Germany poured into West Berlin. The West, with one million 10-lb. food packets, was ready for a flow of several thousand a day. But hundreds of thousands came. They traveled on foot, by train and subway, by car and bicycle from all corners of East Germany. They brought empty cartons, shopping bags, even empty baby carriages in which to carry home their precious "Eisenhower Parcels"--free food contributed by the U.S. The free food was the most successful U.S. diplomatic stroke in Europe since the Berlin airlift. Disturbed and angered, the East German Communists tried every way the could think of to blunt it. But neither threat nor ruse stopped the invasion. The East Germans poured into West Berlin and out again, carrying their two pounds of lard, bags of dried beans, peas and flour, and four cans of condensed milk. All together, each parcel was worth about $1.15--not much by Western standards, but plainly a treasure to East Germans. After five days of hesitation, in evident fear of a people who so recently had proved desperate and courageous enough to stand against Soviet tanks, the Reds at week's end abruptly shut off all highway and rail traffic to Berlin from five East German provinces. That effectively halted the hungry invasion of West Berlin: lines dropped to a trickle. But East German railroad men reported angry mobs at stations all along their route, storming the ticket offices, and clashing helplessly with armed troops and club-wielding cops. [Then Malenkov fell ignominiously from power. After confessing to shortcomings and failures in administration, he was relieved of the premiership and replaced by Nikolai Bulganin.] (February 21, 1955) In Communism's 37 years in power in Russia leaders have fallen from power in dramatically diverse ways. Some cringingly confessed to being jackals, venal hirelings in the pay of the capitalist enemy. Some went silently to the cellar. Some, like Molotov in his days as Premier, stepped uncomplainingly aside and lived on, even rising to high power again. Some, like the devoted Communists in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, confessed to others' errors as their last proof of loyalty to the system, and hoped that after their death Communist history would thank them for their sacrifice to the cause. But nobody before had ever fallen as Georgy Malenkov, once the presumed heir to Stalin's dictatorship, fell last week. He sat before the Supreme Soviet while his startling admission of incompetency was read out.... At 1 o'clock the room is suddenly quiet. A group of short chunky men file into a rear pew; the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the all-high bosses of Communism, has arrived. There is a short, brief explosion of applause, which ends exactly on the instant, for this is the best drilled and most obedient body of public executives in the world--yet not entirely incapable of shock. So last week began the second meeting of this session of the Supreme Soviet. The budget had been received and debated: custom called for a report on foreign affairs, made at the last session by Premier Georgy Malenkov. Instead, putty-nosed Alexander Volkov, Chairman of the Council of the Union, stepped forward to the rostrum. He had, he said, a communication from Comrade Malenkov. Volkov began reading from a paper in his hand. "I ask (he said on behalf of Malenkov) to bring to the notice of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. my request to be relieved from the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers..." There was a muffled gasp, and audible murmur from the well-drilled Deputies. Eyes were focused on the dark-browned, porcine face of the Premier of the Soviet Union sitting in the middle of the party pew. </body> </article> </text>