ADDRESS OF ALLEN W. DULLES, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, BEFORE LOS ANGELES WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL 'PURGE OF STALINISM'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00161R000100160021-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 12, 2002
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: April 13, 1956
• Content Type: SPEECH

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ADDRESS OF ALLEN W. DULLES,
DIRECT-7;12 IF C}S'aTR L INTi,LLIGF TCE,
before
LOS ANGELES WORLD AFFAIRS COl?'"CIL
13 April 1956
PURL; OF STALINISM
There is never a dull moment in my job as Director of Central
Intelligence. Events which seem to defy analysis happen somewhere in the
world every day. Few trends seem to follow a predictable course.
These last few weeks there have been developments in the Soviet Union
which have puzzled all the experts who generally have ready answers --
sometimes more ready than accurate -- to explain Soviet conduct.
Just at a time when some are saying that everything is going wrong
with foreign policy in the Free World countries but that everything in the
Soviet Union is progressing according to some great master design, the
Soviet collective leadership, as they call it, comes forward to beat their
collective breasts and indulge in the most extreme self criticism.
The men in the Kremlin now tell us that all they said earlier about
%5
events in the USSR during the 20 years preceding Stalin's death quite
wrong; that in fact this was an era of infamy, crime, and shame. They admit
that their past adulation of Stalin was based on fear not on fact. The man
they themselves used to call the "glorious Stalin,,.geniuso{:?-mankind" is nw
being publicly accused of "grave errors" and privately described'as a
malicious monster.
This document has been
approved for release through
ttae HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM of
the Central Intelligence Agency.
Date
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The Soviet leaders do not very clearly explain why the new collective
leaders waited. for three years after Stalin's death to tell it to their
people. They do not make a very sat .sf,7ctory showing as to why they them-
selves sat acquiescent in the seats of the mighty during all the period of
Stalin's dictatorship, exercising great powers as members of his inner
circle.
Possibly, as Khrushchev is reported to have admitted, the price of
n-n--conformity was a bullet in the head. This is a very human excuse but
a poor qualification for high office on the part of those who now assert
the rights and prerogatives of leadership. In the Free World; where we
aspire to build on the great traditions of the past, not to repudiate them,
we revere as our heroes and leaders those who..refused to co.~form, whatever
the risks, when the principles of liberty were at stake.
In the USSR, evidently, acquiescing in crime as the price of simple
survival under a political tyrant is sanctioned as legitimate conduct. As
they put it: "The point was not to save one's own life; the point was to
save the revolution."
Before going further,into the details of this strange development in
the Soviet Union it may be worth while to review briefly what had been
taking place there during the years of Stalin's. power. Here we may find
clues as to why the men in the Kremlin now take the serious risks of
repudiating their late here for having put the individual above party and
substituting a personal dictatorship for a collective one.
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Stalin himself ran thrrugh a series of revolutionary combinations,
du
in
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the
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g
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20 " 0. r it example,
in 1924-25 he combined with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky. From
1925-27, a new alliance between Stalin, Bukharin and Rykov was formed and
routed a Trotq~cy-Zineviev-Kamenev combination. Ind finally, from 1927-29,
Stalin worked with Molotov, Voroshilov, ?Iikoyan, and others to crush Stalin's
recent allies, Bukharin and Rykov.
It was during the ten years which preceded Russia's entry into World
War II that Stalin completed the consolidation of his control over the
Communist party. machinery. By that time he had placed his loyal stooges in
all important positions of authority throughout the Soviet Union and the
Jrny was brought under political control.
tmong the major charges said to have been leveled against Stalin by
Khrushchev, is the charge that in the late 'thirties he deliberately
liquidated Marshal Tukhachevsky and thousands of the best officers in the
Soviet Irmy, presumably to insure his political control of the military
apparatus. Certainly today there is ;cod reason to believe that Marshal
Tukhachevsky was falsely accused of conniving with the Germans. There is
some evidence that there was a clever German plot to discredit Tukhachevsky,
which happened to fit in with Stalin's own plans.
We do know that during and after the war there was burning resentment
among the Soviets professional soldiers at Stalin's interference in the
conduct of the war, his unjust and capricious belittling of heroes
such as
Zhukov and his arrogant claims to personal credit for Soviet victories.
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1. senior Soviet general, for example, is recently reported as having privately
branded their so-called documentary film, 'The Fall of Berlin," which shows
Stalin as the great military master mind, as a "tissue.of lies."
Today the collective dictatorship is assiduously repairing the injured
dignity of the military and incorporating its leadership into Communist
Party membership. They must realize that, following the usual pattern of
revolutions, the military leaders might tire of being the pawn of dictators,
whether individual or collective.
But whatever the faults of Stalin in the pro-war decade, one can
hardly ascribe them to his old age or senility. Stalin was then in his
prime. Furthermore one can hardly believe that the acts of the dictator in
a war from which he emerged as a hero, are the motivating causes for the
present attempt to liquidate his memory. In fact, the most recent Soviet
pronouncements are tending to refer to "good" and "bad" Stalin eras.
Naturally, there is no desire to rer.'udiate such measures as farm c
collectivization and the rapid industrialization under the Five Year Plans,
which are s? closely associated with his name. The beginning of the "bad"
period was in 1934 when the great Stalin purges began. If they denounce his
war record, the purpose here must be to eliminate him from the hero class
and to give. the military some of the credit he -had -arrogeteai to himself.
But to find the real reasons for the deg-St, linizetion campaign, we
must, I believe, look to the more recent past, particularly to the hard
autocratic period during the last six or seven years of Stalin's life. Here
we find two major motivations for cutting away from Stalin worship.
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Internationally, from about 1947 onward to the time of his death,
Stalin's, often bellicose, policy in the international field had been a
failure and had tended to unite the Free World against international commu;4
nism. Domestically during this period his police state was meeting ever
increasing disfavor, not only with the helpless People, but with the top
politicians, Generals, and industrial managers who were essential to the
working of the Soviet system. This began to create problems for the regime.
First, let us look at the international picture. In the immediate
p st-war era, riding the crest of the common victory and maintaining military
strenccth and power, Soviet policy had notable successes. It consolidated
the grip on the European satellites and helped the Chinese Communists to
victory.
But beginning with about 1947 in Europe, somewhat later in Asia, the
Free World at last began to realize the implications of the forward drive
of international communism and started to :bake counter measures, and the
tide began to turn.
What happened in these years? The Marshall Plan, which Stalin and
Molotov indignantly rejected and tried to defeat, was put into effect and
?;'urope was saved from economic chaos. In. Greece, the Soviet 'effort to take
ever by guerrilla tactics was thwarted.
Whpn the Soviet attempted to take over Berlin and destroy this out-
post of '..Testern freedom, the Berlin blockade was frustrated by the air lift
and West Berlin rom.ins a show-window of what the Free World can do. Tito
survived his ejection from the Cominform and the wrath of Stalin and struck
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back with telling criticisms of Stalinist policy -- almost identical with
what Soviet leaders are now themselves saying.
Later the North Atlantic Alliance was organized. and despite Soviet
threats the way was ?pened for German rearmament in close union with the
West.
Thus frustrated in the European field Stalin turned to the Far East
and, working with the North Korean and Chinese Communists, attempted to take
over Korea as the first step towards driving America from the Western
Pacific. Again the Communists were blocked and, most important of all, an
alarmed and awakened American public o-inion proceeded to the defensive
rearmament of this country.. Our nuclear power was vastly increased.
It is understandable that Stalin's successors should have found it
convenient to place upon him the blame for Greece, Berlin, Korea, Yu{,oslavia,
German rearmament and the like, and in particular, for the c;enorally hard
Soviet line which has led to the buildup of American defense forces and
Tr 11-TO. It was, these successes which led the Soviet Union to conclude that a
peace treaty with Austria was necessary to build up their badly shattered,
reputation as peace mon..ers and to prop.-.,.re the way for a summit conference,
their pilc;r .mage of penitence to Belgrade, and their effort to line the
Socialist parties into new popular fronts.
But the foreign scene, alone, by no means explains the urge the
present Kremlin loaders felt to break with the hard Stalinist past. They
were already makinE prop;ress in allowing the memory of Stalin to fade in
international recognition and. prestige without going to the extreme of total
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destruction of the Stalin myth with their own people. Thus the clue to
their present policy lies more in the internal Soviet situation than in the
requirements of their foreign policy.
Domestically they have been caught in a dilemma. In order to compete
with the Western world in tho fields of science and industry which was
vitally important for their economic growth and their rearmament program.,
it was essential for the Soviet to speed up the education of their people,
especially in the scientific and technical field. After Stalin's death the
regime encouraged ,.- a.orc objectivity in scientific inquiry, and put on the
shelf some pseuds scientists such as Lysenko. After all they had found oazt
early in the game that in the present nuclear ago one could not fool around
with scientists who tailored their art to the whims of Marxism.
Obviously, the Sovi..ot leaders could not limit their educational
processes to the scientific fields a.nd more and more young men and women
are graduating, from schools, which correspond to our high schools and
colleges, and. arc taking advanced. degrees comparable to our degrees of
vaster of Arts and doctor of Philosophy. Evon with all the indoctrination
in Communist teachings which they give to their young students it is
impossible to prevent education from developing the critical faculties which
every thinking human being possesses.
Purthormore, as part of their new campaign of sweetness and light,
they have found it wise to take down some of the bars which have impeded
travel between the Soviet Union and. the free countries; and while the Iron
Curtain still remains and there is a careful selective process as to those
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who are permitted to leave the Soviet Union or to visit it, it is obvious
th^t today there is far more contact between the people of the USSR and
outside countries than at any time in recent years.
All this has tended to build up pressures upon the Soviet rulers to
create an impression not only internationally but also domestically, that a
dictatorship of the Stalin type was dead. forever.
The Soviet leaders are trying to meet their external and internal
dilemmas by finding a convenient "devil" which they can use to explain away
past Soviet sins to the world abroad and to their own peo.:,le as well as ter
demonstrate that the present rulers of the Soviet are different mentally and
morally than they were under Stp.lin. Thus they hope that their own people
will accept their protestations that the days of government by arbitrary
policy-making, secret trials, deportations, and prison camps are over.
Furthermore, they are again promising that they will do something to raise
the standard of living so th.t the promise of individual freedom will be
seasoned with a greater share of consumers roods and a .more abundant life.
The extent of the op-Position to the Stalinist type regime must have
been gauged by the Kremlin as far stronger and deeper among the Russian
people than we had dared to hope. Nonetheless, the destruction of the
Stalin myth carries with it a very real threat to the internal discipline
and unity of the Soviet Communist Party and the international Communist
movement.
That calculated risk must have been taken--deliberately by men who
knew they had to have a scapegoat, if they were to hope to preserve the
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dictatorship on which their own power and very survival rested. By attack-
ing the personal symbol of Stalin and the worst excesses of his rule, they
hope to be able to preserve many of the ess;:r_tialsof the Stalinist syntu.m,
now labelling it Leninism, the monopoly of all power by a single party,
the complete subordination of the courts and individual rights to arbitrary
party decree, the governmental control Of the press and of all organs of
public information.
This basic structure is meant to be preserved intact. Already the
regime has publicly warned, that some "rotten elements" have taken the
de-Stalinization campaign too literally and are "trying to :question the
correctness of the Party's policy." This, Pravda thundered, is "petty
bourgeois licentiousness" of a kind the "Party has never tolerated and will
never tolerate." A dead and dishonored Stalin, therel_ore, is likely to be
merely a device -- here possibly a Trojan corpse rather than a Trojan horse
-- with which the long suffering Russian people are, I fear, to be deceived
in their expectation of a freer and better life.
Obvion?.sly the Soviet rulers concluded that it would take something
more than a m.:re repetition of the old cliches to have any effect.
Apparently the necessity was deemed to be urgent and impelling. They had.
tried to do the trick with the liquidation of Boriabut..thc._sccrecy..surround.-
ing his execution was hardly a persuasive bit of evidence of a now dawn
of liberty. It was in the worst tradition of the Stalin era. -- and he,
after all, generally gave his victims at least a drum;~head-:public trial.
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The degradation of Stalin, if the Soviet program hail worked as the
leaders had apparently planned it, was to be under strict party discipline.
But it seems to have got out of hand. When ihrushchev briefed the perty
leaders assembled at the V:~ Congress in Moscow at a secret meeting on
February 25th, the representatives of foreign Cormunist parties wore
excluded, but the party leaders from all parts of the USSR were there.
They were to take the gospel by word of mouth to the local precinct loaders.
What was planned, apparently, was a gradual process of burying the dead
leader's memory. Different medicine was to be reserved for the faithful
followers of Stalin in the satellites, each according to their needs,
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Something may have gone wrong with this careful planning. It is
possible that difficult questions were posed by those party workers who had
been taught for decades to worship St,_.lin and who knew that Khrushchev,
Bulganin and the whole Politburo owed their positions to him. On the other
hand, Khrushchev may have deliberately planned to give the Party the "Shock"
treatment to give more conviction to the anew men" and "new times" theory,
It any rate, whatever may have been the plan, the reports a: re unanimous,
as published in the press of every free country, without cf.:"ectivc denial
from *Iloscow, that Khrushchev ended up by branding Stalin not only as a
heartless dictator but as P. tyrant and murderer, an incompetent military
leader whose bungling in both war and peace; had brought the Soviet Union to
the verge of ruin. In the same breath, Stalin, the leading theoretician of
Communism for the past 25 years, was labelled a heretic and his interpretations
of the ?-2crxist-Leninist philoso -)
were rejected.
It may be well at this point to consider the position and character
of the men who have now brought those charges. 11 of them had been for many
long years prominently associated with Stalin's policies. iSome had.been his
hatchet men in many of the less savory acts of his chequered crre:r.
Certainly no leader in history ever took such Elaborate precautions as Stalin
to insure that the men around him were loyal beyond the shadow of a doubt.
That his henchmen, now that he is dead, so bitterly repudiated Stalin is
a commentary on the totalitarian system of government itself and the leaders
it breeds.
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The main attack on Stalin's record was made by the Party Secretary,
Nikita Khrushchev. He had hold key jobs under Stalin since 1935, and had
organized and carried through, for Stalin, the purges in the Ukraine. In
January of 1938, he was named as alternate member of the Politburo and has
been a full member of that body since 1939. Without wavering., he followed
the Stalinist lines and on the Dict?ator's 70th birthday, December 21, 1949,
he had this to say:
"Hail to the father, sage tcnche;r, and brilliant
leader of the Forty, the Soviet people, and the
toilers of all the world, Comrade Stalin."
The number two man in the nti-Stalin crusade has been Jnastas
Mikoyan. In fact he was the first at the recent XX Congress to criticize
Stalin by name. Mikoyan held key jobs under Stalin for ppruximrtely 30
ye^.rs. Stalin installed hiii as comuissar of trade and made him candidate
member of. the Politburo in 1926, when Mikoyan was 31--the youngest person
ever to attain Politburo rank. He 4os adjusted to every turn of the Soviet
policy line and remained in the front political ranks ever.since.
Others who have been parties to this great d bunking exorcise were,
of course, Bulganin, who had worked with Stalin since 1931; Kaganevich, who
had been at his side since 1924; Malenkov, who had been A member of his
personal secretariat for some 25 years, whose: career was made by'Stalin, and
finally, Molotov, the longest Stalin associate of them all. He had worked
with the Dictator since about 1912 in the early days of the illcg= l
Communist conspiraacy.
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There is good reason to believe that Molotov has joined the ranks of
Stalin detractors with reluctance. Certainly a Stalinist at heart, he must
have viewed recent events with a heavy heart and with the knowledge that
the recent deviations of which he has been openly accused are a prelude to
his gradual retirement from the duties of his office. I incline to believe
that Molotov's real sentiments are those he expressed at Stalin's grave
and then more recently when, after Malenkov's demotion in 1954, he exuberantly
reaffirmed his faith in Stalinist principles.
All of these men, while they now find it convenient to disassociate
themselves from the dead tyrant, show no intention of accepting the normal
consequences of long association with a repudiated leader and a discredited
policy nor of relinquishin~ly the benefits they acquired under Stalin and the
power which they are now enjoying as his pupils and succewors.
The leaders of the Soviet Union today are walking a dangerous
tightrope. They are trying to discredit Stalin without discrediting the
Communist Party, which he led so long, or the men who worked with him.
Human memories are short nn.d perhaps they may succeed in this maneuver. But
surely many a Communist will question the good faith of these leaders. The
reversal is to abrupt to invite confidence. After all, it was only a
little over three years ago, on March 9, 1953,,that Stalin was buried. At
that time these men who are now castigating him joined in the most lavish
tribute and they brought together in Moscow the Communist lenders of
China and the European satellites to do him homage.
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This is what his short-time heir, Georgi Malenkov, had to st?y:
"The policy of Stalin will live for ages a nd thankful
posterity will praise his name just as we do. x x x Comrade
Stalin, a great thinker of our epoch, creatively developed in
new historical conditions the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.
Stalin's name justly stands with the names of the greatest
people in all the history of mankind--Marx.-Engles--Lenin.tt
The Chinese Communists and the Moscow-designated rulers of the
European Satellites who attended Stalin's funeral must now have some question
in their minds today as to the forthrightness of the present Kremlin leaders
who induced them to join in this homage. Recently, the Chinese Communists
spent several weeks before publishing their acceptance of MOSCOW views of
the late Soviet Dictator.
Certainly a.t is not for us to defend the Stalinist dictatorship, its
cruelties and perversions as against its present detractors. we do have
e right, however, to question the sincerity of those who today tell us that
for 20 years and more they were a party to foisting; on the world a tissue
of lies and deceit.
Their sincerity is basically to be questioned on three counts. First,
they have been willing to criticize and condemn only carefully selected
faults of the Stalin regime. They have specifically endorsed acts that both
within Russia and in the world at large caused the most widespread and
terrible human suffering; for example, the d eliberate starvation of the
Russian peasantry during the collectivization campaign of the early 301s;
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and the exploitation of the captive peoples of the Eastern European satellites,
where proud and independent nations were crushed in defiance of solemn
international obligations. Mikoyan at the 20th Congress even had the
effrontery to boast Of the Czech coup as an example of how Communist parties
can come to power by "peaceful" and "parliamentary" means.
Secondly, they have failed to repudiate the arbitrary diet^toria.l rule
that allows life and death issues to be settled by a handful of men--whether
by one or a half-dozen matters not to the Russian peasant.
The 20th Congress in its unreal and sheeplike unanimity was an
exam:.)le of the fact th''t the present u, 5, or 6-man leadership intends to
permit little real debate and criticism of basic policy. Not one voice was
raised to protest the decree designed to force the peasants on the collective
farms to devote all their efforts to the collective by sevmly limiting the
time allowed fir work on their private plots. The widespread opposition to
this decree that must exist among the Russian fe.rmers went unrepresented and
unheard as the last Paxty.Congress proceeded to rubber-stamp every resolutidn
put before it.
Thirdly, whatever improvements have been made in assuring the personal
security and welfare of the individual Russian, that progress is dependent
on the whim of the Presidium, (popularily known as the Politburo). The stick
can be used later if the carrot doesn't work.
What we now have is a kind of "mutual protective association" among
a few men who suffered under Stalin so long th^t they are willing ti cooperate
to keep the full police power of the state out of the hands of any one man.
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There is no hint that any ordinary Russian who tries to dissent against the
regime will escape the wrath of Serov+s gunmen any more than he would have
escaped when Beria was alive. If necessary to preserve their own skins
these men might return to unrestricted terror like ducks to water. It was
their native element for years.
The final and real test of the intentions of the Soviet leaders will
remain their willingness to accept those basic institutional changes that
can give the Russian people and the world in general genuine assurance that
a oie-man or three or four-man dictatorship cannot again plot in secret the
massive domestic or international crimes of the.recent past.
In the end, opposition parties, an independent judiciary and a
free press are the only real safeguards against successive dictators, e^ch
with his own power lust and new cult of personality.
The problems which this right-about-frco presents for the world-wide
Communist movement both within and outside of the USSR are immense. Here
are a few of them:
Stalin was not only the'dictator of his country for more than two
decades, he was also hailed ?s its great military leader in war, its
prophet and the interpreter of Marxist-Lenirlst doctrine. His writing,
particularly the problems of Leninism and the Short History of the Communist
Party, are scattered in tens of millions of copies throughout the Communist
world. It will be years before they can ,be removed frp.m circulntion, in
fact, all Soviet history for the past thirty years must now be rewritten.
They won't be able to handle this quite as they did in the case of Beria.
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Here they sent to all holders of the Soviet Encyclopedia Britannica instructions
to excise the pages praising Beria and insert a puffed-up story on the Bering
Straits (which fitted in in proper alphabetical order).
Stalin's name is on thousands of streets and squares. Cities and
towns bear his name throughout the Communist world. For the people of the
Soviet Union, Stalingrad stands as the symbol of their victory over Hitlerism.
Will his name remain here and elsewhere or will the attempt be made to blot
it out?
Stalin's henchmen were put in key positions throughout the length and
breadth of the Soviet Union. They hold key places in the European satellite
regimes. Each and every one of these appointees must today fear not only
for his future, but for his life.
Already political idols are toppling or at least swaying in the wind
from Moscow--in Bulgaria, in Hungary, in Poland. Names of former leaders
who crossed Stalin are coming back into repute daily, and political circles
in the Satellites are plainly in confusion and near panic trying to figure
out where the line of propriety will be drawn next.
As Alfred Robens; a leader of the British Labor Party, recently
remarked, I'How do you correct the mistake, of having shot a man? Do you
restore him to the history books or give him a. posthumous reward?""
The problem of justifying post crimes is especially difficult in the
foreign Communist parties, such as those in France and Italy, where local
leaders clung to Stalin's coat-tails"and did his biddihA'without having
the excuse of the pistol at their head: These men could have denounced
Stalin's crimes earlier and lived,-unlike the men in Moscow.
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Why did they not do so?. This is the question we'ought to keep asking every
Italian tempted to play ball with Togliatti.
And what about the reputation of Trotsky, a key St