Notes on the Benediktov Interview

Stalin-era Stalinism and post-Stalin Stalinism (3)

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 

A. N. Kosygin with I. A. Benediktov, Soviet Ambassador to India, during Benediktov’s posting in New Delhi.

At the very outset of the book, Benediktov argues that the Stalin period was not merely a phase necessitated by historical circumstances, or one that should be defended; he also maintains that the policies pursued during this period created an exceptionally effective and dynamic socio-economic system, and that the Soviet Union’s way out lay in a return to those policies. In his view, thanks to this system, by the late 1950s the Soviet Union had become the most dynamic country in the world in economic and social terms:

“The Stalinist system” (…) proved to be highly effective and full of vitality. Thanks to this system, by the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Union was the most dynamic country in the world in economic and social terms. (V. Litov, Stalin ve Hruşçov Hakkında: Benediktov ile Söyleşi [On Stalin and Khrushchev: An Interview with Benediktov], translated from the Russian by Candan Badem, Yazılama Yayınevi, 4th edn, April 2023, Istanbul, pp. 15-16)

This claim is not an isolated statement of general praise in Benediktov’s interview. On the contrary, it forms the basis of an argument to which he returns repeatedly, in different contexts, as the conversation progresses. In seeking to explain why, during the Stalin period, the Soviet administrative apparatus operated with greater energy, initiative and effectiveness, Benediktov dwells on a number of policies and principles. One of these is “personal responsibility”.

According to his account, during the Stalin period, errors, failures or the waste of resources could not be dissolved into an abstract, collective sphere of responsibility. Whoever had taken a decision was held personally accountable for its consequences. Benediktov contrasts this with the protective bureaucratic mechanisms which, in his view, gained strength after Khrushchev’s era and, over time, permeated the entire state apparatus: a profusion of signatures, a profusion of approvals, and a complex administrative structure that dispersed responsibility and ultimately obscured who had actually done what. These mechanisms, he argues, effectively shielded bureaucrats from personal responsibility.

(…) at that time responsibility for mistakes was concrete and individual; it was not the tangled, collective affair it is today. Now billions disappear, whole regions are left derelict, yet good luck finding those responsible! In our day, such a situation would have been unthinkable. A people’s commissar who had authorised an overspend of two or three thousand roubles would have been risking not only his post but even his life! (pp. 24-25)

From the bitter experience of others, and partly from my own, I knew full well that responsibility for the results would be personal. No “adviser” or “colleague” - including Central Committee secretaries or even members of the Politburo - could have been of any help. Stalin had quickly, and for a long time, made us forget the habit of hiding behind others, of shifting responsibility onto what he sometimes angrily called the “kolkhoz of the irresponsible”. I believe that a similar principle was applied to the other people’s commissariats, including the NKVD. Such an approach generally increased the energy conversion coefficient of the managerial cadres and made it possible, in practice, to see clearly who was who. Now, however, this is difficult to determine, because there are far too many precautionary and double-guaranteeing signatures and approvals. (p. 51)

[During the Khrushchev period] (…) I experienced for myself the growth of bureaucratism at the upper levels, the mechanical conformity to the First Secretary, the evasion of personal responsibility, and the effort to cover oneself with as many signatures and sign-offs as possible. A “new” style of administration made itself felt - what is bad spreads far more quickly than what is good; and in any case, the tendency to cover oneself and to shift responsibility onto others had always existed within the apparatus. (p. 74)

At this point, it must be acknowledged that Benediktov’s criticism touches on a real problem. It is clear that, in the post-Stalin period, the Soviet bureaucracy acquired an increasingly entrenched, privileged, risk-averse, sluggish and irresponsible character. This tendency became visible in all its starkness, particularly during the Brezhnev era. Security of tenure, networks of mutual protection, the dispersal of responsibility through signature and approval procedures, and the tendency of the apparatus to behave like a self-protecting caste all contributed to a serious obstruction in the functioning of the Soviet system. Numerous examples of this can also be found in the diaries of Anatoly Chernyaev, to which we have referred on many occasions on this blog. [*]

“The militsiya - the Soviet police - is the servant of the people.” The language of official Soviet propaganda presented the state apparatus as though it were accountable to working people. In reality, however, during the Stalin period, real discipline over the bureaucracy was maintained not through democratic oversight from below, but through fear from above.

Yet the limitations of Benediktov’s critique reveal themselves precisely at this point. He does not advocate the democratic oversight of the bureaucracy by the working class, the participation of producers in management, or the genuine revitalisation of the soviets on a socialist basis. He seeks the solution not in subjecting the bureaucracy to control from below, but in intimidating it from above - or, more accurately, in forcing it to live in a state of permanent fear. In other words, what he longs for, and what he wanted to see reinstated in the early 1980s, was not the liquidation of the bureaucracy as a privileged stratum, but its disciplining in the manner of the Stalin period: the disciplining of a bureaucracy which, emboldened by impunity, caused economic losses and waste of resources on both a large and a small scale.

For this reason, Benediktov’s emphasis on “personal responsibility” may, at first glance - especially to someone with limited knowledge of Soviet history - appear to rest on a legitimate and reasonable administrative principle. In reality, however, this emphasis exposes the fundamental contradiction of the Stalinist regime. During the Stalin period, bureaucrats were indeed exposed to far greater risks; they could be compelled to take decisions more quickly, and they could be made to pay a much heavier price for failure, sometimes even when they bore no direct responsibility for it.

Yet in the absence of socialist democracy, this mechanism of “personal responsibility” was afflicted with very serious flaws; it was far from being an effective instrument. It operated as an inhuman, arbitrary and top-down form of discipline - one that punished the innocent along with the guilty, and at times barely touched the guilty while reducing only the innocent to ashes. Consequently, this bureaucratic-dictatorial mechanism of personal responsibility, which often operated in deeply unjust ways, fell far short of the conscious, collective and creative effectiveness that genuine socialist democracy could have provided.

After Stalin’s death, this despotic discipline loosened at different speeds in different spheres, in an uneven and combined fashion. The bureaucracy, which had been set in motion by blood and fear, became inert once that fear diminished; it secured itself through various bureaucratic devices; it avoided taking initiative; it dispersed responsibility; and, sinking ever more deeply into conformism, began to enjoy its material privileges free from fear.

This is one of the significant differences between Stalin-era Stalinism and post-Stalin Stalinism. During the Stalin period, the bureaucracy was disciplined through fear under the rubric of “personal responsibility”; in later periods, however, it gradually turned into a caste that made itself untouchable, evaded mechanisms of oversight or rendered them ineffective, and operated in an increasingly sluggish and inefficient manner.

[*] The diaries of Anatoly Chernyaev are an exceptionally valuable source for understanding the functioning of the party and state apparatus in the final years of the Brezhnev era, as well as the sluggishness of decision-making processes, the mood of the upper-level bureaucracy, the tendency to evade responsibility, and the increasingly pronounced administrative inertia. These diaries contain numerous striking observations on the loosening of bureaucratic discipline, the dispersal of responsibility, and the transformation of the apparatus into a self-protecting structure - precisely the issues discussed here in connection with Benediktov’s critique.

To be continued