Free to Think?

The rumble of moving furniture came again last week from the blank-walled Soviet fortress. This time it was a brief official announcement that Marshal Nikolai Bulganin, 53, had been "relieved of his duties" as Minister of Armed Forces and replaced in that post by Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky (also 53). Again speculation buzzed through the free world. What did this rumble mean?

Bulganin has been a faithful party henchman since the Revolution, mostly in administrative duties of various sorts. He is not a Red Army career man; when the Germans invaded Russia in 1941 he was appointed political commissar on the Moscow front, and in 1942 when the city was saved he was handed high military rank. He took over from Stalin himself as Minister of Armed Forces in 1947. Vasilevsky, a medal-shingled career soldier who came to the top in the war, distinguished himself at Sevastopol, Voronezh, Stalingrad.

As in the case of Molotov's replacement by Vishinsky as Foreign Minister, it seemed extremely unlikely that Bulganin's "relief from duty" was a demotion. Like Molotov, Bulganin remained a member of the all-powerful Politburo. It was possible that he had been moved up, either to an inner advisory group on the Politburo, or to the Central Committee's Military Department, the Communist Party's hidden organ which controls the Ministry of Armed Forces. One trend was clear: all but one (Minister of Light Industry A. N. Kosygin) of the Politburo's 13 members have been relieved of routine administrative duties. Perhaps they needed to be free to think, and think hard, in view of crucial policy decisions ahead.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.