Monday, Jul. 22, 1957
THE LENINGRAD CASE
Whether the exiled Georgy Malenkov will be allowed to manage his dam for long is something that perhaps even Nikita Khrushchev does not know at the moment. But just in case Malenkov must be done away with, Khrushchev laid the groundwork a fortnight ago by a pointed reference to Malenkov's involvement in "the Leningrad Case." This curious purge, and its echoes for nearly a decade, play a key role in the current Kremlin power struggle.
IN August 1948, Stalin's heir apparent, the tough and flamboyant Andrei Zhdanov, died at 52 of what his doctors called "paralysis of the heart." The old tyrant gave Zhdanov the most pompous funeral since Lenin's, and walked behind the caisson with tears in his eyes. As boss of Leningrad before and during World War II, Zhdanov had placed a clique of up-and-coming young administrators in crucial posts. Scarcely had his body been lowered into a grave at the foot of the Kremlin wall when his chief rival, pudgy Georgy Malenkov, joined with Secret Police Boss Lavrenty Beria in persuading Stalin to liquidate the "Leningrad clique" and replace it with a Malenkov clique.
Ready Evidence. By the spring of 1949, Beria and Malenkov had the doctored evidence ready. Some of Zhdanov's lieutenants were charged with engaging in corrupt practices, others were accused of pursuing "their own economic policies." One after another, the Zhdanovites disappeared. Virtually the entire Leningrad party apparat led by Peter Popkov, Zhdanov's successor as city secretary, was silently liquidated. In Moscow the purge carried away a clutch of notables, including the youngest member of the Politburo, State Planning Boss Nikolai Voznesensky. Dozens were executed.
Pinning tke Rap. So long as Stalin lived, the Leningrad Case was a "quiet purge": nothing was said of it in print. It was first used as a weapon after Stalin's death, in the overthrow and execution of Secret Police Boss Lavrenty Beria. Even then, mention of the case was confined to a secret memorandum foreshadowing the later declaration in Khrushchev's famed 20th Party Congress speech on Feb. 24, 1956 that it was "precisely Beria" who "fabricated" the charges against the Zhdanovites. Within a year after Beria's death, Malenkov's power had so declined that Khrushchev or his henchmen were able to push through the first public mention of the case in the U.S.S.R. Announcing the execution of former Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov in December 1954, Izvestia reported: "Abakumov framed the so-called Leningrad Case."
From there on, the way was clear for Khrushchev to pin the rap on Malenkov. In February 1955, when Malenkov was ousted as Premier, one of the charges against him in secret party councils was that he was "co-responsible for the Leningrad Case." And two weeks ago, in Khrushchev's speech to the Elektrosila factory workers came the blunt, public denunciation: "Malenkov, who was one of the most important organizers of the so-called Leningrad Case, was simply afraid to come here to you in Leningrad."
The beauty of the Leningrad Case, in Khrushchev's hands, is that he himself was away from Moscow bossing the Ukraine at the time, and the Leningrad murders are among the few crimes that cannot easily be pinned on him too.
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