Plenary session of the CPSU Central Committee in July 1953

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in July 1953 was a four-day meeting of the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which took place around a week after Lavrenti Beria was arrested and whose speeches were characterized by the condemnation of his actual or alleged crimes.

background

Josef Stalin died on March 5, 1953 , whereupon Georgi Maximilianowitsch Malenkow was appointed prime minister and party leader a day later . However, he resigned the party leadership on March 14th, and was succeeded by Nikita Sergejewitsch Khrushchev . The government was transferred to a presidium, which, according to the principle of collective leadership, included Malenkov Beria as 1st deputy prime minister and interior minister, foreign minister Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov , defense minister Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin and Lasar Moisseyevich Kaganovich , who is responsible for coordinating industrial planning .

In order to prevent an alleged coup by Beria, which should have ended with a dictatorship of his own, Khrushchev secretly planned his arrest. For this step he took Kliment Eefremowitsch Voroshilov , Anastas Mikoyan , Kaganowitsch and Malenkow into his trust, who initially reacted very differently to the plan. Ultimately, Beria was arrested on June 26th at the presidium meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU , 3 days later this body passed a resolution to investigate its activities. The support of the party for its establishment was to be secured in the July lenum.

course

The plenary session, chaired by Khrushchev, took place from July 2nd to 4th and 7th and was divided into five sessions. In addition to Khrushchev, 23 other politicians appeared as speakers:

The agenda consisted of three items:

1. About the criminal anti-party and anti-subversive activities of Beriah

2. On convening the special session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

3. Organizational issues

The first item on the agenda was dealt with in the four sessions from July 2nd to 4th, which included allegations against Beria. a.

  • Liaison with foreign secret services
  • Influencing Stalin to advance his own career and despising other politicians
  • Abuse of office to monitor other high-ranking politicians and to suppress the population
  • Attempt to strengthen the influence of the Council of Ministers to the detriment of the Central Committee
  • unauthorized procedure as chairman of the special committee for nuclear issues, no consultation of government and Central Committee on important matters
  • Connections with the Yugoslav Interior Minister Ranković , despite the tensions between the SFRY and the USSR at the time
  • Filling political posts with opposition members or tolerating them
  • Commitment to the Müsavat Partiyası in the 1920s, portrayed by Beria as a conspiratorial activity in favor of the Bolsheviks
  • Reduction of the Soviet influence on the GDR and commitment to the unification of the two German states while maintaining foreign policy neutrality in the future
  • alleged fight against the personality cult to enhance one's own position and damage Stalin's memory
  • Enactment of an amnesty , less political prisoners but v. a. Criminals, including repeat offenders, benefited
  • derogatory and disrespectful behavior towards subordinates and other politicians
  • harmful influence on the economy, especially in the agricultural sector
  • Publication of the brochure On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia under his name, despite different authorship and errors in content

Agenda item 2 was dealt with on July 4th. The plenary accepted the proposal to convene the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for the second half of July 1953 to Moscow and at the same time confirmed the points which were to be submitted to it for confirmation.

Under the third agenda item, dealt with in the fifth session on July 7th, Semyon Denisovich Ignatjew , who had only been excluded in April 1953, and membership candidate Georgi Konstantinowitsch Zhukov were appointed to the Central Committee, while the plenum decided to expel Sergei Arsenjewitsch Goglidze and Bogdan Sacharow .

The plenary session ended with Malenkov's closing remarks and the resolution on agenda item 1.

Stalin was judged largely positively in the contributions. Only in Malenkov's remarks on the last day of the session was there criticism, v. a. in his last years in office, but without condemning Stalin's overall work.

Type of evidence and accuracy of the allegations against Beria

Beria's alleged guilt was not confirmed in the speeches by the presentation of official documents; the speakers mainly cited anecdotes, quoted people involved or argued without any evidence. Aspects such as the appeal to unity of the party, for which Beria allegedly represented a danger, run through the entire event.

While Beria is now held responsible for several crimes during his tenure, some of the allegations against him are now considered questionable or show his similarities with Stalin, who was praised in the plenary:

  • The assumption that Beria planned a coup in 1953 is viewed as unconfirmed based on current sources.
  • When the situation in the GDR was dealt with during the plenary session, the fact that Beria's proposal corresponded to the Stalin notes in terms of content was kept silent .
  • The alleged connection to the government of Yugoslavia also played a role in the show trials against László Rajk and Rudolf Slánský and was cited in these as evidence of the hostile attitude of the defendants towards the Soviet Union and its allies.

Consequences

Beria's arrest was publicly announced in Pravda on July 10, 1953 , and according to official reports, he himself was executed on December 23 of the same year after a five-day secret trial. Rumor has it that Beria died shortly after his arrest, possibly before the Central Committee plenum.

With Arutinov, Bagirow, Kaganowitsch, Kirichenko, Malenkov and Molotov, six of the speakers participating in the plenary session lost their political offices or party membership during Khrushchev's tenure as chairman of the CPSU, and Bagirov was executed in 1956.

The new Soviet state and party leadership even loosened relations with Yugoslavia by granting loans and by meeting Khrushchev and Bulganin with Tito in Belgrade on May 26, 1955 .

The unification of the two German states envisaged by Stalin and supposedly also Beria under the condition of external neutrality was no longer consistently pursued in the following period, the GDR and the FRG increasingly diverged politically and economically.

In his speech on the XX. At the party congress of the CPSU , which is marked by criticism of Stalinist policy, Khrushchev repeated several of the allegations against Beria, u. a. his supposed activities for the Mousavatists and foreign secret services.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The large Bertelsmann Lexikothek. Our century in words, pictures and sound. The 1950s , Bertelsmann Publishing Group, Gütersloh 2001, ISBN 3-577-07943-6 , p. 367.
  2. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 13 ff.
  3. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 342 ff.
  4. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 27.
  5. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 28 ff.
  6. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 308 ff.
  7. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 310 ff.
  8. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 313 ff.
  9. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 314.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Zank: The master of terror . In: Die Zeit , No. 28/2003, accessed on July 27, 2017.
  11. ^ Text of the Stalin Notes, accessed on October 6, 2019
  12. ^ The large Bertelsmann Lexikothek. Our century in words, pictures and sound. The 1950s , Bertelsmann Publishing Group, Gütersloh 2001, ISBN 3-577-07943-6 , p. 68.
  13. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm: The case of Berija. Billing log. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0207-6 , p. 343 ff.
  14. ^ The large Bertelsmann Lexikothek. Our century in words, pictures and sound. The 50s. Bertelsmann Publishing Group, Gütersloh 2001, ISBN 3-577-07943-6 , p. 322.
  15. ^ Khrushchev's secret speech on the XX. Congress , accessed October 5, 2019.