Conversations with Stalin (21 page)

 

ENVER HOXHA (1908– )

Leading Albanian Communist leader. He was educated in France and Belgium and taught French in Albanian schools. He was a founder of the Albanian Communist Party in 1941 and of the Albanian National Liberation Movement in 1942. In 1943 he became Secretary General of the Albanian Communist Party, which post he held until 1954, when it was abolished. He has since served as First Secretary of the Party's Central Committee. In 1946 he was Premier, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and Commander in Chief of Albania's armed forces.

 

ARSO JOVANOVIĆ

Professional prewar Yugoslav army officer from Montenegro. He joined the Partisans and organized the People's Liberation Army, of which he was Chief of the General Staff until the end of 1946, when he was replaced by Koča Popović He was openly on the side of the Soviet Union in the Tito-Cominform break in 1948. He was shot by border guards while trying to escape to Rumania.

 

LAZAR MOISEEVICH KAGANOVICH (1893– )

Communist of humble Jewish origin who was a Party organization man. He rose to power as one of Stalin's chief henchmen. During the Second World War he was a member of the State Defense Committee and subsequently held high posts in the Caucasus and the Ukraine. His influence declined in Stalin's last years, perhaps in part because of the anti-Semitic campaign. After Stalin's death he became prominent once again, but was divested of all power in 1957 as a member of the “anti-Party group.”

 

EDVARD KARDELJ (1907– )

Yugoslav Communist leader generally regarded as second to Tito. A Slovenian schoolteacher, he joined the Party in 1928. He was jailed for two years in 1931. From 1934 to 1937 he studied in the Comintern's Lenin School in Moscow and served as a professor there. He collaborated with Tito in the reorganization of the Yugoslav Communist Party before the war, and became a member of its Politburo in 1940. During the war he served in the Partisan Supreme Command and became Vice-Premier of the Provisional Government founded in 1943. He retained this post when the Government was constitutionally established in 1945. Since 1951 he has also served as Foreign Minister and as president of the commission in charge of the reorganization of the Government. He is regarded as a top ideologist in the Yugoslav Communist Party.

 

NIKITA SERGEEVICH KHRUSHCHEV (1894– )

Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A locksmith by trade, he rose through the ranks of the Communist Party especially through his activities in the Ukraine. Following the Civil War, in which he served as a political commissar of a Partisan detachment, he was sent to the Workers' School at Kharkov University. Thereafter he ascended the ladder of Party posts up to the Politburo (candidate member in 1935) and Central Committee. In 1938 he was put in charge of carrying out a purge in the Ukraine, and during the Second World War he served there in various army posts. After the war he was transferred from the Ukraine to Moscow, where he became a full member of the Party's Central Committee and Presidium in 1952. After Stalin's death, in 1953, he was elected First Secretary and eventually replaced Malenkov.

 

BORIS KIDRIČ (1919–1953)

Yugoslav Communist leader of Slovenian origin. He joined the Party in 1928 and lived the life of a constantly hunted underground activist. He joined the Partisans in 1941, and became political commissar for Slovenia. In 1945 he was made Premier of Slovenia and continued a harsh program of establishing Communist hegemony there. In 1946 he was sent to Moscow to study the Soviet economy. From his return, in the fall of the same year, to his death, he was virtual director of the entire Yugoslav economy. His administration is associated with the ruthless collectivization of agriculture, abandoned after his death, and highly demanding production drives in industry. He was a member of the Politburo.

 

SERGEI MIRONOVICH KIROV (1886–1934)

Leading Bolshevik revolutionary and Politburo member in 1930. He at first supported Stalin in the latter's rise to power but opposed his personal rule after the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934. His assassination in December 1934, probably at Stalin's behest, set off the Great Purge.

 

VASSIL KOLAROV (1877–1950)

Bulgarian Communist who succeeded Dimitrov as Premier in 1949. Like Dimitrov, he was a veteran of the Communist International and was its General Secretary in 1922. Following the Second World War, he left the USSR to return to Bulgaria, where he held the posts of Provisional President of the Bulgarian Republic (1946), Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister (1949).

 

IVAN STEPANOVICH KONEV (1897– )

Marshal of the Soviet Union. He distinguished himself during the Second World War, especially in the liberation of Kharkov (1943) and Kirovograd (1944). After the war he was Soviet representative on the Allied Control Commission in Vienna. From 1946 to 1955 he was Commander in Chief Land Forces, and from 1955 First Deputy Minister of Defense and Commander in Chief of the Warsaw Pact forces. He resigned from this post in 1960 on grounds of ill health. He was chairman of the special court that sentenced Beria in 1953.

 

TRAICHO KOSTOV (1897–1949)

Bulgarian Communist leader. He was a member of the Politburo and Deputy Prime Minister who, though an anti-Titoist, was associated with a “Bulgaria-first” outlook. Stripped of power in March 1949 and indicted in December of that year, he created a sensation by repudiating his confession at the trial. He was executed.

 

GEORGI MAXIMILIANOV1CH MALENKOV (1902– )

Soviet Communist Party leader who worked his way through the Party apparatus to become a member of the Central Committee, in 1939, where he was placed in charge of the administration of cadres. In 1941 he became a candidate member of the Politburo and served on the State Defense Committee throughout the Second World War. After the war he served as Secretary of the Central Committee and Deputy Prime Minister. He succeeded Stalin as Prime Minister in the era of “collective leadership” but was forced to step down after a public admission of failure in 1955. In 1957, as a member of the “anti-Party group,” he was stripped of power.

 

DMITRI ZAKHAROVICH MANUILSKY (1883– )

Soviet Communist Party official and diplomat. He joined the Party in 1903. As an underground activist, he experienced arrest and exile. After the Revolution of 1917 most of his posts were in his native Ukraine. However, he was even more active in the Communist International, serving as Secretary of the Presidium from 1928 to 1943. During the war he served as a political officer in the Red Army. He was also Foreign Minister for the Ukraine from 1945 to 1952, and head of the Ukrainian delegation to the United Nations in 1952.

 

ANASTAS IVANOVICH MIKOYAN (1895– )

Armenian Communist who has been especially prominent as director of Soviet foreign trade and food industries. A candidate member of the Politburo in 1926, he became a full member in 1935. He has also been Deputy Prime Minister since 1937. After Stalin's death he consistently supported Khrushchev and has become one of the most influential leaders of the Soviet Communist Party. He is generally regarded as a “reasonable” Communist and achieved some popularity in the West, especially as a result of his American visit in 1958.

 

MITRA MITROVIĆ (1912– )

Yugoslav Communist Party member since 1933. She was prominent in the Partisan ranks during the Second World War. After 1945 she served for several years as Minister of Education for Serbia. More recently she has risen to posts of federal rank in both the Executive Council of the Government and the Central Committee of the Party.

 

VYACHESLAV MIKHAILOVICH MOLOTOV (1890– )

A Bolshevik since 1906 and a specialist in Party organization. He ascended the ladder, largely as Stalin's lieutenant, until he was second in power only to Stalin. From 1926 he was a member of the Politburo and of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. He was Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars—that is, Prime Minister—throughout the thirties, and Deputy Chairman until 1957. He was best known to the world as Soviet Commissar (from 1946, Minister) for Foreign Affairs. In 1957 he was stripped of power as a member of the “anti-Party group” in association with Malenkov, Kaganovich, and others, and has since held relatively minor posts abroad.

 

BLAGOJE NEŠKOVIĆ (1907– )

Serbian Communist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and joined Tito's Partisans in 1941. In 1945 he was Premier of Serbia. A member of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party, he was accused of deviation in 1952 and stripped of his posts.

 

ANNA PAUKER (1893– )

Rumanian Jew (nee Robinsohn) who was a founder of the Rumanian Communist Party in 1921. She married its head, Marcel Pauker. In 1924 both left Rumania for Moscow to work in Comintern headquarters. In 1936 she returned to Rumania, where she was arrested; her husband, in Moscow, fell in the Great Purge. Returned to Moscow in an exchange of prisoners, she became a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. During the Second World War she directed the Soviet radio station for broadcasts to Rumania and helped organize the Tudor Vladimirescu Division of Rumanian prisoners of war in the USSR. She returned to Rumania with the Red Army, and on November 7, 1947 became Foreign Minister and, soon after, Vice-Premier as well. In 1952 she fell from power, as a “deviationist.”

 

MOŠA PIJADE (1889–195?)

Theoretician of the Yugoslav Communist Party. He was the oldest member in the Party when it was organized in 1920. Sentenced to twenty years in prison for spreading Communism in trade unions, he translated Marx's
Das Kapital
while serving his term in Sremska Mitrovica Penitentiary, the same jail to which Djilas was later sentenced under the Tito regime. During the Second World War he and Djilas led the uprising in Montenegro, which gave rise to a ruthless civil war in that province. After the war he served as Vice-President of the Constituent Assembly and, later, of the Federal People's Assembly. In 1954, as a result of the Djilas affair, he became President of the Assembly. A member of the Yugoslav Communist Central Committee and Politburo, he was, until his death, in the inner circle around Tito.

 

KOČA POPOVIĆ (1908– )

Scion of a prominent Belgrade family, Paris-trained lawyer, and poet. He joined the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1933 and fought in the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return he was arrested, but continued his underground activities after being released. In 1941 he joined the Partisans and rose to the highest military and Government echelons. He served as Chief of the General Staff from 1945 to 1953. Since 1946 he has held the post of Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia.

 

ALEKSANDAR-MARKO RANKOVIČ (1909– )

Yugoslav Communist Party leader, who joined the Serbian Youth Section of the Party in 1927. He spent five years in various prisons, where he got to know Tito and Pijade. In 1937, when Tito reorganized the Party, he was in the Politburo and has remained a top Communist ever since. After the liberation struggle, of which he was a leading organizer, he became best known as Minister of Interior and director of the Military and Secret Police. He and Kardelj are generally regarded as being next to Tito in power.

 

KONSTANTIN KONSTANTINOVICH ROKOSSOVSKY (1896– )

A native Pole who joined the Red Army in 1919 and made a brilliant military career in the Soviet Union. He was one of the USSR's most outstanding generals during the Second World War. For his part in the defense of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk, he was twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and became a Marshal in 1944. In 1949 he was officially transferred to the Polish Army and held the posts of Polish Minister of Defense, Commander in Chief, Deputy Prime Minister, and member of the Politburo of the Polish Communist Party. In November 1956 the Gomulka regime had him transferred back to the Soviet Union, where he has since served as Deputy Minister of Defense.

 

PAVLE SAVIĆ (1909– )

Paris-trained Yugoslav nuclear physicist and member of the Communist Party since 1939. He fought in the liberation struggle and was attached to Supreme Headquarters. In 1949 he received an award for his work with low temperatures.

 

RUDOLF SLANSKY (1901–1952)

Czech Communist leader. He became director of the Communist daily
Rudé Právo
in 1926. In 1928 he was elected to the Central Committee of the Party. He was a member of the Czechoslovak delegation to the last congress of the Comintern, in 1935. After Czechoslovakia's partition by Hitler, Slansky fled to the USSR, where he worked until 1944 in the Comintern. He returned to Czechoslovakia with the Red Army and became Secretary General of the reconstituted Czechoslovak Communist Party. He attended the Cominform meetings of 1947, 1948, and 1949. In September 1951 he was demoted from his leadership and, three months later, was arrested for “criminal activities.” In 1958 he was hanged.

 

IVAN ŠUBAŠIĆ (1892–1955)

Croatian politician. He was Governor
(Ban)
of Croatia from August 1939, and went into exile during the war. On June 1, 1944 he was appointed Premier of the Yugoslav Royal Government-in-exile at the insistence of the Allies. He merged his cabinet with Tito's after the Tito-Šubašić Agreement concluded on the island of Vis. In the coalition Provisional Government, he served for a time as Foreign Minister.

 

MIKHAIL ANDREYEVICH SUSLOV (1902– )

Communist Party leader in the USSR. He joined the Party in 1921, entered the Central Committee in 1941, and was a high-ranking political officer during the war. In 1946 he became head of the Agitation and Propaganda Section of the Central Committee, and in 1947 Secretary. In 1949–1950 he served as editor in chief of
Pravda
. His chief posts since then have been chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Soviet Union (1954) and member of the Central Committee's Presidium (1955). Generally regarded as a doctrinaire, he has nevertheless supported Khrushchev in defeating the “anti-Party group.”