1
Michael Loader
In contrast to the following eight chapters in this volume, the perspective is shifted to the central level instead of focusing on an individual Soviet republic. This chapter will examine a remarkable wave of political purges, which targeted some ten Soviet republics over a 30-month period in the Khrushchev era.
In the wake of the 20th Party Congress in 1956 and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization and economic de-centralization initiatives in 1957, the Soviet republics took advantage of these circumstances to claw more decision-making authority from the Centre. By 1958, the increasingly autonomous behaviour of many of the leaderships of the republics’ Communist parties convinced conservative hardliners in the Kremlin of the need for decisive action to combat what they perceived as rampant nationalism within republican leaderships.
This chapter argues that several leading Soviet politicians masterminded these administrative reorganizations using a key department within the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) Central Committee Apparatus. The Party Organs Department for the Union Republics (hereafter the Department) was the conduit for the communication and transmission of Moscow’s instructions with responsibility for supervising republican Communist parties. The Department fell under the control of conservative hardliners in the late 1950s, moving away from Khrushchev’s orbit. The Department, an understudied component of the CPSU’s administration, played a crucial role as the Centre’s executor of these purges through the guise of its official functions. Between December 1958 and May 1961, an alliance of Kremlin hardliners and their handpicked regional elites in the republics became the architects of a wave of purges across the Soviet republics, conducted by the Department. In its contribution to our understanding of the workings of the Department, this chapter demonstrates the extraordinarily influential power of the Apparatus and complements the literature on the little-studied processes of Soviet purging (chistka) in the Khrushchev era. The tactics employed reveal how political purges were implemented after the removal of the Anti-Party Group in 1957.
This chapter links a series of purges in the Soviet republics, which has not been explored before to this extent. Although historians have been aware that some of these purges occurred, few identified any coordinated effort and even fewer linked more than a couple, while others focused on one or two, often misinterpreting their origins as local skirmishes or rash action by Khrushchev. Russian historians Elena Zubkova (2004, p. 8) and Aleksandr Vdovin (2009) come the closest, each listing seven republics in which each Party held a plenum condemning top leaders for violations of nationality policy. These leaders were subsequently purged. What previously appeared as individual purges, now emerges as a pattern and through new archival material suggests coordinated central action. Among other resources, the arguments advanced in this chapter are substantiated by research garnered following the recent declassification by the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History of previously unavailable documents from the CPSU’s highest executive levels (the Presidium/Politburo and the Secretariat).
Although Khrushchev is often implicated in the ‘decapitations’ of these republican Communist parties, this chapter reveals, contrary to the literature, that his hands were actually largely clean while the consequences of these purges weakened Khrushchev’s political strength as his loyal allies were dislodged from the powerful Central Committee (CC). In several cases, Khrushchev was manipulated into ‘friendly fire’ attacks. Therefore, despite clearing out the Stalinist remnants within the Presidium in 1957, Khrushchev was again soon surrounded by hostile actors, primarily because his reorganization of the central bureaucracy, the haphazard, constant redistribution of cadres, and concerns that his mildly liberalizing Thaw policies might be going too far began to push away his own supporters. Khrushchev could not free himself from malcontents because his own protégés morphed into them.
This research sheds light on who was causing this disruption in the Soviet borderlands. Intervention in the republics translated effectively into an indirect rejection of Khrushchev’s reforms by these Kremlin elements who viewed them as destabilizing. I have identified three members of the top echelons of Moscow’s Party elite who sought to reimpose ‘order’ on the Soviet periphery and later profited (possibly intentionally) from a diminished Khrushchev. The key players were Presidium member and Kremlin ideologue Mikhail Suslov, Committee for State Security (KGB) Chairman Aleksandr Shelepin, and his acolyte Department for Union Republics Chairman Vladimir Semichastnyi.
The Party Organs Department and the ‘Red Cardinals’
Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s cult of personality, the subsequent initiation of de-Stalinization measures in society and culture and economic decentralization through Regional Economic Councils (Sovnarkhozy), which collectively came to be known as ‘the Thaw’ for their partial relaxation and repeal of the most extreme elements of Stalinism, had consequences that were not welcomed by Muscovite hardliners. One such consequence was the impetus provided to nationalist movements by de-Stalinization. The more straightjacketed republics looked to the riots in Poland and the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 for inspiration. Moscow received reports of these growing expressions of discontent and nationalist activity.1
Another effect of the Thaw was to embolden some republican leaderships to push for more decision-making powers. Enjoying more authority than at any time since the 1920s korenizatsiia (indigenization) period, these leaderships gradually became populated with younger, nationally-minded, post-Stalin reformist cadres who sought to broaden their popular appeal by styling themselves as defenders of the titular language and culture (Smith, 2017, pp. 985–986, 990, 1001). In Azerbaijan and Latvia, for example, this took the form of making knowledge of their respective languages compulsory in law (Hasanli, 2015, pp. 110, 112; Goff, 2014, pp. 142–143; Loader, 2017, pp. 1082–1099).2 That the titular republics’ leaderships changed their composition and flexed their muscles on the issues of national language and culture and Russification so swiftly after Stalin’s death (and that it caused the response that is the subject of this chapter) demonstrates the seismic effect of the Thaw and how ‘bottled up’ resentments that had pressurized under Stalin were explosively released.
This was in essence ‘national communism’, a phrase attributed to a few Soviet republics (Latvia, and Lithuania (Grybkauskas, 2013, pp. 346, 366; Kemp, 1999)), satellite regimes in Eastern Europe (Władysław Gomułka’s Poland and Imre Nagy’s Hungary), and Josip Broz Tito’s renegade, independent Communist Yugoslavia. Khrushchev-aligned republican leaders were at pains to show how their national communist policies dovetailed with CPSU policy as products of the Thaw, merely tweaked the Soviet system, did not challenge the Soviet order’s fundamentals, and saw them repeatedly reaffirm their allegiance to Moscow (Loader, 2015, pp. 15–19).
Nevertheless, collectively these developments troubled several leading Kremlin politicians and while they may have read more into the republics reasserting certain national characteristics after years of suppression under Stalin as flagrant displays of nationalism, and reports reaching Moscow exaggerated the impact of national communism in the periphery, much of this was the tangible manifestation of de-Stalinization. Aleksandr Shelepin, Vladimir Semichastnyi, and Mikhail Suslov (who all subsequently played pivotal roles in Khrushchev’s overthrow in 1964) appear to be the hardliners who pulled the strings within the Soviet leadership to act to crush the perceived nationalism that was flourishing in the Communist Party headquarters of capitals in the Soviet periphery. While the friendly and close relationship between Semichastnyi and Shelepin is well documented, I do not argue that they were actively cooperating with Suslov, rather that they were ideologically on the same team in this operation and that their actions, presence, and ‘fingerprints’ can be found on all these purges to varying degrees. These were no Kremlin bedfellows although they were probably not as estranged at this point as they became later in the 1960s when a backstage power struggle took place between the Semichastnyi-Shelepin axis and Suslov (Medvedev, 1989, p. 6).3
These men were the ‘Red Cardinals’ as I term them, because, like the original Éminence grise, Cardinal Richelieu’s gatekeeper François Leclerc du Tremblay, they were independent and powerfully positioned (although Soviet-red rather than grey and not a unified, coordinated group, but informally aligned in this endeavour), operating unbeknownst to Khrushchev as a shadowy coterie who opposed the USSR’s political trajectory in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Red Cardinals were less concerned with resurrecting Stalinism so much as halting de-Stalinization, opposed the Thaw, held hostile opinions of anti-Russian nationalists, and were perhaps Russian nationalists themselves (Schmidt-Häuer, 1986, p. 78; Mitrokhin, 2003, p. 98). These Red Cardinals, especially Suslov and Shelepin, exercised virtually unrivalled influence on the Party-State Apparatus, as representatives of its interests (Medvedev, 1989, p. 6) – it has been said of Suslov that this was the only class he was ‘ever interested in speaking for’ and that he was ‘less a person, more a personification of the apparat’ (Urban, 1990, p. 652). These Red Cardinals were principally responsible for the sweeping leadership changes in the republics, including the ‘scalping’ of many Khrushchev-supporting First Secretaries.
To intervene in the republics against their target leaderships with the aim of reversing the de-Stalinization of nationality policy and restoring Moscow’s brand of orthodoxy in the periphery, the Red Cardinals required a pretext and an administrative arm to execute these changes. This was to be found in their specific constituency, the Apparatus. Within the Apparatus, the Party Organs Department acted as the transmission belt for the decisions of the Party’s highest executive bodies (the Presidium and Secretariat), responsible for monitoring their implementation and republic and regional level Party organizations’ activities. In 1954, the Department was split into the Department of Party Organs for the Russian Federation and the latter with which we are concerned, the Department of Party Organs for the Soviet Republics.
The Department’s tasks of information gathering, monitoring, and reporting on republican Communist parties’ activities, inspections, recommendations, and drafting decrees on disciplinary action in coordination with the Party Control Committee (KPK) and measures to correct issues, all presented an ideal administrative wing to use as the instrument to conduct the purges. Aside from its value as the organ responsible for approving republican cadre changes, the Department became the Red Cardinals’ sword because they controlled it, and because of its character as a bastion of Russian nationalism and antipathy towards non-Russian nationalists in the periphery (Mitrokhin, 2003, pp. 83–88). In March 1957, following the departure of Khrushchev-supporter Evgenii Gromov as the Department’s Chairman, his successors Shelepin, then Semichastnyi, operated the Department more independently of Khrushchev. Furthermore, the Department was under the auspices of the Secretariat, a body strongly influenced by Suslov.
The five-phase strategy
The circumstances of the purges in the periphery suggest a detectable pattern in their execution, a ‘five-phase strategy’, I theorize, or at least a methodology for Khrushchev-era purging processes, which no longer culminated in violent Stalinist ends. While each purge differed and it has not yet been possible to identify every phase in each republic’s purge, enough components of the five-phase strategy can be substantiated to suggest a rubric.
In Phase One, a crucial component of each purge was a willing ally within the given republic’s leadership, who lobbied the Centre for an investigation. It could be that these individuals were the first in their republics to alert the Red Cardinals to violations surrounding national politics. To prepare the ground for the removal of inconvenient leaders, Stalinists in the periphery organized covert letter-writing campaigns (Phase Two). Between June 1957 and May 1958, for example, the Department apparently received 147 (mostly anonymous) complaints from Latvia about a nationalist group that had emerged within the local leadership (Berklavs, 2011, pp. 101, 111–112).6 In one such example, a retired colonel living in Riga, I. Stepanov, sent a catalogue of grievances and names of officials allegedly dismissed because they were Russians to the CC CPSU but Latvian First Secretary Jānis Kalnbērziņš wrote a point-by-point rebuttal, and suspiciously the unknown colonel could not be located (Riekstiņš, 2005).
One of the Department’s key functions was the supervision of local Party organs through inspections. Inspection visits first alerted Suslov to negative information about the situation in the republics in 1956 (amongst Party functionaries it was common knowledge that the Department’s inspectors reported to Suslov) (Hasanli, 2015, p. 51).7 Inspections were designed to ensure accountability and accurate information about regional politics. In response to letters of complaint, the Department could intervene if concrete allegations were mentioned. Their response could be anything from a written enquiry, which required a formal response from the republic’s CC, to an inspection (Titov, 2018, p. 177).
By late 1958, the Department had accumulated sufficient evidence (letters of complaint and negative reports) about the deteriorating situation to organize full inspections (Phase Three). The Red Cardinals’ foot soldiers in this endeavour were the ethnic Russian Deputy Chairmen of the Department Petr Pigalev and Iosif Shikin, who led the inspections. It could be asked regarding these investigations, reports to the CC CPSU, forwarding letters of complaint, and direct coordination of the purges by Pigalev and Shikin – were they not simply doing their jobs by monitoring and holding to account republican Communist parties for egregious nationalist indulgences? Pigalev and Shikin were zealots who went above and beyond their stated tasks in their attempts to root out real or imagined nationalism among leading cadres in the periphery. This notion is supported by a report from 1956 accusing Shikin of ‘misunderstanding national politics’, of ‘only searching for Kazakh nationalism’, and of ‘intimidating local cadres’.8 As for Pigalev, as Geoffrey Swain (2017, p. 117) puts it, ‘he was an apparatus man if ever there was one’.9 Furthermore, Nikolai Mitrokhin (2003, pp. 83–89) has noted the general atmosphere of chauvinism, xenophobia, and ethno-nationalism within the Apparatus.
The inspection teams conducted unilateral investigations, coordinating with individuals friendly towards the Department and the Red Cardinals and prepared reports for the Presidium and Secretariat about the conduct of local leaders. These reports resulted in choreographed local Party plenums (Phase Four) that ousted numerous Party and government leaders. The loyal facilitators and reliable Department personnel then replaced these leaders in order to restore order to the Soviet periphery (Phase Five).
I have advanced my theory that the political purges in the Soviet republics between 1958 and 1961 were not isolated incidents but connected, that the ‘Red Cardinals’ were involved in them, and a roadmap of the methods used to realise these purges. Next, we will see how the five-phase strategy worked in practice and how the involvement of Suslov, Shelepin, and Semichastnyi in overseeing the purges can be substantiated. I will also point to parallels and commonalities in the causes of the purges across the republics, which allows us to determine the ‘invisible’ demarcation line in centre-periphery relations, which, triggered central intervention when crossed.
Ethnic strife in the Turkmen leadership
The first purge in the sequence occurred in Turkmenia in December 1958. A Department investigation team arrived on 8 December (accompanied by Presidium member Nuritdin Mukhitdinov, presumably as the CC Secretary responsible for Central Asia). This purge was overseen by Shelepin who was head of the Department between April and December 1958. The team’s report explained that First Secretary Sukhan Babaev attempted to obfuscate the investigation by coaching Bureau (a republic’s highest executive Party body) members before they were interviewed to speak negatively about the ethnically Russian Second Secretary Fedor Grishaenkov. Babaev allegedly attempted to prevent Grishaenkov from talking to Mukhitdinov by keeping the latter out of the capital, Ashgabat. Babaev had clashed with Grishaenkov over his cadre indigenization policy. Grishaenkov and his Russian colleagues opposed the appointment of local cadres to top posts, and he was supported by Moscow. So, Babaev created an inner circle within the Turkmen Bureau with CC Secretary Nurdzhamal Durdeva and Presidium Chairman Akmamed Sarev to isolate the Second Secretary (Nahaylo and Swoboda, 1990, p. 134).10
Grishaenkov claimed the Department had previously failed to properly respond to numerous letters, statements, and other signals from Turkmenia about Babaev’s ‘non-party behaviour’. Shelepin complained that his predecessor, Khrushchev-man Evgenii Gromov, had decided ‘unreasonably and erroneously’ not to consider further letters sent to the CC CPSU about Babaev. Gromov might have been shielding Babaev because, in 1956, a Department inspector criticized Babaev, yet this report was not forwarded to Moscow. Shelepin added that it would be wrong to blame the Department and that the responsibility rested with Turkmen leadership.11 The Turkmen affair demonstrates that the Department took a harder line after Shelepin took over and proceeded to investigate the claims made in letters of complaint.
Council of Ministers Chairman Dzhuma Karaev, who would become Babaev’s successor, facilitated the Department’s purge by turning on his boss. Karaev reported Babaev’s activities to the investigation team and claimed Babaev was concerned that he did not have loyal people in the prosecutor’s office and KGB but that the Interior Ministry was loyal because it was ‘led by a Turkmen… Now we have to replace the prosecutor with our people [implying a Turkmen]. The same should be done with regard to the KGB leadership. Then everyone will be ours and we’ll get rolling [poidut]’. A raucous plenum was held after such damning testimony, which dismissed Babaev and his allies on charges of ‘being cliquey, ignoring Leninist norms of leadership, nationalism, and favouritism towards national cadres’. Babaev was removed from the CC CPSU, and, along with his supporters, outright expelled from the CPSU in January 1959. Babaev was further denounced at the 21st CPSU Congress for having ‘grossly ignored Leninist standards of Party life, distorting the Party’s sacrosanct principle of internationalism’ and for having been ‘disdainful of personnel of other nationalities’ (Conquest, 1962, pp. 383, 386; Simon, 1991, p. 252; Nahaylo and Swoboda, 1990, p. 134).12 Unconvinced that the Turkmen Party could right itself, the Department recommended dispatching a group of CC CPSU employees to Turkmenia for up to two months to assist the Turkmen Party organization in strengthening ideological work, and the team arrived in March 1959.13 Babaev’s attempted ethnic takeover, cadre indigenization campaign, and anti-Russian clash with Grishaenkov was too much for the Red Cardinals who through Shelepin’s hand personally oversaw the purge with Karaev’s facilitation.
Clan politics in Uzbekistan
The Turkmen purge was followed two months later by the Uzbek case. The CC CPSU received ‘alarming’ information concerning the state of affairs in the Uzbek Bureau and dispatched Department Deputy Head Pigalev to Uzbekistan for verification in early March 1959 (Fursenko, 2015, pp. 364, 1068). Pigalev reported similar policies to those Shelepin uncovered in Turkmenia including a cadre indigenization policy and the revival of pre-Soviet and religious local customs. These customs included Muslim rituals such as circumcision, unfettered access to mosques, marriage, and burial customs. The Party leadership permitted the sale of the Koran to fund religious events. Many ‘red teahouses’ had become centres for Islamic teaching and worship. The Uzbek CC even allegedly discussed replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the Arabic script (Vdovin, 2009).
Pigalev’s report caused outrage at the Presidium on 3 March where Suslov personally condemned such indigenization practices. In what was to become a familiar pattern, after the receipt and debate of an inflammatory inspection report, the Presidium dispatched the inspection team back to the republic to participate in a plenum discussing the matter. Pigalev was sent to Tashkent to supervise the Uzbek Party Plenum on 14 March. At the plenum, the Uzbek CC castigated the leadership and removed First Secretary Sobir Kamolov, the Agitprop (Agitation and Propaganda) Secretary, and Council of Ministers Chairman Mirza-Akhmedov for holding a ‘conciliatory attitude towards nationalist manifestations’ (Vdovin, 2009; Fursenko, 2015, pp. 1067–1068; Khlevniuk et al., 2009, pp. 211–222).14
Unlike other top Uzbek leaders, Sharaf Rashidov, the Uzbek Presidium Chairman, was not removed and instead appears to have been the facilitator for the Uzbek purge. Rashidov had maintained regular direct communication with Moscow, frequently signing documents to be sent to Moscow and telephoning the CC CPSU headquarters. In March 1959 alone, Viktor Makarov, Department Sector Head for Central Asia, wrote memorandums attached to at least three Department documents, which explained that Rashidov had been informed about a CC CPSU decision on cadre changes, illustrating his remarkably close connections with the Department (Grybkauskas, 2021, p. 153).
Clan politics played a role in this purge since Kamolov represented the powerful Tashkent clan and was Mukhitdinov’s protégé and successor.15 Rashidov was the ‘tsar’ of the rival Samarkand clan and succeeded in brokering an agreement to supplant the Tashkenters as a compromise candidate (Cucciolla, 2017, pp. 23–25). While clan politics were superimposed on Party structures in Central Asia and negotiations were a necessity, the Department’s role in orchestrating Kamolov’s overthrow has been overlooked. In Rashidov, the Red Cardinals seemed to have found a willing local associate. Rashidov succeeded Kamolov and extensively purged the Uzbek Party between 1959 and 1961. To demonstrate his reliability, he replaced dozens of Uzbek ministers and department heads with Russians. Newly arrived Russians replaced many prominent homegrown Russian-Uzbeks especially in the KGB and judiciary because their predecessors were deemed less reliable at quashing incidences of nationalism (Simon, 1991, p. 252).16 The allies of the Red Cardinals were handsomely rewarded for their service; Rashidov became a Presidium candidate member in 1961.
The purge of Latvian national communism
The Latvian case presents the clearest evidence of the hand of the Red Cardinals in the purges. The republic was the most overt in its embrace of Thaw-era reform and national communist autonomy. Indigenous Latvian cadres had assumed effective control of the leadership, nationally-minded and even nationalist policies were enshrined in law, for example: compulsory Latvian language learning, residency restrictions targeting Russians, cadre indigenization activities including the ouster of the ethnically Russian Second Secretary, Latvia’s rejection of Khrushchev’s education reform, a pre-Soviet cultural revival including environmental heritage protections, and the formulation of an economic programme catering to Latvian priorities over the All-Union economy. Such an egregious platform attracted Moscow’s attention from 1957 and, thus, Latvia received the toughest response from the Red Cardinals during this wave of purges.
In April 1959, Pigalev led an investigation team to Latvia. Latvian Second Secretary and leading national communist Vilis Krūmiņš (1990a, p. 80; Krūmiņš and Vallis, 1989, p. 10) claimed that in 1962 Shelepin told him that he ordered the inspection team to Riga and guided its most important activities. As the new Department Chairman, Semichastnyi approved the team’s list of inspectors and personally added six names (including Pigalev’s) to the other twelve.17 In their report about ‘shortcomings in the selection and placement of personnel in Latvia’, the inspectors stated that they went to Latvia ‘for verification of the signals received’ – to check the veracity of the avalanche of letters of complaint arriving in Moscow since 1957.18
The local orchestrator of the Latvian purge was the national communists’ nemesis, arch-Stalinist Agitprop Secretary Arvīds Pelše. According to Mukhitdinov (1990, p. 86), between 1957 and early 1959, ‘Pelše regularly [engaged] in detailed discussions [about the situation in Latvia] with Suslov’. Other sources suggest a familial link (their wives being cousins) between Pelše and Suslov (who both studied concurrently at the Institute of Red Professors) (Petroff, 1988, pp. 27, 152; Berklavs, 2011, p. 32; Īņvāns, 2003, p. 6). Aldis Purs (2012, p. 69) reminds us that this was often the case in the Baltic republics, as ‘initial allegiances based on ideological conviction often masked deeper familial bonds and an almost caste-like nature within the ruling elite of the Communist parties’.
While in Riga, the inspectors met with Pelše and his ardent supporters. They did not discuss the case with the Latvian leadership outside of formal interviews, where Pelše was always present. The team interviewed some authors of the letters of complaint but not others and the process was far from comprehensive (Mukhitdinov, 1990, p. 87). During a clash at a Latvian Bureau meeting on 20 June between the inspection team and Latvian leaders mediated by Mukhitdinov, Krūmiņš remarked, ‘In the presence of Mukhitdinov, I wanted to say [that] not all those [complaint] letters sent to the CC CPSU are completely accurate and it is very difficult to resolve issues correctly when they are misinterpreted’. Krūmiņš’ statement was designed to highlight the inspectors’ deceitfulness and underscored Mukhitdinov’s independence from the Department, which was why he directly addressed him. Krūmiņš emphasized how the Bureau did not pursue infractions committed by Russians because they feared accusations of ethnic discrimination. He gave the example of Rēzekne’s regional Party boss who organized two days of revelry for his son’s wedding in the CC building but when challenged by Latvia’s leaders he complained to Moscow that he was being harassed because he was Russian.19 This shows how complaints deflected accusations of corruption through counterclaims that they were anti-Russian witch hunts.
The Department presented their investigation report to the Secretariat as an accurate and unbiased account. Semichastnyi added weight to the report by attaching a cover letter, noting the many letters of complaint received and expressing his agreement with its findings.20 The report paints a narrative designed to outrage Khrushchev and the Presidium and shape their opinions about the need for administrative reorganizations.
The mere presentation of critical reports was, however, not enough to convince Khrushchev of the need to remove leaders in the republics who ostensibly supported him and his reforms. Despite the damning investigative report on Latvia, Khrushchev was sceptical about its validity, even after direct attempts by Pelše and Russians living in Latvia (such as Khrushchev’s old army colleague General Demin) to persuade him that nationalism was rife in the Latvian Bureau during his coincidental state visit to Riga earlier in June 1959 (Berklavs, 2011, p. 122; Prigge, 2004, p. 223; Krūmiņš, 1990b, p. 88; Kalpiņš, 1988, p. 3).21 The Presidium sent the investigation team back to Latvia to determine if the Latvians could, or would, restore order, and decided that Suslov himself would lead the investigation. Suslov was reputedly chosen because ‘many questions were ideological’ and he was considered an expert on Baltic affairs because of his role in Sovietizing Lithuania.22 The Red Cardinals were likely shaping events with the outcome of Suslov’s unusual selection to lead the investigation team back to Latvia. A few days before his departure, Suslov fell ill, so Mukhitdinov (1990, pp. 87–88) offered to go instead.23
As the Department was charged with ensuring the implementation of higher organs’ decisions about the republics (Titov, 2018, p. 175), the Department’s Chairman, Semichastnyi, possessed enormous power over regional politics. In his memoirs, Semichastnyi claimed to have persuaded Khrushchev to remove Latvian First Secretary Kalnbērziņš, proposing Pelše as his replacement. Semichastnyi writes that he and Pigalev suggested to Khrushchev that Kalnbērziņš be relieved of his duties.
In response Khrushchev exploded: ‘What? You’ve already thrust yourself into the Presidium and are now giving orders? Don’t you know that he’s a candidate member of the Presidium?! He has more work to do to correct the situation’.
Semichastnyi: ‘He’s asking to leave his post. He said to me: “These two young people, Berklovs and Krumin [sic] and those who support them, peck me to death [zakliuiut]. They gained such momentum, I couldn’t hold my ground”. He is asking to be relieved, Nikita Sergeevich.’
Khrushchev: ‘You’re forcing him to resign, aren’t you!’
Semichastnyi: ‘No I didn’t force him.’
Khrushchev: ‘But why didn’t he come to me?’
Semichastnyi: ‘He told me that he was ashamed to come to you, ashamed that he has let you down.’
Khrushchev became a little calmer. ‘You could see these words were a balm to his soul’, recalled Semichastnyi.
Khrushchev: ‘So what do you suggest?’
Semichastnyi: ‘Let’s make him Presidium Chairman of Latvia.’
Khrushchev: ‘Wait, wait. But maybe, it is a good idea? […] You will speak to him. But who should be First Secretary?’
Semichastnyi: ‘There’s Pelše. Arvīds Janovich - an old communist, a sensible man, very civilized, ideologically consistent. On this whole affair, he has his own opinion, and it’s quite correct. I have spoken at length with him.’
Khrushchev: ‘I don’t mind. He is probably the most successful candidate. But speak with Kalnbērziņš.’
(Semichastnyi, 2002, p. 40).24
Semichastnyi says he met with Kalnbērziņš the next day and at the end of the conversation asked, ‘Now, who do you think should be First Secretary? We have an opinion but what do you think?’ ‘Pelše, certainly there’s no one else’, replied Kalnbērziņš. Semichastnyi notes, ‘that’s what we decided to do’. There are several key points in this remarkable conversation. The self-importance of the 35-year-old Semichastnyi is readily apparent. That Khrushchev immediately assumed Semichastnyi was forcing Kalnbērziņš out suggests he was familiar with the Department’s meddling in the republics. We also see the first mention of replacing Kalnbērziņš with Pelše and the proposed solution for Kalnbērziņš. Furthermore, Khrushchev supposedly consults Semichastnyi about a suitable candidate and agrees to Pelše, while the ‘we’ in his subsequent chat with Kalnbērziņš suggests the existence of other players. Semichastnyi’s version of events place him at the forefront of the purge’s organization, along with Suslov.
Semichastnyi and Shelepin developed a close association from 1950. Although they were close friends, it was not an equal partnership. It is unlikely that Semichastnyi would have involved himself in decision-making about the Latvian situation on his own. He was new to the Department and unfamiliar with its workings. Shelepin was very much Semichasntyi’s patron and superior. Semichastnyi (2002, p. 157) owed his extraordinary rise to Shelepin: ‘I always considered Shelepin a leader and treated him with a special reverence’, he recalled. Therefore, it remains likely given Shelepin’s established animosity for the national communists that he was a guiding force for Semichasntyi in this purge.25 Semichastnyi also boasts about how ‘we’ (again that ‘we’) dealt with Krūmiņš and Berklavs. Writing in the 1990s, Semichastnyi considered himself vindicated for the purge by referring to the strict citizenship and language laws for non-Latvians enacted in post-Soviet Latvia. Thus, Semichastnyi even claimed, ‘So, I was the author of a very fair decision’ (pp. 39–40). Therefore, the role in the purge assumed by the Department, Semichastnyi, and probably Shelepin is extraordinary.
Mukhtidinov’s trip to Latvia made a negative impression on the Presidium when he reported back on 22 June. The national communists were acknowledged as being in charge and the older leaders, Council of Ministers Chairman Vilis Lācis and Kalnbērziņš, characterized as infirm or compromised. A decision was initially taken to replace Kalnbērziņš with Pelše (although it was later decided not to formalize this – reflecting Khrushchev’s vacillation (Fursenko, 2015, p. 1072; (Mukhitdinov, 1990, p. 91; Fursenko, 2015, p. 371)). Suslov told the Presidium he had spoken with Pelše who complained that the Latvians could not solve their own problems and insisted the Presidium should resolve the problem (Mukhitdinov, 1990, p. 90). Khrushchev repeatedly stated his concern about the potential public relations fallout a purge could generate and wished to minimize the negative impact of the whole affair. At the CC CPSU Plenum on 29 June, he told the audience that if he were to make an administrative reorganization, ‘some will say the Latvians almost rebelled against Soviet power [which would] spoil the whole wonderful picture of the commonwealth of nations of our great Soviet Union […] We cannot [allow] that. I think that the Latvians themselves can cope with this matter’.26
Thus, for clarify and because the situation with nationality politics necessitated a wider discussion, Khrushchev summoned the leaders of all fourteen non-Russian republics to a special enlarged Presidium meeting on 1 July 1959.27 Initially upset by the discussion about the situation in Azerbaijan at the meeting’s beginning, Khrushchev calmed down once he had sufficiently questioned the Latvians. Illustrating his confidence and trust in the Latvians, Khrushchev said that following the discussion he felt as though they had emerged ‘from the sauna clean, and with our pores open to breathe normally’.28 Crucially for the Latvians’ salvation, Suslov was on a trip to France and not present at this important meeting (Petroff, 1988, p. 118). Without direct external influence from the Red Cardinals and able to question the ‘wrongdoers’ personally, with some hesitancy, Khrushchev decided that the Latvian leaders should retain their positions if they corrected the situation in Latvia. Khrushchev, however, did not provide concrete instructions.29 The Presidium resolution reflected this ambiguity.
Pelše and the Department used Khrushchev’s ambiguity to interpret his resolution as it suited them. Pelše succeeded because the national communist faction disintegrated under the weight of the investigations and individuals attempted to save themselves. If they had presented a united opposition (as we will see occurred in Lithuania) focussing on Pelše’s shared culpability as a Bureau member or refuting the charges instead of bickering, Pelše’s plans might have come to naught. The national communists missed the opportunity to use Khrushchev’s conciliatory tone and remarks that the ‘Latvians will be able to solve their own problems’ using ‘home remedies’ as an argument, complacently assuming that was the end of the affair. This culminated in their defeat at the Communist Party of Latvia (CPL) Plenum 7–8 July 1959. Pigalev was there to supervise (as in Uzbekistan) and delivered the keynote speech denouncing the group, beginning a two-and-a-half-year purge in which up to 2,000 Latvian officials were dismissed (Simon, 1991, pp. 252–253; Prigge, 2015, p. 8).30 Suslov lobbied for Pelše within the Presidium (Mukhitdinov, 1990, pp. 90–91) and in November 1959, once the dust has settled, Kalnbērziņš and Lācis were removed for failing to prevent the crisis and, in Phase Five, Pelše became First Secretary. As with his Uzbek counterpart, Rashidov, Pelše was also rewarded with elevation to the CC CPSU in 1961.
Attempts to manipulate Khrushchev over Azerbaijan
In the mid to late 1950s, the leadership of Azerbaijan embarked on a nationally-minded reform project second only to Latvia in its radicalism. In December 1956, in an episode remarkably close to what Berklavs experienced when he was shown letters of complaint in Moscow, the Department’s First Deputy Chairman, Iosif Shikin, presented First Secretary Imam Mustafaev with letters of complaint received by Moscow from Azerbaijan and warned Mustafaev to put his house in order (Hasanli, 2015, p. 130; Fursenko, 2015, p. 403). Two of the architects of Azerbaijan’s national revival, Presidium Chairman Mirza Ibrahimov and Council of Ministers Chairman Sadikh Rahimov were dismissed in 1958. Shikin had Ibrahimov’s public remarks that he found it ‘disgusting’ that some Azerbaijani intellectuals did not know Azerbaijani and declared them ‘traitors’ translated into Russian and sent to Moscow to engineer his removal. In June 1958, Rahimov was sacked for ‘localist tendencies’ because he refused to supply Armenia and Georgia with gas and petroleum products (Hasanli, 2015, pp. 288, 292–293, 302–303). Thus, the Department had Azerbaijan in its crosshairs long before the purge.31
A 26-member inspection commission to Baku was carefully prepared for two or three months (Semichastnyi, 2002, p. 40). In spring 1959, Shikin arrived to conduct a thorough investigation. Azerbaijan and Latvia were the only republics to seriously challenge Khrushchev’s 1958 education reform (Loader, 2021). Their obstinacy served as another pretext for investigations. As in Latvia, the commission investigated shortcomings and violations in carrying out Party policy, the selection and nomination of cadres, and non-Azerbaijani appeals to Moscow, which expressed fears of growing nationalism. As with Pigalev’s inspection in Riga, Shikin’s commission in Baku kept their conclusions secret and did not discuss their enquiries with the Azerbaijani leadership.32 The investigation was tailored to match the Department’s objectives.
Shikin’s report concluded that Mustafaev was unfit to be First Secretary and recommended his removal (Hasanli, 2015, pp. 386–387). Semichastnyi and Shikin personally delivered the report to Khrushchev on 23 June (the visitor’s log to Khrushchev’s Kremlin office supports Semichastnyi’s account) (Goriachev, 2003, p. 63). Semichastnyi asked Shikin to read out his report because he and Khrushchev were acquainted from their army days. Khrushchev instinctively lashed out at Semichastnyi (as over Kalnbērziņš) and zealously defended Mustafaev because he favoured him.
Khrushchev: ‘Have you even spoken to Mustafaev! He’s one of the best first secretaries.’
Semichastnyi: ‘Nikita Sergeevich, listen to the end of the report, and then say it if he’s the best or not. Listen to what the “best First Secretary” has done.’
As Shikin read out a litany of violations, Khrushchev quietened and then fumed: ‘Well, he’s a scoundrel, how could he! Why has this been allowed? The Presidium will hear about this’ (Semichastnyi, 2002, p. 41). Once again, the Department directly influenced Khrushchev, exploiting his hot-headedness. Shikin’s report was designed to convince a sceptical Khrushchev of outrageous violations in national policy. Shikin’s report formed the basis of Khrushchev’s criticism of the Azerbaijanis at the June 1959 CC CPSU Plenum, where he also derided the situation in Latvia, linking the two – ‘Mustafaev pursued the same nationality policy and made the same decisions about other nationalities as Latvia’. Khrushchev claimed that the Azerbaijani Supreme Soviet ordered schools to operate in Azerbaijani only. When Mustafaev objected because this was not true, a perplexed Khrushchev responded, ‘Did Shikin’s commission report something differently to me?’ Khrushchev softened and ended his speech by remarking, ‘I think that the Azerbaijanis themselves will cope with this matter […] let them look and remove these stones from under their feet’.33
The situation, however, remained unresolved. The entire Azerbaijani Bureau was invited to Moscow for a head-to-head with the Centre. They attended the CC Secretariat on 30 June. The Department briefed the Secretariat about their inspection and presented a draft resolution. In drafting resolutions, the Department was guiding the leadership’s decision-making, shaping the discourse. According to Semichastnyi (2002, p. 41), Khrushchev began to speak about the situation in Azerbaijan:
Khrushchev: ‘We finished the investigation and it’s been reported to me…’
Mustafaev, jumping up: ‘It’s not true, Nikita Sergeevich, the report is fraudulent, it’s a fabrication.’
Semichastnyi and Shikin rose. Semichastnyi: ‘Nikita Sergeevich, I once again confirm that everything is reliable, it’s all true.’
Khrushchev deflected: ‘We will examine it at the Presidium. And gain an understanding…’
Again, Semichastnyi makes plain how he intervened in the Azerbaijani affair, attempting to reinforce the veracity of Shikin’s report. After Mustafaev was bitterly criticized by the Central Committee Secretaries, association with him became politically toxic. Like Berklavs, Mustafaev’s former Bureau allies sought to avoid a purge by sacrificing him.
(Hasanli, 2015, p. 388)
The situation in Azerbaijan was the first order of business at the crucial July 1959 Presidium meeting. Shikin again recounted the leadership’s nationalist transgressions. These revelations and Mustafaev’s obstinate defence once again enraged Khrushchev. He condemned the Azerbaijani leaders, asking if they were:
ashamed of rolling into the swamps of bourgeois nationalism. We will rid ourselves of enemies […] So many excellent people have been promoted, but the shit floats to the top. We will clear it out like a housemaid does when she cooks borsch and then skims off the scum with a spoon.34
Khrushchev did not understand the threat posed to republican leaders by the Department.
Khrushchev told Mustafaev the inspectors were not his enemies: ‘So why are you so suspicious of them [believing] that they want to drown you? They want to get you out of the swamp’.
Mustafaev: ‘I would like to know their report’s conclusions in order to know what to do’.
Khrushchev: ‘They carried out the work in order to help you. […] We need a strong Azerbaijani party organization. It will be, but you need to straighten up.’
Although Khrushchev harangued Mustafaev (‘You are not a communist’) after listening to his catalogue of misdeeds, once he engaged Mustafaev directly, he was slightly mollified, concluding the meeting satisfied with the Latvians but not yet the Azerbaijanis.35
Khrushchev still hoped for a resolution without personnel changes, deciding to schedule further meetings of the Secretariat and Presidium for 2 July, in which Semichastnyi and Shikin both participated, to try to find a way forward (Fursenko, 2015, p. 372).36 Even these meetings concluded without a decision to remove Mustafaev. While ‘full confidence was expressed in Mustafaev’ it was noted that he was ‘unsuitable, he didn’t live up to expectations, he couldn’t cope’, and should receive ‘a new job’. In further evidence of Khrushchev’s preference to stifle the connection to the national question, the protocol instructed that this element should ‘not be emphasized’. Yet, Presidium resolutions were ‘not to be adopted, so that they [the Azerbaijanis] themselves decide’. Therefore, as in the Latvian case, the Presidium decided not to determine the Azerbaijanis’ fate but allow the Azerbaijani Bureau to discuss the Party’s shortcomings, hold a plenum ‘to develop practical measures for their correction’, and to send Mukhitdinov and the investigators to attend and ‘study the situation in the Azerbaijani Party’ (pp. 372, 403–404).37
As with Latvia, once the matter was delegated to the republic to resolve, the plenum was used as a vehicle to oust the ‘problem cadres’ as the solution to correct the situation. Mustafaev and other leaders were removed at a plenum on 7 July, the same day as the Latvian plenum.38 Shikin supervised, as Pigalev did in Latvia and Uzbekistan. Mustafaev’s successor, Veli Akhundov emphasized that the Azerbaijani CC had to be very careful while resolving the situation so as to avoid encouraging Mustafaev and company’s ‘nationalist supporters’ (Goff, 2014, p. 149).
The Red Cardinals achieved their aims by either attempting to influence Khrushchev’s decision or resorting to subverting his wishes. William Prigge (2004, p. 229) suggests that officials around Khrushchev misguided him; Yugoslav ambassador to the USSR Veljko Mićunović was convinced that Khrushchev was ‘systematically misinformed by his own bureaucracy’ (Taubman, 2003, p. 389).39 Khrushchev was kept regularly updated on the investigations: Shelepin visited his Kremlin office the same day as his CC report was filed on the Turkmen affair and also on the day the Presidium discussed the Uzbek case; Pigalev (and Lubennikov, another apparatchik sent with him to Tashkent) had an audience with Khrushchev just after supervising the purge at the Uzbek Plenum (Goriachev, 2003, pp. 59–61). The problem was that these informants with access to Khrushchev were precisely the Red Cardinals and Department personnel working against him or trying to manipulate him. We also know Khrushchev experienced bureaucratic intransigence to his Sovnarkhoz reform and corn-growing campaign. As Ronald Suny (2011, p. 429) puts it, ‘Khrushchev dominated through his personal authority, though occasionally he was forced to retreat from his preferred positions’. This limited Khrushchev’s ability to exercise power, yet it did not completely enfeeble him as a leader because he seems to have been aware of attempts to shape his opinion and remained sceptical of evidence he was shown, preferring to question the accused himself.
The aborted purge: Lithuania
At the July 1959 Presidium meeting, Khrushchev acknowledged that nationality problems were widespread: ‘They say there are only Lithuanians in the leadership, they do not nominate Poles or Russians anywhere. Comrade Sniečkus is no better off than the Latvians […] in Lithuania you have such things as in Latvia, and maybe worse. […] Every party organization must struggle with its own nationalism’.40 It seems common knowledge that there were serious considerations about a purge in Lithuania and also that Khrushchev might be its instigator, which we can read in a joke between Lithuanian nomenklatura. The joke goes that Khrushchev had been planning to purge Sniečkus but mixed Lithuania up with Latvia and purged the wrong republic (Lithuania and Latvia sound similar in Russian – Litva and Latviia) (Grybkauskas, 2021, p. 149).
In May 1959, Shikin led a team to Lithuania, but this case proved an exception to the practice I have identified. First Secretary Antanas Sniečkus is a major reason Lithuania avoided sharing Latvia’s fate. The Kremlin had attempted to remove Sniečkus on several occasions. Yet, Sniečkus endured by playing both sides. He had a reputation for carrying out Moscow’s orders to the letter, supervising the burning of history books and was allegedly responsible for the destruction of a national monument in Kaunas but Sniečkus also saw himself as the defender of Lithuania’s cultural, linguistic, and economic interests against some central policies (Kemp, 1999, p. 160; Lieven, 2000, pp. 290–291).
Sniečkus also had powerful friends in Moscow. Suslov was acquainted with Sniečkus from his time on Stalin’s Bureau for Lithuania, purportedly saving Sniečkus’s career after a Moscow commission compiled charges of favouritism and corruption against him (Conquest, 1962, p. 60). Suslov could vouch for him in the Presidium, unlike the national communists in Latvia, whom Suslov deeply mistrusted. As such, Sniečkus enjoyed Moscow’s confidence. Therefore, he was permitted a degree of flexibility to continue his more autonomous policies. Complaints about Sniečkus, even regarding permitting discrimination in nationality politics on his watch, while investigated by the Department, were not taken forward.41
This other important factor, which derailed a purge in Lithuania, was the steadfast loyalty of the local apparatus to the titular Party. Furthermore, unlike in Latvia, the Lithuanian leadership was not riven by intra-Party feuding. This was partially because the leadership was more homogenous: in 1959, Lithuanians constituted 55.7% of their Party; Estonians formed 47.5% of theirs; while Latvians comprised just 37.4% of the CPL (Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993, p. 360). When Moscow’s inspectors visited, the leadership displayed a united front, defended Sniečkus, and successfully challenged the investigation’s claims (Berklavs, 2011, p. 119). The Lithuanian leadership proved cohesive, unlike their Latvian counterparts, closing ranks around Sniečkus, and despite critical comments made against him at the Party’s July Plenum, only a few high-profile ministers and the Rector of Vilnius University Yuozas Bulavas were sacrificed in August 1959 for mistakes in Leninist nationality policy and nationalism (Kemp, 1999, p. 163).42
Lithuania demonstrates that the purges in Latvia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan were not inevitable. Without facilitators like Pelše and Rashidov, and faced with a united Party leadership, Shikin could not substantiate Sniečkus’s indictment. Therefore, Sniečkus emerged from the crisis unscathed, and the Red Cardinals were satisfied that Lithuania had not crossed the invisible line into unacceptable nationalism. Nevertheless, the report criticizing the Lithuanian leadership was repeatedly addressed by the Department under Semichastnyi and his successor.43
The purges continue, 1960–1961
Another five purges occurred intermittently in a string of republics between 1960 and 1961, which to one degree or another appear to follow the pattern I have outlined.
A Russian is removed in Kazakhstan
A prolonged discussion in the Kremlin took place between September 1959 and January 1960 about a change of leadership in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh case was somewhat different and there appears to have been much less involvement from the Department, most likely because nationalist tendencies were not the primary issue (Conquest, 1962, p. 385) and because the First Secretary in question was ethnically Russian. Instead, Presidium member and Kazakh First Secretary Nikolai Beliaev was lambasted for a series of economic and political blunders that eroded his position. Beliaev got into a dispute in the Presidium over the construction of a metallurgical factory in Karaganda. He was blamed for agricultural failures connected with Khrushchev’s faltering Virgin Lands project, obstinate management of the Kazakh Party leadership, and held responsible for a fatal riot in Temirtau in 1959. His rival, Dinmukhamed Kunaev (1994, pp. 125–127), assisted in undermining Beliaev at the Presidium (Fursenko, 2015, pp. 431–434). Again, strife within the Bureau played a role as secretaries jostled to shift the blame. Nationality issues were not entirely absent either - during a January 1960 Presidium meeting, Kazakh Secretary Nurymbek Dzhandil’din revealed that under Beliaev there had been ‘national deviations’ (p. 433).
Although the Department’s involvement was limited, its hand was still present. Suslov and Pigalev were involved in the Presidium meetings in September and October 1959 and January 1960 that reprimanded Beliaev and in which Suslov personally criticized him (Fursenko, 2015, pp. 404, 433, 1084). Khrushchev, however, was once again reluctant to remove Beliaev (Sushkov, 2009, p. 126). Yet, like other Phase Fours, at a Kazakh Party Plenum held on 19 January 1960 to improve the Kazakh Bureau’s work following a review by the Secretariat and Presidium prompted by Kunaev (1994, p. 126), Beliaev was attacked for evading responsibility for the Temirtau riot. According to Andrei Sushkov (2009, p. 127), however, Kunaev engineered Beliaev’s removal in conjunction with Presidium member Leonid Brezhnev (who would conspire with the Red Cardinals against Khrushchev in 1964) as part of a clientelist, powerbase-building strategy, designed to weaken Khrushchev (who did not initiate the purge). Beliaev was ousted as First Secretary and Kazakh CC Secretary Grigorii Mel’nik was dismissed. In a customary feature of these purges, the ethnically Kazakh Second Secretary, Fazyl Karibzhanov, was also replaced.44 Like the other First Secretaries ousted by this wave of purges, Beliaev lost more than his Party stewardship; being deprived of his Presidium membership in Khrushchev’s May 1960 reshuffle.
Isolated leadership in Armenia
In July 1960, the Armenian Party leadership expressed concern about nationalist cultural trends (Nahaylo and Swoboda, 1990, p. 137). In November, the Department reported on the situation and charged the Armenian Bureau with allowing ‘manifestations of nationality swaggering and national narrow-mindedness’, an erroneous cadres policy and familial favouritism, holding First Secretary Suren Tovmasian personally responsible for the poor state of affairs in the Armenian Bureau and CC due to his haughty management style. The Armenians were summoned to Moscow where Tovmasian rebuffed all criticism and attacked his fellow Bureau members in ‘an offensive manner’, which displeased the Department’s functionaries.45
In a customary Department tactic, the inspectors noted that Tovmasian’s removal was implied in conversations with other Bureau members (demonstrating that there was discord in the leadership, which always irked Moscow), and the Department supported the idea.46 Another feature of the purges was that they occurred in republics where there was significant turmoil and division within the titular Party Bureau, except Lithuania where a purge did not take place primarily because there was no cleavage to exploit. As Grybkauskas (2021, pp. 148–149) puts it, ‘the functionaries of the centre only needed to detect disagreements within the republic’s leadership and use it as a pretext for the centre’s intervention’. In December 1960, Jacov Zarobian supplanted Tovmasian as First Secretary, and early in 1961 all three CC secretaries were removed.47Grybkauskas (2021, pp. 97–99) suggests the Department considered a wider purge unnecessary because the Bureau’s surviving ‘healthy’ part that had come to power was reliable having denounced Tovmasian and recognized ‘the importance of obeying and maintaining close contact with their supervisors in Moscow’.
Another clan scandal: cotton and nationalism in Tajikistan
Pravda covered the Tajik leadership’s fall in April 1961 as a major corruption scandal. The Department had the Tajik leadership in its crosshairs since 1959 when it began to sow seeds of doubt about the First Secretary among local functionaries, which was how the Department’s divide and rule strategy operated (Grybkauskas, 2021, pp. 88). A Department inspection purportedly discovered that Tajikistan had grossly and systematically falsified statistics on cotton production. This was made possible because of ‘major political mistakes’ in the Tajik Bureau, particularly the ‘incorrect practices in the selection of cadres who were chosen strictly according to nationality, kinship and patronage’. As preceded other purges, the Tajik leadership met with the Secretariat and reputedly tried to evade responsibility for the affair, remaining unified and eschewing criticism of each other, at least initially, which forced central intervention. The Secretariat ordered a Tajik Party Plenum to be convened and recommended strict punishments for those responsible. Of particular note in the Secretariat’s decision was the unusually explicit order for the Department ‘to send experienced employees from the central apparatus work in these positions [First Secretary, Second Secretary, Council of Ministers Chairman, etc.]’ (Khlevniuk et al., 2009, pp. 353–354, 362–365).
The Secretariat dispatched the Department’s lead Inspector, Ivan Koval, who delivered his investigation’s conclusions at the plenum (again, this was the first time the Tajiks heard the commission’s report). Yet, according to Mukhitdinov, the investigation did not establish that senior Tajik officials took bribes or gave illegal orders. Rather, Presidium member Frol Kozlov was jostling for position in the Presidium and supported harsh punishments for regional leaders who deceived the State following the Riazan affair in 1958. Mukhitdinov (1995, p. 550) claims that he later privately admonished Kozlov for insisting on the removal of the Tajik leadership, shouting at him: ‘Did you do the right thing by practically decapitating the whole republic!?’ Kozlov spoke at the plenum that discharged and expelled from the Party First Secretary Tursunbai Uldzhabaev, Council of Ministers Chairman Nazarsho Dodkhudoev, and hundreds of leading officials. Some were tried for violations in cadre selection and padding figures on cotton procurement. The ethnically Russian Second Secretary, Petr Obnosov, was removed ‘for lacking political principles’ and directly replaced by Inspector Koval’ himself. Kozlov sharply criticized Obnosov, telling him ‘You should have come to the CC and reported these dark affairs as part of your collective responsibility [krugovaia poruka]’, which left the impression on the Tajiks that ‘they’re not sending people to us from the Centre for important positions, but to control everyone, to monitor and bypass [the Tajik government] and report to the CC CPSU’, which ‘cast a shadow on the Russians’ as imperial rulers (Mukhitdinov, 1995, pp. 502, 550–551; Grybkauskas, 2021, pp. 92–94; Rakowska-Harmstone, 1970, p. 162; Simon, 1991, p. 254).48
Intrigue in Kirghizia
The Department began reporting issues about growing nationalism and mistakes in national policy in Kirghizia in February 1960.49 In April 1961, a letter of complaint to Moscow from the Kirghiz Academy of Sciences complained of First Secretary Iskhak Razzakov’s incorrect approach to cadres policy.50 Grybkauskas (2021, pp. 89–90) claims the Department specifically used claims about mistakes in economic and nationality policy against local leaderships to weaken their cohesion, allow for better penetration by the Department, and to increase Moscow’s distrust of local leaderships to facilitate purges. Some mistakes were genuine, but others were fabricated. This, Grybkauskas says was the case in Kirghizia, where the Department engineered the leadership’s replacement because of blunders in economic and nationality policy, and that while there were some mistakes, the Department’s functionaries fabricated many problems and attributed them to the Kirghiz leaders.
A resolution was adopted mandating university admission quotas of at least 60% for ethnically Kirghiz students without coordinating with the CC Apparatus. The Department was irritated by the Kirghiz making independent decisions without consulting Moscow and thus triggered a purge, considering the Kirghiz guilty of regionalism and disobedience towards Moscow (Grybkauskas, 2021, p. 89). This is a textbook case of the Department manoeuvring behind the scenes to oust various leaders.
In January 1961, the Department began actively looking to replace Razzakov. Department Chairman Viktor Churaev and Presidium member Kozlov secretly interviewed Frunze City Party First Secretary Turdakun Usubaliev (a dedicated former Apparatus employee) as a suitable candidate. An investigation commission found manifestations of localism and errors in nationality policy (Usubaliev, 1995, pp. 20, 34–36; Usubaliev, 2007). The investigators recommended Razzakov’s dismissal but as usual the Secretariat referred the decision back to the Kirghiz leadership. During the ensuing May 1961 Plenum, the new Department Chairman Vitalii Titov and his Deputy Pigalev personally presided over the plenum. Titov berated the leadership for ‘exceeding their rights’ and ‘placing their own interests above those of the whole state’. ‘Did you have too little power […] or did you not have a telephone connection? You only had to lift the receiver and discuss [the situation]’, Titov lectured the Kirghiz. Titov also repeatedly interrupted speakers to prevent them complaining about impossibly steep agricultural targets foisted upon them by the Department, which had set the Kirghiz up to fail (Grybkauskas, 2021, p. 89).
During a break in the plenum, Titov instructed Usubaliev to meet with him and Pigalev, where Titov explained he had canvassed the Kirghiz Bureau and all members unanimously supported Usubaliev’s candidacy and the Department’s recommendation to make their Head of Sector Mikhail Gavrilov the new Second Secretary. Titov explained this was the ‘will’ of the Presidium but the matter had been ‘forwarded’ to the plenum to ‘decide’. Usubaliev feigns surprise and modesty in his memoirs (days beforehand, the Bureau chose Usubaliev to report to the plenum about the resolution of mistakes, a clear indication of his status) and his recollections are suspiciously peppered with favourable references to Razzakov, perhaps to deflect accusations that he conspired with the Department to oust Razzakov (Usubaliev, 1995, pp. 36–37, 42; Usubaliev, 2007). These revelations situate the Department at the heart of the purge and demonstrate the extraordinary power and influence it wielded as evidenced by Titov’s claim that he spoke for the Presidium.
Razzakov and Council of Ministers Chairman Kazy Dikambaev were sacked. Second Secretary Vasili Stepkin was ostensibly demoted to Agricultural Secretary for failing to pursue an appropriate cadre policy but Grybkauskas (2021, p. 199) maintains that the real reason was the Department’s dissatisfaction with Stepkin’s failure to help damage Moscow’s confidence in Razzakov and Dikambaev by provoking a leadership conflict that would have led to a purge. The Department’s memorandums imply that the Apparatus wanted to influence Stepkin and make him contradict the Kirghiz leaders more sharply, a clear indication of the rights the Department considered it enjoyed to interfere in the politics of the republics.
Rumblings in Moldavia?
It is not clear if Moldavia belongs in this group. According to Robert Conquest (1962, pp. 383, 386), there was some unusual reshuffling in Moldavia in September 1959. Much of the September Plenum was dedicated to issues of nationalism following the purges in Azerbaijan and Latvia. The plenum noted ‘nationalistic tendencies’, ‘national limitedness’, and the publishing of ‘ideologically depraved works that did not strengthen the friendship of peoples’ (Pravda, 1959, p. 2). It was noted that ‘reviews’ had been conducted in many Party organizations, including Moldavia, specifically the ‘training and placement of cadres’, which suggests that an investigation had taken place. There was concern in the Moldavian leadership that some were sympathetic to Latvian national communism. First Secretary Zinovie Serdiuk explained:
I’ve heard rumours, as probably you have too, that in Latvia they pursued a policy of replacing Russians. And we had some people who said the Riga Party made the right decision, where it was said that workers who have not studied the Latvian and Russian languages for two years will be replaced […] other work will not be given to him […] and this means he must leave Latvia. Thankfully, our Soviet Union is large, in Ukraine and in Moldavia they accept Russians.
(Prigge, 2017)
The Moldavian leadership’s reaction to the Latvian and Azerbaijani purges was enough to stave off a major purge but the leadership was still changed at the end of the wave of purges. In May 1961, Serdiuk and CC Secretary Maksim Skurtul were removed from their positions. Strangely, Serdiuk was not demoted but received the respectable position of KPK Deputy Chairman, the central body responsible for enforcing discipline among Party members. Therefore, more work is required to understand why Serdiuk’s fate differed from the other first secretaries.
The ‘unscathed’ republics
I have provided an overview of the ten republics that were affected: eight purges (including all six Muslim republics), one aborted purge, and one possible purge (Moldavia). The remaining non-Slavic republics suffered purges in the early 1950s: Georgia’s Mingrelian affair in 1951–1952, according to Jeremy Smith (2011, p. 80) ‘tackled head-on the most entrenched and nationalist leadership in the Soviet republics’ at the time. Beria’s supporters were then expunged from the leadership in 1953. So, significant cadre turnover had already occurred at the beginning of the decade. The second reason that the Georgian Communist Party was spared was probably because Georgia’s Second Secretary Pavel Kovanov (1956–1962) was a twelve-year veteran of the Apparatus, but more importantly he has been identified as a ‘Shelepintsy’, one of Shelepin’s clients (Mitrokhin, 2003, pp. 99–100).
Finally, despite being a Khrushchev appointee, Georgian First Secretary Vasil Mzhavanadze ‘eagerly participated in intrigues against him’ and thus survived in his post until 1972. As another Georgian Second Secretary, Petr Rodionov (1964–1971), perfectly encapsulates it regarding the fall of Khrushchev, ‘The idea of a conspiracy against Khrushchev united a variety of people, including those who disliked each other.’ It was exactly this way with the Red Cardinals and the purges. Rodionov noted that relations were tense between Shelepin and Mzhavanadze after the 22nd Party Congress but during preparations to oust Khrushchev in 1964, they became close, and in their intimate circle Mzhavanadze only addressed Shelepin by his informal diminutive, ‘Sasha’ (Rodionov, 1989, pp. 188–189, 191). Such familiarity and clientelism in Georgia ensured Shelepin could vouch for Mzhavanadze as Suslov could for Sniečkus.
In the Estonian case, native-born Communists were replaced by Sovietized Estonians in 1950. Nevertheless, it is curious that Estonia survived in 1959. The Department reported official discrimination against Russians in 1956 and a dossier on nationality relations was prepared, while the Latvians drew inspiration for their national communist language, immigration, and cadres policies from attending a radical Estonian Communist Party Plenum in October 1956.51 In July 1959, Khrushchev told First Secretary Johannes Käbin that ‘the situation in Estonia is not better than that of Latvia [and Lithuania] […] you have such [problems]’.52 Furthermore, an investigation team quietly visited Estonia in July 1959 and found the ubiquitous ‘serious shortcomings in work with cadres’. Semichastnyi, Pigalev and Shikin were ‘familiarized’ with the report, which noted some nationalist activity, but the matter was not pursued beyond October 1959.53 This was probably because such nationalism was not present within the Sovietized Estonian leadership. Moscow’s implied confidence in the Estonians, coupled with what Smith (2003, pp. 240–241; 2017, pp. 996, 1001–1002) considers as the Estonians’ non-confrontational strategy of compliance, spared them major intervention.
This suggests that the impermissible ‘red line’ was the penetration of a republic’s leadership by nationalist thinking and policies. Grybkauskas (2021, p. 75) confirms this assessment, ‘The titular nomenklatura of a republic was […] most frequently purged not during nationalist events or mass protests [but when] Moscow discerned “localism”, that is, the desire to maintain distance and support the interests of the republic over the centre’. The Estonian purge of 1950, in the Stalin era, had some influence on how future purges were conducted, for example, the import of reliable replacement cadres from the Centre (Zubkova, 2001, p. 101), but the similarities between the battery of purges in 1958–1961 offer a blueprint for how Khrushchev-era purges occurred. In the same way as elements of the Estonian purge could be found in this chain of purges, processes from the 1958–1961 series later resurfaced, for example, when Ukraine’s First Secretary Petro Shelest was dropped in 1972 for flirting with nationalism.
Phase Five: cadres replacement
The final component of the Red Cardinals’ strategy was to promote reliable Centre-trained cadres from the Department to high-ranking positions (usually as Second Secretary) within the republics to restore order, correct deficiencies in national policy, and to keep the new leaderships on track. In his memoirs, Semichastnyi (2002, p. 39) admitted precisely this. He wrote: ‘Having worked in the CC and gained experience, instructors then left to become first secretaries and CC secretaries of regional parties […] Shelepin began this practice, and I continued it’. The Department’s personnel were installed as Second Secretaries in Latvia, Azerbaijan, Moldavia, Kirghizia, and Tajikistan. Russian Second Secretaries in Tajikistan, Kirghizia, and Azerbaijan were removed for failing to prevent the growth of nationalism and replaced by fresh cadres from the Department who offered the further advantage of deepening the Department’s tentacles in the republics, tightening their constrictive grip on how the Party was managed. Once the seismic crash of this wave of purges, which upended so many republican leaderships, receded, it was followed by an extraordinary calm. For the next two decades, many republican leaderships remained remarkably consistent: the purges’ local beneficiaries, the new first secretaries in Moldavia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kirghizstan remained in power until the early-mid 1980s (and in Pelše’s case, he was promoted to the Politburo in 1966 where he remained until his death in 1983).
Conclusion
What is the common denominator among these purges? All of them either targeted republican leaderships’ pursuing varying degrees of nationally-minded to nationalist policies and discrimination against Russians in the periphery or at least included accusations of such behaviour in their charges. It was this crime that made these leaderships untenable to the Red Cardinals, who required their cleansing.
The purges largely failed to rein in the republics or quell nationalism, and the newly appointed leaderships became more corrupt, quietly autonomous, and embarrassing than before. While in Latvia, Pelše vociferously repressed national communist policies, many other beneficiaries of these operations continued to court nationalist trends, albeit discreetly. In Lithuania, Sniečkus the survivor continued his semi-autonomous policies and resisted a new cadre exchange policy (Kemp, 1999, p. 163). Though Rashidov purged the Uzbek Party, he built a more disobedient apparatus, turning the leadership into a nepotistic family clique that conned investment from Moscow for fictitiously elevated levels of cotton production into the 1980s. The Great Cotton Scandal caused significant political fallout (see Chapter Four). Mustafaev’s successor, Veli Akhundov discreetly permitted the continuation of Azerbaijan’s national revival. Akhundov restored Agitprop chief Kurbanov after Moscow removed him in 1961, with instructions to revive folk customs and traditions. In 1967, Akhundov broke with cadre tradition and made an Azerbaijani, Heydar Aliyev, KGB Chairman (Hasanli, 2015, pp. 428–429). Most significantly, unlike in Latvia, the law enforcing use of the local language in Azerbaijan was not rescinded and remained part of the Constitution. This suggests that the crackdown failed to produce the desired response among the republics’ leaderships. Despite Khrushchev’s vague push for further integration between the Soviet peoples and the soaring rhetoric of the early 1960s, by the decade’s end under Brezhnev’s new management, the reality was quietly recognized, and pronouncements about the fusion of nations petered out.
In exposing this ‘Suslovite’ offensive against localism in the republics, it becomes clear that Khrushchev was not the catalyst for these purges and was manipulated into viewing regional leaders as nationalists or unable to prevent their portrayal as such. Khrushchev’s initial instinct was to defend his supporters (six/seven of the nine purged leaders were appointed or promoted under Khrushchev). He repeatedly deferred difficult decisions about the fate of leaders back to their own capitals despite their intra-Party struggles.
The wave of dismissals and expulsions of leading Party functionaries across the republics demonstrated that the period of concessions was over, and Moscow was reasserting control, recentralizing the Union following the failure of decentralization. As a consequence of these peripheral purges, Khrushchev lost the support he had cultivated in the republics since 1956 (Simon, 1991, pp. 251–254). Khrushchev emerged weakened; the Apparatus portrayed his reforms and acquiescence as responsible for the growth of nationalism and localism. Khrushchev was forced to perform a volte-face following repeated republican crises, retreat from some of his plans, and concentrate on tightening the reins, shifting the emphasis to integration and homogenization (Nahaylo and Swoboda, 1990, p. 137). Suslov was able to exert significant influence over the formulation of the new Party Programme in 1961, which comprehensively rebuffed local aspirations, personally including a statement that ‘in the USSR there is a merging of nations and their languages, the formation of one nation with one language, with a single common culture’ (Vdovin, 2009). Into the early 1960s, Khrushchev became increasingly isolated following the loss of several Presidium allies, a shrinking political base and further disenchantment with his frenetic bureaucratic overhauls. The purges exacerbated these factors and improved the position of Suslov, Shelepin, and Semichastnyi, the Red Cardinals, in their quietly escalating struggle against Khrushchev, culminating in the latter’s own fall from power in October 1964.
Notes
1 Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennii arkhiv noveishei istorii) hereafter RGANI fond 5, opis 31, delo 59, list 210–211.
2 Latvian State Archives (Latvijas Valsts arhīvs) hereafter LVA, PA-102. fonds, 14. apraksts, 8. lieta, 83–84. lapu.
3 Shelepin and Semichastnyi’s powerbase lay in the Komsomol while Suslov’s was in the Agitprop Department of the CC Apparatus (Mitrokhin, 2003, pp. 98–101; Mitrokhin, 2013). After Khrushchev’s fall, the temporary alliance between the Shelepin Group and Brezhnev’s Dnipropetrovsk group dissolved and a rift developed with Suslov on Brezhnev’s side in the conflict. Suslov worked to reduce Shelepin’s influence and eventually succeeded in shunting him to the token post of Chairman of the Trade Union Council in 1967. That same year Suslov insisted on Semichastnyi’s dismissal as KGB Chairman following the embarrassing defection of Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, to the USA; Suslov’s client Yuri Andropov replaced Semichastnyi as KGB Chief (Medvedev, 1989, p. 6). In his memoirs, Shelepin (1991, p. 4) has only scathing words for Suslov because he masterminded his fall from grace; as Semichastnyi (2002, p. 166) put it, ‘We have always had a strained relationship with him…’.
4 LVA, PA-101. f., 21. apr., 108–109 l.; LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 111–113. l.
5 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.60, l.10–11; RGANI f.5, op.31, d.59, l.203–212; LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 48a. l., 91, 167. lp. Military officers wrote many of the letters of complaint. After returning from service in Poland, Lieutenant-Colonel Cherviakov and his family were unable to register in Riga despite bringing up the matter with Latvia’s leaders. Frustrated, Cherviakov wrote to Moscow. He included the questions he was asked when he tried to register: ‘Why did you come to Latvia, why is it necessary to be here? We did not invite you here’. A KPK employee confirmed this when discussing the situation in Latvia, noting that ‘very many people appeal to the CC… They complain that they are mistreated […] they are asked the question: “why did you come here, what do you need?” […] The case of collective farm chairman Sobolev is characteristic. He destroyed the farm and was rightly expelled from the Party […] Instead of considering the issue [he was asked] “you are a Belarusian, why did you come here?”’, LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 48a. l., 181–182. lp.
6 According to Latvian national communist leader, Council of Ministers Deputy Chairman Eduards Berklavs, at a meeting in Moscow, CC CPSU Department for Cadres Chief Kiselev told Berklavs that while the CC ‘certainly did not believe [everything] in the letters, there is no smoke without fire’. Berklavs suspected that Pelše and his Russian and Russified Latvian supporters composed the letters. He wrote in his memoirs: ‘It was decided to write [letters] until a commission comes from Moscow to verify the letters’ accuracy, when the commission arrives… [they would] pretend to be locals [and] confirm that all the letters are accurate’. Berklavs also had to meet with Shelepin as the Department’s new head to discuss the matter. The pair had a frosty exchange that demonstrated how Shelepin felt about nationalism in the periphery: ‘We have observed nationalist deviations [in Latvia], that you have forced everyone to learn Latvian and to hate Russians’ (Berklavs, 2011, p. 113).
7 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.54, l.14–19; LVA, PA-101. f., 21. apr., 48a. l., 89–92. lp.
8 RGANI f.5, op. 31, d. 239, l. 18.
9 This is particularly evident in the instructional book Pigalev (1962) wrote for the Higher Party School entitled ‘Local party organs – organs of political and organizational leadership’ shortly after being elevated to the post of the Department’s First Deputy after the successful conclusion of the purges in 1961.
10 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.97, l.124–126; LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 15. l., 21. lp. In Latvia, the national communists also created an inner circle on the Bureau in which they used ‘tea breaks’ to decide questions and exclude their non-members, LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 48a. l., 199–200. lp.
11 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.97, l.139.
12 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.97, l.123, 126; RGANI f.5, op.31, d.122, l.48–63, 79–81; Turkmenistanskaia Iskra, 16 December 1958, p. 1.
13 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.97, l.140–141.
14 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.122, l.104–110. Department Deputy Chairman F. Yakovlev reported about the plenum to the Presidium and the Presidium declaration approving the personnel changes included Semichastnyi’s signature, RGANI f.3, op.12, d.544, l.41–42.
15 Mukhitdinov was personally warned at the Presidium on 24 March not to get involved in the matter because of his patronage of Kamolov (Fursenko, 2015, p. 366).
16 RGANI f.4, op.15, d.163, l.88, 90, 154; RGANI f.5, op.31, d.122, l.89–102.
17 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.536, l.4.
18 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.527, l.71.
19 LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 48a. l., 112–113. lp. In 1956, an investigation of two anonymous letters alleging nationalism by Jēkabpils and Krustpils District leaders, logged by the CC CPSU and then forwarded to Latvia confirms that Krūmiņš had a point. The complaints were ‘carefully examined and not confirmed’. The investigation found they were crafted by an aggrieved Party member and were ‘clearly defamatory in nature’, Riekstiņš (2005). Instances of score-settling show why letters of complaint were not taken overly seriously by Moscow until they became politicized in late 1958. This did not mean, however, that cases were entirely fabricated. ‘Statements of a nationalist character’ by Latvians were, for example, confirmed in an investigation from 1958 into a complaint from some Russian collective farm fishermen, LVA, PA-101. f., 22. apr., 112. l., 122–124. lp.
20 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.527, l.71–82; RGANI f.3, op.12, d.527, l.70.
21 Berklavs (2011, p. 111) claims it was Demin who wrote the sample complaint letter addressed to the CC that he read in May 1958, although it was ostensibly signed with the Latvian surnames Ozoliņš, Kārkliņš, Lejiņš, Kalniņš, and Bērziņš (odd for a complaint about Latvian nationalism) but did not have a return address.
22 As Chairman of the Bureau for Lithuania between 1944 and 1946, Suslov was tasked with ending the partisan insurgency and restoring Soviet power. In this bloody work he gained the epithet ‘the Second Hangman of Lithuania’ (Girnius, 1978).
23 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.527, l.69. Mukhitdinov was Khrushchev’s trusted ally and an opponent of Suslov. Khrushchev brought Mukhitdinov to Moscow from Uzbekistan, and he became his informal emissary to the Republics. It could be why he went to Latvia in Suslov’s stead. Mukhitdinov’s presence during several of these investigations suggests a dual power structure whereby both the Red Cardinals and Khrushchev’s representatives carried out intertwined investigations in the periphery.
24 Although Semichastnyi’s recollections require the usual caveats regarding the veracity of memoirs, the Latvian purge was a small episode in Semichastnyi’s career. So, it seems unlikely that he would exaggerate his involvement. Furthermore, his recollections correspond with the available archival evidence such as Khrushchev’s opinion on the matter (RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.53, 56–58), his visits to Khrushchev’s office were logged, and the commission report also noted Kalnbērziņš’ willingness to resign, RGANI f.3, op.12, d.527, l.82.
25 According to Krūmiņš, Shelepin relayed to him his impression of his altercation with Berklavs in 1958 in Shelepin’s office, remarking that Shelepin had been ‘bitten’ by Berklavs’s sharp character. Berklavs apparently called Shelepin ‘a Great Russian chauvinist’. Shelepin retorted that Berklavs was a ‘nationalist’. Shelepin reputedly said that the dispute was so serious that they ‘almost came to blows’. Thereafter, Shelepin could never forgive Berklavs (Krūmiņš, 1988, p. 136; Krūmiņš and Vallis, 1989, p. 10).
26 RGANI f.2, op.1, d.374, l.152–153. Krūmiņš (1988, p. 136) describes Khrushchev’s displeasure towards Pelše in November 1959 for creating a ‘ruckus around the world’ with the purge. The Latvian émigré community did indeed turn the purge to its advantage with frequent mentions in both the press and radio broadcasts, (Berklavs 2011, pp. 155, 184).
27 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.536, l.2–3.
28 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.58.
29 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.536, l.6. Khrushchev said: ‘Maybe no dismissals are necessary and the whole leadership can remain the same. Let the people who have made mistakes take part in fixing them. […] So, I think we should let the Latvians decide for themselves’, RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l. 54, 56.
30 This is the highest and most commonly cited figure.
31 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.60, l.10–13. The cascade of purges concerned the other republics. The Azerbaijani leadership were influenced by the Uzbek purge in March. Consequently, they decided to hold a plenum in June 1959 to scapegoat Ibrahimov, portraying him as the architect of the nationalist revival but like their Latvian counterparts, the plenum descended into infighting (Hasanli, 2015, pp. 379–383).
32 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.59.
33 RGANI f.2, op.1, d.374, l.146, 148, 153.
34 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.20, 25.
35 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.69, 19.
36 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.536, l.7; RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.67, 69.
37 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.538, l.118.
38 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.124, l.8–16.
39 Furthermore, the Latvian purge’s second victim, Latvian Trade Union Council Chairman Indriķis Pinksis (1988, p. 127), claimed that in early 1962 he attempted to inform Khrushchev of the ‘witch hunt’ in Latvia. Shelepin intercepted Pinksis but promised to deliver Pinksis’ letter to Khrushchev. Later, he telephoned Pinksis and said Khrushchev was too busy to deal with Pinksis’ petition. Pinksis believed his letter never reached Khrushchev.
40 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.2, 67.
41 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.123, l.126–131.
42 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.123, l.117–121; Lithuanian Special Archives (Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas) LYA 1771-3-4690, pp.76–77; LYA 1771-196-129, pp.1–2, 7–10.
43 RGANI f.4, op.15, d.169, l.80–88; RGANI f.5, op.31, d.171, l.36–70; RGANI f.5, op.31, d.171, l.82–97.
44 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.145, l.2–5.
45 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.148, l.41–44.
46 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.148, l.46.
47 http://www.knowbysight.info/1_ARMEN/15910.asp.
48 Ironically, Obnosov, although Russian, was not sent from Moscow – his career developed in Tajikistan.
49 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.142, l.102–113.
50 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.145, l.142–143.
51 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.59, l.203–212; National Archives of Estonia (Rahvusarhiiv), RA, ERAF.1.4.1941, pp.4–5, 14–16; RA, ERAF.1.163.2.
52 RGANI f.3, op.12, d.997, l.2, 67.
53 RGANI f.5, op.31, d.123, l.187, 209–211, 213–217.
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