He had a clear understanding of this. He had deliberately promoted the young and working-class cadres to high postings. Whereas in France and Britain the old clung to power, Stalin had brought on a fresh generation to replace the ageing veterans of the October Revolution — and he was pleased with his achievement.8 He had promoted young adults to all rungs on the ladder of party and government. This had long been one of his objectives, and he had attained it by the most brutal methods. At the end of the Great Terror he sought to keep the promotees on his side. The system of graduated perks and privileges was maintained. The higher the rung, the greater the reward. Stalin bribed them into murderous complicity. The administrative beneficiaries of the purges had a fixed higher income and guaranteed access to goods and services denied to the rest of society. Even if they did not literally step into dead men’s shoes, they certainly took possession of their apartments, dachas, paintings, carpets and pianos. They hired their tutors, chauffeurs and nannies. The promoted officials belonged to a privileged elite.
Stalin wished to sedate the minds of officials still fearful that he might resume the terror. At the celebratory Eighteenth Party Congress in March 1939, his general report picked up the theme:9
The correct selection of cadres means:
Firstly to value cadres like the gold reserve of party and state, to cherish them, to show them respect.
Secondly to know the cadres, to make a careful study of the virtues and defects of each cadre official, to know how to facilitate the official’s capacities.
Thirdly to cultivate the cadres, to help each growing official to rise higher, not to begrudge time in handling these officials patiently and hastening their growth.
Fourthly to promote new, young cadres boldly and in a timely fashion, to avoid letting them stand around in the same old place or letting them go stale.
His appeal to the recent promotees was fervent. Unnamed discussants, he declared, thought it better for the state to ‘orientate itself to the old cadres’ with all their experience. But Stalin insisted that the wiser course was the one he had chosen.10 Not for the last time he gave the impression that the promotees had no firmer friend than himself.
Having created a new administrative elite, he wanted their allegiance. It was for them more than for any other group in society that he had ordered the publication of the
A technocratic imperative was being proclaimed, and Stalin was putting himself forward as the Leader of the newly reformed USSR. With typical false modesty — and even self-pity — he pretended that the burden of individual leadership had somehow been thrust upon him. At times he complained about this. While other Soviet leaders tended the business of their assigned institutions, he gave consideration to the entire range of affairs. At a supper party in 1940 he was quite mawkish:13
But I
Yes, I can study, read, follow things up each day. But why can’t you do that? You don’t like to study, you go on living complacently. You waste Lenin’s legacy.
