Yugoslav sources said, in the autumn of 1962, that Bukharin would shortly be rehabilitated.112 This did not take place, though at a meeting of an All-Union Conference on Measures to Improve the Training of Scientific-Pedagogical Cadres in the Historical Sciences,113 Pospelov said: “Students ask whether Bukharin and others were spies of foreign States…. I may state that it is sufficient to study the documents of the XXIInd Congress of the C.P.S.U. in order to say that neither Bukharin nor Rykov, of course, were spies or terrorists.” This little-publicized partial exculpation is important in principle. But Bukharin’s and Rykov’s names were not restored to Party favor. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Pyatakov, I. N. Smirnov, Sokolnikov, and Rosengolts—to name some of the other leading figures at the public trials—remained totally unrehabilitated. So did a good many men who had not even come to public trial—for example, Preobrazhensky, Smilga, Uglanov, and Shlyapnikov.
Rehabilitation, as well as being done in this illogical and partial fashion, took a variety of forms. The maximum was the full-scale article with at least a remark at the end that the man named had fallen victim to slander as a result of the personality cult. The minimum was simply the mention of the former purgee’s name in a neutral or favorable context. There was, indeed, something even more minimal, if one can so express it, than the above. It was now conventional in the “biographical notes” on people who had played a part in the earlier history of the Party and who were listed at the end of works dealing with that time to give, in addition to those of birth and death, the date of entering the Party. In the case of all those in good odor, this was phrased “Member of the Party from 1910,” or whatever the date might be. In the case of those still unrehabilitated, this was invariably “Got into the Party
This curious, and typical, indirectness marked a failure to come to grips with the past. It is easily explicable. After Stalin’s death, the machine he created continued to rule the country. The principle of one-party rule, the overriding competence of that party in all spheres of life, the preservation of its “monolithic” nature—and rule over it by a small central body—all continued.
All the leaders had arisen in the old machine during Stalin’s time. The channels through which they rose remained as then established. And the principles of rule were, in general, those then brought to fruition.
The efforts of Khrushchev personally and of a number of intellectual and other figures had nevertheless made important, if partial, progress in uncovering the truth. The resistance from the whole traditionalist cadre at every level was natural. And it beat him.
THE BREZHNEV REACTION
After the fall of Khrushchev in October 1964, an end was gradually put to speculative and risky initiatives in every field. This applied also to the matter of “Stalinism.” The rehabilitation process virtually ceased, as did written discussions of the more sensitive areas of the Stalinist past. Stalin himself began to be treated at first with a rather cold respect and later with considerable favor, in spite of the protests of intellectuals. The system of government he created, as amended and improved under Khrushchev, was consolidated.
The extent of the reaction since Khrushchev’s time could be seen in the treatment of Raskolnikov. In his military
This was, indeed, a special case. More generally, those rehabilitated remained so, though the expression “Illegally repressed. Posthumously rehabilitated” disappeared from the reference books. And accounts of events of the Purges simply ceased to appear. For the moment, at least, the promise of better things after forty years in the wilderness showed little sign of fulfillment. The reason, basically, seems to be that the caravan was led by men skilled in the ways of the wilderness, and enjoying the powers they had gained and would certainly forfeit in a lusher land.
