Workers World, Vol. 4 No. 2
Nikita Khrushchev took over the reins of power under the sign of “collective leadership.” Following the death of Stalin, there appeared any number of articles in the Soviet press which stressed the restoration of the Leninist principles of collective leadership. To the extent that this was expounded as a corrective against the preceding period, it gave the appearance of reopening the era of the leadership given to the party by Lenin.
For the term “collective leadership” to have any substance at all, it would mean the active participation of the existing groupings within the present leadership of the Soviet party. Certainly it should have meant that the viewpoint advanced by Molotov and his adherents in the Central Committee be represented in the Presidium.
If collective leadership meant a broadening of the democratic processes within the party, it should have by all means meant that if Molotov’s adherents were in a minority, that his viewpoint would be presented to the party and subject to the ordinary discipline that there be maintained a unity of action following a congress of the party.
What actually did happen to Molotov, however, was that he was indicted on the vague charge of violating the principles of “peaceful co-existence” and summarily ousted from his post with not even so much as the printing of his letter to the Central Committee criticizing the draft program to be presented to the 22nd Congress.
How could this possibly be regarded as an improvement on Stalin? If Khrushchev were really democratizing the party, as he alleges, then his first duty was to assure adequate safeguards for the fair presentation by his political opponents at a party congress. Is not that what the congress was called for?
Instead of that, there followed an orgy of attacks against the opposition. The true test as to whether there has been a broadening of democratic processes within the party, is not whether this or that secondary or tertiary official is permitted wider latitude in criticizing subordinate leaders on secondary issues. The true test is whether the principal leaders are permitted to present their views on fundamental issues.
If Khrushchev’s leadership proves anything at all, it proves that party processes have not been democratized, but that his specific faction and its allies in the upper echelons of the party have completely monopolized all channels of communication and debate. The issue between Molotov and Khrushchev has been made abundantly clear since the 22nd Congress. Molotov has taken a far more intransigent position against imperialism than Khrushchev.
The very idea of indicting him for violating the principle of “peaceful co-existence,” to the glee and merriment of the imperialists, makes one suspect the nature of the democratization which Khrushchev alleges the party has gone through as a result of his leadership.
This, however, is merely the organizational side of the question. The political content of the divergent views between Khrushchev and Molotov is what really interest the world at large. On that score, there is no question that the soft line pursued by Khrushchev and his collaborators in the field of foreign policy constitutes a grave danger not only to the USSR itself, but to the other socialist countries and to the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples throughout the world.
Each passing day brings more evidence that the rift between China and the Soviet Union is widening. Yet signs continue to accumulate that the class antagonisms between world imperialism on the one hand, and the USSR and China on the other – far from moderating – are becoming sharper and more intense.
One merely has to remind himself that it is scarcely three months since Khrushchev retreated on the deadline he had set for signing a peace treaty with the German Democratic Republic. Now Kennedy is back in his familiar role of holding top level meetings with his principal military chiefs and planning to send more – not less – troops to Europe.
Before this issue of Workers World goes to press, 6,000 fully equipped elite troops will reach Europe to join the more than 300,000 U.S. military personnel already there.
In the Far East, the Laotian peace negotiations have been wrecked by the U.S. puppet, Boun Oum, undoubtedly on instructions by his Washington masters. The questions that is in the mind of millions is whether the Laotian talks were broken off by the U.S. in a deliberate attempt to test the solidity of the China-Soviet alliance.
It is these deeds and not the words of peace by the U.S. imperialist government that express the true gravity of the international situation.
The record arms budget which the Kennedy Administration presented to a cheering Congress is in itself the most alarming symptom of imperialist intentions against the socialist countries, and in particular against China and the Soviet Union.
Under these circumstances, a class-conscious worker cannot but feel that the policy of an accommodation with the West so urgently pressed by Khrushchev and his followers is a snare and a delusion.
Class-conscious workers and communists throughout the world cannot but prefer the political position of Molotov as against that of Khrushchev.
Last updated: 11 May 2026