Anti-Party Group

The Anti-Party Group (Russian: Антипартийная группа, tr. Antipartiynaya gruppa) was a group within the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that unsuccessfully attempted to depose Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Party in May 1957. The group, named by that epithet by Khrushchev, was led by former Premiers Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. The group rejected both Khrushchev's liberalisation of Soviet society and his uneven denunciation of Joseph Stalin.

Motives

The members of the group regarded Khruschev's attacks on Stalin, most famously in the Secret Speech delivered at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 as hypocritical as well as ideologically wrong, given Khrushchev's complete complicity in the Great Purge, and similar events as one of Stalin's favourites. They believed that Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence would leave the Soviet Union open to attack. Additionally, Malenkov and Molotov had been removed from their positions as Premier and Foreign Minister the year before. Others feared for their careers and possibly their lives in the continuing de-Stalinisation of Soviet life.

Attempted take-over

The leaders of the group - Malenkov, Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich - were joined at the last minute by Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov, whom Kaganovich had convinced that the group had a majority. In fact, in the Presidium the group's proposal to replace Khrushchev as First Secretary with Premier Nikolai Bulganin won with 7 to 4 votes, but Khrushchev argued that only the plenum of the Central Committee could remove him from office. At an extraordinary session of the Central Committee held in late June, Khrushchev argued that his opponents were an "anti-party group". He was backed by Defense Minister Georgy Zhukov, who gave a forceful speech, and was reaffirmed in his position as First Secretary even using the military to bring in supporters of Khrushchev to convince people to support him.

Aftermath

During the stormy meeting of the Central Committee, Zhukov had come close to threatening Khrushchev's opponents with force (even as he denounced them for having the blood of Stalin's victims on their hands) but the triumphant Khrushchev resisted.

Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Shepilov - the only four names made public - were vilified in the press and deposed from their positions in party and government. They were given relatively unimportant positions:

• Molotov was sent as ambassador to Mongolia
• Malenkov became director of a hydroelectric plant in Kazakhstan
• Kaganovich became director of a small potassium factory in the Urals
• Shepilov became head of the Economics Institute of the local Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan

In 1961, in the wake of further de-Stalinisation, they were expelled from the Communist Party altogether and all lived mostly quiet lives from then on. Shepilov was allowed to rejoin the party by Khrushchev's successor Leonid Brezhnev in 1976 but remained on the sidelines.

Khrushchev became increasingly distrusting and in the same year also deposed and expelled Defense Minister Zhukov, who had assisted him against the anti-party group but with whom he increasingly had political differences, alleging an attempted coup. In 1958, Premier Bulganin, the intended beneficiary of the anti-party group's move, was forced to retire and Khrushchev became Premier as well.

Khrushchev's treatment of his opponents marked a departure from earlier practice in Soviet politics (as last seen in 1953 during the purge of Lavrenti Beria) - a development that was followed during later power struggles, such as Khrushchev's own deposition by Brezhnev in 1964 and the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991^{[citation needed]}.

See also

• Communist China’s Gang of Four

External links

• Khrushchev Expels the 'Anti-Party Group' Central Committee decree on the Anti-Party Group, June 29, 1957
• Russian: Шепилов Д.Т. Непримкнувший. Воспоминания Издательство «ВАГРИУС», 2001. ISBN 5-264-00505-2