From Malenkov to Khruschev

If there is one lesson to be learned from the Malenkov “resignation,” it is that most of the journalistic guesses about the specific power relations in the Kremlin are utterly fruitless. No one really knows. And if the subject were not so grave, there would be something inexpressibly comic about the “Russian experts” whose expertness consists of little more than a close study of the photographs in Pravda and the order in which the names of the Russian rulers are listed.

Amidst the whirl of speculation a few facts might be remembered. The most fundamental is that the unchanging element in recent Russian history has been the concentration of political power in one man or a very small group, ...