What a French intelligence officer saw Soviet people in 1957

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

An anonymous French intelligence officer left notes about the USSR in 1957. Mentally, Soviet people corresponded to Western children at the age of 12, but at the same time the Soviet elites were the best graduates of Cambridge (confirming the axiom “the government in Russia is the only European”). The state is European, but the people are Asian. He saw politics in the USSR as a confrontation between the "peasant" and "bourgeois parties."

Deputy Director of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Lipkin, while working in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, discovered an interesting document in the fund of the Director of the Department for European Economic Cooperation Oliver Wormser - an analytical note by an unknown author, drawn up on the basis of his work in Moscow. We can only guess what kind of man he was, but most likely he served in French foreign intelligence.

Judging by the breadth of the analysis and the attempt to develop his own method of understanding Soviet Russia, its author was a well-educated person, and most importantly, he was well informed about the hidden life of the Soviet elite. He does not disclose the names and number of his informants in the USSR, but, judging by the text of the note, he communicated with people of different political views.

Lipkin suggests that the fact that the note got into the personal file of the head of the Department of Economic Cooperation, who was responsible for France's participation in the Common Market (and they worked with him - in the text, certain passages are underlined by hand), suggests that the document was circulating in circles involved in key foreign policy decisions. Judging by the attention paid by its author to the problem of European neutralism and Europe - the "third force", it is possible that his work was directly related to the task of defining the Soviet position in relation to the new structure of Europe (the future European Union).

The Interpreter's blog cites (abbreviated) this note of a French intelligence officer about the USSR in 1957 (quotes - the journal "Dialogues with Time", 2010, No. 33):

“According to the vision of the Frenchman, if we draw a parallel between the historical experience of Western European countries and the USSR, then the hands of the clock should be turned 70 years ago, that is, return to Western Europe in 1890. The late industrialization carried out in the USSR, according to this logic, is comparable to the period of Western European development in the middle - second half of the 19th century (and the revolution in Russia in 1917 corresponds to the European revolutions of 1848).

Continuing his observations, he makes the assertion that in terms of the level of mental development, Soviet people correspond to modern Western Europeans at the age of 12.

He also notes the presence of some knowledge about English civilization (thanks to his acquaintance with the work of Dickens) and German romanticism (through the works of Hegel and Marx).

Building in a note a kind of mental map of Europe, in terms of the level of intellectual culture and the development of art, its author unequivocally refers the USSR as a state to the area of European culture. However, in his opinion, its development again froze somewhere at the level of 1890. But according to the criterion of the behavior of Soviet people, the French anonymous attributed Soviet civilization to the Far East. However, he believes that the level of development of average Soviet people is approximately equal to the level of residents of the state of Oklahoma in the United States, which he opposes to the civilized population of the prosperous state of New York and the respectable Greenwich Village.

Despite this, he gives an unexpectedly high assessment of the Soviet political elite, claiming that its level corresponds to graduates of the Higher Polytechnic School in France or Oxford and Cambridge in England (that is, here again we are faced with the axiom of the last two centuries - “The only European in Russia is government - BT). Moreover, drawing historical analogies, he likens the consolidation of communist society under Stalin to the activities of Napoleon, who consolidated the national bourgeois state that arose under Robespierre.

When analyzing the political situation in the USSR in 1957, the author, applying the class approach, divides the political stratum into spokesmen for the interests of the peasantry (army and generals) and the bourgeoisie (party apparatus). By the term "bourgeoisie", especially the "Soviet bourgeoisie", "bourgeois ruling stratum", he means the urban population of the country, the circles that represented their interests.

According to the author's observations, in 1957 the ruling stratum in the USSR for the most part still consisted of people from the "pre-war bourgeoisie" (fathers, sons, grandchildren). As an example, he examines the personality of Georgy Malenkov, noting his "bourgeois behavior" along with the political and administrative experience acquired as an associate of Stalin. From a human point of view, according to the author, all this, taking into account his age and personal charm, made Malenkov the best candidate for the role of the country's political leader.

However, despite his positive personal qualities, Malenkov expressed the interests of the old-style communists, united around the Molotov-Kaganovich group. Giving his own explanation for the removal of Malenkov from the political proscenium of the country in June 1957, the author of the note writes that there was a danger that Malenkov would pursue a policy of systematic export of communism, primarily in the countries of Southeast Asia, using China as an outpost. However, the consequences of such a policy, according to the note, would be a drop in the standard of living in the USSR. The "bourgeois ruling stratum" did not want to allow this in the cities.

Insofar as it concerned life in the countryside, the army did not want to allow this either (the spokesman for the interests of the village, according to the author's logic). Under these conditions, the "Soviet bourgeoisie" did not support Malenkov's group at the moment when the army leadership decided to remove him from the country's political life, transferring all the external attributes of power to one person - the first secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev.

“But from a human point of view, this personality [Khrushchev], non-bourgeois in origin and more proletarian than peasant in origin, is and will remain completely unacceptable for the current ruling stratum,” the author predicts. - Thus, does she count on the final fall of Khrushchev, i.e. his more or less quick displacement by a politician of bourgeois origin, but without any inclination to export communism, or a qualified representative of the army (if not bourgeois, then at least more peasant than proletarian in origin),”the author asks.

Developing his thought, he admits a scenario in which the displacement of Khrushchev would have been carried out by Georgy Zhukov, relying on Konev and supported by Sokolovsky and Antonov. At the same time, it is noted that Konev, unlike Zhukov, is much more popular among the middle and lower army ranks of the Soviet army.

However, in the future, the author himself questions both scenarios. The first is due to the lack of a civilian figure of the proper caliber on the political Olympus, acceptable to the "bourgeoisie" and capable of replacing Khrushchev at the head of the Communist Party (such a figure will appear only in 1965 - Leonid Brezhnev - BT). The second is because of the extremely small likelihood of a direct seizure of power by representatives of the army.

It is noted that despite his low personal qualities, the first secretary takes into account the interests of the peasantry and continues to orient the economic potential of the country towards the development of the military-industrial complex.

Recognizing the impossibility of accurately predicting the future development of the Soviet Union, the author attempts to systematize the main aspirations and assessments of the future inherent in the representatives of the ruling stratum. The description is called "optimism and pessimism" in the USSR.

Pessimists, according to the note, believe that the chances of living to a better time are very slim. This is due to the fact that the United States will not agree to an agreement with the USSR that would provide for political equality and arms reduction. Optimists, on the contrary, believe that “after they (by the hands of Khrushchev) destroy the communist ideology (its export) and get rid of an unworthy individual, very mediocre from all points of view, whose services they were forced to use [i.e. Khrushchev], "a Russian marshal with gray eyes will once meet the gaze of a blue-eyed American general, after which a complete and final agreement will be established for the joy of everyone."

Following the logic of conventional "pessimists" and "optimists" in the USSR, the author puts forward two mutually exclusive scenarios for the development of international relations. In the first case, the United States would continue the arms race without fear of affecting their standard of living, while the Russians would be forced to surrender due to falling standards of living. In the second case, the Americans will have to get used to the idea that the Russians will not surrender, and the arms race will most likely eventually lead to a war that could turn into an unconditional surrender of the United States to the USSR."