RUSSIA: The Roots Are in the Way

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However ignominious was former Premier Nikolai Bulganin's performance in publicly confessing error at last month's Central Committee meeting in Moscow, it was not groveling enough to satisfy his sometime globetrotting pal, Nikita Khrushchev. Unprecedentedly, Moscow last week published a stenographic report of the December session at which Bulganin demeaned himself.

Moscow's minutes, which sold out within hours, showed that after Bulganin admitted "joining" the "antiparty activities of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Shepilov," speaker after speaker rose—obviously in a coordinated assault—to assail his confession as "feeble" and "unconvincing." Said Agriculture Minister Vladimir Matskevich, a longtime Khrushchev henchman from the Ukraine: "Bulganin now pretends that he only joined the group at the last minute. This is not true. If Bulganin has in fact repented, then he must disarm himself completely and tell honestly about his subversive work and about the roots that have remained."

Besides suggesting that there is still party opposition to be uprooted, this report indicated that Boss Khrushchev is demanding even more self-incriminating confessions before or during the 21st Party Congress, which opens Jan. 27. The rhetoric of accusation is increasing in intensity. State Prosecutor Roman Rudenko recently accused Malenkov & Co. of having "committed criminal violations of Soviet legality." In the old days, using the word criminal was the first ritual step to a show trial and execution. How much does Khrushchev need victims now? At the very least, some of Khrushchev's old comrades, now in disgrace, will probably have to use the Party Congress as a public confessional. They will be lucky if their humiliation ends there.

To a group of Chicago businessmen, Anastas Mikoyan last week hinted that the oldest, and once the mightiest, of the disgraced comrades might soon be brought back from Asian exile. Vyacheslav M. Molotov, said the First Deputy Premier, "might even become an ambassador to a larger state."

"He is a conservative man,'' explained Mikoyan. "He thinks that everything past is good and everything new is bad. [But] we have utmost confidence in him as an ambassador just so long as he is not in a position to decide on questions of reform."

Mikoyan obviously was not talking off the cuff. At week's end Netherlands' officials confirmed that Moscow had asked and received permission to shift old Stonebottom, now 68, from the Russian embassy in forbidding Outer Mongolia to the post of ambassador in The Hague.