Power Struggle in the Troika (PJW)

"Power Struggle in the Troika" is an excerpt from The Dancing Bear: The Soviet Union in the 1960s, written by historian Robert Conquest and published in 1977.

Power Struggle
It was clear the Troika could not last for long. The three heads - Shelepin, Brezhnev, and Kosygin - all favored different outlooks for the Soviet Union. Shelepin believed in fermenting the worldwide revolution and a hard stance against the United States; Brezhnev wanted to consolidate and centralize power within the Soviet Union and around himself, along with pursuing a policy of detente; Kosygin hoped to install internal reforms. Of the three, Kosygin seemed most content with the splitting of power, but for Shelepin and Brezhnev - there could be only one winner. Shelepin was the most ambitious of the three, and being the major figure behind the December coup, believed he himself deserved to be in charge. So he made the opening moves of the struggle that destroyed the Troika.

Believing Brezhnev was the more dangerous target, Shelepin moved against him first by striking at his underlings, the junior members of the transitional government headed by the Troika. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had moved close to Brezhnev due to their similar belief in de-escalating tensions with the United States, so he was the first to go. A bomb planted within Gromyko's car killed the Minister of Foreign Affairs during his morning commute to the Kremlin on January 17, 1962.

Early KGB reports suggested the bomb was planted by "Ukrainian fascist-terrorists", no doubt a reference to Khrushchev and Brezhnev's Ukranian heritage. While the KGB continued their investigation into the bombing, Mikhail Suslov plotted within his office, surrounded by his bar graphs and flow charts. Suslov, a leader in the Presidium and essential master of Soviet media through his connections to Pravda, was instrumental in forming the Troika; the man never liked direct leadership, much preferring to remain the power behind the throne. Thus, he was the most important of the junior members of the Troika, and a key power broker.

Shelepin's youth and rashness immediately made Suslov distrust him. But Shelepin, thanks to his control of the powerful Committee of Party and State Control, along with the KGB, made him, for the moment, untouchable. However, there was discontent in the KGB over Shelepin's costly decisions in choosing incorrect foreign communist movements to back; new KGB head Vladimir Semichastny himself approached Suslov when he heard Shelepin's plan to kill Gromyko. Deftly navigating the political scene, Suslov allowed the killing of Gromkyo to proceed - taking out one potential enemy, while at the same time gaining new ones in Semichastny and others who had grown weary of Shelepin after the bombing.

Above all else, Suslov - despite being one of the most hardliner Stalinists - desired collective leadership for the Soviet Union, rather than consolidation around one man. When he considered which Troika member to back to oust Shelepin, the stronger and hardliner Brezhnev was the initial first choice - but Suslov was weary of Brezhnev's own plans to consolidate power. Thus, Suslov instead turned to the liberal Kosygin - if nothing else, Kosygin would accept the splitting of power as part of his reforms. Thus, the lines had been drawn in the battle for the future of Moscow, and when Semichastny approached Suslov with Shelepin's next move in February, Suslov realized he had found a great opportunity...