Stalinists Worrying Khrushchev

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29724, 18 January 1962, Page 10

Stalinists Worrying Khrushchev

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter— CopyngM)

WASHINGTON, January 17.

The Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Khrushchev) is secure as head of state, but he still has a problem on his hands with the “Stalinist” group, according to United States analysis.

Analysts of Soviet affairs believe his position as head of the Soviet Government Is secure because of his ability to reach the common people of Russia and because of his qualities as a public relations representative of the U.S.S.R. Nevertheless, these analysts say that Mr Khrushchev is not the political force which he is pictured to be often. The Secretary of State (Mr Dean Rusk) told Senators in Washington on Monday that “something is going on” in the Kremlin which might involve shifts or changes in policies. A number of incidents are said to have given the State Department planners this impression. Molotov’s Position One, in particular, is the case of the former Foreign Minister (Mr Vyacheslav Molotov), who was denounced by Mr Khrushchev at the recent Communist Party congress as a leader of the anti-party group. Shortly afterwards, Mr Molotov, in apparent disgrace, returned to Moscow, but he has now been reinstated in his old job as Soviet representative on the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. So far as is known, however, Mr Molotov is still in Moscow. United States analysts described the case of Mr Molotov as “very atrange.”

They believe that Mr Khrushchev sprung the issue of Stalinism on the party congress without advance warning in the hope that he could take the congress by storm and win action from it which the party’s central committee would not then be in a position to challenge. Obviously, United States experts conclude, he did not achieve the desired result. Differences With China They see a definite link between the internal strife which they say exists in the Soviet Union and the ideological differences with Communist China. The experts think the trouble facing Mr Khrushchev is being encouraged from Peking. The special adviser to President Kennedy (Mr Chester Bowles) said in a speech at a Detroit Press Club lunch yesterday: “This division (between Moscow and Peking) not only strikes at the very base of Communist co-opera-tion and policy-making; it opens up a genuine military problem in the Soviet rear.”