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An old plotter like Khrushchev could be counted on to balance off the army with other concentrations of power. He was out to make himself popular, and now had control of the agencies of public opinion. He would take credit where he could, and blame failure on others. His first administrative act after the ouster of his rivals was to announce that collective-farm peasants would no longer have to make compulsory deliveries to the state of the produce they grew in their tiny, private plots. Again and again through the propaganda and speeches ran a curious refrain: the four ousted leaders had opposed Khrushchev's announced intention of boosting production to U.S. levels. In his Leningrad speech last week, Khrushchev shamelessly stole Malenkov's 1953 consumer-goods program: "We want our shops to be filled with many cheap and pretty fabrics and clothes, everything that makes the life of man more beautiful." Below the power struggle at the top there were hungry, supine but restless millions. How were they taking the new purge? They could not care less about the big shots, but they would be affected by the widespread purge of thousands of minor officials and workers, which experience told them inevitably followed a faction fight at the top level. Mindful of the old Russian saying, "When the masters fall out, the serf gets his hair pulled," they were shrinking back into their shells of reserve. New York Timesman Max Frankel went among a crowd near Red Square, asking for opinions on the ouster, got dutiful or noncommittal answers, except from one who snapped: "There is a policeman. Why don't you ask him instead of me?"
*But Molotov stubbornly abstained from voting against his own censure. *Founded and built by Peter the Great (1703) and for 211 years called St. Petersburg; renamed Petrograd at the outbreak of World War I; changed to Leningrad after the death of Lenin in 1924.