Dmitri Shepilov - Post-Ministership and Resignation

Post-Ministership and Resignation

On 14 February 1957 Shepilov was once again made Secretary of the Central Committee responsible for Communist ideology and the next day, Andrei Gromyko replaced him as the Soviet foreign minister. In his new capacity, Shepilov oversaw the Second Composers' Congress in March 1957, which re-affirmed the decision of the First Congress (January 1948) to denounce Dmitri Shostakovich and other modernist composers. When Shostakovich privately composed a satirical cantata Rayok (Peepshow) later that year (published in 1989), he made one of the basses a caricature of Shepilov. Shepilov also denounced jazz and rock music at the Congress, warning against "wild cave-man orgies" and the "explosion of basic instincts and sexual urges".

Shepilov was the only Central Committee Secretary to oppose Khrushchev in June 1957 when a majority of the Presidium members tried to oust Khrushchev during the so-called Anti-Party Group affair. He reportedly joined the plot at the last moment when Lazar Kaganovich assured him that the plotters had a majority in the Presidium When Khrushchev prevailed at the Central Committee meeting, he was furious over what he saw as Shepilov's betrayal. Shepilov was ousted from the Central Committee on 29 June 1957 and vilified in the press along with Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich, the only 3 other Soviet leaders whose participation in the coup attempt was made public at the time. Shepilov was friend of Marshal Georgy Zhukov and perhaps that was one of the reasons why a few months later Zhukov himself was removed from the office.

After losing his Central Committee positions, Shepilov was sent to Kyrgyzstan to head the Economics Institute of the local Academy of Sciences, but was soon demoted to deputy director. In 1960 he was recalled to Moscow, expelled from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and sent to the Soviet State Archive (Gosarkhiv) to work as a clerk, where he remained until his retirement in 1982. Following a second wave of denunciations of the "Anti-Party Group" at the 22nd Communist Party Congress in November 1961, Shepilov was expelled from the Communist Party on 21 February 1962. In 1976 he was allowed to re-join the Communist Party, but remained on the sidelines.

When Khrushchev was ousted as the Soviet leader in October 1964, Shepilov began working on his memoirs, a project which he continued intermittently until circa 1970. His papers were lost after his death at age 89 in Moscow, but were eventually found and published in 2001.