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Further Reading

1955-1964 - Nikita S. Khrushchev

Nikita Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, who gained world fame as the Soviet leader who broke with Stalin's rigid interpretation of communism, was born in a province of Ukraine on April 17, 1894. Unlike Stalin and other Soviet leaders, Khrushchev, the son of a miner, rose up from the ranks of the working class.

Khrushchev's working life began in Ukraine, in the region of Donbas. His job as a pipe fitter (which he began at fifteen) exempted him from service in World War I. Yet, eager to change Russia, he joined the workers' struggle before the 1917 Revolution erupted and by 1918, he had joined the Russian Communist party (the Bolsheviks), and served as a political worker for the Red Army in the civil war. The following year he joined the Red Army and fought against Polish troops. His service won him admission to the new Soviet schools where he quickly rose through the party ranks, becoming secretary of the school's Communist Party Committee.

By 1925, he worked for the party full-time and became known for his hands-on understanding of mine and factory conditions. His reputation as an effective and enthusiastic party organizer propelled his rapid rise within the party. Under orders from Moscow, Khrushchev participated in massive confiscations of food, crops, forage grains, and supplies, that left millions of peasants starving to death. In 1931 Khrushchev was promoted to Moscow, where he briefly studied at the Soviet Industrial Academy. In 1934 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and recipient of the Order of Lenin and first secretary of the Moscow City Committee in 1935. In 1938 Khrushchev was appointed the 1st Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party and promoted to Politburo in 1939.

Khrushchev's political career was, to a great extent, connected with Ukraine. In the period from 1938 to 1947 (with intervals) [Khrushchev] was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine; from 1944 to 1947 he was also head of the government of the UkrSSR [the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]; in October 1939 he was instrumental in getting Western Ukraine included into the UkrSSR.

At the outset of Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev coordinated the unsuccessful defense of Ukraine, while his family was evacuated to Kuibyshev. The battle of Stalingrad (1942-43) was one of the pivotal engagements of the Great Patriotic War between Nazi and Soviet forces. Soviet forces ultimately repulsed the Nazi advance, frustrating Hitler's hopes for a quick victory, and assuring hit ultimate defeat. Khrushchev was a political commissar during the battle of Stalingrad. Khrushchev was at Stalingrad when the German assault began in August 1942 and throughout the awful months that followed. Khrushchev's service at Stalingrad apparently pleased Stalin, as Khrushchev was decorated and promoted in the Communist party afterwards [in the movie Enemy at the Gates notwithstanding, Bob Hoskins does quite well at portraying Khrushchev in all his warty peasant earthiness, but the Stalingrad campaign was not run by Nikita Khrushchev, who played a rather minor role in the overall scheme of things].

Khrushchev was later a political commissar of the 1st Ukrainian Front, where his deputy was Leonid Brezhnev. Khrushchev was directly responsible for "clearing Ukraine from hostile elements." At least 80,000 people were sent to death following the orders signed by him. He was partially to blame for the destruction of the age-old continuity in the rural life which came about as a result of "the accelerated building of communism." Khrushchev presided over the forced Russification in the post-war years. In the post-war years, Khrushchev coordinated the Soviet struggle against the Ukrainian Insurrection Army and national liberation underground movement in Western Ukraine. Khrushchev carried out "political and ideological campaigns" against "Ukrainian nationalism" and against "cosmopolitanism that knows no allegiance to the native land." Most of the victims of these campaigns were young intellectuals, artists, writers and musicians.

In 1946-1947 famine struck another blow in Ukraine. The famine began with a drought that devastated the southern oblasts of Ukraine. Instead of organizing aid to this region, Stalin cynically connected this famine to manifestations of "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism." In the spring of 1947 Khrushchev, wrote several letters to Moscow. According to documented proof in the form of memoirs, Stalin called Khrushchev a "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist" and categorically forbade any assistance to Ukraine. Khrushchev's attitude led Stalin to demote him at the end of 1947, but Stalin called him back to Moscow two years later to lead the Moscow City Party. Determined not to be displaced again, Khrushchev consolidated his power, often clashing with Georgy Malenkov.

Stalin died without naming an heir, and none of his associates had the power to immediately claim supreme leadership. The deceased dictator's colleagues initially tried to rule jointly through a collective leadership, with Malenkov holding the top positions of prime minister (chairman of the Council of Ministers; the name changed from Council of People's Commissars in 1946) and general secretary (the latter office for only two weeks). The arrangement was first challenged in 1953 when Beria, the powerful head of the security forces, plotted a coup. Beria's associates in the Presidium, however, ordered Marshal Zhukov to arrest him, and he was secretly executed. With Beria's death came the end of the inordinate power of the secret police; the party has maintained strict control over the state security organs ever since.

After the elimination of Beria, the succession struggle became more subtle. Malenkov found a formidable rival in Nikita S. Khrushchev, whom the Presidium elected first secretary (Stalin's title of general secretary was abolished) in September. Of peasant background, Khrushchev had served as head of the Ukrainian party organization during and after World War II and was a member of the Soviet political elite during the Stalin period. The rivalry between Malenkov and Khrushchev surfaced publicly through Malenkov's support for increased production of consumer goods, while Khrushchev conservatively stood for development of heavy industry. After a poor showing by light industry and agriculture, Malenkov resigned as prime minister in February 1955. The new prime minister, Nikolai A. Bulganin, had little influence or real power; Khrushchev was now the most important figure within the collective leadership.

Khrushchev was the first Communist Party chief to begin breaking down the stereotype of the glum, secretive Soviet leader. Taking advantage of the permissible dose of criticism of the Soviet past in his struggle for power, Khrushchev eventually understood that he would have to go further. The first wave of the 1953 amnesty affected mainly the criminal element. The brutally crushed camp uprisings of 1953-1954, involving political prisoners and former military men, showed that de-Stalinization could not be implemented by means of Stalinist methods. From 1954 special commissions began visiting the camps. Comprised of jurists and party workers who examined the most odious, individual cases, these commissions had the right to recommend release or even make decisions on a prisoner's release. Yet they constantly upheld the principle of differentiating between a sentence reduction, amnesty, and rehabilitation (both legal and political). Only rehabilitation allowed former "zeks" [prisoners] to become full-fledged citizens, i.e., they could return home, lay claim to living quarters and their old jobs, and, as a rule, reinstatement in the party. Once people began returning from their places of imprisonment, more and more problems began to crop up, leading to the question "Who is to blame?"

At the Twentieth Party Congress, held in February 1956, Khrushchev further advanced his position within the party by denouncing Stalin's crimes in a dramatic "secret speech." Khrushchev revealed that Stalin had arbitrarily liquidated thousands of party members and military leaders (thereby contributing to the initial Soviet defeats in World War II) and had established a pernicious cult of personality (see Glossary). With this speech Khrushchev not only distanced himself from Stalin and from Stalin's close associates, Molotov, Malenkov, and Lazar M. Kaganovich, but also abjured the dictator's policies of terror. As a direct result of the "de-Stalinization" campaign launched by the speech, the release of political prisoners, which had begun in 1953, was stepped up, and some of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated.

Khrushchev later intensified his campaign against Stalin at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961, winning approval to remove Stalin's body from the Lenin Mausoleum, where it had originally been interred. De-Stalinization encouraged many in artistic and intellectual circles to speak out against the abuses of the former regime. Although Khrushchev's tolerance of critical creative works vacillated during his years of leadership, the new cultural period -- known as the "thaw" -- represented a clear break with the repression of the arts under Stalin.

After the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev continued to expand his influence, although he still faced opposition. Khrushchev's rivals in the Presidium, spurred by reversals in Soviet foreign policy in Eastern Europe in 1956, potentially threatening economic reforms, and the de-Stalinization campaign, united to vote him out of office in June 1957. Khrushchev, however, demanded that the question be put to the Central Committee of the CPSU, where he enjoyed strong support. The Central Committee overturned the Presidium's decision and expelled Khrushchev's opponents (Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich), whom Khrushchev labeled the "anti-party group." In a departure from Stalinist procedure, Khrushchev did not order the imprisonment or execution of his defeated rivals but instead placed them in relatively minor offices. Khrushchev moved to consolidate his power further in the ensuring months. In October he removed Marshal Zhukov (who had helped Khrushchev squelch the "anti-party group") from the office of defense minister, presumably because he feared Zhukov's influence in the armed forces. Khrushchev became prime minister in March 1958 when Bulganin resigned, thus formally confirming his predominant position in the state as well as in the party.

A product of the Stalin era, he played the principal role in refashioning the Stalinist political heritage and disentangling its assets from its liabilities. He has introduced a pragmatic, innovating spiritinto Soviet society and has given new direction and impetust o Soviet policies at home and abroad. Since the defeat of the "anti-party" group in June 1957, Khrushchev occupied a position of supreme authority in the Soviet leadership. He was head of the party and government; he eliminated his main rivals from the seat of power; and he placed his proteg6s in command of the leading organs of authority. Alone among the members of the hierarchy, Khrushchev received wide acclaim for a multitude of accomplishments and benefited from an apparently genuine popularity. He thus attained heights of power and prestige well beyond the reach of any political competitors. Khrushchev was not, however, a singular, isolated political phenomenon like Stalin. He was first and foremost the leader and spokesman of the interests and outlook of the party machine, the hard core of political careerists who sought to perpetuate their rule and their philosophy.

The cornerstone of Khrushchev's policies was the establishment of party supremacy, in fact as'well as in theory, over all areas of Soviet national life. By basing his regime squarely on the party, Khrushchev promoted not only his own interests but those of the party as well of command has restored a large measure of stability in Soviet political life that was lacking when Stalin died. At that time the party was at the lowest point in its vitality and prestige, and supreme power was shared precariously by representatives of different power elites. By 1960 the party machine completely dominated the structure of power, reigning supreme over the other functional elites -- the economic administrators, the armed forces, and the secret police -- and party careerists operated as the principal integrating and centralizing elements in the state. Not since the early days of Stalin's rule had the party enjoyed such a position of authority. By eliminating pluralism in the power struc-ture, Khrushchev has bequeathed to his party cohorts a firm hold over national life.

Despite his rank, Khrushchev never exercised the dictatorial authority of Stalin, nor did he ever completely control the party even at the peak of his power. His attacks on members of the "anti-party group" at the Twenty-First Party Congress in 1959 and the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961 suggest that his opponents still retained support within the party. Khrushchev's relative political insecurity probably accounted for some of his grandiose pronouncements (for example, his 1961 promise that the Soviet Union would attain communism by 1980). His desire to undermine opposition and mollify critics explained the nature of many of his domestic reforms and the vacillations in his foreign policy toward the West.

Unlike Stalin, whose dictatorship was based primarily on fear, Khrushchev relied largely on persuasion and pressure. As leader of the party and nation, he attempted to create a regime more acceptable to the party at every level and, at the same time, more responsive to the aspirations of the population at large. In line with the effort to popularize the dictatorship, the regime readily discarded outmoded Stalinist patterns ofcontrol and gradually replaced them with more flexible techniques. Instead of repressing popular pressures, the regimehas sought to harness them to its own purposes. In short, political manipulation and demagogic appeal, involving promises of security and welfare in exchange for party supremacy, have formed the vital ingredients of Khrushchev's style of rule.

A confrontational Cold Warrior, Khrushchev told Americans in a 1959 visit: Your grandchildren will live under communism!" In 1959 the USA staged its "American National Exhibition" in Sokolniki Park. Amid the initial throngs of curious and information-starved Soviet visitors then was Communist Party chieftain Nikita Khrushchev. There to explain the United States (or at least its home appliances) was an equally controversial figure, then-Vice President Richard Nixon. At this first Sokolniki exhibit that the famous "kitchen debate" between these two stalwarts took place. Nixon led Khrushchev around a demonstration U.S. kitchen, pointing at a dishwashing machine and helpfully noting that "this is our newest model," (in case Khrushchev was in a buying mood?). Khrushchev refused to take anything Nixon said at face value - bonus points for perspicacity there - and indulged in a classic Soviet debating tactic: When stumped by your opponent, lie like a rug. Shown everyday, U.S. appliances a Soviet family couldn't dream of owning, Khrushchev counterpunched: "[Newly built] Russian houses have all this equipment right now." The spontaneous exchange featured both humor (Khrushchev: "I hope I haven't insulted you." Nixon: "I have been insulted by experts.")

Since the end of the 1930's, the Soviet government had set the main goal as the "completion of building socialism and transition to the building of communism." In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev promised, "The current generation of Soviet people will live under communism." Following this phrase, the third program of the CPSU was adopted with the ambitious goal to build communism by 1980.

Throughout his years of leadership, Khrushchev attempted to carry out reform in a range of fields. The problems of Soviet agriculture, a major concern of Khrushchev's, had earlier attracted the attention of the collective leadership, which introduced important innovations in this area of the Soviet economy. The state encouraged peasants to grow more on their private plots, increased payments for crops grown on the collective farms, and invested more heavily in agriculture.

Khrushchev had a problem: how to help the Soviet Union feed itself. He concluded that his country needed a corn belt. Khrushchev managed a number of experimental agricultural campaigns, such as the Virgin Lands Project, which attempted to cultivate lands in the harsher climate regions like Kazakhstan and Siberia. In his dramatic virgin land campaign in the mid-1950s, Khrushchev opened to farming vast tracts of land in the northern part of the Kazakh Republic and neighboring areas of the Russian Republic. In some years these new farmlands, which had never been farmed before, produced excellent harvests, but they turned out to be susceptible to droughts. Later innovations by Khrushchev, however, proved counterproductive. His plans for growing maize and increasing meat and dairy production failed miserably, and his reorganization of collective farms into larger units produced confusion in the countryside.

Khrushchev's reforms in industry and administrative organization created even greater problems. In a politically motivated move to weaken the central state bureaucracy, in 1957 Khrushchev did away with the industrial ministries in Moscow and replaced them with regional economic councils. Although Khrushchev intended these economic councils to be more responsive to local needs, the decentralization of industry led to disruption and inefficiency. Connected with this decentralization was Khrushchev's decision in 1962 to reorganize party organizations along economic, rather than administrative, lines. The resulting bifurcation of the party apparatus into industrial and agricultural sectors at the oblast (district) level and below contributed to the disarray and alienated many party officials at all levels. Symptomatic of the country's economic difficulties was the abandonment in 1963 of Khrushchev's special seven-year economic plan (1959-65) two years short of its completion.

Unlike Stalin's successors, who had long and wide experience in the ruling group, the men who served under Khrushchev were, as a rule, relative newcomers to the top level. For the most part, their membership in the ruling group dated from Khrushchev's political victory over his opponentsin June 1957.

By 1964 Khrushchev's prestige had been injured in a number of areas. Industrial growth slowed, while agriculture showed no new progress. Abroad, the split with China, the Berlin crisis, and the Cuban fiasco hurt the Soviet Union's international stature, and Khrushchev's efforts to improve relations with the West antagonized many in the military. Lastly, the 1962 party reorganization caused turmoil throughout the Soviet political chain of command.

In October 1964, while Khrushchev was vacationing in Crimea, the Presidium voted him out of office and refused to permit him to take his case to the Central Committee. Khrushchev retired as a private citizen after his successors denounced him for his "hare-brained schemes, half-baked conclusions, and hasty decisions." Yet along with his failed policies, Khrushchev must also be remembered for his public disavowal of Stalinism and the cult of personality.