Post-Stalin Leadership

Nikita Khrushchev

Leadership Struggle

Throughout the 1920s Khrushchev was prominent in Ukrainian affairs, serving as the Party’s district secretary in a number of areas, including the capital, Kiev. In the 1930s he began to climb the party ladder. He moved to Moscow and was appointed a district secretary there in 1931. by 1935 he had become the Party Secretary for the whole capital. Khrushchev’s elevation has to be set against the background of the purges. As with all who rose within the Party or government in this period, Khrushchev was stepping into dead men’s shoes. One man’s imprisonment or execution was another man’s promotion. The price of political survival was unswerving loyalty to Stalin, and Khrushchev was exemplary in his toadying.

For the next three years he played his part in the continuing purge of suspected anti-Stalinists in Moscow. His commitment to the task is evident in a speech he made at a Party meeting in 1936. Just as Comrade Stalin, with his sharp Leninist eye, has accurately pointed out the path for our Party, as for the whole of the construction, so he has pointed our the corners where vermin can crawl out. We have to shoot not only this scum, but Trotsky should also be shot.

At the end of 1938 Khrushchev went back to Ukraine as First party Secretary to carry out similar work there. His reward was to be made a member of the Politburo. In the war years, 1941-45, during which large parts of Ukraine suffered German occupation, he was a political commissar in the army, involved in organizing military and civilian resistance. He fought at Stalingrad and was among the Soviet forces that liberated Kiev. Immediately after the war Khrushchev returned as First Secretary in Ukraine.

In 1949 he was appointed Secretary to the General Committee and given particular responsibility for the planning of Soviet agriculture, an extension of the specialism he had developed as an administrator in Ukraine. His work was not an outstanding success. One of his schemes for developing agricultural centres in the countryside, known as “agro-towns”, failed to materialize and he was criticised in Pravda. Such lack of success hardly suggested that he was destined for leadership. At the time of Stalin’s death in 1953 Khrushchev was an industrious but not politically outstanding member of the Politburo. His breezy, talkative manner made him appear less devious and scheming than the usual Bolshevik politicians. His colleagues tended to underrate both his ambition and his ruthlessness, and yet by the late 1950s Khrushchev had come to dominate Soviet politics.

Post-Stalin Collective Leadership

Malenkov:

Head of Soviet Government

Molotov:

Foreign Secretary

Khrushchev’s leadership strategy

Khrushchev’s Steps to Power:

1. Removal of Beria

a) Framed a conflict between Red Army and Secret Police

b) General Zhukov admired Khrushchev

c) Red Army arrested, tried and shot Beria in June 1953

2. Undermining of Malenkov

a) Malenkov viewed as natural successor to Stalin

b) Khrushchev used position as Head of Party over next two years to criticise government policy; travel the country and speak with peasantry; promote his own supporters

c) 1955: Malenkov resigned following poor harvests

3. Dealing with a new threat

a) Khrushchev turned on former supporter, General Zhukov

b) Accused him of attempting to create a leadership cult around himself.

c) Zhukov forced to retire

4. Side-Lining Bulganin

a) Since Malenkov’s resignation Bulganin and Khruschev took joint leadership of country

b) 1958: Khrushchev accused Bulganin of being part of an internal faction ‘The Anti-Party Group’

c) Bulganin forced to resign

d) Khrushchev took over his position as
Head of Government

The Secret Speech and DeStalinisation

A key feature of Khrushchev’s campaign to exert his control over the Communist Party was to orchestrate a move away from Stalin’s policies. Khrushchev was keen to move Russia away from governance based on
extreme repression. He believed that this had tarnished the USSR’s image overseas, and was unhelpful at a time of increasing international tension. He also thought that many people would welcome an alternative to the repressive nature of Stalinist rule. Khrushchev thus launched a scathing attack on Stalin, which formed the start of a process known as de-Stalinisation. The denunciations began at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Khrushchev made a speech on “The Cult of the Individual and its Consequences”. The contents of the
speech were never published (and became known as his “secret” speech) but the key points were leaked to the Communist Party organisations so that they would be
familiar with Khrushchev’s position. The following criticisms were made of Stalin:

Why did Khrushchev make the “Secret Speech”?

De-Stalinisation had three basic aims:

• To justify the introduction of more progressive economic policies;
• To make peaceful co-operation with the West easier;
• To absolve Khrushchev and the other Soviet leaders from their complicity in Stalin’s errors.

Khrushchev knew that he was taking a risk in undermining Stalin’s reputation. He knew that he was laying himself open to the charge of having been an accessory to the offences that he was now condemning. After all, he had helped carry out the purges in Moscow and the Ukraine. But Khrushchev calculated that, since all the Soviet leaders had climbed to their current positions by carrying out Stalin’s orders, none of them had a clean record. Their shared guilt would prevent any serious challenge being offered to his denunciation of Stalin.

The impact of the “Secret Speech”

Although the contents of the “Secret speech” were not officially disclosed until 1961, it still caused an outcry among senior party members. The withering attack on Stalin’s character and record staggered party officials and made them fear for the future because, in one obvious sense, they were all Stalinists. They had all survived to hold their current positions because they had participated in, and benefitted from Stalin’s terror. Many of them were finding it difficult to adapt to life without Stalin. An opposition group to Khrushchev emerged, known as the “Anti-Party Group”. Early in 1957, while he was temporarily absent on one of his many visits abroad, the opposition made plans to remove him. They attempted to abolish the post of first secretary of the party, which would have destroyed Khrushchev’s power base. The chief protagonists, Molotov, Kagonovich and Malenkov, were quickly dealt with by Khrushchev, who pointed out that only the party Central Committee could change the party organisational structure. The actions of the three opponents were therefore illegal, and they were swiftly removed from the Presidum. Having previously used the support of the army, Khrushchev now took steps to prevent them becoming a threat. This involved undermining the position of his loyal supporter – Marshall Zhukov. Zhukov was accused of creating his own “cult of personality” and was forced to retire. He was replaced by Marshall Malinovsky. It only remained for Khrushchev to demote Bulganin, which he did by forcing him to confess to being implicated in the Anti-Party Group. In March 1958, Bulganin resigned as Premier and lost his place on the Central Committee. Shortly after, Khrushchev took over that post himself. For the first time since Stalin’s death, one man held the offices of Prime Minister in the government and First Secretary in the party.

Key Features of De-Stalinisation

• Release of political prisoners from labour camps
• Relaxation of censorship – leading to a raft of works published criticising Stalin
• End of cult of personality. Stalingrad renamed Volgograd and his body removed from the Lenin mausoleum and buried in a concrete-filled hole beneath the Kremlin

The reaction to de-Stalinisation

After the initial shock of the “secret speech”, the reaction to de-Stalinisation bore a striking resemblance to that what occurred when Alexander II introduced his reforms. There were strikes (which included newly released prisoners from the gulags), riots and protests for even greater freedoms (especially from the satellite states such as Yugoslavia, Poland and Hungary). But Khrushchev resisted the temptation to use violence to deal with unrest. Order was maintained through the MVD which was under the control of the party. However, Khrushchev still dismissed rebellious politicians at will (for example, Zhukov and Bulganin) and used physical force when deemed necessary (for example, tanks were sent into Hungary in 1956 to suppress the Nagy regime). Thus, Khrushchev, like Alexander II, did not intend to move to far from authoritarian rule; the one party, one leader state was to remain intact until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

De-Stalinisation and the satellite states

Yugoslavia had been the one eastern-European country to have successfully resisted Soviet domination in the post-war period. It remained Communist but independent of the USSR. Khrushchev made great play of Stalin’s mishandling of Tito and the Yuogslav Communists. Khrushchev contended that, had Stalin shown any real understanding of Tito and the national cause he represented, Yugoslavia would have maintained closer ties with the Soviet Union. His main purpose appears to have been a reveal Stalin’s foreign policy failures. He was not calling for a revision of Eastern-bloc Communism. Nevertheless, that was how many of the satellites saw it. They read Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin as an invitation to seek greater national independence for themselves. Khrushchev visited Tito in 1955 and 1956. Throughout the Eastern-bloc there were stirrings of independence – most notably in Poland and Hungary. How determined the USSR under Khrushchev was to maintain its grip was clearly revealed in its reaction to events in Hungary in 1956. When the Soviet Union felt its own security threatened or its control of the Eastern-bloc challenged, it was prepared to use force against the satellites. De-Stalinisation was a false dawn for those who thought it signified genuine independence for Eastern Europe. Khrushchev was as determined as his predecessor had been to assert the USSR’s right to dictate to the rest of the socialist world. This resulted in post-Stalinist Russia strengthening, no weakening its hold over its satellites.

Economy and Society

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death the Soviet leaders began to admit that the collectivisation of agriculture had not solved the problem of food production and supply in the years following the Second World War. In 1953 Khrushchev informed the Central Committee that grain stocks under Stalin had been lower than under Nicholas II. Major changes were needed, and viewing himself as an “expert” in rural matters as a result of his peasant upbringing, Khrushchev outlined a range of new policies.

Agriculture, Peasants, and the Virgin Land Campaign

Khrushchev’s agricultural policies

The Virgin Land Campaign

The Virgin Land Campaign began in 1954 and developed into a massive project for exploiting the previous unused areas of the USSR for crop production. Over a quarter
of a million volunteers, mainly drawn from the Komsomol (the Young Communist League), were enlisted to work in these regions. Considerable financial and material
investment was put into the scheme, most spectacularly in the provision of 120,000 motorized tractors. Six million acres were freshly ploughed in the virgin lands in the
first year of the scheme. A corn research institute was established in Ukraine and sown acreage of corn rose from 4.3 million hectares in 1954 to 18 million hectares in 1955. Thanks to favourably hot weather during two successive years’ growing seasons, corn harvests were abundant. It appeared that “Mr. Corn” (“Kukuruzshchik”) had achieved an agricultural “miracle.” In 1950, 96 million acres of land were given over to the production of wheat, by 1964, this increased to 165 million acres. Between 1952 and 1958 farm-workers incomes more than doubled
with the prospect of real economic advancement for the individuals being greater than at any time since the NEP.

However, poor management and short-sighted planning caused significant issues for the long-term success of these policies. For example, crops were often sown in
unsuitable soil and the effects of climate tended to be ignored. The necessary fertilizers were seldom available in sufficient quantity. In the drive to convert to foodstuffs, successful crops such as cotton were replaced by crops such as maize (as part of the corn plan) which simply refused to grow. This occurred notably in Kazakhstan where the “maize mania” often led to whole areas abandoning their traditional planting for the lure of a crop whose yield then proved so poor that it was not worth harvesting.

The policies also suffered as a result of a lack of agricultural workers required in the virgin lands to keep pace with the localised schemes. For example, in Kazakhstan by 1960 total acreage of corn productions had increased to 28 million hectares and reached 37 million by 1962. This inevitably meant that more farmers would be required in this region. However, again poor planning was an issue as any skilled farmers were reluctant to move to these areas because of the bad living conditions such as a lack of adequate housing. Unfortunately, many towns and villages saw the Virgin Land Campaign as an opportunity to send orphans, abandoned children and criminal to the newly cultivated regions. This affected the quality of the work force, the land not being cultivated properly and therefore poor productivity levels. The much promised mechanisation of agriculture also failed to materialise and by 1959 there was only one tractor for every 200 hectares of land. Furthermore, if tractors broke, there were inefficient parts to mend them. 1963 brought a bad harvest to the farmers of the Virgin Lands where grain production dropped from 140 million tonnes to 107 million tonnes. As a result of this, riots broke out at the Budyenni Locomotive Works in Novocherkassk where the KGB killed 23 protesters.

Industry and the Urban Population

There was nothing original about the industrial policies adopted by Khrushchev as he continued with the approach of Stalin’s Five Year Plans. However, Khrushchev did want to alter the direction of the Soviet economy by lessening its dependence in heavy industry and giving greater prominence to light engineering and chemicals. He emphasized the need for sustained effort, but whereas Stalin has used coercion, Khrushchev offered incentives. Stalin’s neglect of consumer goods was replaced by the promise of material rewards. In a radio broadcast Khrushchev excited the interest of many Soviet women, by suggesting that if they continued to work hard they would soon be able to buy nylon underwear.

The ‘Space Race’

A new focus of the Cold War in the later 1950s and 1960s became competition with the United States to be the first leading world power to dominate space. Large amounts of investment and resources were given to these space projects in the 6th and 7th plans and did lead to significant technological development in the Soviet economy.

Living and Working Conditions

The Cold War

‘Peaceful Coexistence’

Following the death of Stalin in 1953, and after much manoeuvring, in February 1955 Khrushchev was able to bring about Malenkov’s dismissal as temporary Soviet premier. Like the rest of the Soviet leadership, Khrushchev had been profoundly affected by the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Fully aware of the human and economic devastation his country had suffered, and genuinely fearful of the risks posed by the escalating nuclear arms race, Khrushchev developed his own foreign policy agenda – one known as “Peaceful Coexistence”. In a move away from the early post-1917 policies of encouraging “world revolution” and the spread of Communism, Khrushchev declared that violent conflict between the communist and capitalist world was not inevitable in the way that Lenin had described.
However, Khrushchev’s pursuit of this policy during the period 1955-64 was at times inconsistent. He was more of a risk-taker than either Stalin or the collective leadership that replaced him following 1953. nonetheless, Khrushchev tried to achieve real détente between East and West, to avoid the risk of a devastating nuclear world war. However, under Khrushchev “Peaceful Coexistence” also involved a clearly competitive element based on the belief that the socialist system would soon prove to be economically superior to the capitalist system. Ultimately, he argued, there could be a peaceful global transition to socialism.

The Warsaw Pact, 1955

In May 1955, just as the USSR had feared, West Germany became a member of NATO. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union announced the formation of its own military alliance. The Warsaw Pact – so called because the treaty was signed in Warsaw – was a mutual military assistance alliance that include the Soviet Union and all the Eastern European allies. In particular, it included East Germany, as the lack of agreement on the German question had finally persuaded the Soviet Union of the need to prop up the communist government in East Germany. However, the USSR did not give up on the possibility of achieving a European agreement on collective security. In fact the Warsaw Pact even had a clause which stated that, if a general European treaty on collective security was signed, then the Warsaw Pact would be dissolved.

The Geneva Summit, July 1955

In July 1955, the first summit meeting occurred between the leaders of the “big four” powers – the first since the Potsdam Conference in 1945. The meeting was not significant for any particular agreements reached, but rather for the spirit of friendship in which the meeting was conducted and certainly seemed to more discussions on from the Truman-Stalin era of diplomacy.

There were some areas of disagreement:

• Soviet proposals to resolve the “German question” by holding elections on reunification were rejected
• Eisenhower’s “Open Skies” proposal that each side would allow the other to undertake aerial reconnaissance of military sites was rejected by Khrushchev.

But on a more positive note, following the meeting
the USSR did establish diplomatic and trade links
with West Germany.

Khrushchev’s “secret” speech, 1956

In the secret speech Khrushchev attacked Stalin’s foreign policy and accepted that there could be “national roads to socialism” that did not just include the exportation of the Soviet model. In fact, as early as 1955, Khrushchev had made attempts to secure Yugoslavia as a definite ally of the Soviet Union – something which Stalin had failed to achieve. Khrushchev soon announced the dissolution of Cominform, from which Stalin had expelled Yugoslavia, and he encouraged its membership of the Warsaw Pact. Tito refused to go this far, and only agreed to restore diplomatic relations. The secret speech was circulated in the Eastern European satellites, which gave hope to reform communists and non-communists who sought a reduction in Soviet control of their countries. Two counties particularly affected were Poland and Hungary.

Poland

Reform Communists in Poland were led by Wladyslaw Gomulka.

He had been imprisoned by the Stalinist regime in the late 1940s – and was only released from prison following Stalin’s death.

Khrushchev and Gomulka met in 1956 and it was agreed that Soviet military
intervention in Poland would end, as long as Poland remained in the Warsaw Pact.

This action inspired leaders in other satellite states to seek further reform in their relationship with Moscow.

Hungary

Pro-reform Communists organised protests in Budapest which rapidly got out of control.

Khrushchev allowed the reformist Communist leader Imre Nagy to form a government but his decision to legalise opposition parties and withdraw from the Warsaw Pact persuaded Khrushchev to opt for military intervention in Hungary.

After intense fighting, a pro-Soviet government was installed and in the purge that followed Nagy was arrested, taken to the USSR and in 1958 executed.

Berlin crisis, 1958

On 27th November 1958 Khrushchev issued his first “Berlin Ultimatum”. This was an attempt to push the West into concluding a formal peace with Germany and agreeing that West Berlin should become an international and demilitarised area – Khrushchev was particularly concerned that NATO would make West Germany a nuclear power. Khrushchev warned that if such agreements were not forthcoming, the USSR would sign a separate peace with the GDR that would include handing over control of the access route into West Berlin.

Camp David, 1959

In an attempt to break the deadlock on the Berlin discussions, Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to visit the US for talks. The notion that a Soviet leader would visit the US was a ground-breaking move and the talks at the Presidential country residence of Camp David were considered so constructive that they gave rise to the term “the spirit of Camp David” as an expression of the improve Soviet-American understanding. Khrushchev withdrew his previous Berlin ultimatum and it was agreed that further talks would take place at the Paris Summit planned for May 1960.

The Paris Summit and the U-2 incident, May 1960

By the time the leaders met in Paris, the situation had already altered. The US has discovered, via its spy planes, that the USSR was already well behind the US, while West Germany was no longer prepared to make any concessions on West Berlin. Then on 1st May (during the conference), came the announcement that a Soviet missile had successfully brought down a US U2 spy plane over the USSR. Eisenhower, embarrassed that his previous denials of the existence of spy places (he had claimed they were weather planes) refused to apologise. The incident soured the rest of the talks. As discussions on Berlin dragged on, an ever increasing number of East Germans migrated to the West. By 1959, these numbered around 200,000 a year – many of them young technicians and skilled workers. This was having a serious effect on the weak East German economy, and was thus encouraged by the West. Not surprisingly, the GDR leader, Walter Ulbricht, began to press for action. Ideally Ulbricht wanted West Berlin to be added to East Berlin, removing the Western presence in the GDR.

The Vienna Summit, June 1961

The first meeting between Kennedy and Khrushchev was not a success, as Kennedy still refused to make concessions on Berlin or Germany. Kennedy increased US military spending and ordered more nuclear fallout shelters. In response, Khrushchev gave provisional permission for Ulbricht to begin preparations for physically dividing Berlin. He then announced that he was reimposing a six-month deadline for West Berlin to become demilitarised.

The Berlin Wall, August 1961

As tensions increased, the number of East German refugees increased dramatically, to over 20,000 a month, and was soon double the rate for the 1950s. The formal division of Berlin began to halt this. At first a barbed-wire fence was erected. The West did not react, so on 13th August, the GDR authorities rapidly completed the building of the Berlin Wall, which became a very visible image of the Cold War divisions. The wall stopped the mass emigration from the East and this, along with Soviet aid, eased the GDRs economic problems and moved the focus of the Cold War away from Europe.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

When Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader of Cuba since 1959, openly declared himself a Communist, Khrushchev saw the possibility of a major Cold War coup. He moved quickly, offering a package of economic support for Castro’s regime. The Soviet Union hoped, and the USA feared, that the creation of a Russian-backed Marxist state in Cuba, would be the prelude to the rapid spread of Soviet-style Communism throughout central and South America.

The Soviet Union increased its investment and involvement in Cuba, culminating in Operation Anadyr, the installation on the island of Soviet nuclear missiles, capable of reaching the USA. Khrushchev was involved in every aspect of the planning and privately spoke of “putting one of our hedgehogs down the Americans’ trousers”.

Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba until the missiles were removed, and let it be known that if any attempt were made to use them against the USA he would order a retaliation in kind. Kennedy backed his ultimatum by placing US armed forces on nuclear war alert. Faced by such as uncompromising determination, Khrushchev chose not to risk a full-scale nuclear confrontation. He gave the order to the Soviet ships not to challenge the American naval blockade. With the tension broken, direct contacts by letter and phone were made between Kennedy and Khrushchev. These exchanges produced a compromise; the Soviet leader agreed to the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and the American President gave a commitment to reduce the USA’s bases in Turkey. Khrushchev’s critics back in the USSR viewed this as a diplomatic victory for the USA and worsened his position.

The Kitchen Debate

The ‘Kitchen Debate’ was a 1959 exchange between United States vicepresident Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. In this informal conversation, conducted in Moscow in front of press reporters and television cameras, Nixon and Khrushchev engaged in some verbal tussling, debating the merits of their respective ideologies.

Who was Nixon?

The American exhibition opened in Moscow in late July 1959 and was attended by Soviet leader Khrushchev and US vice-president Nixon. At the time, the two had held high office for around six years. Nixon’s rise had been steeper and more rapid than his Russian counterpart. A lawyer bytraining, Nixon was an active anti-communist.

Nixon arrived in Moscow on July 23rd. Prior to visiting the American exhibition, he attended a public reception hosted by Khrushchev. This event was outwardly friendly but, as one might expect, there were several prickly moments. Khrushchev was known for his combative and sarcastic manner – and having Nixon, one of the most vocal of America’s anticommunist agitators, as his guest proved too good an opportunity to pass. At the reception, Khrushchev welcomed the vice-president to “a land of captive people” (a sarcastic reference to one of Eisenhower’s earlier remarks about the Soviet bloc). The Soviet leader then went on to deride America as “imperialists”, “monopolists” and interferers in the affairs of communist nations.

US exhibition in Moscow

The American exhibition opened the following day. The Soviets hindered the construction of the exhibition, allocating a ten-acre site in a remote forest, well outside Moscow. As a result, much of the US government supplied funds were spent on building access roads, clearing trees and connecting power and water. It soon fell behind schedule. The Americans complained that their Russian counterparts, several of whom were women, were lazy, poorly equipped and unable to follow instructions. Under the terms of the US-Soviet agreement, no overt political material was displayed in either exhibition. Nevertheless, both governments viewed the exhibitions as opportunities for Cold War propaganda. The American exhibition was less concerned with industrial and technical achievements than promoting the idea that Americans enjoyed a better standard of living. Because of this, there was a strong focus on consumer goods like motor cars, electrical appliances and labour saving devices.

An entire suburban house was constructed inside the American exhibition building, offering Russian visitors a look inside the average suburban home in the US. This model home contained the latest products: a dishwasher, colour television, frozen meals and Pepsi-Cola. There were displays of American culture including films, television programs, art, books and games. The American exhibition was very popular with Soviet citizens. Almost three million Russians attended, despite a lack of easy transportation from Moscow. There were long queues for free samples of American food and drink, like Pepsi-Cola. The book displays had to be constantly restocked because of petty theft. Four sets of Monopoly – ironically the most capitalist board game of its era – were also pilfered and had to be replaced.

Khrushchev and Nixon toured the exhibition the day before its public opening, with a large press contingent in tow. While in the display home, the two men gave impromptu comments that morphed into a friendly but sometimes heated exchange.