Khrushchev

• When is Nikita Khrushchev in power

  1956-1964
• Power struggle after Stalin's death


  - In March 1953, Stalin dies (1924-1953 power)

  - Period of collective leadership

  - No system to replace single power

  - Power struggle

  - Politburo targets those most likely to succeed

  --- Trotsky after Lenin, Beria after Stalin

  - Beria power base = NKVD (armed, bases)

  - Beria has files on everyone

  --- They turn on him

  --- He can eliminate people by force or politically
• What is Khrushchev's power base?

  The Red Army
• When is Beria killed


  Dec 1953

  - collective agreement

  - Khrushchev starting to emerge
• 20th Party Congress


  February 1956

  - Khrushchev gives De-stalinization speech

  - lists out Crimes against party, anti cult of personality (problem for Mao)

  - All Politburo members have blood on their hands

  - STALIN was the problem, not communism

  - Stripped other Politburo members of authority

  - denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin

  - denounced the leadership of Stalin.

  - completely new and different direction in Russian politics
• Hungarian Uprising


  1956

  - Impact of secret speech abroad led to shock and confusion among communists abroad and fuelled discontent with the communist regimes that had been imposed in Eastern Europe

  - Hungarian nationalists staged huge demonstrations demanding non-communist parties be legalized

  - turned into armed rebellion and spread throughout the country

  - revolt against the government of the Hungarian people's republic and its soviet imposed policies.

  - First major threat to soviet control since the USSR's forces drove out the Nazis at the end of the cold war.

  - Khrushchev rolls in tanks

  - 20,000 killed - many students

  - Challenge to Khrushchev - stalin never needed brute force

  - Defeat of pro-stalin anti=party group
• When is Khrushchev elected Premier

  March 1958

  - Consolidated power

  - previously serving as first secretary of the Communist Party since 1953 (continues this role)
• When is Khrushchev removed from power

  Oct 1964

  - But they don't kill him

  - Change in the USSR
• Socialism with a human face

  - what khrushchev wants to achieve in terms of communism in Russia

  - communists gain the freedoms of press, assembly, worship, the right to strike, and freedom to travel abroad, free elections
• Khrushchev's economic aims


  - Improve standard of living for proletariat and peasants

  --- Bringing in a dynamic of incentive for productivity

  --- Reducing pressure of quotas

  --- Putting more control into the managers industries, collective farms

  --- Improve productivity

  --- Diversify the economy with consumer goods

  - Reduce corruption

  --- Severe scale

  --- Data is always falsified because of fear of stalin

  - Address issues with centralization

  --- Decentralisation to local governments

  - Stop lagging behind other capitalist countries

  - Prove communism could hold its own

  - Industry reform

  - Abolished moscow-based ministries

  - Implemented sovnarkhoz/sovkhoz

  - Independent of central control

  - Free to regulate industrial activity in the area
• Khrushchev's political aims


  - De-stalinization

  - Problems caused by Stalin not party

  --- It's not about the killings the slave labour

  --- It's about his treatment of the bolsheviks, the party, and the bastardisation of marxist ideology

  - 'Human face'

  - Reduce corruption

  - No sense of meritocracy

  - Reduce centralised control of party elites

  --- He's going to make enemies

  --- Power is going to be taken away from the corrupt

  --- These men are not going to be happy that their power and position is being challenged and taken away

  - He's going to localise control back to the local governments
• Khrushchev social aims

  - Give limited increase in freedom

  - Renaissance of art, film, media

  - Reduce censorship

  - change treatment of dissidents

  - Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners are released

  - Prioritise education

  --- Under stalin, tertiary and even high school education was only offered to party elite children because they received government salaries that could afford university

  --- Education under khrushchev is free

  --- Meritocracy for everyone

  - Huge expansion in science, technology, engineering, and the arts
• Khrushchev foreign policy aims

  - Peaceful coexistence

  - Satellite states

  - Developing world
• Economic success under Khrushchev

  - Improved standard of living for rural workers

  - 7 year plans

  - Taken pressure off workers, manager

  - making plans realistic

  - Improve consumer goods productivity - key to improve standard of living

  - Address issues with centralisation- final year separate hammer and sickle
• Social success under Khrushchev

  - More artistic freedom

  - Less censorship

  - Education

  - New books published

  - Western books available

  - Russians able to Travel/People able to enter Russia

  - Several cultural events inc sport/ballet

  - Stalin removed from culture

  --- Statues taken down

  --- Cities renamed

  --- Portraits removed

  --- Stalin's body removed from place of honor next to lenin and buried in normal cemetery

  - Number of russian orthodox monasteries and convents greatly reduced

  - Virtually all seminars closed

  - Number of churches fell from 20,000 to 8000

  - Authority of priests reduced

  - Those who protested were arrested and imprisoned
• Technology successes under Khrushchev

  - Space race/nuclear arms race

  - Sputnik 1957

  - Gagarin 1961
• Rehabilitation of Victims of Repression (with statistics)

  - By 1 january 1956 prisons held 1.6 million inmates and almost another million in camps

  - Rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands - 51,439 prisoners released by June 1956

  - But there were limits

  - Nationalists in Batic, Ukraine, and Byelorussia excluded

  - Some repressed nationalities allowed to return home but not all (Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars exempt) and often unrest ensued when they did

  - Isolated instances of protest in the Soviet Union, leaders include Khrushchev fearful things getting out of hand
• in 1956, how many prisoners in the USSR

  prisons held 1.6 million inmates and almost another million in camps
• How many prisoners were rehabilitated

  - 51,439 prisoners released by June 1956

  - But there were limits

  - Nationalists in Batic, Ukraine, and Byelorussia excluded
• The Thaw

  - Repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations.

  - De-Stalinisers zealous Communists: denounced the cult for crediting Stalin, not the people or the Party, for achievements of industrialisation and victory over fascism.

  - Had personal experience of the fear and insecurity that dominated Soviet society under Stalin.

  - Rehabilitation of Gulag inmates begins in 1953 under Lavrentiy Beria, Minister of Interior.
• Growth in agriculture and industry

  Very high rates of growth in both

  - agricultural (33% in 1954-1958)

  - industry (annual growth of about 5%)
• Virgin Lands Program

  - 42 million hectares of new arable land

  - Involves sending tens of thousands of teens to start to open up land for farming land that has never been used before

  - Huge amounts of chemical engineering, fertilisers

  - Needs engineers, harvesters,

  - The students are given a packet of seeds and a tractor

  - HOWEVER THIS LAND IS NOT VERY FARMABLE AND KHRUSHCHEV IS HEAVILY INVESTING

  - (it will be ultimately abandoned)

  - 1956 was key moment - Most successful year of program- Largest harvest in history of USSR

  --- 50% higher than pre campaign years

  - The campaign was thus expanded

  --- 1957 bad. 1958 and 1959 good

  - Success of harvest in early 1960s were poor and contributed to end

  - So originally it's going well, but then it goes wrong

  - Basically the bumper harvest wasn't about the new territories, but a boom in traditional harvest areas

  - 30% of land produced nothing
• Launch of Sputnik

  October 4, 1957

  - demonstrated Soviet technological prowess.
• How did Khrushchev improve living standard for workers

  - introduces minimum wage
• Housing stock between 1955-1964


  - doubles

  - but usually poor quality
• Increased social services spending

  8% in 1956-65.
• Advancements in Education

  - Improved educational opportunities for workers and peasants

  - abolished school and university tuition fees in 1958

  - Abolishes idea that party elites have university

  - If you're good at engineering now u go to an engineering school

  - If you're good at art go to art school

  - It doesn't matter where in the party your parents are
• Democratisation campaign

  Political reform

  - intended to curb power of the bureaucracy and transfer responsibility for governance directly to the people

  - Applied term limits to leading party functionaries
• Expanded party membership

  - 6.9 million to 11 million members between 1954 and 1964

  - 60% still registered as workers and peasants
• Decentralisation

  transfer of 11,000 enterprises from central to republican control by 1955
• Establishment of regional economic councils

  1957

  - each given comprehensive authority over economic development

  - part of decentralisation
• Anti Party Group

  1957

  - group within the leadership of the Communist Party that attempted to depose Khrushchev

  - Khrushchev's policies, together with destalinisation, increased opposition within the party and state

  - attempt to topple him failed and his enemies (many of them senior stalinist lieutenants) were ousted from their positions

  - group opposed Khrushchev's "Secret Speech," the denunciation of Stalin, and Khrushchev's other policies of liberalization of the Soviet Union.
• Political successes

  - De Stalinization

  - Human face

  - Reduce elite party control and corruption

  - reduce centralised control of part elites

  - End of Terror

  - Release of political prisoners

  - Attempt to separate the hammer and sickle

  --- Going into 1956, K has escalated the decentralisation of economy and parties

  --- He wants to separate the systemic organisation that combines industry and agriculture

  --- He's going to create two distinct sectors, one for agriculture one for industry

  - Decentralisation of the command economy

  --- His enemies don't like this

  --- They remove him

  - Methods of K's own removal - success of own political policies

  --- they don't kill him
• Separation of hammer and sickle

  - Going into 1956, K has escalated the decentralisation of economy and parties

  - He wants to separate the systemic organisation that combines industry and agriculture

  - He's going to create two distinct sectors, one for agriculture one for industry
• Success in foreign policy

  - Peaceful coexistence

  - Arms agreements

  - Summits

  - Hotline

  - Missiles from turkey

  - Relations with satellites - Poland/EG

  - Developing world

  - Space race

  - Nuclear weapons

  - Warsaw Pact 1955

  --- Eastern european mutual assistance treaty

  --- Russian response to NATO

  - Berlin

  --- meant he could regain control over situation and free himself from continuing pressure from Ulbricht and danger he might act independently

  - Cuban missile crisis

  --- A promised non invasion of cuba from kennedy

  --- Cuba in their sphere of influence

  --- Could rebuild relationship with castro
• Economic failures

  - Limited improvement in standard of living for rural workers

  - 7 year plans and poor consumer goods productivity VS US

  - Lack of housing - key to improve standard of living

  - Failure of initiatives in agriculture from Virgin Lands etc

  - Food crisis and import grain from west 1963-1964

  - Economic cost of technology/Space Race/ nuclear arms race

  - Economic cost of supporting states/developing world

  - Virgin Lands

  - Despite improvements, still heavily lagged behind western world

  - Khrushchev liked plans that looked good on paper but they were too complicated to carry out

  - Simple ideas showed lack of understanding of economic realities of his situation
• Social failures

  - Artists still persecuted

  --- Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

  --- You may criticise stalin

  ---- You MAY NOT criticise the USSR and the party

  - Religious policies
• Political failures

  - Reduce elite party control and corruption led to opposition

  - Also removal of power of elite does this

  - Attempt to separate hammer and sickle - coup 1964
• Foreign policy failures

  - Crackdown in Hungary 1956

  - Peaceful coexistence - confrontation and crisis 1958-61 and 1963

  - Escalation in arms race

  - Sino soviet split

  - Paris summit

  --- U2 incident

  - Fails to get indepence berlin from kennedy and eisenhower

  - Cuban missile crisis

  --- Humiliation for khrushchev

  --- Contributed to his downfall

  - Berlin

  --- visible admission that the communist propaganda message had failed

  --- The soviets had to create a barrier to keep the people in the east

  --- Once wall was built, K went back on promise to Ulbricht and did not sign independent peace treaty with the GDR that would have given EG control over access routes to berlin

  - Sino-soviet split

  --- De Stalinization

  --- Ideological split

  --- Mao wants ultimate resolution and all out war against capitalists

  --- Khrushchev wants peaceful coexistence

  --- No help with atomic weapon
• Corn

  - Khrushchev was kinda obsessed with corn

  - Very impressed with US corn industry

  - K wanted expansion of USSR corn production to be used as livestock feed

  - Corn research institute established in Ukraine

  - Corn 4.3 hectares to 19 million in 1955

  - Program saw early success, but when K wanted to grow corn in non corn lands it became a problem

  - When corn harvest failed, it wasn't just corn that was lost but all the crops that had been replaced

  - 37 million hectares of corn

  - 30% of land produced nothing