Opposition and fall of Khrushchev
Cards (28)
- However, under Khrushchev, with the return of greater intellectual and artistic freedom, there emerged a new group of cultural dissidents' who used the arts to convey political messages.
- Some writers sought to evade Soviet censorship by publishing their work abroad. This was known as tamizdat. It was hoped that the substance of such works would be relayed back to Soviet citizens through foreign broadcasts. The publication of Pasternak's Dr Zhivago overseas would be one such example.
- However, such activity was high risk and brought the danger of imprisonment and the labour camps.
- Dissident literature was also spread through underground societies, including 'The Youngest Society of Geniuses, a student group set up in the mid-1960s. This produced a journal, The Sphinxes, which contained collections of prose and poetry.
- The event was marked by impromptu public poetry readings. This sparked a series of regular readings known as the 'Mayak' (lighthouse) in Mayakovsky Square.
- The action cost Vladimir Bukovsky, a biology student, his university place and drove him to become a fully committed dissident, while Eduard Kuznetsov, who was accused of publishing samizdat and charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, was to spend seven years in prison.
- (1936-2002), the editor and publisher of a Moscow samizdat poetry magazine called Syntaxis, was arrested in 1960. He was sent to labour camps on three separate occasions, between 1961 and 1969, for exposing human rights abuses and demanding reforms. He also tried to smuggle writings abroad in order to increase external pressure on the USSR.
- Music also produced its cultural dissidents and, just as writers used samizdat to self-publish, so musicians made illegal recordings known as Magnitizdat - on reel-to-reel tape recorders. Tapes were passed between friends, allowing forbidden musical styles and song lyrics to spread quickly in the underground. Jazz, boogie-woogie, rock 'n' roll, soul music and Western pop were all disseminated in this way.
- Yuliy Kim was typical of the musicians who reacted to political events in their song writing. He associated with the dissident movement in Moscow and wrote a song cycle called 'Moscow kitchens' which told how subversive thought was passed around in free discussions in the capital's kitchens.
- Soviet 'nonconformist art' which broke free from the shackles of Soviet realism also brought dissident painters. The limitations to the 'thaw' which had marked the coming of Khrushchev became apparent in 1962, when Khrushchev attended the Manezh Art Exhibition at which several nonconformist artists were exhibiting. He engaged in an argument about the function of art in society but this only had the effect of encouraging the dissident painters to pursue their art in private, challenging official artistic reality.
- A few cultural figures expressed their opposition to the regime by seizing the opportunities, provided by Khrushchev's more open relationship with the West, to defect. One of the best known of these was the ballet-dancer Rudolf Nureyev who had becoming a leading dancer with the Kirov Ballet when, on an overseas tour in 1961, he defected in Paris.
- Not all members of the Communist Party were content with the way the USSR was led under Khrushchev. His rise to power saw a struggle between those who believed in liberal reform, such as Bulganin, and hardline conservative pro-Stalinists such as Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich.
- This opposition group fought Khrushchev less because of his policies and reorganisation than out of a desire to restore 'Stalinism. The reformers, on the other hand, spoke in his favour through fear of a return to the old regime and police rule.
- It was not until Khrushchev had dismissed Zhukov and thus put the Red Army in its place, however, that total victory was achieved.
- By 1957 only two per cent of the Soviet prison population were political prisoners.
- These were most marked in Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, where there were violent nationalist demonstrations in Tblisi, 4-10 March 1956.
- However, just a few months later, he was ousted in a coup orchestrated by Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny and Mikhail Suslov.
- He refused to resign, but he was denied access to the media, which might have enabled him to whip up popular support to resist his attackers. (Two of his supporters - the editor of Pravda and the head of the state radio - were out of Moscow.)
- Only weeks later, however, Pravda denounced Khrushchev for his 'hare-brained schemes, half-baked conclusions, hasty decisions, unrealistic actions, bragging, phrase-mongering and bossiness.
- embarrassing and flamboyant behaviour (in 1960, at a meeting of the UN General Assembly, he banged the table
- their influence.
- Scheme and the shortfall in food supplies (thus forcing the import of grain from the USA and Canada) were seen as Khrushchev's personal responsibility, particularly since he had set himself up as an agricultural expert.
- Decision to promote production of consumer goods offended those who thought he was giving inadequate attention to heavy goods.
- Khrushchev's dealings abroad were criticised.
- of Khrushchev's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and he was personally blamed for the USSR's poor relations with communist China.
- In 1962, the USA discovered that Khrushchev was supplying nuclear weapons to Castro in Cuba. They placed a quarantine around Cuba and ordered Soviet ships heading for the island to turn back. After tense negotiations, the ships withdrew; an apparent victory for US diplomacy.
- The final straw for Khrushchev's opponents came when Khrushchev arranged a visit to Western Germany in 1964 through his son-in-law, ignoring the state bureaucracy.