by Tatyana Shvetsova Today we shall tell you how Nikita Khrushchev’s period in power ended, and how his contemporaries and descendants evaluate his activity as head of state. By 1964 Nikita Khrushchev’s positions inside the country were increasingly weakening. When he suggested another agriculture reform, his colleagues in the Central Committee of the Communist Party accused him of ruining the economy, conducting a very imprudent foreign policy, and creating his own personality cult. On the night of October 14th 1964 a Plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party removed him from the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party. Officially it was announced that he was going on pension due to health reasons. A contemporary and participant of those events, outstanding soviet state functionary, Byelorussian leader Cyrill Mazurov not long before his death in 1989 in one of his press interviews said: “Rumors regarding the idea of removing Khrushchev had been in the air after the 22nd Congress of the party, which was held in 1962. Some time after the Congress he was tranquil, yet afterwards he became altered beyond recognition. Quite possibly he became convinced of his own grandeur, became irritable, suspicious of his comrades, not only me, but others as well. He suddenly realized we didn’t share many of his opinions. Generally, Nikita Sergeyevich became a Leader with a capital letter, not just a First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU – rather, a man who had no consideration for opinions other than his own and disregarded everyone else. We patiently endured this for two years. But among ourselves we said that Nikita had to be corrected.
Later, on October 14th 1964, a Plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party was held, where members of the Central Committee were informed about the decision of the Party Central Committee Presidium and with great satisfaction voted for removing Nikita Khrushchev from power.” Historian Pyotr Deinichenko noted: “Khrushchev’s removal from power marked a new epoch in the history of the Soviet Union. It demonstrated not so much the victory of conservative forces, as the fact that society was tired of social experiments and endlessly waiting for the arrival of the radiant future. A vast majority of the population didn’t even want to hear of sacrificing itself for the sake of the victory of communism. The decade of Khrushchev’s reforms demonstrated that simultaneously the party-soviet bureaucracy, leaders of enterprises and common people all longed for stability.” In 2004 at the ‘round table’ dedicated to the 110th birth anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev, his one-time ‘speechwriter’ and now President of the Association of political sciences Fyodor Burlatsky said the following: “Right now there are debates about the fate of liberalism, particularly in Yeltsin’s and Gaidar’s interpretation. Strangely enough, Khrushchev did more for liberalism than all other personalities of the post-Stalin epoch… He was characterized by a thirst for innovation, unusual for political leaders of that time.” The Politologist stressed that Nikita Khrushchev freed from prisons hundreds of thousands of innocent people, exonerated millions, and actually freed the peasants, who until then had been in ‘semi-feudal’ position, providing them with passports. In his historical report at the 20th Congress of the Party Khrushchev came out with a denunciation of Stalin’s personality cult, although he was forced to speak before ‘rabid stalinists’, adds Fyodor Burlatsky. He noted that in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev became the first leader of the USSR to make an official visit to the USA, and stressed: “In effect, the growth of rapprochement between this country and the West began with Khrushchev.” Commenting Nikita Khrushchev’s removal from power, Fyodor Burlatsky notes: “He was removed for embarking on a conflict with the apparatus: party, state, and later – military. He was removed by his closest associates, as is usually the case in such situations.” In the opinion of Fyodor Burlatsky, the contemporary generation of our compatriots owes Khrushchev the fact that under his rule the country embarked on a transition to a new, more open society. The time will come, believes the Politologist, when society will give Khrushchev his due. An interesting opinion belongs to Khrushchev’s contemporary, former dissident Mikhail Antonov, who criticized the powers-that-be for not being soviet enough, for a betrayal of the ideals of the socialist revolution. Antonov called for promoting moral issues in handling the national economy. In the 1960’s he was a victim of reprisals, spent time in jails, and later, upon being released, went on to become a leading expert of the Institute of World Economics and International relations. In one of his books, in a chapter dedicated to Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Antonov wrote: “Reaching the summit of power, Khrushchev was forced to conduct an inventory of what he had inherited from his great predecessor. Outwardly, it all looked simply wonderful. The USSR was one of two superpowers of the world, and a leader of the socialist camp, uniting a third of humanity. However, in actual fact this grandeur was already splitting at the seams due to an inability of the previous leadership to respond to the new challenges of the day. Khrushchev himself later wrote in his memoirs: “in 1954 we were still impoverished, there was nothing to eat and some regions were starving.” So when he came up against a dire lack of food in many regions of the country, the first requirement was to deal with the situation in agriculture – the most backward branch of the economy. Later he had to admit that the industry, which on paper was fulfilling and over fulfilling production plans, in actual fact was long working for its own needs – in other words, production of means of production was growing much faster than production of commodities. However, enterprises that were oriented towards the consumer’s needs were concerned exclusively with the quantity of goods, rather than their quality and stock variety. As a result, those goods that were in particular demand were often not to be found in the shops. There was an acute housing crisis. Reports of staff members of the State Security Committee pointed to the fact the patience of the popular masses was running out. The USSR was surrounded by military bases of the USA and NATO countries. The socialist camp still existed, yet it had lost Yugoslavia, led by Iosip Broz Tito. This was a testimony of the frailty of the alliance. Moreover, there was growing proof that China was planning to challenge the USSR’s leadership and generally conduct a policy in its own national interests, often diametrically opposed to the soviet ones. In other words, despite producing an outwardly stable impression, the country was facing extremely difficult problems. And it was Nikita Khrushchev who had to deal with them. Individually, every one of Khrushchev’s ideas was sensible, but taken as a whole all his programmes collapsed.” As Professors Vladimir Lisichkin and Leonid Shelepin noted in one of their books, “It was impossible to alter anything in the situation that had emerged by the time Nikita Khrushchev came to power. The very principle of managing the economy as one big factory had become obsolete. What had been correct before, was inadequate to the reality of the second half of the 20th century. New approaches were required. A forward advance could be achieved only after making a breakthrough, first and foremost in theory, ideology, in comprehension of the aims of soviet society and ways of its development. But since this didn’t happen, all that could be expected was a regressive movement.” The soviet literary-artistic magazine “Druzhba Narodov” ? 11 for 1988 published an article by writer and film scriptwriter Anatoly Strelyany, where he referred to Khrushchev’s consciousness as ‘utopical’, and insisted: “Khrushchev was made for extreme situations, when all resources needed to be mobilized for achieving a specific aim… He was unprepared for systematic work.” Former dissident Mikhail Antonov, whom we have already quoted, recalled one of Nikita Khrushchev’s actions which has repercussions for Russia today: “In 1954 it was 300 years since Ukraine was reunited with Russia. Timed to the occasion Khrushchev made a generous gesture and handed the Crimea over to Ukraine as a gift. At the time the USSR seemed cemented together for good. So Khrushchev regarded the gesture as a friendly one, no more, since within the framework of the Union the Crimea’s belonging to this or that union republic seemed inconsequential. In reality, already as far back as then mines were being laid under the very foundations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. One could foretell that the Crimea, where 90% of the population were Russian, could one day become an apple of discord between Russia and Ukraine – the two most economically developed union republics.” Professor Olshtynsky, addressing the times of Nikita Khrushchev, particularly singles out the criticism of Stalin’s personality cult and its far-reaching repercussions: “It injected a psychological stress in soviet society in general, and in intellectual circles in particular. Public consciousness lost its stability, while growing contacts with the West were conducive to an infiltration of western ideas. This all served to ‘ferment society’, and sparked the emergence of several politico-ideological movements, alternative to the official ideology. These were ‘genuine Marxism-Leninism’, ‘liberalism’, and ‘Christian ideology’. Proponents of ‘genuine Marxism-Leninism’ proceeded from the surmise that Stalin had distorted Marxist-Leninist ideology and it needed to be restored. Followers of ‘liberalism’ believed it imperative to achieve a transition to a western-type democracy. The proponents of a Christian outlook suggested that Christian moral values and Slavophil traditions be used as a basis for public life. All these trends reflected the problems that deeply concerned various stratum of society and manifested themselves in later years. These trends found artistic reflection, too. Counteraction to censorship led to a release of typewritten magazines, in other words ‘independent publishers’. It was on its basis that the dissident movement began to gather force. It was widely used by the west in its ‘cold war’ against the USSR for its destruction. One of the more noteworthy dissidents – writer Vladimir Maximov, already in the mid 1990’s announced that if he had known the effect the dissident movement would finally have, he’d have burnt his manuscripts.” Former dissident Mikhail Antonov remarked: “Khrushchev was deposed on the day of the Orthodox holiday of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin. What did the Heavenly forces save us from at the time?.. Who can say…” Prominent Russian journalist Vadim Kozhinov believes, “…at the time, in the mid-1950’s, significant changes in the life of the country were inevitable, since the pendulum of history had begun its leftward movement (albeit not very noticeable then) already in the last Stalinist years. Whoever had come to power in 1953, events would have taken the turn they did no matter what.” We are only beginning to analyze and reassess our recent past, so we
can expect the emergence of other assessments of Nikita Khrushchev’s activity.
Khrushchev’s post after his removal was taken over by Leonid Brezhnev.
Selected by his party colleagues as a temporary figure, not very strong
and more conciliatory, he none the less spent eighteen years on the post,
outliving all other leading conspirers against Khrushchev…
07/07/2006
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However,
the critical point was a note he circulated among party organizations behind
the back of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
In this note he suggested liquidating regional party committees. This was
a gross violation of the Party Charter, where the organizational base of
party construction is elaborated. This is when our patience ran out. The
Presidium of the Central Committee of the party drew the conclusion that
Nikita had to be removed from the post of Party Head. At that time he was
resting at the Black sea, at a state residence in Abkhazia. The Party Presidium
summoned him from his vacation. I took the floor at the meeting and told
Khrushchev everything I really thought about him… I said a lot of unpleasant
things… So did others. A lot of what people said was unexpected for him.
It even drew tears from him, and he said: “Comrades, you didn’t tell me
everything before!” And we replied: “But we couldn’t tell you anything
– you growled at everyone.”
