THE SOVIET UNION, 1928-91

AREA 5 : KHRUSHCHEV

1. RUSSIA FROM THE START OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR TO THE DEATH OF STALIN (1939-53)

• 1939 --- World War two began BUT Russia was neutral as had signed treaty with Germany under which Russia would remain neutral and in return would be allowed to occupy eastern Poland.
• 1941 – Germany ignores treaty and invades Russia. Hitler had always made it clear that he wanted to destroy communism, enslave the inferior races and use Russian lands as a German colony. Stalin, however, had believed Hitler wanted to avoid war with Russia and the invasion took him completely by surprise. Russia sides with Britain and USA against Germany. Russia calls the Second World War, the Great Patriotic War. Stalin sets out to re-energise Russian nationalism. Promotes Russian history and stops destruction of churches.
• 1941-43 Germany does well and lays siege to Leningrad (St Petersburg) and Stalingrad. Much of the German success was due to Stalin's purges of the Red Army and his lack of preparation.
• 1943-45  A German army is forced to surrender at Stalingrad. The Russian weather saves Russia as the Germans are unable to deal with the cold. Stalin adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying everything that could be useful to the Germans, including crops and factories. He appealed to people to fight for Mother Russia and replaced his commanders with more able men. By 1943 the Russian war production outstripped Germany's. The war turns against Germany and the Germans are pushed out of Russia.
• 1945 Germany surrenders. Russia takes over effective control of most of Eastern Europe. Now two superpowers – USA and Soviet Union.
• Stalin's reputation was enhanced by his victory. He was now an international figure and the West could no longer ignore him and Russia. Russia was now a major power.
• However the war had devastated the country with 20 million dead and whole areas of the country destroyed. 70,000 villages and 2000 towns had been destroyed.
• 1945-53 Stalin now controlled an Empire and by 1949 had nuclear weapons. Communist had expended into Eastern Europe and Asia. West increasingly concerned about spread of communism. A period of tension, known as the Cold War, began. Stalin continued his persecution of ethnic minorities in Russia and purged anyone suspected of disloyalty. He removed high ranking army commanders and appointed younger men, like Leonid Brezhnev, to weaken the power of older communists. In 1952 stories of a plot by Jewish doctors to kill Stalin were published in the press and Stalin seemed to be about to carry out yet another massive purge. He had continued with the Five-Year Plans and there had been some success in rebuilding Russia after the war, although mainly with slave labour. Yet the focus had been on massive building projects rather than catering for the serious shortage of housing.
• 1953 Stalin died. No clear leader. Stalin left Russia as a world power with control over Eastern Europe. However the Cold War meant Russia was spending vast sums on the military rather than dealing with problems at home : collectivisation had failed to solve the food problem; central planning had led to inefficiency as nobody wanted to make decisions and there was a culture of falsifying figures to meet quotas. Consumer goods were in short supply and there was a serious housing shortage. There was strict censorship, gulags and slave labour.

2 – HOW KHRUSHCHEV BECAME SOVIET LEADER

• Nikita Khrushchev had served Stalin and had been implicated in the Terror. He had been the Party boss in Leningrad and had eliminated the supporters of Kirov there. He had achieved fame as one of the organisers of the Moscow Metro and he later played a key role in the defence of Stalingrad against the Germans.
• When Stalin died in 1953 there was a power struggle between 5 men: Beria (Head of the Secret Police), Khrushchev (Party Secretary), Molotov (the Foreign Minister), Bulganin (the Deputy Prime Minister) and Malenkov (The Prime Minister). In 1953 Beria was executed for illegally trying to take over the country. Most people expected Malenkov to become leader. However, Malenkov made a series of promises, known as THE NEW COURSE, offering to improve living standards, increase consumer goods, expand electrification, increase food production, relax Stalin's terror and pursue peaceful policy with the West. His failure to keep his promises led to criticisms and the army turned against him over his policy towards the West. This allowed attacks to be made on him and Khrushchev criticised his agricultural policy. Malenkov was quickly undermined and resigned.
• By 1956 Khrushchev had emerged victorious against his other rivals. There was an attempt by members of the Politburo to oust him in 1957 but Khrushchev used his control of the party t use Party members to block the actions of the Politburo. Within 12 months, his rivals had been removed from office and given minor positions well away from Moscow.
• There were three main reasons why he emerged victorious:

(a)    He used the same post as Stalin to do exactly the same thing : isolate opponents and promote own supporters. He had managed to persuade Malenkov that he, Khrushchev, should be Party Secretary since it would be wrong for Malenkov to be both Prime Minister and Party Secretary. Malenkov agreed and Khrushchev used the post just as Stalin had to control meetings and decisions and to place his own supporters in key positions. His opponents had misjudged him : he came from a humble background and was ill educated, but he was ambitious and a fighter. The same mistakes made about Stalin 25 years before were being repeated. Khrushchev tried to make sure of the support of communist officials by touring the country and meeting them.

(b)   He won the support of the armed forces. He had played a vital role on the defence of Leningrad during the war and this impressed the army.

(c)    He gained support and popularity as a result of a famous speech he made, known as the Secret Speech of 1956. He seemed to offer a new kind of leadership. He appeared friendly and out-going and promised reforms to improve life for ordinary Russians. He seemed energetic and dynamic.

3 -- WHAT WAS THE SECRET SPEECH?

• In February 1956 Khrushchev made a speech to the Twentieth Communist Party Congress. He began by proposing peaceful co-operation with the West and the production of more consumer goods. The press were then asked to leave, and Khrushchev delivered a speech to the party, which became known as the "Secret Speech".
• To the amazement of his audience, he attacked Stalin and the terrible policies that he had carried out. This was the first time that anyone had publicly attacked Stalin for over 20 years. In his speech he said things like : “Stalin invented the idea of an ‘enemy of the people’. He used this to carry out the most cruel actions against anybody whom he suspected. The facts show that many abuses were carried out on Stalin’s orders. He paid no attention to either the rules of the Communist Party or the laws of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s behaviour not only affected life in the Soviet Union, but also our relations with foreign countries.” However, the idea of attacking Stalin did not begin with Khrushchev : Malenkov had planned similar policies before he had fallen from power, but nobody had expected Khrushchev to do it now. It took Khrushchev a weekend to lay out his criticisms : he read out Lenin's will with its criticisms of Stalin, he claimed Stalin ad not been such a war hero, and he blamed all the mistakes on Stalin's "mania for greatness".
• Khrushchev stated that Stalin had abused his power and was an Enemy of the People. However, the criticisms were all levied against Stalin and not communism, since Khrushchev wanted communism to survive and wanted to be the leader of he Communist Party. Stalin had deviated from communism.
• This speech is called the Secret Speech because nobody knew he was going to make it. It shocked the other leading members of the Party who were taken completely unawares.

4 -- WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF THE SECRET SPEECH?

• Khrushchev had destroyed the image of Stalin. He portrayed him as a cruel dictator who had selfishly carried out policies to gain personal power and to destroy rivals. As a result millions of innocent people had suffered terrible hardships and even death.
• Khrushchev was keen to distance Stalin’s rule from the Communist Party. He set out to show that such policies were not the result of Communism, but the result of Stalin, who had corrupted Communist rule for his own ends. Stalin had broken the laws of the country and abused his position. In this way Khrushchev hoped people would still support the Communist party, whilst blaming Stalin, rather than the party, for the terrible events. He was also keen to remove himself from blame for the terrible actions carried out under Stalin.
• The speech helped Khrushchev. His rivals were taken unawares and attacked Khrushchev’s speech. This made it look as if they were defending Stalin. This helped to weaken their support.
• Khrushchev also knew that Russia had to try to improve relations with the West. The world was divided into two armed camps, both with nuclear weapons. His speech was designed to make the West believe that Russia wanted better relations.
• The day after the speech Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s tomb and buried without ceremony next to the Kremlin Wall. The Cult of Personality was over.
• The Speech also helped Khrushchev come to power. Although he had played a leading role in the Terror, by making this speech he distanced himself from the atrocities, whilst his rivals continued to be viewed as part of Stalin’s Terror.

5 -- WHAT WAS DE-STALINISATION?

• It was important for Khrushchev to make a firm break with Stalin if he was to distant the Party from Stalin’s policies and to improve relations with the West. He set out to totally destroy the memory of Stalin.
• This policy is known as de-Stalinisation. The rigid controls imposed on the country by Stalin were now attacked.
• Some of the changes included:

(a)    Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd

(b)   School textbooks were re-written to give a more accurate history of the Revolution and to show the minor role played by Stalin

(c)    Posters, statues and monuments to Stalin were removed.

(d)   The NKVD was re-organised. After the execution of Beria, a committee was appointed to run it. Its size was reduced.

(e)    Millions of camp prisoners (zeks) were released from the gulags and given pardons.

(f)  Those executed by Stalin were declared innocent.

(g)     Millions of ethnic people who had been deported from their lands were allowed to return home.

(h)  Censorship laws were relaxed and new artistic styles and books permitted. Books that criticised Stalin, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich were published. However censorship was relaxed, not abolished. Khrushchev disliked Doctor Zhivago because it attacked the system rather than Stalin. The author, Boris Pasternak, was attacked in the press and he was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize for literature and made to publicly apologise for his book.

(i)    The death penalty was abolished.

(j) Cultural and sporting exchanges with other countries were permitted.

(k) Soviet citizens were to be allowed greater freedom to travel abroad.

Khrushchev hoped that de-Stalinisation would allow him to develop closer co-operation with the West, to introduce his policies to reform communism and to rehabilitate his reputation. Khrushchev wanted to make communism more acceptable to the people by giving it a human face : by improving agriculture to feed people and by supplying more consumer goods.

6 -- THE UNFORESEEN ASPECTS OF THE SECRET SPEECH

• Ordinary Russians felt that the speech gave them permission to criticise the system, even their new leader Khrushchev himself – this is NOT what Khrushchev had intended.
• There followed a wave of criticism and unrest throughout the Soviet Union – within 5 years Khrushchev had been forced to reintroduce the death penalty to curb this growing climate of criticism.
• Greater freedom led to a surge in religious practice. Khrushchev had not foreseen this and responded by closing down 10,000 churches.
• It was not only in the Soviet Union that the speech caused problems for communist leaders. People in countries under Russian control, like Poland and Hungary, believed that it signalled a move away from Stalinist rule towards greater freedom. They believed that the Soviet Union would not interfere if they tried to get rid of their communist governments. In both countries rebels rose up against their communist leaders. The Hungarian Revolt of 1956 was the most serious. Khrushchev made it clear that he would not allowed communist rule to be removed. He sent in troops and tanks to crush the rebels. He may have criticised Stalin but he was not that different in some ways.

7 – HOW DID KHRUSHCHEV SEEK TO MODERNISE RUSSIA?

• Like Stalin Khrushchev believed that Russia needed to focus on agriculture and industry in order to improve the country. However, he felt that Russia needed to move away from Stalin's Command Economy and wanted decisions, especially in industry, to be taken at local level. He introduced reforms in both areas:

(a)    AGRICULTURE – THE PLAN

• Khrushchev firmly believed that he knew about agriculture and that his expertise could solve Russia’s agricultural problems. He decided to take over control and implement his own policies. He knew that despite covering one-sixth of the world his country was still unable to grow enough food to feed its people. He felt that high taxes paid by collective farms and the low prices they received for their goods meant they were unproductive.
• Khrushchev came up with three main policies to solve the problems:

(i)                  THE VIRGIN LAND SCHEME : He selected Kazakhstan and Western Siberia, areas that had never been cultivated before, and decided that these areas would now be cultivated. This area was larger than France and Khrushchev was convinced that by cultivating this area he would increase agricultural production and feed his people. He confidently said that 20 million tonnes of extra grain would be produced and that the food supply problem would be solved within 2 years. He invested money ion new fertilisers for the area and set large workforces of volunteers to he area.

(ii)                THE AMALGAMATION AND REFORM OF THE COLLECTIVE FARMS : Khrushchev was convinced that Stalin had not gone far enough. The collective farms were still too small to be really productive. So thousands would be joined together to form even larger collectives. These would be bigger and more efficient and would have independence. To encourage farmers, their debts would be written off and they would be paid higher prices for their produce. In this was farmers would want to grow more. He closed the motor tractor Stations and gave the machinery to the Collective Farms.

(iii)               THE INTRODUCTION OF MAIZE : Lots of the grain grown was being fed to animals rather than the human population. Khrushchev hoped that by encouraging farmers to grow maize for their animals, the grain would be available for people.

(b)   AGRICULTURE – THE RESULTS

• Maize can only grow in certain soils. Khrushchev thought he was an expert and would not listen to those that warned him. As a result maize was often grown in unsuitable soil. This meant valuable land was wasted on crops that would never grow. The maize crop failed and other crops that could have been harvested to feed people were not grown.
• Not enough investment was put into fertiliser and so there was not enough to help with production. There was also not enough money for new machinery.
• Khrushchev utilised the Komsomol (young communists) to run the Virgin Land Scheme. These young communists were enthusiastic and idealistic but had no idea about farming. Their inexperience led to soil being over-farmed and exhausted. In 1963 hurricanes swept away most of the topsoil and left the ground completely useless for farming. Some 6 million hectares of land were destroyed forever as agricultural land. To avoid a famine, Khrushchev had to spend a fortune buying Canadian and American grain.
• Where crops were grown in Kazakhstan, most of it rotted away as Khrushchev had ignored the need for an infrastructure. There were no proper roads or railways to transport the crops. So they were left on the side of the fields to rot.
• The increase in farmers’ wages to encourage them to grow crops doubled their standard of living. However it did not last as soon the cost became too great for the government and wages had to be reduced. This annoyed farmers and meant their incentive to grow crops was removed.
• HOWEVER : grain harvest rose sharply between 1953 and 1964. Indeed in the first years the Virgin Lands produced lots of crops but the soil could not sustain the demand and after 1958 yields from these areas fell as the land was farmed too intensively.  However other crops did not reach same high levels. Overall agricultural production fell and in the early 1960s the government was forced to raise food prices which caused unrest in the cities. In 1963 the country had to import grain from abroad. Yet despite the great hurricanes of 1963, the Soviet Union recorded its highest ever grain harvest in 1964.

(c)    INDUSTRY – THE PLAN

• Khrushchev believed that industry had been stifled under Stalin because all the orders came from the top and people did not make decisions at the local level, usually out of fear. He believed that if people were given the power to make their own decisions, industry would no longer be stifled and would be successful. 60 government ministries were abolished to encourage independence and local decision making.
• Khrushchev decided that Gosplan had outlived its usefulness. Instead of one central planning agency in Moscow, the country would be divided into 100 regional economic councils, called sovnarkhozys. These regional councils would be given the power and independence to make decisions based on local circumstances and conditions. They would have the freedom to charge the state whatever they liked.
• Many of the restrictive controls on workers were removed, performance-related pay was introduced and capitalist methods of production were to be seen in some factories. A seven-hour day was introduced and workers were allowed to change jobs.
• Khrushchev justified his policy by asking “What sort of communism is it that cannot produce a sausage?”  He realised that the Soviet Union had to produce not only more food but more consumer goods for its people and that meant changing methods.
• Khrushchev believed that the people would become dissatisfied unless their standards of living improved. He ordered factories to make more luxury goods for people in order to improve standards of living. The Plan called for clothes, shoes, bicycles and watches, among other items to be made.
• Khrushchev also wanted to show that the Soviet Union was far advanced of the United States. To prove the superiority of communism, he ordered the Soviet Union to win the space race.

(d)   INDUSTRY – THE RESULTS

• In the cities local factory managers were used to being told what to do under Stalin and were unable to cope with their new-found independence. The result was confusion, errors and increased unhappiness among the workers. They simply became another level of bureaucracy.
• The sovnarkhozy were mot working and just created administrative confusion, so Khrushchev was forced to reduce the number and by appointing committees of officials to supervise them, but this just increased the muddle and nobody knew who was in charge or what the were expected to do.
• The space race achievements were spectacular but they failed to produce any real benefits for ordinary Soviet people. Resources had been diverted away from industry to finance the space race and so some areas of the economy had failed to develop sufficiently.
• HOWEVER : ownership of luxury goods rose dramatically (although it was still far behind the West). Yet the goods were usually of poor quality and did not provide valuable exports as the world wanted better quality items than Russia could produce. Living standards remained well below that of people in the West. He managed to re-house 50 million people, but failed to meet his ambitious plan of creating 15 million pre-fabricated flats. Yet things were much better than they had been during the terrible years of the 1930s. Real wages did increase and the government spent far more money on welfare services.

There were achievements in terms of industrial output:

• The Soviet people were proud of their space race achievements. Up to 1969, the Soviet Union was always ahead in the space race. They were first to send a satellite, a dog, a man and a woman into space.

 8 -- WHY DID KHRUSHCHEV FALL FROM POWER?

• By 1964 Khrushchev was very unpopular in Russia
• Main reason for unpopularity was failure to tackle economic problems : in 1962 there had been strikes against increases in food prices in Novacherkasst – resulted in tanks crushing demonstration and killing people. By 1964 prices had risen by 30% whereas wages had either fallen or stayed same. Russia had only avoided famine by buying foreign grain. Many Russians felt humiliated that they had had to rely on the USA to survive. There were chants avout turning Khrushchev into sausage meat.
• Khrushchev had lost some of his initial popularity through a series of harsh measures, such as restoring the death penalty and restoring the powers of the secret police.
• Khrushchev’s economic reforms had failed. He had promised independence but had not delivered. Most chairmen of collective farms were still Communist Party officials, who knew little about agriculture. Increasingly the government began to take back control. The experiment had failed.
• Khrushchev was seen to have got the priorities wrong. People wanted better living standards. Instead he had got Russia engaged in an expensive conflict with the USA and had poured vast sums into the Space Race and sport. Foreign policy was seen as a failure – Russia was believed to have been humiliated over Cuba and the subsidies to foreign allies was a heavy burden.
• Other Communist leaders were increasingly embarrassed by Khrushchev’s behaviour. He was often drunk, rude and abusive. On the international stage he was seen as damaging Russia’ image through incidents such as when he banged his shoe on the table at the U.N.
• Under Khrushchev there had been no real improvement in living standards. Production of consumer goods had suffered because money had been diverted to foreign aid, space race and sport. People were calling for Khrushchev to be turned into sausage meat.
• In October 1964 Khrushchev was forced to resign – succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev.

9 -- ASSESSMENT

• The worse aspects of Stalinist regime was removed under Khrushchev – families no longer blamed for actions of one member, but towards end he brought back death penalty.
• Writers were given more freedom – could attack Stalin but could not attack Revolution or Communist system – so freedom still limited.
• Yet 1960s saw persecution of religion as monasteries were closed and churches left without priests – Khrushchev had feared that religion was becoming too popular. Many Christians worshipped in secret – became crime.
• There were some improvements under Khrushchev – quality of education improved – number of universities tripled. Russia sent first satellite into space and first man under Khrushchev. Pensions and other social welfare benefits were increased. Attempts were made to improve housing.
• Yet agricultural and industrial policies failed. Production fell under Khrushchev – led to riots and discontent.
• People felt that Khrushchev had promised much but had failed to keep his promises.

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