Nikita
Khrushchev, the grandson of a serf and
the son of a coal miner, was born in Kalinovka, Ukraine on 5th April,
1894. After a brief formal education Khrushchev found work as a pipe
fitter in Yuzovka.
During
the First World War Khrushchev became involved
in trade union activities and after the
October Revolution joined the Bolsheviks.
In January,
1919, Khrushchev joined the Red Army and
fought against the Whites in the Ukraine
during the Civil War. After leaving
the army he returned to Yuzovka where he returned to school to finish
his education.
Khrushchev
remained active in the Communist Party and
in 1925 was employed as party secretary of the Petrovsko-Mariinsk.
Lazar
Kaganovich,
the general-secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, was impressed
with Khrushchev and invited him to accompany him to the 14th Party
Congress in Moscow.
With the
support of Kaganovich, Khrushchev made steady progress in the party
hierarchy. In 1938 Khrushchev became secretary of the Ukrainian Communist
Party and was employed by Joseph Stalin
to carry out the Great Purge in the Ukraine.
The following year he became a full member of the Politburo.
After the
invasion of Poland in 1940 Khrushchev was given the responsibility
of suppressing the Polish and Ukrainian nationalists. When the German
Army invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941, Khrushchev arranged
the evacuation of much of the region's industry. During the Second
World War Khrushchev granted the rank lieutenant general, and
was given the task of organizing guerrilla warfare in the Ukraine
against the Germans.
When the
German Army retreated in 1944 Khrushchev
was once again placed in control of the Ukraine and the rebuilding
of the region. Khrushchev job was made more difficult by the famine
of 1946. This brought him into conflict with Joseph
Stalin who accused Khrushchev of concentrating too much on feeding
the people living of the Ukraine rather than exporting food to the
rest of the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev
was demoted in 1951 and replaced as the minister responsible for agriculture.
On the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953,
Gregory Malenkov became both prime minister
and head of the Communist Party. He appeared to be a reformer and
called for a higher priority to be given to consumer goods.
In September,
1953, Khrushchev became first secretary of the Communist Party. He
arranged for the execution of Lavrenti Beria,
head of the Secret Police and gradually
he gained control of the party machinery. In 1955 he joined with Nikolai
Bulganin to oust Gregory Malenkov
from power.
During
the 20th Party Congress in February, 1956, Khrushchev launched an
attack on the rule of Joseph Stalin. He
condemned the Great Purge and accused Stalin
of abusing his power. He announced a change in policy and gave orders
for the Soviet Union's political prisoners to be released.
In the
summer of 1956 Gregory Malenkov, Nikolai
Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov and
Lazar Kaganovich attempted to oust
Khrushchev This was unsuccessful and Khrushchev now purged his opponents
in the Communist Party.
Khrushchev's
de-Stalinzation policy encouraged people living in Eastern Europe
to believe that he was willing to give them more independence from
the Soviet Union. In Hungary
the prime
minister Imre
Nagy removed
state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on
political and economic reform. Nagy also released anti-communists
from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing
Hungary from the Warsaw
Pact.
Khrushchev
became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4th
November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary.
During the Hungarian
Uprising an estimated
20,000 people were killed. Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet
loyalist, Janos
Kadar. Imre Nagy
was imprisoned and executed in 1958.
In 1958
Khrushchev replaced Gregory Malenkov
as prime minister and was now the undisputed leader of both state
and party. In the Soviet Union he promoted reform of the Soviet system
and began to place an emphasis on the production of consumer goods
rather than on heavy industry.
Khrushchev
eased censorship in the Soviet Union and allowed One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn to
be published. Some pointed out that this was part of his de-Stalinization
policy and did not reflect a genuine increase in freedom. His critics
pointed out that books such as Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak were still banned.
In 1959
Khrushchev announced a change in foreign policy. In 1959 visited the
United States and offered "the capitalist
countries peaceful competition". Khrushchev was due to attend
the Paris Summit Conference in 1960 when a reconnaissance plane was
shot down over the Soviet Union. He cancelled the meeting and later
that year at the Union Nations he attacked
Western influence in the Congo.
When John
F. Kennedy replaced
Dwight
Eisenhower as
president of the United States he was told about
the CIA plan to invade Cuba. Kennedy had
doubts about the venture but he was afraid he would be seen as soft
on communism if he refused permission for it to go ahead. Kennedy's
advisers convinced him that Castro was an unpopular leader and that
once the invasion started the Cuban people would support the ClA-trained
forces.
On April 14, 1961, B-26
planes began bombing Cuba's airfields. After the raids Cuba was left
with only eight planes
and seven pilots. Two days later five merchant ships carrying 1,400
Cuban exiles arrived at the Bay
of Pigs. The attack was a total failure. Two of the ships
were sunk, including the ship that was carrying most of the supplies.
Two of the planes that were attempting to give air-cover were also
shot down. Within seventy-two hours all the invading troops had been
killed, wounded or had surrendered.
At the beginning of September
1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet
Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites.
There was also an increase in the number of Soviet ships arriving
in Cuba which the United States government
feared were carrying new supplies of weapons. President Kennedy complained
to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that
the United States would not accept offensive weapons (SAMs were considered
to be defensive) in Cuba.
On September 27, a CIA
agent in Cuba overheard Castro's personal pilot tell another man in
a bar that Cuba now had nuclear weapons. U-2 spy-plane photographs
also showed that unusual activity was taking place at San Cristobal.
However, it was not until October 15 that photographs were taken that
revealed that the Soviet Union was placing
long range missiles in Cuba.
President Kennedy's first
reaction to the information about the missiles
in Cuba was to call a meeting to discuss what should be
done. Fourteen men attended the meeting and included military
leaders, experts on Latin America, representatives of the
CIA, cabinet ministers and personal friends whose advice Kennedy
valued. This group became known as the Executive Committee
of the National Security Council. Over the next few days
they were to meet several times.
At the first meeting of
the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the CIA
and other military advisers explained the situation. After hearing
what they had to say, the general feeling of the meeting was for an
air-attack on the
missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before
the Bay
of Pigs invasion, John
F. Kennedy decided
to wait and instead called for another meeting to take place that
evening. By this time several of the men were having doubts about
the wisdom of a bombing raid, fearing that it would lead to a nuclear
war with the Soviet Union. The committee was now so divided that a
firm decision could not be made.
The Executive Committee
of the National Security Council argued amongst themselves for the
next two days. The CIA and the military were still in favour of a
bombing raid and/or an invasion. However, the majority of the committee
gradually began to favour a naval blockade of Cuba.
Kennedy accepted their
decision and instructed Theodore Sorensen, a member of the committee,
to write a speech in
which Kennedy would explain to the world why it was necessary to impose
a naval blockade of Cuba.
As well as imposing a naval
blockade, Kennedy also told the air-force to prepare for attacks on
Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida
and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships
carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched,
a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers
that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders
for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites.
The world waited anxiously.
A public opinion poll in the United States revealed that three out
of five people expected fighting to break out between the two sides.
There were angry demonstrations outside the American Embassy in London
as people protested about the possibility of nuclear war. Demonstrations
also took place in other cities in Europe. However, in the United
States, polls suggested that the vast majority supported Kennedy's
action.
On October 24, President
John
F. Kennedy was
informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the
United States ships blockading Cuba. That evening Khrushchev sent
an angry note to Kennedy accusing him of creating a crisis to help
the Democratic Party win the forthcoming election.
On October 26, Khrushchev
sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union
would be willing to
remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United
States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter
from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their
nuclear bases in Turkey.
While the president and
his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev's two letters, news came through
that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the
military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that
he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba. Kennedy refused
and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his
first letter.
Khrushchev agreed and gave
orders for the missiles to be dismantled. Eight days later the elections
for Congress took place. The Democrats increased their majority and
it was estimated that Kennedy would now have an extra twelve supporters
in Congress for his policies.
The Cuban
Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation
between the United States and the Soviet Union. The event appeared
to frighten both sides and it marked a change in the development of
the Cold War.
The Military
and the leaders of the Communist Party felt humiliated by Khrushchev
climbdown over Cuba. His agricultural policy was also a failure and
the country was forced to import increasing amounts of wheat from
Canada and the United States.
On 14th
October, 1964, the Central Committee forced Khrushchev to resign.
He lived in retirement in Moscow where he wrote his memoirs, Khrushchev
Remembers (1971). Nikita Khrushchev
died on 11th September, 1971.
Classroom
Activities
Cuban
Missile Crisis
(A1)
In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev claimed he was against Joseph Stalin's
Collectivization Policy.
Collectivization was begun the year before I was transferred
from the Ukraine, but it wasn't until I started work in Moscow that
I began to suspect its real effects on the rural population - and
it was not until many years later that I realized the scale of the
starvation which accompanied collectivization as it was carried out
under Stalin.
(A2)
Nikita Khrushchev was the secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee
in 1939. Khrushchev who was with Stalin when the Nazi-Soviet Pact
was signed, wrote about these events in his autobiography, Khrushchev
Remembers (1971)
I believe the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 was historically
inevitable, given the circumstances of the time, and that in the final
analysis it was profitable for the Soviet Union. It was like a gambit
in chess: if we hadn't made that move, the war would have started
earlier, much to our disadvantage. It was very hard for us - as Communists,
as anti-fascists - to accept the idea of joining forces with Germany.
It was difficult enough for us to accept the paradox ourselves.
For their
part, the Germans too were using the treaty as a maneuver to win time.
Their idea was to divide and conquer the nations which had united
against Germany in World War I and which might united against Germany
again. Hitler wanted to deal with his adversaries one at a time. He
was convinced that Germany had been defeated in World war I because
he tried to fight on two fronts at once. The treaty he signed with
us was his way of trying to limit the coming war to one front.
(A3)
In the 1930s Nikita Khrushchev worked
closely with both Joseph Stalin and Lavrenti
Beria.
Beria and
I started to see each other frequently at Stalin's. At first I liked
him. We had friendly chats and even joked together quite a lot, but
gradually his political complexion came clearly into focus. I was
shocked by his sinister, two-faced, scheming hypocrisy.
Even though
I agreed with Stalin completely, I knew I had to watch my step in
answering him. One of Stalin's favourite tricks was to provoke you
into making a statement - or even agreeing with a statement - which
showed your true feelings about someone else. It was perfectly clear
to me that Stalin and Beria were very close. To what extent this friendship
was sincere, I couldn't say, but I knew it was no accident that Beria
had been Stalin's choice for Yezhov's replacement.
(A4)
Nikita Khrushchev was critical of Stalin's
cultural policies implemented by Andrey Zhdanov.
When he gained power he gave permission for banned books such as One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn to be published.
I think
Stalin's cultural policies, especially the cultural policies imposed
on Leningrad through Zhdanov, were cruel and senseless. You can't
regulate the development of literature, art, and culture with a stick,
or by barking orders. You can't lay down a furrow and then harness
all your artists to make sure they don't deviate from the straight
and narrow. If you try to control your artists too tightly, there
will be no clashing of opinions, consequently no criticism, and consequently
no truth. There will be just a gloomy stereotype, boring and useless.
(A5)
Nikita Khrushchev claimed that it was
some time after Stalin's death before he realized the extent of his
crimes.
I still
mourned Stalin as an extraordinary powerful leader. I knew that his
power had been exerted arbitrarily and not always in the proper direction,
but in the main Stalin's strength, I believed, had still been applied
to the reinforcement of Socialism and to the consolidation of the
gains of the October Revolution. Stalin may have used methods which
were, from my standpoint, improper or even barbaric, but I hadn't
yet begun to challenge the very basis of Stalin's claim to a special
honour in history. However, questions were beginning to arise for
which I had no ready answer. Like others, I was beginning to doubt
whether all the arrests and convictions had been justified from the
standpoint of judicial norms. But then Stalin had been Stalin. Even
in death he commanded almost unassailable authority, and it still
hadn't occurred to me that he had been capable of abusing his power.
(A6)
Nikita Khrushchev, speech, 20th Party
Congress (February, 1956)
Stalin
acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient co-operation
with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission
to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his
viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal
from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation.
This was especially true during the period following the 17th Party
Congress, when many prominent Party leaders and rank-and-file Party
workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell victim
to Stalin's despotism.
Stalin
originated the concept "enemy of the people". This term
automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors
of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven; this term made
possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms
of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed
with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent,
against those who had bad reputations.
(A7)
Richard
Nixon met Nikita Khrushchev
in Moscow, in 1959. In his memoirs Nixon described the impression
that Khrushchev made on him.
Khrushchev's
rough manners, bad grammar, and heavy drinking caused many Western
journalists and diplomats to underestimate him. But despite his rough
edges, he had a keen mind and a ruthless grasp of power politics.
Bluntly ignoring Western invitations for disarmament and détente,
Khrushchev openly continued to stockpile weapons... many
believed that he would have no qualms about using them to unleash
a nuclear war.
(A8)
In his autobiography Nikita Khrushchev describes his first meeting
with
John
F. Kennedy after
he had beaten Richard
Nixon to
became president of the United States.
I was impressed
with Kennedy. I remember liking his face, which was sometimes stern
but which often broke into a good-natured smile. As for Nixon... he
was an unprincipled puppet, which is the most dangerous kind. I was
very glad Kennedy won the election... I joked with him that we had
cast the deciding ballot in his election to the Presidency over that
son-of-a-bitch Richard Nixon. When he asked me what I meant, I explained
that by waiting to release the U-2 pilot Gary Powers until after the
American election, we kept Nixon from being able to claim that he
could deal with the Russians; our ploy made a difference of at least
half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed.
(A9)
James Reston, a journalist on the New
York Times newspaper, travelled to Vienna with President John
F. Kennedy when he met Khrushchev
for the first time He commented on this meeting three years later
in an article for his newspaper.
Khrushchev
had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs; he would have understood
if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him but when Kennedy
was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the
job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young
leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.
(A10)
Theodore Sorensen was a friend and speechwriter for John
F. Kennedy. He was with Kennedy in
Vienna and later wrote about the meeting between these two men.
Neither
Kennedy nor Khrushchev emerged victorious or defeated cheerful or
shaken. Each had probed the other for weakness and found none. Khrushchev
had not been swayed by Kennedy's reason and charm. Kennedy had not
been panicked by Khrushchev's tough talk
(A11)
Elie Abel's book, The Missiles of October: The Story of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, was published In 1966. In the book Abel comments
on John Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna.
There is
reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy's measure at their
Vienna meeting in June 1961, and decided this was a young man who
would shrink from hard decisions... There is no evidence to support
the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America's power. He questioned
only the President's readiness to use it. As he once told Robert Frost,
he came to believe that Americans are "too liberal to fight.'
(A12)
Mikhail
Gorbachev, Memoirs (1995)
Khrushchev's secret speech
at the XXth Party Congress caused a political and psychological shock
throughout the country. At the Party krai committee I had the opportunity
to read the Central Committee information bulletin, which was practically
a verbatim report of Khrushchev's words. I fully supported Khrushchev's
courageous step. I did not conceal my views and defended them publicly.
But I noticed that the reaction of the apparatus to the report was
mixed; some people even seemed confused.
I am convinced that history
will never forget Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's personality
cult. It is, of course, true that his secret report to the XXth Party
Congress contained scant analysis and was excessively subjective.
To attribute the complex problem of totalitarianism simply to external
factors and the evil character of a dictator was a simple and hard-hitting
tactic - but it did not reveal the profound roots of this tragedy.
Khrushchev's personal political aims were also transparent: by being
the first to denounce the personality cult, he shrewdly isolated his
closest rivals and antagonists, Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and
Voroshilov - who, together with Khrushchev, had been Stalin's closest
associates.
True enough. But in terms
of history and 'wider polities' the actual consequences of Khrushchev's
political actions were crucial. The criticism of Stalin, who personified
the regime, served not only to disclose the gravity of the situation
in our society and the perverted character of the political struggle
that was taking place within it - it also revealed a lack of basic
legitimacy. The criticism morally discredited totalitarianism, arousing
hopes for a reform of the system and serving as a strong impetus to
new processes in the sphere of politics and economics as well as in
the spiritual life of our country. Khrushchev and his supporters must
be given full credit for this. Khrushchev must be given credit too
for the rehabilitation of thousands of people, and the restoration
of the good name of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens who
perished in Stalimst prisons and camps.
Khrushchev had no intention
of analysing systematically the roots of totalitarianism. He was probably
not even capable of doing so. And for this very reason the criticism
of the personality cult, though rhetorically harsh, was in essence
incomplete and confined from the start to well-defined limits. The
process of true democratization was nipped in the bud.
Khrushchev's foreign policy
was characterized by the same inconsistencies. His active presence
in the international political arena, his proposal of peaceful co-existence
and his initial attempts at normalizing relations with the leading
countries of the capitalist world; the newly defined relations with
India, Egypt and other Third World states; and finally, his attempt
to democratize ties with socialist allies - including his decision
to mend matters with Yugoslavia - all this was well received both
in our country and in the rest of the world and, undoubtedly, helped
to improve the international situation.
But at the same time there
was the brutal crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956; the adventurism
that culminated in the Cuba crisis of 1962, when the world was on
the brink of a nuclear disaster; and the quarrel with China, which
resulted in a protracted period of antagonism and enmity.
All domestic and foreign
policy decisions made at that time undoubtedly reflected not only
Khrushchev's personal understanding of the problems and his moods,
but also the different political forces that he had to consider. The
pressure of Party and government structures was especially strong,
forcing him to manoeuvre and to present this or that measure in a
form acceptable to such influential groups.
(A13)
Alexander
Dubcek, Hope
Dies Last (1992)
My Russian friends learned
about Khrushchev's secret speech about two weeks after it happened.
A representative of the Central Committee came to the school and read
excerpts at their Party meeting. No text circulated. It was a strictly
confidential intra-Party announcement, and we foreign students were
told nothing, then or later. I, however, learned very quickly about
the speech and about many additional details which confirmed rumors
that had been circulating for months. Still, it was the official truth
that had the greatest impact.
To tell the truth, I was
not quite ready to hear much of what they were saying, and I was shocked
when they stated bluntly that Stalin had been a murderer. There were
many more shocks waiting to be sure, but this one was too sudden and
too momentous - the man had for so many years portrayed himself as
the embodiment of everything I wanted to believe in. Now I could no
longer separate Stalin from the bad side of things, could no longer
assume he did not know. Now it seemed he was the very cause of all
the woe.
A major source of these
revelations were the prisoners who were then starting to return from
the camps of the Gulag. Their stories quickly spread. It was more
and more obvious that all of them were innocent, which meant that
the other millions, those who could not return, those whose graves
were scattered across the country, had also been innocent. This included
the best-known victims of the great purges of the 1930S, a time I
remembered so vividly It was a terrifying thing to learn.
Apparently most other
foreign students, including those from Czechoslovakia, were insulated
from this ferment until well after the Twentieth Congress. I have
to admit that I hesitated to tell them what I was hearing from my
Russian friends. Since my very young years, I have been inclined to
think things through before making a move or a judgment, and this
was no exception. It took me time to digest this flood of depressing
news and to separate men from ideas and the good from the bad.
Among my Russian friends,
Khrushchev was the hero of the day. The story circulated that he had
dared to make the speech before the delegates against the will of
the majority of the leadership, who had been involved in the mass
repressions. In 1957 they conspired against Khrushchev and tried to
overthrow him, but he was smarter and won the struggle against Molotov
Kaganovich, and the rest.
(A14)
Herbert
Morrison,
An Autobiography (1960)
When Khrushchev came with Bulganin on 25 April, 1956,
to that by now famous
dinner with the Parliamentary Labour Party, he appeared at first to
be a quite new type of Russian leader - jolly, ready to laugh and
be friendly, and on the surface perfectly genuine. I suspected that
it was a post-Stalin policy of the Kremlin to choose extrovert, human
personalities for positions of power and public office so long as
they had brains and Communist convictions as well.
At the dinner Khrushchev
went through the motions of not wishing to make a formal speech, wanting
to leave the limelight to Bulganin, who was of course Chairman of
the Soviet Council of Ministers and Prime Minister. Bulganin spoke
conventionally and courteously, friendly greetings to Britain and
all that.
Mr. K. did speak, as I
knew he would. He started his speech pleasantly enough with harmless,
friendly material, but the longer he spoke the more he boasted. It
was the usual sort of thing. The Soviet Union had won the war. Britain
had done little. The men who most obviously showed their annoyance
at this were George Brown and Aneurin Bevan. Soon they were making
protests which Khrushchev could not pretend he had not heard.
This annoyed Khrushchev
very much and he lost his temper. He made it very plain that he disliked
being contradicted and that he was not accustomed to it. He was cross
also when Gaitskell raised the question of the Communist imprisonments
of Social Democrats.
Next day, on the eve of
their departure, I attempted to cheer Khrushchev up but his anger
had not subsided and he took the opportunity to denounce the entire
British Labour Party.
Khrushchev is undoubtedly
a clever man; either a dangerous one or a man who will be valuable
to the cause of peace. It is impossible to know yet whether he is
playing a part or being genuine.
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