Nikita Khrushchev

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Khrushchev in 1962

“”About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don't like us, don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

—Nikita Khrushchev to Western ambassadors in Moscow, a little over 35 years before the dissolution of the USSR.

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Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) held the title of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1964, which made him effectively the leader of the country during this time. He's known for starting his premiership with a bang by denouncing the brutality and totalitarianism of his predecessor Joseph Stalin and embarking on reforms to end the Stalinist cult of personality. The slight loosening of repression and censorship in the Soviet Union during this time is known as the Khrushchev Thaw. He was a key figure in the early Cold War, overseeing Soviet responses to the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1958–1959, and the 1960 U-2 incident. He also supported the Soviet space program, seeing the successful launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite. The Cuban Missile Crisis, a revolution in Hungary, and a major ideological split with China severely tested his leadership and eroded his popularity. This, combined with the fact that his policies largely failed to improve living standards in the Soviet Union, resulted in his political downfall in 1964. Despite this, he was the first Soviet leader who got to retire peacefully instead of die in office. So that's at least something.

Prior to his rise to power, Khruschev worked as a metalworker in Ukraine before becoming involved in labor activism and then participating in the Russian Civil War as a political commissar. He gradually rose through the ranks of the Communist Party by attaching himself to Lazar Kaganovich, a protégé of Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev was a loyal supporter of Stalin's reign, and he became a member of the Soviet Politburo in 1939. He was a willing participant in Stalin's various bloody crimes, including those against Ukraine. During World War II, Khrushchev was the head of the Communist Party in Ukraine and witnessed many Nazi atrocities firsthand. After the war, he returned to Moscow and loyally remained Stalin's advisor until Stalin died in 1953. The death of Stalin sparked a struggle for power between Khrushchev and Georgy Malenkov, who was backed by the murderous secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria. Khrushchev came out on top, and then he made his greatest contribution to humanity by having Beria executed.

Khrushchev's legacy is mixed. On the one hand, he did curb many of the worst excesses of the Soviet system, and he did play his part in keeping the Cold War from escalating into a nuclear war. On the other hand, he was complicit in Stalin's mass murders, violently suppressed dissent in Hungary, and oversaw the construction of the Berlin Wall. His successor as the leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, would oversee the Era of Stagnation as the failures of the Soviet system would begin catching up to it.

Leading the Soviet Union

Khruschev is most known for separating himself from Stalin through his rolling back of political repression in the Soviet Union. This meant "Russian writers who had been suppressed began to publish again" and "Western ideas about democracy began to penetrate universities and academies." Khruschev also gave a speech to the Congress of the CPUS in 1956 which denounced Stalin, his crimes, and his "cult of personality."

This speech was incredibly controversial, directly leading to massive pro-Stalin demonstrations in the Republic of Georgia (Stalin's birthplace). Meanwhile, anti-Soviet sentiments in Poland and Hungary were both emboldened by this new era, leading to massive protests against the Soviet government.

Although society was more free than it was under Stalin, that is not saying much. Khrushchev infamously refused to allow Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago to be published within the USSR, viewing it as anti-Soviet. When the book won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, Pasternak declined it largely due to the Soviet backlash against the work. Khrushchev would later admit this was a massive mistake on his part, although the novel would not be made available to the people of Russia until 1987.

At the end of the day, "Khrushchev's line on art and literature changed frequently during his years in power, but he never wavered on the principle of party control. He rejected official attempts to micro-manage the creative process but insisted that it was the prerogative of the party, not the writers and artists themselves, to determine, 'the main aim of creative work.'" Even if Khrushchev was more generous with what the Soviet government allowed people to publish, it was still the Soviet government that decided what was published, meaning any form of free speech in the nation was essentially an illusion. The ability to write more-or-less freely but the inability to publish led to the samizdat underground self-publication, which included among other works, Doctor Zhivago and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

Was he really an "Anti-Stalin"?

Khrushchev (l) and Stalin (r) in 1936 at the time of the purges

Even though Khrushchev is quite famous for coming out against many of the actions Stalin engaged in, it is important to remember he played a part in Stalin's government. Khrushchev was even described as "a zealous supporter of Stalin" during the time of his political career when Stalin was in power.

Khrushchev even played a role a particularly infamous episode in Soviet history, The Great Terror, where "at least 750,000 people were executed" most of whom being widely believed to have been totally innocent. Khrushchev was always rather careful to discuss his place in the Stalin government after he became head of state, with one biographer of his saying:

Khrushchev was especially sensitive to the question of his own complicity in Stalin's crimes. He insisted that the "leading cadres of the party" had not known that innocent people were being arrested in the purges but then contradicted himself almost immediately, claiming that he had successfully prevented the fabrication of political cases in Moscow and Ukraine. Resurrecting the lies of 1953, he sought to blame as much as possible on Beria's manipulation of an ailing Stalin and stated that Stalin's abuses had come to light only after Beria's fall. He praised Stalin's commitment to communism and his crushing of the enemies of the Revolution.

They go on to note that this "revealed that de-Stalinization was a two-edged sword; many of the 'de-Stalinizers,' Khrushchev among them, were as vulnerable as their opponents to questions about their activities before 1953."

Crushing protests and creating tankies

Although the term is primarily used to describe supporters of Stalin, it was during Khrushchev's tenure the term "tankie" first came into use in left-wing circles. Specifically, the word began "as an insult for members of the Communist Party of Great Britain" who supported the use of tanks to crush the revolution in Hungary in 1956

The revolution came about in response to Soviet oppression of the people of Hungary. Khrushchev appointed anti-Stalinist Imre Nagy as premier in response to this, and allowed Soviet tanks to be taken out of Hungary. However, Nagy later attempted to abolish one-party rule and wanted Hungary to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, both of which the Soviet Union felt were unacceptable. As such, the only possible option left was an invasion, which occurred and which allowed the Soviets to once again have control over Hungary. Nagy was executed by the Soviet government for treason in 1958.

A famous fake quote

One of the most famous quotes from Khrushchev, especially from those on the right who warn of "creeping socialism" is "We can't expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until one day they will awaken to find they have communism." The quote has a long history, going back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it's totally made up.

See also

• Leon Trotsky — generally recognized as the more Anti-Stalin Russian politician.