FREE ESSAY ON NIKITA KRUSHCHEV

NIKITA KRUSHCHEV

Nikita Khrushchev is undoubtedly one of the most important and interesting political
figures of the twentieth century. Rising from a background of extreme poverty, he became
an early supporter of the November 1917 bolshevik revolution. During the inter war years
he joined the Communist Party, and rose steadily through its ranks; by the outbreak of
World War II, he was firmly entrenched as one of the most important Soviet politicians
and statesmen. He continued on in this capacity throughout the war years, and rose to
power following the death of Stalin in 1953. Khrushchev then initiated a series of great
reforms, which completely changed the face of politics and indeed life in general in the
Soviet Union. Ultimately however, many of these reforms failed to achieve of their
primary goals, and these failures led not only to Khrushchev's personal political
downfall, but also to major changes in the global political climate.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born on 17 April 1894 in Kalinovka, a small village in
the province of Kursk, which lies just on the Russian side of the border with the
Ukraine. Sergi Nikanorovich Khrushev, his father, was an average poor peasant who left
the family each winter to work in the coalfields of the Donets Basin. Khrushev's family
lived in an area cursed with overpopulation; many people lived there because of the
fertile soil, which they hoped to use to feed their families. The overpopulated,
malnourished villages were centers for disease; diphtheria, typhus, and syphilis was
widespread. "This poverty was to dominate Khrushchev's memories of peasant life." 
Like most peasant boys, Khrushchev started work at an early age. His first job was
guarding the village animals. Later he worked as a herdsboy for the local land owner.
Khrushchev attended the village school for approximately two years between the ages of
seven and twelve. In a land of general illiteracy, even two years of formal education was
an important advantage. In 1909, at the age of fifteen, Khrushchev became an apprentice
fitter at the German owned Bosse engineering works in Yuzovka. The living and working
conditions in the Donbas, where Yuzovka was situated, "were as bad as the most lurid
political agitator could have depicted them, and Khrushchev's experience gave him the
experience gave him the emotional charge that seems genuinely to have lasted all of his
life." It also showed him the true face of capitalism.
In the summer of 1914, Russia was at war with the Axis Powers, but this had no effect on
Khrushchev. He avoided conscription into the army because he was a skilled worker, and at
the end of the year he moved to Rutchenko mechanical workshops. It was around this time
that he married, although not much is known of his wife. His political career started
when he helped organize strikes by Rutchkovo miners in 1915 and 1916. In Kalinovaka,
Khrushchev had felt the hopelessness of the land-hungry peasant and so got himself
actively involved with the Revolution. He was elected a member of the Rutchenkovo soviet,
whose first act was to disband the local police. 
With the whole of the Ukraine in German hands, Khrushchev went to his hometown of
Kalinovka where he took part in the division of the local land owner estates among the
peasants. But by far the most important event at this time was Khrushchev joining the
Bolshevik Party, which took place between April and autumn of 1918. In the autumn of
1918, he was sent to work within the political department of the 9th Army, which was
fighting the anti-Bolshevik General Denkin in the north of the Donbas. While Stalin was
maneuvering against Trotsky, Khrushchev was engaged in the important work of forming
party cells in the front line units of the 9th Army. In other words, he was becoming the
most junior sort of military commissar, the Party's representative at the Army's grass
roots. This was a very important job because it was the commissar's job to keep the
troops fighting since desertion was as bad in the Red Army as it was in the White. 
By the Spring of 1920, Denkin' army had been pushed back down the Black Sea coast to
Novorossisk, where part of it managed to escape to British and French navies. Units of
the 9th Army, including Khrushchev's, chased another contingent of White forces down the
coast to the Georgian seaports of Sochi, and with their subsequent surrender Khrushchev's
first military career came to an end. "It had been in no way particularly remarkable,
although one Soviet source claims that by the war's end Khrushchev was working with the
political department of the 9th Army which implies promotion. "Men like Khrushchev were
the noncommissioned officers of the Bolshevik armies, a group essential for victory." 
In the Donbas, one third of all the industrial enterprises were ruined, and Khrushchev,
along with other mineworkers, was drafted as an industrial soldier to restore them.
Khrushchev's job there involved a good deal of propaganda. He was to explain to the
miners the first great change, which was the introduction of the New Economic Policy
(NEP). At this time his first wife died, probably from malnourishment and/or disease,
leaving Khrushchev with a son and daughter. 
In 1922, Khrushchev was lucky enough to be sent to the Workers' Faculty of the Don
Technical College at Yuzovka. This was definite sign of the party's approval, as the
school's capacity was set at only 1500 students. Candidates were chosen based on their
loyalty to the regime and their proletariat background. Khrushchev was also appointed to
the position of Party secretary for the entire college. At the college (among other
subjects), the students were well versed in Marxism. "Marx's writing's struck Khrushchev
as almost a revalation, and he provided Khrushchev with an explanation of all that he and
his family had endured before the Revolution." In 1924, the year before graduation from
the technical college, Khrushchev married again to a Yuzovka schoolteacher named Nina.
They had three children, two girls and one boy. 
After graduation in April 1925, at the age thirty-one, Khrushchev was appointed Secretary
of the Petrovo-Marninsky District Party Committee. This put Khrushchev at the lowest
command post in the Party' s territorial hierarchy. In the same month that Khrushchev
went to the Petrovo-Marninsky District, Lazar Kaganovich, a staunch Stalinist, and later
major supporter of Khrushchev, became the head of the Ukrainian Party. It was from this
time forward that Stalin can truly be said to have dominated Khrushchev's career, a
domination that was to persist even after Stalin's death. The Party as Stalin created it,
disciplined to absolute subservience, with all decisions made at the top, suited a man
like Khrushchev. 
Khrushchev eagerly endorsed all Stalin's attacks on his opponents. At the 1st
All-Ukrainian Party Conference in October of 1926, (his first speech on such an important
occasion) he declared that the recent public confession of error, made by Trotzky,
Zinovyev and Kamenev was not sincere, and he demanded repressive measures be taken
against the opposition. Shortly after came his promotion to head of the Stalino Party's
organization department, in order to head the battle of the communists of the region
against the Zinovyevists and Trotskyists. All along Khrushchev followed the leadership of
his chief Kaganovich. 
In the autumn of 1929, Khrushchev moved to Moscow to become a student at the Academy of
Heavy Industry. The academy was one of a number of institutions established to train
Party members of correct proletarian background.
Stalin's fight with Bukharin, who led the 'Anti Five-Year Plans', came to an end in 1929,
when Bukharin was forced out of office. This was important to Khrushchev because in April
1930 his supporter Kaganovich replaced Bukharin and took over leadership of the Moscow
organization. At Kaganovich's order, and to weed out the many Bukharin supporters still
within the academy, a new Party cell was formed with Khrushchev as secretary. From this
point, Khrushchev's link to Kaganovich was clear. Khrushchev's new job as the Industrial
Academy's Party secretary brought him into Moscow politics at an excellent moment for his
political advancement. Stalin was well into the process of weeding out the untrustworthy
and unreliable from the Moscow party and Khrushchev, with Kaganovich's support, stood
only to gain from this. In January of 1931, Khrushchev was made Party secretary of the
Bauman district where the Academy was situated. Within months he moved on again to the
Command of the Kranoprensky district, which was of far greater industrial importance.
"Khrushchev's political rise after this point was spectacular." In 1933 he became
Kaganovich's No.2 in the Moscow City Party and he then took over leadership in early
1934, following being elected to the Soviet Central Committee at the 17th Party Congress
in February. This made Khrushchev one of the hundred or so most important Party members
in the country. His rapid advancement continued with his succeeding Kaganovich as the
leader of the Party for the whole Moscow region in 1935. In the five-year interim between
Khrushchev's arrival in Moscow and that point, he had risen from complete obscurity to
the leadership position of the most important of the regional Party organizations. 
The thirties were the time of the Blood Purges of Stalin's opponents. Stalin
systematically removed any opposition by means of a series of arrests and or executions,
(which Khrushchev later condemned in his secret speech of 1956). Of the nine Moscow
district Party secretaries appointed with Khrushchev in January of 1931, he was the only
one to be still in politics at the end of the decade. Some one hundred of the 139 members
of the Central Committee to which Khrushchev was elected in 1934 were arrested (and most
of them shot) by 1938. Khrushchev's Moscow speeches were full of praise for Stalin and he
was always careful to included Kaganovich in Moscow achievements. His speeches were also
loaded with abuse against Stalin's opponents. 
In August of 1937, a "powerful and ominous trio" came to the Ukrainian Capitol of Kiev,
composed of Molotov, Soviet Prime Minister and Stalin's right hand man; Yezhov, the head
of the NKVD; and Khrushchev. The three were accompanied by a special detachment of NKVD
troops from Moscow. The purpose of the trio was to get Khrushchev in power and to start
weeding out the Ukrainian nationalists who were seen as a threat in the time of the
stresses of the Five-Year Plan. An Assembly of the Ukrainian Central Committee was
summoned to meet the guests. Molotov opened the meeting with a long speech that demanded
that Koiser, the Ukrainian first secretary be dismissed and that Khrushchev take his
place. The Ukrainians refused. Molotov suggested that the Ukrainians should go to Moscow
to discuss the matter with the Soviet Central Committee and they agreed. Once in Moscow
they were seen by Stalin, Molotov and Kaganovich. It is not known what went on at the
meeting, but soon afterwards Koiser disapeared, and Khrushchev was announced to be his
successor as First Secretary of the Ukraine. As well as Koiser, most senior Party
officials from the Ukraine also disappeared at this time. "Khrushchev's take over of the
Ukraine is the most blatantly Stalinist episode in his career. In it we see a man who had
accepted total ruthlessness as a legitimate political weapon. [We see a man] who partly
from ignorance, and partly from a deep, if crude faith that appeared to justify any
means, was ready to tolerate the large scale murder and arrest of critics and supposed
opponents." It was this purge that labeled Khrushchev as 'Butcher of the Ukraine'. 
The Ukraine in 1938 accounted for 55 per cent of the total pig iron produced in the
Soviet Union. It produced 35 per cent of the steel and over half of its total coal
production. It had an estimated population of 40 million, so for Khrushchev to be given
control of it was a sign of Stalin's confidence in him as a Stalinist and an
administrator. His main task in the Ukraine was to restore its agriculture, which was
catastrophically low due to effects of collectivization. By 1935, after two harvests
under his control, Khrushchev declared the grain problem solved and went on to launch an
offensive against the wretched state of livestock farming. Moscow approved of his work
and he was launched as an agricultural expert on a national scale. The Pravda published
his speeches at greater length that other senior members and he was allowed to take
credit for the important new system of incentive payments to farmers first tried in the
Ukraine and then applied to the rest of the country. His growth in stature as a national
figure was matched by the promotion to candidate member of the Politburo in 1938, and
full membership a year later. 
During World War II, Khrushchev was responsible for the amalgamation into the Ukraine of
territory annexed by the Soviet Union from both Poland and Romania. He was made senior
member of the War Council, Southwest Directorate following the German invasion of 1941,
and was responsible in this capacity for the representation of the Party's highest level
at the front. It was also during the war that the first personal conflicts between
Khrushchev and Stalin took place. Stalin's indecision and unpreparedness at the outset of
hostilities did not sit well with Khrushchev, whose Ukraine was the first SSR to bear the
brunt of the German offensive. 
From a point almost immediately following the liberation by Soviet troops of Kiev in
1943, Khrushchev was heavily involved in the restoration of the Ukraine after its
devastation at German hands. This was the second occasion on which Khrushchev found
himself rebuilding after war, but in this case of course, the rebuilding to be done was
on a much larger scale than previously. The war had not only destroyed the Ukraine which
he had worked so hard to restore; it also took his eldest son who was killed in action as
a fighter pilot. The fact that Khrushchev was entrusted by Stalin with the positions of
both Ukrainian Party leader and Prime Minister, a position to which he was appointed near
war's end, was another major mark of the latter's confidence in his ability to
effectively manage the reconstruction of the Ukraine.
In 1949, Stalin summoned Khrushchev to Moscow as head of the Party organization and, at
the same time, to include him in the Central Committee secretariat. For the three
following years, Khrushchev would be closer to Stalin then ever before. It is believed
that Stalin did this for no reason other than to counterbalance Melenkov, who after the
death of Zhdanov had acquired too much power. Soon after his arrival in Moscow it was
apparent that Khrushchev had upset the balance of power in the party leadership to the
detriment of Melenkov. Apart from Stalin, they were the most powerful members by far in
the five-man secretariat, which looked after the day to day running of the Party. 
On March 4th 1953, Stalin died from a stroke and the news two days later caused as much
disbelief as relief among the Soviet Leadership. The death of Stalin and liquidation of
Beria, brought Malenkov's rivalry with Khrushchev to a critical point with the advantages
lying with Melenkov. On March 7th it was announced that he was to be Prime Minister as
well as senior Party Secretariat. Seven days later, since the majority of senior
politicians were in fact Khrushchev's allies, the Soviet leaders forced Melenkov of his
position and Khrushchev took control of the Party. Not long afterward, Malenkov resigned
from the premiership but kept his seat on the Party Presidium.
Khrushchev's term of office was marked by the reorganization and reformation of almost
every facet of life in the Soviet Union. Political reforms initiated by Khrushchev
included a massive de Stalinist campaign, as a result of which the heavy repression of
the Soviet People came largely to an end. Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Shepilov
formed the 'Anti-Party Group' and attempted to oust Khrushchev. But Khrushchev was too
popular in the Central Committee and they decided not to side with the Anti-Party Group.
Shortly after, Zhukov was removed, Bulganin was pensioned off, Molotov was appointed
Ambassador to Outer Mongolia, Sheplev received a teaching job and Kaganovich and Melenkov
were both assigned to remote industrial enterprises. Key members of the secret police
organization known as the MVD were ousted from their offices; the organization itself was
broken up, and finally reconstituted as the KGB, a body put under the direct control of
the Party so as to be impossible to use as a tool of personal power. This was accompanied
by the mass release of political prisoners from labour camps (most to go straight to the
Virgin Land scheme as 'volunteers') and their reintroduction into civilian life, and the
easing of political repression of the people. At Khrushchev's order, the secret police
were forbidden to run impromptu trials, arrest people without basis, and generally
terrorize the populace as they had done under Stalin. Agricultural reforms included the
consolidation of collective farms to be more efficient, and numerous reductions in taxes
and other hindrances to both state and independent production. Workers in the
agricultural industries then had much greater impetus to increase their production, as by
doing so they would ensure surpluses, which they could now use to increase their standard
of living. Industry and education systems were also reorganized by Khrushchev in attempts
to increase productivity in all sectors. He enjoyed the success of the Sputnik in 1957,
and bountiful harvest of 58. Khrushchev challenged the West in Berlin and he involved
himself in such places the Congo, Indonesia, and Cuba. He risked losing his alliance with
Mao Tse-tung, which would have split the communist world in two. He visited the United
States and called for peace at Camp David. And later, he traveled to New York to embrace
Castro and to pound his shoe at the United Nations. "In his frustration" [at his]
"failure to produce a world triumph, one which would, among other things dispel a
political storm at home, he resorted to his greatest gamble and brought the world to the
brink of nuclear war in Cuba." In the end, Khrushchev's reforms did not prove successful
in many respects however, and it was this fact that led to his downfall.
"The single most important factor in the events which led up to Khrushchev's fall in the
autumn of 1964 was the failure of the Soviet economy to sustain its remarkable
performance of the mid-1950s." Khrushchev failed to meet his economic goals, one of which
was the goal to outproduce the United States by 1970. Agriculture, consumer goods, and
heavy industry were all below predicted levels. In the case of agriculture, the predicted
increase in farm production was seventy percent but in reality it only rose by 1.7
percent, which wasn't even enough to keep up with the growing population. The failure of
Khrushchev's Seven-Year Plan wasn't the only problem that Khrushchev had to deal with.
The U2 affair and the Paris Summit put an end to his radical schemes for cutting defence
costs. Eventually, as numerous plans put forth by Khrushchev failed to reach their
performance goals, and as others failed outright, the number of Khrushchev's detractors
began to grow. The invasion of Hungary and the Cuban Missile crisis added to his
unpopularity. All these factors resulted in the inevitable ousting of Khrushchev on the
13th of October 1964. Khrushchev retired and lived the rest of his life in peace with his
family until his death from a heart attack on September 11, 1971, at the age of 78. 
In the end, Khrushchev will be remembered as a skilled administrator, but somewhat
unlucky and ineffective reformer. During his tenure as general secretary of the Ukrainian
Party, the standards of living were raised, industrial and agricultural outputs were
increased, and every effort was made to de-Stalinize and better social programs
throughout the USSR. As leader of the national Communist Party however, many of his
policies failed to achieve the effects he intended, to the detriment of his personal
power, and in some cases, the heightening of tensions between east and west. Nonetheless,
the unforeseen effects of these policies were extremely significant, and it is as a
result of them that Khrushchev will be remembered. 
Bibliography
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