Khrushchev introduced many new different schemes for agriculture and industry. There were the Virgin Land Schemes, 13 million hectares in the West would be ploughed up and 20 million tonnes of grain would be produced. Collective farms were reduced in numbers, and tractor farms were closed down, instead tractors were produced for the farms. However, the tractors were often faulty and new parts and replacements were hard to get. Khrushchev also thought that growing maize would be a good idea because it would give food for the animals and produce grain. However, Khrushchev did not plan these schemes very well, he generalised too much and geographically the site was not good.
Industrially, Khrushchev reduced working hours and strictness was relaxed. There were separate councils for regional areas to make decisions of their own, after Stalin they were not able to make any fresh decisions.
Space Research was also a huge factor; Khrushchev poured a lot of money to compete against USA to be the first in space. There was less money for consumer goods and food and that meant that the price of food went up and queues for food were again very long. Russians were getting embarrassed of their country and their leader, he was socially rude and refused to take any advice and failed in the Cuban Missile Crisis, with all these reasons against him he was forced to resign.
Once Khrushchev had resigned, Communist leaders believed that Khrushchev had gone to far in trying to reform the Soviet Union. They appointed Brezhnev, who was in office at the time of Stalin, so he preferred not make any reforms but to keep the country as still as possible. Writers and intellectuals were arrested, in case of any new ideas that might be thought up.
Once Brezhnev had died Yuri Andropov who used to be head of the KGB and was heavily involved in clamping down any injustices took over. He found out that the USSR was in huge debt and a third of the national income was from the black market. The money that was generously spent on the space program was a huge amount and the debt ran to thousands of millions of roubles. Andropov wanted to crack down on corruption but he later died February 1984. He was succeeded briefly be a sickly 72 year old but died in March 1985.
