How successful was Khrushchev as Soviet Leader?

by peterealdoc2 (student)

‘The man with baggy trousers from the Ukraine’, described by Hughes and Wallace, was never considered the heir to Stalin. However, by 1955 Nikita Khrushchev was the dominant member of the post-Stalinist collective leadership, a feat accomplished by his force of personality and political skill. Several similarities can be seen between Khrushchev’s rise to power and that of his infamous predecessor, a route that brought to power two great and influential Leaders, and two very different natures of leadership. Nevertheless, although Khrushchev was a great Leader, he was not a great Soviet Leader; through his agricultural and industrial policies, implementation of De-Stalinisation and in particular his Secret Speech, Khrushchev proved himself to be a leader that was too different too soon for the USSR.

Through his rise to power, Khrushchev appeared to have the makings of a successful Soviet Leader by outmanoeuvring his political opponents in a similar way that Stalin did. Through his working class roots, Ukrainian rather than Georgian, Khrushchev rose through Soviet ranks due to his organisational abilities just like ‘comrade card index’, and built up a power base by ‘recruiting and keeping officers loyal to himself’ according to Service and promoting his supporters into the Central Committee , as Stalin did with the Politburo and Orgburo. He appeared an unobtrusive figure, a moderatist, underestimated by his colleagues whilst possessing a ruthless ability to eliminate political rivals; further to this, none of the other candidates matched Khrushchev in persuasiveness and the strength of personality which ensured that he was successful in his rise to power. Again similarly to Stalin, Khrushchev’s power base was the most important aspect of his ascent, especially the influence he had in the army, which proved crucial in outmanoeuvring opponents. After an attempt by Politburo members to remove him from power, the success of which was prevented by Khrushchev’s astute political persuasiveness as he referred the matter to a Central Committee full of his own supporters; this ensured Khrushchev was ultimately successful in his rise to Leader of the Soviet Union, although his initial position very fragile.

In order to successfully consolidate his power, Khrushchev embarked upon a process of De-Stalinisation, which was necessary and for the Soviet Union and could have led to his success as Soviet Leader. Nevertheless, the way he went about the implementation of this policy, in particular the oration of his Secret Speech, failed to take into account the profound psychological effect the desecration of Stalin’s character would have on the people the former leader brought to power, to the extent that Lynch asserts that ‘Khrushchev had provided the grounds for his own eventual dismissal’. De-Stalinisation had the aim of improving the population’s very low quality of life, a significant proportion of which were living below the poverty line, and was motivated by Khrushchev’s genuine ideological desire to see Communism popular again. With de-Stalinisation came beneficial social reforms that saw social benefits including pensions, education and medicinal care increase by 8% annually between 1956 and 1965. In order to improve living conditions, minimum wage was initially raised in 1956 to 27 roubles in the countryside and 35 roubles in towns, only to then increase further to between 40 and 45 roubles by 1959. Censorship laws were eased slightly, allowing great literature like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

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However this was not the case with all books such as Dr. Zhivago as it became clear in Khrushchev’s Russia that only certain critical literature was permitted to be published; critics of Stalin. This public denigration of the once revered leader was a key aspect of de-Stalinisation, characterised by the Leader’s Secret Speech in 1956. This secret speech had ulterior motives; a large part of Khrushchev’s motivation for it was the opportunity it presented to discredit his political rivals. It was a risk, a stroke of ultimately misplaced intuition typical of the nature of his leadership, but not right for the USSR just after Stalin’s death. Lynch asserts that Khrushchev’s speech was ‘a selective one...it was very important that the illegality and terror he was exposing should be seen as the crimes of one individual’. For decades, whether genuine or not, veneration of Stalin had become common practice and the people were institutionalised. To suddenly and publically not only remove this but reverse it completely left in particular the politicians he had brought to power perplexed and frightened. The effects of the secret speech, in particular the undermining of party security, translated to the population as well; a popular poem from the time described ‘we built upon granite, but now the stone crumbles, dissolves and melts at our feet’. It also prompted active opposition to Khrushchev’s rule, orchestrated by the party members unhappy with their Leader’s denouncing. Therefore with his premature secret speech, Khrushchev ensured that de-Stalinisation became ‘a double-edged sword’ in the words of McCauley, which cancelled out any success the policy might otherwise have had.

Khrushchev’s real chance to consolidate his power and unite the party rather than divide it was with his agricultural policies. The emphasis he put on food production rather than heavy industry was enough of a difference to clearly outline a different domestic approach to that of Stalin, and with this instead of the secret speech, Khrushchev’s colleagues may well have been more united behind him for the Virgin Land scheme as they were forced to admit collectivisation was not successful. Until the Virgin Land scheme, all signs pointed to Khrushchev having a success in agriculture that Stalin never achieved. He was in touch with his peasant roots, spent time in the countryside with them throughout his career, and was very motivated and enthusiastic to pioneer a new agricultural policy for the USSR. Despite this, ‘enthusiasm was not enough’ asserts Service, ‘it could not make up for lack of detailed planning’; this lack of detailed planning was to become a constant recurrence throughout the Khrushchev era. His leadership style was to lead with inspiration and intuition, leaving the toothcomb to someone else to check the legitimacy of policies. Another leadership trait was his close personal involvement with schemes; according to Lynch, ‘this close personal involvement had its obvious advantages, but it also made him vulnerable...when policies failed he appeared directly responsible in a way a less energetic leader would not have been’. This was the case with the Virgin Land scheme, where Khrushchev inspired hundreds of thousands of young Russians to immigrate to Siberia and cultivate previously unused land, without stopping to think that it was unused for a reason.

The extent of this scheme cannot be underestimated; almost 30 million hectares were involved in it; as McCauley states ‘it truly was a nationwide plan’. However, although he should have delegated far more effectively, the administrators behind the scenes let Khrushchev down by failing to organise adequate facilities such as housing for the emigrants, as well as little or no research being done into what crops could flourish in the area and more importantly which ones couldn’t; Lynch goes on to say that ‘Khrushchev had not been well served by the officials responsible for turning his schemes into reality’. This lack of suitable crops led directly to the calamity of ‘maize mania’ where wholly unsuitable crops were sowed that couldn’t have survived the climate, and the country was saved from famine only through the importation of grain from North America. In the words of Lynch, ‘what had begun as a grand design to enable the USSR to overtake western countries...could in the end be sustained only by dependence on supplies from those very countries’. Ultimately, the Virgin Land scheme failed due to its lack of both foresight as well as lack of organisation and administration, with the annual growth of agriculture falling from 4.2% to 2.8% between 1961 and 1965. Nevertheless, because of the nature of Khrushchev’s leadership, he assumed personal responsibility for this failure and his whole agricultural policy was deemed unsuccessful as a result.

The same lack of foresight and policy understanding was prevalent in Khrushchev’s industrial policies as well. Although the focus on consumer goods was welcome and necessary, it was not entirely successful due to lack of commitment on the part of the state. Khrushchev understood the needs of the people and went about making new policies with real enthusiasm in his famously forthright, declaring ‘it’s no good everyone having the right ideology if they have to walk around with no trousers’. However this resulted in some corners being cut; McCauley goes as far to say that ‘had he sat down and read the small print of the new decrees he would have been forced to rethink his ideas’. This lack of foresight was displayed in industry, where, coupled with the lack of proper application of skill, portrayed through the building of fifty thousand flats with low quality supplies so that they were soon dilapidated and their living conditions poor. Further to this, Khrushchev’s colleagues were unhappy with both the consumer focus and his attempts to decentralisation, which they lost power and influence from. As Khrushchev had neither Stalin’s terror nor Brezhnev’s bribery to act as an incentive, opposition mounted against him. Five year plans were abandoned in favour of seven year plans that still did not even nearly meet targets; in 1963, 107.5 million tonnes of were produced despite a target of more than 180 million tonnes being set. Although Russia enjoyed a very public success in the international Space Race, this too came at a cost to Khrushchev’s success as he was forced to divert spending from other areas, including the consumer focus he had pledged in order to compete with NASA. A particularly detrimental cut was in military budget; as Soviet armed forces were reduced from 3.6 million to 2.4 million in 1960, Khrushchev forfeited his main power base. Despite the increase in consumer goods, the legacy of Stalin’s Russia was such that industrial success was judged in terms of iron and steel output, and many prominent party members were unable to come to terms with heavy industry taking a backseat as other areas of the economy were allowed to develop. This lack of success resulted in Khrushchev losing the faith of the Central Committee as well as the military, his main source of support, and also largely contributed to his loss of power.

Khrushchev was a persuasive Leader with a strong personality, but the party did not want such a figure after their last one of those brought his country and his people nothing but harm. Therefore Khrushchev, with his risk-taking and intuitive approach, came to power at the wrong time in the USSR and was not the right man to succeed the despot in 1953. The legacy of Stalinist Russia was just too much for one man to overcome in such a short space to time and it was Khrushchev’s mistake to attempt to so with such haste. With the party, according to McCauley ‘yearning for a manager rather than a leader’, the Pravda’s derision of Khrushchev as ‘alien to the party’ in 1964 was entirely accurate; he was alien to what the party had become under Stalinist rule, and although his ability to be a successful Leader cannot be questioned, he could not be a successful Soviet Leader as the contrast Khrushchev marked from his predecessor, whether good or bad, was too much for the USSR to contemplate.

Ciara Lally

22.06.2010