8.6 Khrushchev’s defeat

On October 14, 1964, the plenum of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union freed N. S. Khrushchev from his state and party responsibilities, ostensibly at his own request, on account of his deteriorating health. This was the only successful palace coup in Soviet history. Obviously, Khrushchev’s numerous opponents learned from the lessons of the abortive 1957 coup. They prepared their move carefully: they chose an occasion when the first secretary was away from the capital, gained the assent of almost all the top leaders, and made sure they observed all party rules and regulations.

The charges leveled against Khrushchev by Mikhail Suslov at the plenum – not published at the time – included mismanagement of the economy and “errors” in foreign policy. Neither the Cuban missile crisis nor the deterioration of relations with China were mentioned, presumably because on these major issues there were no differences within the leadership. One gets the impression that although foreign policy setbacks weakened Khrushchev’s position, these were not the major reasons for his removal. The fact that the country had endured a couple of disastrously bad harvests was a great blow to him. He obviously failed to solve the most serious economic problem of the country – the inability of collectivized agriculture to provide the country with cheap and plentiful food. His successors were not much more successful than he, and this implies that Khrushchev was not entirely at fault, that the problems were inherent in the system.

Khrushchev’s opponents succeeded because he had managed to alienate large segments of the population, and most especially the political elite that really counted. Even if the common people had given him their support, it is doubtful this would have assured his political survival. Most of the charges against him were well founded: his constant changes in the administrative structure – they could hardly be called reforms – had created confusion and a sense of instability.

Nikita Khrushchev was the last Soviet leader with a firm belief in the superiority of Marxist-Leninist ideology. He never doubted the justice of his cause. Ironically, perhaps, it was the strength of his beliefs that was the source of much of his political troubles. Because he believed in the egalitarian promise of the revolution, he considered it his task to reduce inequality. He was well aware of the unseemly privileges of the elite: shopping in special shops for items otherwise unavailable, access to good apartments at a time of extraordinary shortage, connections that enabled them to send their children to the best and most prestigious schools. This elite, like most elites, was very successful in perpetuating itself.

Khrushchev attempted to narrow the ever-widening gap in the standard of living between the privileged and the rest of society. He made an effort to narrow wage differentials by raising the standard of living at the bottom of the social scale; collective farm peasants, unskilled workers, and pensioners benefited. The first secretary had a populist faith that the Soviet people could be mobilized against the vested interests of the bureaucracy. His ill-fated reform of destroying the ministerial structure of the economy and creating instead territorial organs, the sovnarkhozy, was conceived in this spirit. Not surprisingly, with his attacks on privilege and bureaucratic power he made himself unpopular among the politically powerful. However, the kind of mass participation he had in mind had little to do with pluralism or the genuine autonomy of social organizations. Mass mobilization, meaningless “voluntary” organizations, were of course not new in Soviet history. The practice of sending agitators to apartments to “explain” the issues in purposeless elections had been used before Khrushchev. But he made concerted efforts to revitalize the Komsomol and the trade unions.

Some of his ideas for mass mobilization were novel. Most significant of these was the druzhina, a “volunteer” people’s militia, that was to help the authorities in maintaining order. These came to be one of the least attractive forms of social control and enforcement of conformity. The authorities used the druzhiny for combating “parasitism,” and at times for harassing dissidents. The druzhiny often deteriorated into brawling bands, interfering with the lives of citizens.

From the point of view of the entrenched elite, Khrushchev’s educational reforms were particularly distasteful. The Soviet Union was supposed to be a country of the working classes, yet it was obvious that the workers possessed little prestige. The elite was able to reproduce itself by sending their children to schools of higher education, which alone within the Soviet system promised jobs of high status. Khrushchev’s worthy but utopian goal was to bring education and physical work closer together. Students and scholars from schools and universities were required to spend a day in a factory or farm and to learn a trade. The requirement was universally hated. On the one hand, specialists and scholars whose expertise was much needed spent useless hours on the factory floor or picking potatoes; on the other, the genuine workers considered it a waste of time to teach these uninterested and unmotivated students, who contributed practically nothing to the overall output.

A place at a university was a scarce commodity. Children of the intelligentsia, as everywhere, were in a good position to compete. By contrast, the working classes, and especially the collective farm peasantry, were greatly disadvantaged. In order to improve the chances of those who came from the lower classes, Khrushchev abolished tuition at institutions of higher education and made financial aid dependent not only on academic performance but also on financial need. These steps, while well intentioned, were not enough. Khrushchev took more radical measures. At first a certain number of places were put aside for candidates with a few years of work experience; they did not have to take competitive exams with students who had just completed high school. Despite these attempts, the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds did not substantially rise. In 1958, therefore, the regime took a more drastic step. It required students, after the completion of a compulsory eight-year course, to work in factories or farms for three years. The law was increasingly circumvented: it was absurd for talented young mathematicians, for example, to waste three valuable years learning to be proletarians.

Khrushchev, a fervent communist, saw inefficiencies and irrationalities all around him. It was the wide gap between reality and the promises of ideology that inspired his ceaseless attempts at change. Under his rule the conservative Soviet system was subjected to constant proposals for reform. His fertile mind and willingness to experiment, and his courage in undertaking ambitious reforms, were the appealing aspects of his rule. Often his reforms were hopeless because the problems he wanted to solve were essential features of the regime and therefore irremediable. But at other times he could be fairly blamed for attempting to introduce reforms that were insufficiently considered and created more trouble than they were worth. Those who accused him later of “hare-brained” schemes were not unjust.

Two of his reforms aimed at the party elite caused the most serious discontent among those who mattered most politically. One of these reforms aimed at preventing the ossification of the leadership and encouraging mobility within it. The new rule required that one-third of the membership of the governing bodies, both at the regional and the national level, had to be replaced at each election. The constant evaluations of the party secretaries at each level aimed at improving work, but it created a sense of instability. Those whose jobs were now subject to this scrutiny not surprisingly turned against the first secretary.

His second reform of the party created even greater dissatisfaction. It was a strange and ill-conceived idea: in 1962 Khrushchev decided to split party committees at the local level into agricultural and industrial sections, each substantially independent of the other. In this way it was thought that the local leaders would have greater expertise over the area they were supposed to supervise. But the unintended consequence of the reform was unfortunate: the industrial sector freed itself from the burden of helping the agricultural sector, producing further deterioration in the conditions of agriculture. This was the first “reform” of Khrushchev to be rescinded on his removal from power.

October 1964 marked the end of a period of relative optimism, a period during which many people inside and outside of the Soviet Union believed that the flaws of the system could be remedied. Khrushchev in spite of his unpromising background as Stalin’s bloody henchman, his crudity, his lack of constancy, and his numerous poor judgments, deserved credit for alleviating the worst aspects of Stalinism. During his tenure the Soviet Union ceased to be totalitarian; his rule can be better characterized as authoritarian. Ultimately his failures showed that the problems he recognized were inherent in the system that he wanted to save. It is understandable that when a Soviet leader, Gorbachev, once again embarked on a course of significant reforms, he also attempted to rehabilitate Khrushchev’s memory.

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