Following the death of Joseph
Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union came into a period of transition. Georgy
Malenkov was the dictator's heir as Premier while Stalin's position as First
Secretary of the Communist Party went to Nikita Khrushchev. Other positions were continued by their
respective members of the Presidium, the highest committee in the SU.
This separation of powers was defended when Minister of Internal Affairs
Lavrentiy Beriya was arrested and executed in secret. Beriya had headed
Soviet security with extensive powers and aided in the spread of Communism
throughout Eastern Europe by the overthrow of governments. Rumors stated
that Beriya was working toward a military coup in Moscow itself, and an alliance
of Khrushchev and Malenkov managed to defeat him.
Khrushchev began to institute
further reforms and, in 1956 at the 20th Party Congress, gave his "Secret
Speech." Point by point over the course of four hours, Khrushchev
gave a description of Stalin's cruelty and abuse of power. He later
recalled, "congress listened to me in silence. As the saying goes, you could
have heard a pin drop." The initial speech was behind closed doors,
although it was later repeated slowly to Eastern European leaders and finally
published, though stamped "not for press." Stalin remained an
icon, but his reputation was destroyed along with those who had supported him
during the Great Purge. Outrage exploded on both sides, including four
days of rioting in Stalin's homeland of Georgia. Most sentiment supported Khrushchev as a new
leader for a new Soviet Union.
Foreign Minister Vyacheslav
Molotov, who had long served under Stalin, received much of the flack from
Khrushchev's speech and was demoted. He joined with other conservatives
such as Malenkov and Old Bolshevik Lazar Kaganovich, determined to knock
Khrushchev out of power. They sought a political maneuver, arguing before
the Central Committee to remove Khrushchev, but eventual discussion prompted
them to ensure that they could remove him before acting. Molotov
approached Premier Bulganin, who wavered and would not give total support as Khruschev
controlled the public at large as well as the military under Minister of
Defense Georgy Zhukov. Zhukov and Khrushchev had served together in the
Ukraine, and Zhukov had begun the calls for reform and the ousting of Stalin's
abuses even before the Secret Speech. Any action against Khrushchev would
be opposed by Zhukov and, in turn, the military he controlled.
It was clear that their efforts
would meet with at most partial success unless they ousted Zhukov. Now,
rather than targeting the chairman himself, they began a plot to remove Zhukov
from office. He had risen to great new heights, becoming the most
decorated figure in the Soviet military. After a meeting of the Presidium
in June of 1957 when the general was granted full membership in the Presidium,
Molotov mentioned to Khrushchev that Zhukov's fame as Minister of Defense was
likely to make him Premier, like Bulganin. Khrushchev became nervous
about losing his engineered popularity due to the fall of Stalinism to Zhukov
and began to orchestrate the general's removal, effectively making Khrushchev a
conspirator in the plot against himself. That October, while visiting
Albania, Zhukov was voted into forced retirement.
Khrushchev began pushing for
military reform, attempting to undo Zhukov's policy of the political agencies
of the military reporting to commanding officers before the Communist
Party. The move lost him a great deal of support politically as it became
evident he was consolidating power. By the beginning of spring the next
year, the Presidium voted to remove him as they had Zhukov. Khrushchev
was demoted to managing agricultural materials in the Ukraine, where he would
live out the rest of his life.
With the conservatives back in
control of the Soviet Union, they attempted to recast the nation away from
Khrushchev's policies. The Virgin Lands Campaign began to fail, leading
to a new campaign of improving production on existing land and increasing sophistication
in communal farms. The use of tanks in Hungary in 1956 was seen as widely
unpopular, and the USSR was saved from international scorn only by the timely
seizure of the Suez Canal. Molotov set to work rebuilding the Soviet
image, capitalizing on Russian advantages in the Space Race to encourage
communist action in other countries as Colonialism ended. Relations with
Mao's China improved, and gradually China, Mongolia, North Korea and later countries
in Southwest Asia were inducted into the Warsaw Pact.
As Communism spread, the West became
increasingly nervous. In 1960, an American U2 spy plane was shot down,
but long talks at the Four Powers Summit enabled the East and West to divide up
the world into agreed upon spheres of influence. The Cuban-Turkish
Missile Crisis tested the agreement, which brought about suspicious but
peaceful coexistence as both sides removed weapons from near the other's
border. The twentieth century continued, and the Soviet economy stagnated
under conservative rule and eventually gave way to introductions of minor
capitalism through East Germany and Poland. Similar experiments went
forward in China after the death of Mao. Liberalization proved to be beneficial
for the Communist nations, who thrived while the economies of the West
struggled to recuperate from the recessions of the 1970s. Massive
expenditures in governments such as Britain and America proved beneficial for a
time in the 1980s, but, by the 1990s, attention shifted to the Communists, who
by 2010 were the world economic leaders as the West attempted to repay its
massive tax capital.
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In reality, the "Anti-Party
Group," as they were dubbed by Khrushchev during speeches in his defense,
did not wait to gain support from the military. Their action to remove
Khrushchev was supported in the Presidium, but the meeting of the Central
Committee supported him, especially Zhukov, who gave an affirming speech that
the military backed Khrushchev. The
political careers of Khrushchev's opponents were ended as Khrushchev went on to
become Premier; Molotov was sent as ambassador to Mongolia, Malenkov was made
director of a hydroelectric plant, and Kaganovich became director of a potassium
factory. Later, Khrushchev would be
overthrown by conservative elements in 1964 under Leonid Brezhnev.
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