Nikita Khrushchev : The Red Tsar
Stalinist and Reformer : The Soviet Head of State who denounced Stalin.
The Counterpart of John F. Kennedy who brought the world to the brink of disaster with the Berlin
Wall and the Cuban-Missile Crisis.
September 1959 – Khrushchev flies to the USA. He brought the whole family to show ‘Communism
with a human face’. The family spends 12 days touring the USA. A journey to a new, unknown
world.
Rockefeller (American business magnate) referred to Khrushchev as a public politician. ‘If you have
come to America before the revolution, you would have been a great leader of our trade unions’.
Khrushchev’s response was ‘which trade unions? I am a great leader of the greatest
country in the world’.
The international media dubbed him ‘hurricane Nikita’. Political scientist, William Taubman,
referred to him as ‘vintage Khrushchev. He was voluble, he was loud, he was angry and
provocative’.
Khrushchev started this policy of crisis: the Suez crisis, two Berlin crises and ended with the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Nina Khrushcheva (granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev – referring to what her grandmother said to
her) ‘the Khrushchev of 1962 was not the Khrushchev of 1956 : absolute power corrupts
absolutely.
‘The kiss of power, especially the kiss of power in the Kremlin is deadly’.
Sergei Khrushchev suggested that ‘Khrushchev wanted to tell people the truth about Stalin’.
William Taubman suggested that ‘Khrushchev felt Stalin’s death as a kind of thunderclap’.
They had been for so long by the myth of Stalin’. ‘Khrushchev’s education was minimal, he
probably had no more than two years of elementary school education – he stood out amongst
other miners for his intelligence’.
Khrushchev on tape: ‘I was immediately fascinated by Stalin. We had been invited to Moscow,
young Party members from Donetsk, and we had our photograph taken with him. He exuded great
humanity. We were incredibly pleased that we have the chance to talk to him’.
William Taubman – ‘Khrushchev played a role which helped him to rise. And the role was
of a kind of court jester in Stalin’s court. Khrushchev was a simple man in the sense
that he was uneducated and he played that up. It had the effect of lulling Stalin’s
suspicions and vigilance.’
‘What allowed Khrushchev to play the fool so effectively was that, in some ways, he was a fool’.
At the end of his life, Khrushchev stated that he had blood up to his elbows. He signed death
warrants for many people.
The Secret Speech of 1956 – for the first time in Soviet Russian history, the leader came out and
said that we made mistakes, we apologies to the nation. Khrushchev had the courage to
denounce the man who had committed such horrors – a holocaust in the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev wanted humanitarian socialism, believing in the superiority of the system.
Matthias Uhl historian – ‘Khrushchev implemented very important reforms, without which
the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed far sooner’. The most important thing he
did was to liberate the peasants. You have to remember that the whole of the Soviet industrial
apparatus was constructed on the bones of peasants, who deprived of their rights. They were
squeezed in order to raise money for industry and the economy. Now for the first time they were
able to taste the fruits of socialism as families were given their own apartments.
1957 – the festival of international youth. There were incredible attempts to try to
decentralise the communist monolith in every area.
,Khrushchev wants an easing of tensions, but he does not question the system itself. That is why he
has the Hungarian uprising suppressed in 1956.
‘Khrushchev is the one who brings the Soviet Union up to standard in the second half of
the twentieth century’. (Matthias Uhl) Only during Khrushchev’s rule did the Soviet Union
really become a global player in the Cold War.
In 1958, Khrushchev issues an ultimatum that causes a political sensation. He demands the
withdrawal of Western troops from West Berlin so it can become a free city, independent of West
Germany.
William Taubman – one of the problems with Khrushchev’s reforms both in home and
foreign policy is that he did not think them through. He began and hoped to improvise along
the way. Khrushchev wanted to guarantee the future of the communist states of Eastern Europe,
including East Germany. He did not realise that there would be immense resistance.
The irony is that the man who wanted to ease the cold war, helped to trigger two of the
cold war’s most dangerous crises – he did not want nuclear war and he did not want to
use those weapons.
The fact that the transfer of power was peaceful, is a consequence of Khrushchev’s policies.
He may have been a failure as head of state, yet putting an end to mass murder makes him a
great leader.
, An analysis of Nikita Khrushchev – Joseph Torigian
Khrushchev was the first peasant leader of the USSR, he was a zealous reformer who tore down the
edifice of Stalinism. Prisoners were freed, Communism was liberalised and life was improved for
millions of people. However, he threw all this away with international theatrics that ultimately led
to a soviet coup.
Political Science and the Fall of Khrushchev
Not all political scientists share the same view of why Khrushchev was removed from power.
However, at least three perspectives deserve special attention: the “weak Khrushchev” theory, the
“institutional constraints” theory, and the “dumb Khrushchev” theory. All of these positions fail to
come to grips with the special characteristics of Marxist-Leninist systems.
