Khrushchev: from worker to leader of a nuclear superpower
During the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika and the reforms of the 1990s, liberal democratic circles tried to create the image of a reformer, almost a hero, who tried to get rid of the “bloody” Stalinist legacy. The era of Khrushchev's rule was called the "thaw". In fact, he started the first perestroika in the USSR and almost collapsed the USSR.
Ox driver, revolutionary and head of Moscow
Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev was born on April 3 (15), 1894 in the village of Kalinovka, Olkhovsky volost, Dmitrievsky district, Kursk province, into a working-class family. Nikita Khrushchev all his life did not even know the exact date of his birth, he wrote in questionnaires and celebrated his birthday on April 17. Only after his death did historians clarify the date according to the church metric book - April 15.
I worked from an early age. Already at the age of 9, his father sent him to work in the fields. “I learned to count to 30 (at a parochial school - Author’s note), and my father decided that I had had enough of teaching,” recalled Nikita Sergeevich. “All you need is to learn to count money, but you’ll never have more than thirty rubles anyway.”
He worked as a shepherd, cleaned steam boilers, was a shoemaker's apprentice and a salesman in a shop, and at the age of 14 he became an apprentice mechanic at the machine-building and iron foundry plant of E. T. Bosse. Since 1912, he worked as a mechanic at a mine and, as a miner, was not mobilized to the front in 1914.
Khrushchev himself recalled: “I began to work as soon as I learned to walk. Until I was 15 years old, I herded calves. I grazed sheep for a landowner, I grazed cows for a capitalist - all this before I was 15 years old. Then I worked at a factory for the Germans, for the French in mines, for the Belgians in chemical plants.”
The first part of Khrushchev’s life is the working life of a young proletarian, revolutionary, commissar during the Civil War. There were many thousands of such biographies in that era. Its peculiarity is its connection with the Donetsk basin. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs: “I spent my childhood there, and for me Donbass is my native element, I missed the miners...”
Khrushchev also studied a lot and persistently. Party school at the political department of the 9th Army during the Civil War, working faculty of Dontechnikum (future Donetsk University) in Yuzovka. Industrial Academy in Moscow (1929), where he met academy student Nadezhda Alliluyeva, wife of I. Stalin. Khrushchev considered this acquaintance a lucky “lottery ticket.” Khrushchev did not become an academician, but for his era he was an educated person. Although he was hiding behind a deliberately rustic appearance.
From 1931 to 1938, Khrushchev worked in Moscow, and for several years he was the first person in the Soviet capital. Since 1934 he was the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee, and since 1935 he simultaneously held the position of first secretary of the Moscow Committee, replacing Lazar Kaganovich in both positions. Khrushchev held these positions until February 1938.
L. M. Kaganovich recalled: “I nominated him. I thought he was capable. But he was a Trotskyist. And I reported to Stalin that he was a Trotskyist. I spoke when they elected him to MK. Stalin asks: “What about now?” I say: “He is fighting the Trotskyists. Actively performs. He fights sincerely."
Khrushchev carried out party “purges” in Moscow. Built the metro. Later he recalled: “As a matter of fact, I gave 80% of my time to the metro then. I walked to and from work in the city committee through the metro mines. It’s simply difficult to say what kind of working day we really had. I don’t even know how long we slept. We simply spent a minimum of time on sleep, and devoted all the remaining hours to work...”
As a Moscow leader, Nikita Sergeevich solved a variety of problems. This is how he described Stalin’s call in his memoirs with the words: “Comrade Khrushchev, I have heard rumors that the situation with toilets in Moscow is not going well...” Khrushchev then had to urgently build a network of public restrooms in the city. The capital's prosperity began with the work of the Bolsheviks, Nikita Sergeevich also made a serious contribution.
Stalin and Khrushchev at the presidium of the session of the USSR Central Executive Committee (January 1936)
"A plump man with a simple smile"
In 1938, Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine, and a candidate member of the Politburo, and a year later - a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b). While occupying these positions, he showed himself as a fighter against “enemies of the people.” Khrushchev played a significant role in the repressions of 1937–1939. in Ukraine.
During the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was a member of the military councils of the Southwestern direction, the Southwestern, Stalingrad, Southern, Voronezh and 1st Ukrainian fronts.
From the memoirs of General Semyon Ivanov, who fought at Stalingrad in 1942 as chief of staff of the 1st Guards Army:
“This short, plump man with a simple smile always remained, so to speak, a stabilizer of the situation within the circle of military leaders who led the troops in the Battle of Stalingrad. The situation was tense, everyone worked literally to the point of exhaustion, so nervous breakdowns often occurred and relationships became strained. Nikita Sergeevich, it seems, foresaw the occurrence of such moments and immediately found the right tone to calm those in conflict...
He also did a lot in organizing the supply of products to the fronts from Stalingrad plants and factories. He was constantly in work teams, helping to quickly resolve issues of interaction between enterprises and all city services. Khrushchev was distinguished by inexhaustible optimism. He had a sense of humor and knew how to lighten the mood in the most critical circumstances.”
He also did a lot in organizing the supply of products to the fronts from Stalingrad plants and factories. He was constantly in work teams, helping to quickly resolve issues of interaction between enterprises and all city services. Khrushchev was distinguished by inexhaustible optimism. He had a sense of humor and knew how to lighten the mood in the most critical circumstances.”
Khrushchev knew how to work, establish contacts with people and groups, and direct their activities for the purposes he needed. This allowed him to reach the pinnacle of power.
General Ivanov noted an interesting characteristic of Khrushchev:
“During negotiations with Stalin, Khrushchev was completely transformed. His feigned simplicity disappeared; he did not allow himself a single extra word. He spoke clearly and concisely, showing his knowledge of all front-line affairs.”
Portrait of Soviet Lieutenant General N. S. Khrushchev. 1943
Jester of the Red Emperor
Often, publicists and researchers make Khrushchev into a kind of fool, a buffoon under Stalin, who can only knock on the podium with his shoe and promise to show Kuzkin’s mother to the Americans. They say, he was a fool, he created and did not give an account to himself of what and why. This is a mistake or deliberate deception. Close-mindedness and a certain simplicity were just an image, a kind of cover behind which Khrushchev’s true nature was hidden.
Khrushchev was able to convince even Stalin that he was a kind of “shirt guy”, a man of the plow, and many political subtleties were beyond his understanding. Therefore, Stalin did not notice the threat from Khrushchev. He deceived Beria too. Lavrenty Pavlovich did not understand Khrushchev, even considered him a friend for a long time. Beria helped the “simple guy” in a comradely way. When Beria figured out the true essence of Khrushchev, it was already too late. “The Jester” outplayed everyone and reached the top of the Soviet Olympus, eliminating all competitors.
At the same time, Khrushchev should not be considered a genius of court behind-the-scenes games, who defeated everyone in the court struggle. He was a cunning man, but he did not have the mind of Stalin or Beria, other Soviet statesmen and technocrats. If you take his biography, you get the impression that he was often led by other, much smarter and more powerful forces and people. They needed such a person at or on the throne. With the help of Khrushchev, it was possible to deal a strong blow to the Soviet empire. By nature he was a battering ram.
At the start of his career, Khrushchev was a repentant Trotskyist. In the early 1920s, he was almost purged from the party because he had “become philistine,” that is, he was carried away by personal enrichment. Khrushchev repented of his sins to Kaganovich, who became his first patron. Then his career was promoted by Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. The rise of Khrushchev took place against the backdrop of purges of Trotskyists and Zinovievites. In 1935, Khrushchev headed the Moscow party organization and fully demonstrated his brutal nature in the “Great Terror” campaigns in Moscow and then in Ukraine.
Khrushchev was not a sadist or a pathological killer, like some representatives of the “Leninist Guard,” but he was a soulless careerist who was ready to go over his head for personal gain. An interesting fact is that many similar figures who “went too far” in those years paid for it and themselves became “victims” of Stalin’s repressions. Khrushchev passed this fate.
And in the future, Khrushchev was distinguished by a strange “unsinkability”. So, in 1942, Khrushchev, being a member of the Military Council of the front along with Marshal Timoshenko, proposed attacking near Kharkov from the Barvenkovsky ledge. The General Staff objected, believing that an attack from the ledge of an almost finished cauldron was dangerous. Khrushchev insisted on his own and convinced Stalin. It all ended in disaster for the entire southern strategic direction. The German armies were stopped only in Stalingrad and the North Caucasus. Others paid for such mistakes with their heads, careers, or at least reductions in rank. Khrushchev was not harmed at all. In 1943, he even received the rank of lieutenant general.
In 1946–1947 Khrushchev is again in Ukraine, heading the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. With his ill-considered actions, he worsened the work of agriculture and seriously aggravated the situation. There was a bad harvest at that time. Hunger began. Khrushchev seemed to fall into disgrace, but immediately became the head of agriculture. He screwed up here too with his experiments and “reforms.” However, Khrushchev is not only not punished, but is also appointed first secretary of the Moscow regional party committee and secretary of the Central Committee.
Member of the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Lieutenant General Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (1894–1971), addresses the residents of liberated Lvov from the rostrum. Those gathered are near the Lviv Opera House. August 1944
De-Stalinization
Khrushchev took part in the conspiracy against Stalin. It is clear that he himself could not come up with this matter. But he took advantage of the general sentiment. During this period, the “old guard” (except for Beria) feared a new “purge.” The USSR and the party were on the verge of tremendous changes. Stalin planned to “refresh the blood” of the party and state elite. The process of changing personnel was gaining momentum and threatened the “old guard” with the loss of warm places and feeding grounds.
Moreover, Stalin planned to radically change the entire system: to create, along with the “vertical of power”, led by the “horizontal” party - the Soviets. The party was supposed to become the “Order of the Sword” - responsible for creating the image of the future, ideology, personnel, for educating society, losing real power. Management was to pass into the hands of elected Soviet bodies. This prospect greatly frightened most of the "old guard". In its depths a conspiracy was born that led to the elimination of Stalin and Beria.
The premature death of Stalin, and then the murder of Beria (Why was Beria killed?) became the first steps in the restructuring of the USSR.
The second terrible blow to the future of the USSR was Khrushchev’s report on Stalin’s personality cult at the 1956th Congress of the USSR Communist Party in February 1991. This report became a kind of starting point for the restructuring of the USSR, the abolition of the Stalinist course, which led to the construction of a qualitatively different society of creation and service. Anti-socialist and anti-people reforms began, which ultimately destroyed the USSR in XNUMX. Also, anti-Stalin hysteria within the country undermined trust in Moscow on the part of members of the socialist camp. Thus, relations with China, where respect for Stalin was very great, with Albania, etc., were spoiled.
De-Stalinization dealt a terrible blow to the society of knowledge, service and creation that Stalin built. Soviet civilization is turning off the main path of development into a dead end, which ultimately led to the civilizational and state catastrophe of 1985–1993.
Georgy Zhukov and Nikita Khrushchev
First optimization
Khrushchev's perestroika dealt a powerful blow to the Soviet Armed Forces and security agencies. It should be noted that Khrushchev initially used the generals for his own purposes. First, to eliminate Beria. Zhukov helped him a lot in this matter. Beria was dangerous because he planned to continue the Stalinist course and uncovered an anti-Stalinist conspiracy. True, I didn’t have time to do anything. He was simply killed, without trial or investigation. The appearance of an investigation and trial was organized after the murder. At the same time, under the cover of the “Beria case,” a wave of terror swept among diplomats, intelligence officers and in scientific institutions that Beria supervised.
Khrushchev and his masters struck a blow at the Soviet security system. Dekanozov and Kobulov were shot as “Beria’s executioners.” Although they had no relation to the punitive authorities, but were engaged in diplomacy and intelligence. Scientific institutions were cleared. The strategic intelligence system, which helped us win the Great Patriotic War and get ahead in the field of advanced technologies, was purposefully destroyed. The best specialists in this field - Raikhman, Sudoplatov, Eitingon, Meshik, Zarubin, Korotkov and others - fell under the steamroller of repression. Some were liquidated, others were imprisoned, and others were fired. Those who survived then worked for a long time about rehabilitation.
By gradually eliminating his former allies, Khrushchev was able to gain full power. Malenkov was removed from the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The military also helped bring him down. Defense Minister Bulganin received the post of head of government, and Zhukov became defense minister. Then the “anti-party group” - Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and their supporters - lost their posts.
Again Khrushchev was supported by Zhukov, who was the real leader of the army. However, he soon paid for his poor judgment. Khrushchev was afraid of the popular and strong-willed marshal, who could become an obstacle to the “optimization” of the armed forces. Just four months after the victory over the “anti-party group,” when the Minister of Defense went abroad, Khrushchev pushed through a resolution “on Zhukov’s cult of personality and his penchant for adventurism, opening the way to Bonapartism.” The marshal was fired from all positions and sent into retirement. Then Khrushchev removed Bulganin as well, becoming head of government.
Having received full power, Khrushchev showed himself in all his glory. The armed forces were "optimized". Priority was given to ballistic missiles, nuclear arms. The remaining types and types of troops underwent a serious reduction. Moreover, they cut them alive, massively reduced the most experienced combat personnel. Destroyed the Stalinist program for the construction of the most powerful ocean naval fleet. Even the ships already ready or at various stages of construction were safely sent for scrap. The rest remained on paper.
The Air Force was also dealt a powerful blow. Khrushchev believed that a certain number of ballistic missiles was enough. Under Stalin, a huge amount of work was done to create an aircraft industry. The most important industry, without which the country’s full sovereignty is impossible, was created practically from scratch. More than a dozen different design bureaus appeared, where they designed excellent domestic fighters, attack aircraft and front-line bombers. The best scientists and engineers of the country worked in these design bureaus. After the war, strategic bombers began to be created.
Dozens of people worked in the Union aviation factories, engine-building enterprises and aircraft alloy smelting plants. Khrushchev struck at this magnificent heritage. Many pilots then recalled with tears in their eyes how hundreds of excellent aircraft were scrapped. A number of promising programs were closed.
Thus, Khrushchev’s military reform closely resembles the reforms of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, when they reduced the “excess power” of the Soviet superpower. But in fact, they crushed the only superpower that restrained the predatory appetites of the collective West.
Khrushchev's reforms were chaotic and disorderly, and at the same time they were systemic. The essence of this system is destruction. For all their apparent confusion and disorder, for all the widest range of Khrushchev’s undertakings, one general pattern can always be identified. All reforms led to degradation and the possible collapse of the Soviet Union.
On the cover of American Time magazine in 1953. Signed "Superbombs and fit shoes"
To be continued ...
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