In economics, too, Khrushchëv made his imprint. In 1953 his personal objective had been the exploitation of the virgin lands, and he had implied that no large diversion of finances would be needed to turn agriculture out of its Stalinist rut. It was quite a campaign. Within three years of Stalin’s death an additional 36 million hectares were put under the plough. This was as large as the cultivated area of Canada and represented a staggering extension of Soviet cereal agriculture. Khrushchëv also returned to one of his pet schemes by carrying out the amalgamation of kolkhozes into bigger units. The number of such farms consequently dropped from 125,000 to 36,000.28 Khrushchëv wanted the biggest possible units of agricultural production. He also strove to turn kolkhozes into sovkhozes, thereby increasing the number of peasants employed directly as state employees; and he severely reduced the area under cultivation in private plots.
For Khrushchëv, in his own way, was a communist believer who wished to demonstrate the superiority of communism. While he tried to increase central state intervention in some ways, he also tried to liberate rural initiative. The machine-tractor stations were abolished in 1958. Kolkhozes were to be allowed to run their affairs without excessive local interference. The annual harvest figures, which were the key test of Khrushchëv’s agricultural policy, were generally encouraging. Wheat output rose by over fifty per cent between 1950 and 1960. Milk and meat production had increased by sixty-nine and eighty-seven per cent respectively in the seven years after Stalin’s death.29
Food was consumed in the greatest quantity in the country’s history; but such an improvement was not the end of the matter for Khrushchëv. He wanted adjustments in the economy that would afford an even fuller satisfaction of the needs of ordinary consumers. He felt that the ministries in Moscow prevented any solution. They were detached from everyday questions of production and remained careless of local needs. In 1957 he secured the Presidium’s sanction to break up the central ministries and to allocate their functions to 105 regional economic councils (sovnarkhozy). Khrushchëv’s idea was that this new administrative tier would introduce more dynamic planning and management. In 1958, too, he secured a reconsideration of priorities for industrial investment. Capital goods were still projected to expand production at a faster rate than consumer goods: Khrushchëv did not touch this sacred cow. But he adjusted priorities so as to boost those sectors – especially oil, gas and chemicals – that had been neglected by Stalin.
Soviet economic achievements under Khrushchëv were undeniable. An ambitious Seven-Year Plan came into effect in 1959. Gross national income had grown by fifty-eight per cent by 1965 and industrial output by eighty-four per cent. Even consumer goods went up by sixty per cent. There were spectacular successes for the USSR, especially in 1957 when the first sputnik was sent up to circle the earth; in 1960 Yuri Gagarin followed this with the first manned orbit of the globe. Gagarin had a film star’s good looks, but Khrushchëv was his equal as a showman, habitually holding public receptions for cosmonauts when they returned from subsequent missions.
In agriculture, his over-confidence remained incorrigible. He interfered persistently with crop-rotation patterns. Even more damaging were his further restrictions on the size of the private plots which could be allocated to kolkhozniks. Since two fifths of Soviet vegetables were grown on them it took little expertise to foresee that shop shelves would soon become empty unless his policy was reversed. The same picture was discernible in industry. For instance, he disrupted co-ordination in Moscow and other cities by arbitrarily raising targets for the construction of apartment blocks; and, when he simultaneously downgraded the priority for bricks, he brought chaos to his already outlandish schemes.30 Khrushchëv was brought up in the Stalinist tradition of command and did not alter his habits after denouncing Stalin. Never the most self-questioning of men, he assumed he knew best; his bossiness had been hardened into an essential feature of his mode of rule.
There were disappointments for Khrushchëv even by the standards of his own Seven-Year Plan as introduced in 1959. The virgin lands were so over-ploughed that parts of Kazakhstan were turned into a dust-bowl, and Khrushchëv’s authority was diminished by poor harvests across the USSR: agricultural output in 1963 was only ninety-two per cent of the total achieved in 1958. Consumer products were not coming out of the factories in the quantity and with the quality he desired. The investment in capital goods continued to be skewed heavily towards military needs, still more heavily than the Plan required. Khrushchëv’s attempt to associate himself with youth, science and progress was belied by the survival of economic priorities and practices from the 1930s.
So long as the official aim was to achieve military parity with the USA, it was difficult to alter economic policy to any great extent. Yet Khrushchëv, after his early refusal to support Malenkov’s plea for more relaxed relations with the American government, began to reconsider the situation. By the late 1950s Khrushchëv, too, was advocating ‘peaceful coexistence’. Professional historians dutifully ransacked the archives for evidence that Lenin had strongly believed that global socialism and global capitalism could peacefully coexist. In fact Lenin had mentioned such an idea only glancingly.31 In any case Khrushchëv did not unequivocally repudiate the traditional Leninist thesis on the inevitability of world wars until global capitalism had been brought to an end.32 But certainly he preferred to put his practical stress on the need for peace. Repeatedly he argued that competition between the communist East and the capitalist West should be restricted to politics and ideology.
The Soviet-American relationship was at the crux of deliberations in the Presidium. The USSR and the USA were left as the only superpowers. As the old empires crumbled, the Presidium sought to befriend the emergent African and Asian states. The opportunity overlooked by Stalin was grasped by Khrushchëv. Together with Bulganin, he had toured India, Burma and Afghanistan in 1955. Nine years later he went to Egypt and offered President Nasser a subsidy sufficient to build the Aswan Dam. In 1959 the guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba and associated itself with the USSR.
At last the original Bolshevik objective to promote the interests of the colonial peoples was being vigorously pursued. Yet the nations of Eastern Europe felt that the Soviet Union was itself an ‘imperialist’ power. There was also an edginess elsewhere, especially in the West, about Soviet pretensions in central Europe. Admittedly the USSR co-signed the peace treaty in 1955 which involved the Soviet Army’s withdrawal from Austria; and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer went to Moscow in the same year and secured the release of the thousands of German POWs not yet repatriated to West Germany. But the Soviet forces’ suppression of the Hungarian popular revolt revived old fears. Also intimidating was the USSR’s refinement of its H-Bomb after its first successful test in August 1953. The USSR had the personnel, ideology and technology to threaten the heart of the continent, and the USA made clear that it would retaliate with nuclear weaponry if any NATO state were to be attacked.
Khrushchëv tried to relieve the tensions between the USSR and the USA. A conference was held in Geneva in 1955 attended by himself and President Eisenhower. In 1959 Khrushchëv permitted an exhibition of the American way of life in Moscow which included a model kitchen. There, the ebullient First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union participated in a televised impromptu discussion with American Vice-President Richard Nixon on the respective virtues of communism and capitalism, and Khrushchëv enhanced his popularity at home and abroad by his readiness to debate directly with foreign leaders. Khrushchëv, accompanied by his wife and a host of advisers, reciprocated with a visit to the USA in September 1959.
Soviet politicians were gradually ceasing to seem utopian fanatics or mindless automatons. But mutual suspicions were not entirely dispelled. Far from it: a summit meeting of Khrushchëv and Eisenhower that had been planned for mid-1960 was ruined by the shooting down of an American U-2 spy-plane over Soviet airspace. The fact that the American pilot Gary Powers had
been captured gave Khrushchëv and his spokesmen an irresistible opportunity to upbraid the Americans for their diplomatic untrustworthiness. Yet he still wanted peaceful coexistence with the West. In the 1960 American elections Nixon was defeated by John Kennedy; and Khrushchëv arranged a summit with him in Vienna in June 1961. This proved to be not the easiest of meetings since Khrushchëv did not hide his condescension towards the younger man. But eventually the two leaders agreed to move towards introducing greater predictability and harmony to relations between their countries.
Khrushchëv no longer faced serious domestic challenge to his foreign policy. His control was such, he boasted, that he could instruct Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to take down his trousers and sit on a block of ice and Gromyko would meekly comply. He also knew that Soviet nuclear capacity was as yet nowhere near to parity with the Americans’ despite the claims made by Kennedy in his electoral campaign; he could therefore count on considerable support in the Presidium for a cautious handling of affairs with the USA.33
Yet the Soviet rapprochement with the USA caused upset in the ‘world communist movement’, especially in the People’s Republic of China. Tensions had existed for years. Mao had never forgotten his demeaning treatment at Stalin’s hands. A Soviet-Chinese agreement was signed in 1959 which promised Soviet technical and financial aid in an attempt to buy off Chinese criticism. But it did not work. In 1960 Mao fulminated against those who based their policies on the priority to avoid nuclear war. Such a war, according to Mao, would in fact be both survivable and winnable. Once the mushroom clouds of the H-bombs had lifted, ‘a beautiful system’ would be created in place of capitalist imperialism. As this tacit critique of Khrushchëv continued, other communist parties were appalled by the growing breach in the international communist movement; and, although the militarist recklessness of Mao was widely rejected, there remained several foreign leaders who had waited for years to oppose Khrushchëv for his insults to Stalin’s memory. The conference of eighty-one parties held in Moscow in 1961 did little to rally Marxist-Leninist global unity.
And so Khrushchëv, despite his dominance, was beset by problems by the early 1960s. His political and economic changes were not as effective as he had anticipated, and his foreign policy was running into obstacles. By removing aspects of Stalin’s heritage and undertaking a semi-return to Leninism, he was solving a few problems but avoiding most. His failure was in some measure his fault. He had an erratic, autocratic personality and a deeply authoritarian outlook. Yet his quarter-reforms of the Soviet order were probably the maximum that his close colleagues and the rest of the central and local élites would have tolerated at the time. The upholders of this order were too powerful, accomplished and confident for any more radical transformation.
18
Hopes Unsettled (1961–1964)
Khrushchëv still believed that history was on the side of communism. His confidence was infectious and attracted a lot of lower-echelon party functionaries and ambitious youngsters to his side. Like Stalin in the 1930s, he persuaded such people that the problems for communism in the USSR could be solved by a more rigorous application of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. This, he suggested, would necessarily involve a rejection of Stalin and a reversion to the ideals of Lenin. There were many people who responded to his summons to join the party and to help to change public life. The enthusiasts among them were known as ‘Children of the Twentieth Congress’.
They believed that a reformed Soviet order would quickly demonstrate its political and economic superiority over its Western rivals; they agreed with Khrushchëv that capitalism was like ‘a dead herring in the moonlight, shining brilliantly as it rotted’.1 Khrushchëv himself assumed that popular gratitude for his liberating influence would engender co-operation between the central political élite and society. He was proud of the achievements made for the average Soviet citizen. High-rise apartment blocks were put up in all cities. Diet went on improving. Meat consumption rose by fifty-five per cent between 1958 and 1965 alone.2 Fridges, televisions and even washing-machines entered popular ownership. The hospital and education services were free and universally available; rents, home heating and cooking fuel were very inexpensive. Labour discipline was relaxed. Unemployment was practically unknown. Wages rose after 1953 and kept on rising; in the RSFSR between 1959 and 1962, for instance, they increased by seven per cent.3
General financial provision had also been introduced for those who had retired from work. In fact the minimum annual pension was set at thirty rubles and was barely sufficient for subsistence;4 but Khrushchëv had made a start in tackling the problem and jobs were anyway available for many elderly citizens as concierges, doorkeepers and hotel cleaners. The retention of cheap urban cafeterias meant that neither pensioners nor the working poor starved.
Recreational clubs flourished. Lev Yashin, the soccer goalkeeper, was one among the many sportsmen adored by the population. Escapist entertainment was heard on Soviet radio. A very popular ditty began with the words:
Let there always be sunshine,
Let there always be sky,
Let there always be Mama,
Let there always be me!
Such songs had been allowed even under Stalin; the difference was that they were heard much more frequently. Another novelty was Khrushchëv’s permission for a change in the design of apartment blocks so that a family might have its privacy. The shared kitchens and corridors of Stalin’s kommunalki had prevented this; but now parents could speak to their children without fear of being overheard. Nor was it any longer dangerous to take an interest in foreign countries. Hobbies such as philately and Esperanto became activities that did not lead to arrest by the KGB. One of the most popular film series, Fantomas, was a French sci-fi thriller with Russian subtitles; and the authorities began to allow specially-trusted citizens, usually party members, to travel to the West in tourist groups.
Yet much stayed unchanged. Although Khrushchëv rehabilitated millions he punished only a handful of Stalin’s intimates for the abuses of power he regularly condemned. Apart from Beria and the security-police leaders, apparently, there were no serious transgressors in the entire Soviet state. It would, of course, have been difficult to arraign all those whose activities had led to arrests and deaths under Stalin: the result would have been an anti-Gulag as big as the Gulag – and Khrushchëv would have been a convict. Nevertheless his evasiveness had the effect of maintaining public distrust of politicians.
The media of public communication continued to blare out messages of support for the communist party. News programmes stuck closely to the party line of the day. Alternatives to Soviet Marxism-Leninism were banned: Khrushchëv, while getting rid of some of Stalin’s rigidities, introduced rigidities of his own. Doctrinal orthodoxy remained an unquestionable objective, and the authorities maintained the habit of lecturing society about everything from nuclear-bomb test negotiations to methods of child-care. Day-to-day dispensation of justice was improved and a proliferation of legal reforms took place.5 But arbitrariness remained a basic feature of the management of society. The dense network of informers was maintained in every corner of society: the USSR was still a police state. Those Soviet citizens who travelled abroad exemplify the point. They had to write reports on foreigners they met on their holidays; they were also constrained to leave behind a close member of their family as a surety that they would return to the USSR. The state continued to hold its society in suspicion.
Consequently people did not feel grateful to Khrushchëv for long. Material and social conditions had got better, but life in general remained hard – and the political, economic and cultural order was still extremely authoritarian. Khrushchëv in his frequent, lengthy speeches showed that he underestimated the depth of popular grievances.
In the countryside he failed to grasp that the amalgamation of the kolkhozes into super-kolkhozes produced enormous social distress.6 His campaign to build quasi-urban settlements for compulsory inhabitation by all f
armworkers nearly finished off a peasantry bludgeoned to its knees by Stalin. No kulaks survived to be dekulakized, and the KGB did not pile trouble-makers into cattle-trucks bound for Siberia and Kazakhstan. But deportations of a kind occurred as villages were bulldozed and large settlements were established to form the centres of the enlarged farms. The avowed intention was that schools, shops and recreational facilities should simultaneously be attached to each super-kolkhoz; and probably Khrushchëv genuinely believed that the amalgamations would bring benefit to the rural population. But, as usual, the regime was better at destruction than creation. The new rural facilities always fell short of Khrushchëv’s promises in number and quality.
If peasants had no love for him, he received little greater affection from urban inhabitants. All towns across the USSR were dreary, ill-appointed places to live. Even Khrushchëv’s record in building apartments was ridiculed. The new flats were referred to as khrushchëby, a pun on his surname and the Russian word for slums. Furthermore, the increase in industrial output was achieved at huge cost to the environment. In Kazakhstan his neglect of the effects of nuclear testing led to the deaths of thousands of people. A repertoire of private satirical commentary circulated. Millions of Gulag inmates returned from the camps with bitter jokes about the Soviet order, but most people did not need to have had this penal experience to mock the authorities. The Party and the KGB had to take preventive action against trouble.7 On days of official celebration, such as May Day or the October Revolution anniversary, the security police regularly cleared the streets of likely trouble-makers. Individuals waving critical placards or clutching petitions of complaint were swiftly arrested.
The Penguin History of Modern Russia Page 42
