How did Khrushchev’s policies change soviet state?

Question by pakkstudd: How did Khrushchev’s policies and reforms change soviet state?
How did Khrushchev’s policies and reforms change soviet state after the repressions of Stalin?

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Answer by 美人プリンセス
Khrushchev introduced de-Stalinisation to protect his own position by getting rid of Stalin’s old supporters in the party. In order to secure his own position he thus needed to make a clean break with the past and he therefore removed old Stalinists in order to establish his own power base. Sooner or later the truth about Stalin would come out and Khrushchev did not want to be held responsible.

Khrushchev also believed that many of Stalin’s policies, such as the Purges and Collectivisation, had been genuinely unacceptable and that there had to be a break with the Stalinist past. Khrushchev was well aware that the Soviet economy had stagnated under Stalin. He wanted to get rid of the command economy that Stalin had created. He also wanted to reduce Stalinist central planning and replace it with more freedom of expression and local initiative while concentrating more on production of consumer goods.

Khrushchev was also very conscious of the danger of nuclear war with President Eisenhower’s United States and was eager to rid the Soviet Union of its confrontational Stalinist legacy in order to improve relations with the west. Khrushchev adopted the policy of peaceful-coexistence, which meant accepting that the West had right to exist, while at the same time trying to prove that the Soviet system was better. This new policy could not be put into practice as long as Stalinist ideas prevailed.

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