Question by hensleyu: How did Khrushchev rise to power?
How did Khrushchev rise to power? After his demotion in 1951, how did he gain all of his power?
Will you help me by explaining his “struggle for power” ?
I cannot really find a good source? If you could explain some things, it’d be great!
Answers and Views:
Answer by Adam Green
The Soviet government announces that Nikita Khrushchev has been selected as one of five men named to the new office of Secretariat of the Communist Party. Khrushchev’s selection was a crucial first step in his rise to power in the Soviet Union—an advance that culminated in Khrushchev being named secretary of the Communist Party in September 1953, and premier in 1958.
The death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953 created a tremendous vacuum in Soviet leadership. Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union since the 1920s. With his passing, the heir apparent was Georgi Malenkov, who was named premier and first secretary of the Communist Party the day after Stalin’s death. This seemingly smooth transition, however, masked a growing power struggle between Malenkov and Nikita Khruschev. Khrushchev had been active in the Russian Communist Party since joining in 1918. After Stalin took control of the Soviet Union following Lenin’s death in 1924, Khrushchev became an absolutely loyal follower of the brutal dictator. This loyalty served him well, as he was one of the few old Bolsheviks who survived Stalin’s devastating political purges during the 1930s.
In the 1940s Khrushchev held a number of important positions in the Soviet government. Yet, when Stalin died in March 1953, Khrushchev was overlooked in favor of Malenkov. It did not take long for Khrushchev to take advantage of the mediocre Malenkov. First, he organized a coalition of Soviet politicians to force Malenkov to relinquish the post of first secretary—the more important post, since it controlled the party apparatus in the Soviet Union. Malenkov publicly stated that he was giving up the position to encourage the sharing of political responsibilities, but it was obvious that Khrushchev had gained a crucial victory. To replace Malenkov, the party announced the establishment of a new position, a five-man Secretariat. Even Western journalists noted that in announcing the five-person position, Khrushchev’s name was always listed first, while the others were in alphabetical order. It was soon apparent that Khrushchev was the driving power in the Secretariat, and in September 1953, he secured enough backing to be named secretary of the Communist Party. In February 1955, he and his supporters pushed Malenkov out of the premiership and replaced him with a Khrushchev puppet, Nikolai Bulganin. In March 1958, Khrushchev consolidated his power by taking the office of premier himself.
Officials in the United States, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, badly underestimated Khrushchev. Initially, they considered him a lackey of Malenkov, but soon came to learn that the blunt and unsophisticated Khrushchev was a force to be reckoned with in Soviet politics. Despite their concern, Khrushchev’s rise to power did initiate a period in which tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union began slightly to ease, as he called for “peaceful coexistence” between the two superpowers.
Answer by Tonii
Hi, I do online schooling and am actually doing chapter 33 of my history book and just so happen to be around where you are (maybe you go to PALCS too, fancy that) Actually- do you go to palcs? If so I can just give the page numbers if not i’ll continue then
update: aw wth, here straight from my book:
“Nikita Khurushchev emerged as the new Soviet leader. In 1956, he shocked top Communist party members when he publicly denounced Stalin’s abuse of power. He then pursued a policy of de-stalinization. He did not change Soviet goals but did free many political prisoners and eased censorship. He sought a thaw in the Cold War, calling for a ‘peaceful coexistence’ with the West.
The thaw had limits, though. When discontented Hungarians revolted against communist rule in 1956, Khurshchev sent tanks in to smash them. When critics at home grew too bold, he clamped down. It appeared that a return to Stalinism could happen at anytime.”
Overall, Nikita was a successor of Stalin thus already having that advantage to come to power. (Stalin was seen as a HORRIBLE leader, so once Khurschev pursued a policy of de-stalinization, it seemed to the Soviets like he’d be the best new leader). He promised a lot of good things, like the end of censorship and freedom of speech but once he felt critics became too bold or revolts against communism sprung, he acted against his own words. You should have no problem generating your own thoughts/ideas/sentences from the couple paragraphs given
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Spellbound says
When Stalin died in 1953 there was no clear successor to him.
The country was initially run by a triumvirate of Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov but machinations among the Politburo led to Khrushchev being elected First Secretary of the Party in September of 1953.
By 1956 Khrushchev’s position was still very weak and he needed to find a way of isolating and removing his political rivals – he couldn’t use Stalin’s tactics of having them arrested by the NKVD as Beria had been in charge of that and loyalties ran deep. What he decided to do was to present himself as a down to Earth, folksy, peasant. By doing this he sought to isolate Malenkov, a sophisticated man, but seen as a drab bureaucrat – he achieved this by beginning to reform the country, economically, politically as well as culturally.
His reforms proved popular, at first, and they seemed to give communism a new direction.
He still needed to reform the party, and to ensure that the Stalinists could not come back to power. This was the reason for both the 1956 “Secret Speech” where he denounced Stalin and the terror of his regime, and for Molotov’s removal from office in 1956 – he was removed from the Presidium (the enlarged and renamed Politburo) in 1957.
In agriculture he began the Virgin Lands campaign – ploughing up vast areas of virgin steppe.
In science, his regime saw the launch of the first artificial satellite – Sputnik, the first man and the first woman in space.
In the arts Dr Zhivago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich were published.
Khrushchev was probably, after Lenin, the most dedicated communist who ruled the Soviet Union, he firmly believed that communism was the best form of economic and political system. He thought that, because he had risen from ill educated peasant’s son to the supreme head of the USSR, that it was an egalitarian country – especially as its great rival, the USA, was practising segregation at the time.
See:
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era – William Taubman
Khrushchev Remembers – Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
Interestingly Beria – Stalin’s monster – proposed a whole series of reforms in 1953 that were even more far reaching than Gorbachev’s. Had he managed to push through these reforms the USSR would have allowed a large degree of private enterprise and there would have been a political liberalisation, perhaps it would now resemble China.
See:
Beria, My Father – Sergo Beria