Question by bmxrider11: nikita khrushchev????
/what actions did nikita krushchev take as a soviet leader, and what were there results??????
Answers and Views:
Answer by Irene
He took the missiles from Cuba during the Cuba missle crisis
Answer by Bobby
He turned back the Stalinist hard line approach and sought rapprochement with the West. He also banged his shoe on a podium during a UN meeting.
Answer by Spellbound
Khrushchev reformed much about the USSR, from agriculture to the structure of the Communist Party, and from industrial reform to loosening censorship and attempting to thaw relations with the west.
Khrushchev had three big ideas regarding agriculture and industry. The first idea was the Virgin Lands Scheme, coupled with a move to grow maize rather than wheat – as he saw maize as a modern crop and a reorganisation of collective farms into larger units. This was the ploughing up of thousands of acres of empty steppes in Kazakhstan, Southern Russia and Southern Siberia. It was an enormous undertaking – thousands of people were mobilised, new tractors and other machinery had to be built and new towns for all the new people. Initially the schemes were a success; yields increased massively – the first harvest doubled the Soviet harvest. But after a few years all the nutrients were robbed out of the soil and the harvests began to fail. The scheme was quietly abandoned after the 1963 harvest failed and the Soviet Union had to import grain from Canada.
http://www.askwinston.co.uk/page48.html
His second big idea was to split the party into industrial and agricultural wings, this was coupled with a programme to de-centralise the USSR. This had the effect of making people move to where their expertise was needed – so industrialists went to the cities and agriculturalists went to the provincial towns and cities. It was hugely unpopular and repealed as soon as he was deposed in 1964.
His third idea was to refocus the economy from heavy industry to produce more consumer goods. There were many discussions at politburo level, but he never managed to devise a systematic programme in order to push through these reforms.
Khrushchev loosened the restrictions on art, literature and cinema – allowing, among others, the (very) critical novel Dr Zhivago to be published. He also did away with arbitrary state terror – lessening the excesses of Stalinism. He also continued the massive apartment building programme begun to house the people and to help alleviate the hardship caused by the war. For the religious, however, he undertook a massive clampdown on the church. People were required to register to attend, and church-going would bar you from party membership, from promotion, from better housing and your children would not be able to get into the better schools. He also undertook to destroy many churches – notably the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and the destruction of three cathedrals in Lenin’s birthplace of Ul’ianovsk.
Brezhnev saw the Khrushchev thaw re-freeze – censorship was reimposed, the terror was not re-imposed, although imprisonment, exile and being held in a secure asylum for the most dangerous dissidents was common. Religion was still clamped down on – although under Brezhnev the focus shifted to a clampdown on the Jewish population – leading to many wanting to emigrate to Israel (most were refused – they became known as the Refuseniks). In the mid 1970s Brezhnev began to change the economic base of the country, away from heavy industry beginning light, consumer industries. One reason for this was that the Soviet Union was doing well at the Olympics, so they wanted people to see the success on the television. He also invaded Afghanistan – leading to many young men being killed and injured in the conflict – and, with the ongoing failure to subdue the Afghans – the regime appeared to many Russians to be weaker than it had ever been.
Ultimately however, Brezhnev’s era was one of stagnation, economically, socially and politically. He was an old man in the late 1970s and so were most of his Politburo – content to carry on with the system, even though the system was by now beginning to fail.
See:
Khrushchev Remembers – Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman
Unpersoned – The Fall of Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev – Martin & Burg, David Page
http://countrystudies.us/russia/13.htm
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