Question by HorseLover: What were Nikita Khrushchev’s hopes for the future? What were his reasons for viewing socialism as superior?
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Answer by Cowboy Bill
He, like all Soviet leaders, hoped to expand their empire across the entire planet. Khrushchev actually stated publicly that the Soviet Union/communism would conquer the United States without ever firing a shot.
Looks like Mr. Obama may actually fulfill that threat….
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Spellbound says
Khrushchev as a Marxist believed that capitalism would ultimately and inevitably fail; the working classes overthrowing their exploiters and instigating a communist revolution.
He thought that Communism was the pinnacle of human economic and political development – capitalism was just a stage on the road towards communism.
He thought that the huge gains that the Soviet Union had made in its first forty years – from a medieval peasant based country with a rural economy to a nuclear global superpower – would continue and the USSR would economically outstrip the USA.
Marxism taught him that a country where the majority of people run the country is a fairer system than one where only the middle class run anything.
He also thought that as racism and chauvinism was not present in the Soviet system, yet, in the 1950s & 60s, was institutionalised in the US, then the USSR was morally superior to the USA.
His hope for the future was for the USSR to achieve communism – i.e. where the state "whithers away" and the people work for the common good, without the need for exploitative relations of employer and employee. He assumed that the Soviet Union would achieve this by 1980.
See:
Khrushchev Remembers – N.S. Khrushchev
Khrushchev – W Taubman