What were the causes of the downfall of Khrushchev?
Question by Lovelyn: what were the causes of the downfall of soviet leader Khrushchev?
Answers and Views:
Answer by sneezewhiz He lost the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Read all the answers in the comments.
Add your own answer!
Reader Interactions
Comments ( 2 )
Slava Tsays
To put in a nutshell the reason was general dissatisfaction of the Soviet communist party elite with some aspects of Khrushchev's personnel policy, economic and home policies what undermined stability and certainty of elite's position.
1) Majority of high ranking Soviet officials had been promoted to their important party roles during Stalin's period. That is why they were quite skeptical about Khrushchev's flirtations with "the thaw";
2) Numerous Khrushchev's initiatives in the administrative field (such as dividing regional party organs into rural and urban ones) made party functionaries' lives unpredictable and nervous;
3) Khrushchev made himself unpopular with the military after dismissing marshall Zhukov and making drastic cuts on the Soviet army;
4) After Khrushchev managed to kick out of the Politburo his main opponents (Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov) in the end of 1950s he felt himself confident to get rid of "collective leadership" making important decisions by himself disregarding opinions and directly personally offending his close colleagues in the Politburo. Some historians say that the last straw for the coup organizers were Khrushchev's words that he had to do something with those "stupid Lenia (Brezhnev) and Kolia (Podgorni)" – both members of the Politburo (Brezhnev would be a party leader after Khrushchev) and coup members.
Khrushchev was criticized for his ruthless crackdown of the 1956 revolution in Hungary, despite the fact that he and Georgy Zhukov were pushing against intervention up until the declaration of withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and also for encouraging the East German authorities to set up the notorious Berlin Wall in August 1961. He also had very poor diplomatic skills, giving him the reputation of being a rude, uncivilized peasant in the West and as an irresponsible clown in his own country. He had also renewed persecutions against the Russian Orthodox Church, publicly promising that by 1980 "I will show you the last priest!" He also made unrealistic predictions on when the ideal communist society would emerge, predicting 1980. This is one of the factors that led his successors to add a new stage between socialism and communism, dubbed "developed socialism," which Soviet leaders predicted could go on for many years before an idyllic communist society could emerge.
His methods of administration, although efficient, were also known to be erratic since they threatened to disband a large number of Stalinist-era agencies. He made a dangerous gamble in 1962, over Cuba, which almost made a Third World War inevitable. Agriculture barely kept up with population growth, as bad harvests mixed with good ones, culminating with a disastrous one in 1963 that was triggered by bad weather. All this damaged his prestige after 1962, and was enough for the Central Committee, Khrushchev's critical base for support, to take action against him. They used his right-hand man Leonid Brezhnev to lead the bloodless coup.
Slava T says
To put in a nutshell the reason was general dissatisfaction of the Soviet communist party elite with some aspects of Khrushchev's personnel policy, economic and home policies what undermined stability and certainty of elite's position.
1) Majority of high ranking Soviet officials had been promoted to their important party roles during Stalin's period. That is why they were quite skeptical about Khrushchev's flirtations with "the thaw";
2) Numerous Khrushchev's initiatives in the administrative field (such as dividing regional party organs into rural and urban ones) made party functionaries' lives unpredictable and nervous;
3) Khrushchev made himself unpopular with the military after dismissing marshall Zhukov and making drastic cuts on the Soviet army;
4) After Khrushchev managed to kick out of the Politburo his main opponents (Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov) in the end of 1950s he felt himself confident to get rid of "collective leadership" making important decisions by himself disregarding opinions and directly personally offending his close colleagues in the Politburo. Some historians say that the last straw for the coup organizers were Khrushchev's words that he had to do something with those "stupid Lenia (Brezhnev) and Kolia (Podgorni)" – both members of the Politburo (Brezhnev would be a party leader after Khrushchev) and coup members.
staisil says
Khrushchev was criticized for his ruthless crackdown of the 1956 revolution in Hungary, despite the fact that he and Georgy Zhukov were pushing against intervention up until the declaration of withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and also for encouraging the East German authorities to set up the notorious Berlin Wall in August 1961. He also had very poor diplomatic skills, giving him the reputation of being a rude, uncivilized peasant in the West and as an irresponsible clown in his own country. He had also renewed persecutions against the Russian Orthodox Church, publicly promising that by 1980 "I will show you the last priest!" He also made unrealistic predictions on when the ideal communist society would emerge, predicting 1980. This is one of the factors that led his successors to add a new stage between socialism and communism, dubbed "developed socialism," which Soviet leaders predicted could go on for many years before an idyllic communist society could emerge.
His methods of administration, although efficient, were also known to be erratic since they threatened to disband a large number of Stalinist-era agencies. He made a dangerous gamble in 1962, over Cuba, which almost made a Third World War inevitable. Agriculture barely kept up with population growth, as bad harvests mixed with good ones, culminating with a disastrous one in 1963 that was triggered by bad weather. All this damaged his prestige after 1962, and was enough for the Central Committee, Khrushchev's critical base for support, to take action against him. They used his right-hand man Leonid Brezhnev to lead the bloodless coup.