What Were The Limits Of The “Thaw” Introduced By Khruschev After He Had Succeded To Power In The U.S.S.R. Essay, Research Paper

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What Were the Limits of the “Thaw” Introduced by Khrushchev After he had Succeeded to Power in the USSR, and What Factors Caused its Failure as a Remedy for the Cold War?

Santiago Heppolette

History

professor Williams

The death of Stalin on the 5 of March 1953 introduced a new era to the Soviet Union and its communist government. After all, Stalin ruled the Soviet empire without any tolerance far reaching the soviet society. Even though Stalin built a great empire, he made a great impact in the organizational, psychological, and economical features that have survived until this day. As Nikita Khrushchev came slowly to power after Georgi Malenkov s colleagues were not willing to let him hold the same power as Stalin did, so did De-Stalinization. De-Stalinization was the attempt to break away from the Stalin s method of thinking and not only internal, but foreign government policy in order to create a more relax and less oppressive type of government. Once Stalin died, the remaining leaders, mainly Khrushchev and Malenkov also known as the collective leadership, faced mayor problems. After all in the past thirty-six years of Soviet rule no clear procedures of a change of leadership had been established or prepared for this event. As Khrushchev came to power he initiated a reassessment of the Stalin period. Consequently, De-Stalinization or the “thaw” of the Cold War begun, yet it was frozen in 1964 with his own downfall and revived in 1985 with Gorbachev. Still and all, he was not able to really start until 1956 when he made his famous “secret” speech to his colleagues. In this speech he attacked Stalin and said that the only way to fixed the problems that they faced was to go back Lenin s path. Nevertheless, he did praise Stalin s economical strategy. After this speech, Khrushchev secured his position as the top leader of the Soviet Union.

Having made his position secure, yet with some opposition among members of the party, Khrushchev embarked on a policy program that was often clever, but sometimes paradoxical and unsettled. In other words, as he wanted to make changes in the government towards a more “liberal” regimen after thirty-six years under the influence and oppression of one individual, and yet maintain the Communist essence, certainly limitations would arise. Many members of the party saw as a soft person ready to give to the demands of the West; Consequently, this is what brought him down at the end.

One of Khrushchev s high priorities was the reorganization of Soviet institutions. One of these reforms was decentralization, which meant to replace the economic ministries that were responsible for different branches of the economy. He introduced sovnarkhozy that was regional economic councils. This reform was meant to strengthen party organs which were also organized in regional basis. However, Khrushchev was unsuccessful with his new program from an economic stand point of view. The reason was that it ultimately replaced old problems that had resulted from the central power of the branch economic ministries. In order to improve coordination, over the next several years’ sovnarkhozy had to be made progressively larger. However, once Khrushchev was removed from office, the old economic ministries were restored.

Another reform was the division of party organs into two. The first one was to take over industrialization while the other was to take over agriculture. By splitting the two he was aiming to give agriculture its own institutional base and therefore being in a better position. Because of this reform many secretaries, who sat in the central committee, lost their jobs; thereupon, Khrushchev lost support from them. Because of these reforms, Khrushchev also lost support of the peasants since party officials were dictating what to grow and providing unsuitable areas with not enough funds.

Internationally, Khrushchev in 1953 started dialogues with President Dwight Eisenhower. These dialogues begun to lessen the tension between the two powers. It was in this context that the word “d tente” came about. This word means relaxing the strain. Khrushchev had in mind that peaceful coexistence was possible; however, at this time the Americans adopted the policy of containment while the Soviets were not going to let go communist rule. Therefore, coexistence was only but an attempt.

D tente was always tampered with a lot of mistrust, the reliance of military force, and the competition of the production of nuclear arms between the two countries. D tente did not mean to let go the influence and power that each country had in the world. The Soviets were unwilling to let go any country in the eastern Europe front that was strategically for national security. When they were challenge by any eastern European satellites the never hesitated to act. For instance, in 1956 the Hungarian uprising was repressed quickly sending a clear message that acts such a this would not be tolerated.

Similarly, in the United States there was very high feeling of paranoia with the spread and take over of communism around the world. Therefore, containment became a priority to the country. The spread of Communism was to be avoided no matter what the consequences where. For instance, the involvement in the Korean War in 1950, when Truman ordered the U.S eighth Army to keep South Korea free from communist take over. As a result, Khrushchev could only push so far to reform the Soviet Union due to the reason that he was under pressure from the leaders of the Soviet empire not to show any signs of weakness.

Khrushchev and Mao Tse-Tung, leader of Communist China, a country that did not have good relations with the Soviets due to differences in ideology of what communism should be, started to aim for communist global influence in third world countries. These attempts of communist global influence failed to lessen the tension between the Soviets and the United States. In fact, when Khrushchev introduced D tente it was too soon and at an awkward time to start making changes. D tente was the beginning of an attempt that it only started to make changes until 1985 with Gorbachev.

The involvement in The Cuban Missile Crisis did not help improve the image that Khrushchev had among the party members as they saw this incident humiliating. This was yet another failure towards his foreign policy. In 1961, Khrushchev succeeded to install enough missiles in Cuba to blow away mayor cities in the United States. According to Khrushchev, he was only trying to defend Cuba from another U.S. invasion. The new president, Robert F. Kennedy, put a naval blockade with the intention to remove the Missiles from Cuba if the Soviets would not. The United States was ready to go to war. For obvious reasons, Khrushchev backed down closely to a confrontation and removed the missiles. Yet, the question remains unanswered. Why would the Soviet take such risk knowing that the United States was superior in weaponry? Some analysts believe that they were trying to make the United States dismantle a nuclear military base in Turkey, Italy, and England. Yet, others believe that the Soviets were trying to cause confusion with the detonation of the bombs; therefore, causing NATO to Crumble. By doing this the Soviets would have a chance to move onto Berlin. Moreover, Kennedy thought that Khrushchev was only truing to test how serious was the United States .

Back in the Soviet Union, Khrushchev was humiliated and was seem soft and weak among the members of the party. This is what finally brought him down and his attempt for “The Thaw” of the Cold War. In 1964 the central committee voted for the resignation of Khrushchev. Once he was removed, he disappeared from the political scene and Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin would take power.

Khrushchev s failure was not only his controversial and contradictory policies, but the lack of confidence among his colleagues. In the brief period that Khrushchev was in power he did leave an important mark in Soviet politics. Stalinist ideas were abolished and many of Lenin s resurrected. He “strongly favored increased, though controlled, popular participation.” Some say that he was in essence a populist. The factors mention above are the cause of his failure to fully bring about the Thaw of the Cold War. Yet, it was not all his fault, but also the paranoia of the West and the competition for world power.