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Nikita Khrushchev Никита Хрущёв | |
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| Born | 15 April 1894 Kalinovka, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | 11 September 1971 (aged 77) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | Russian[1] |
| Political orientation | Marxism–Leninism (Right-revisionist[2]) |
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April 1894 – 11 September 1971) was a Soviet revisionist politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Premier of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964.
Khrushchev is considered to be responsible for numerous theoretical errors and policy mistakes[2] which laid the groundwork for further problems—problems which eventually culminated in the overthrow of the Soviet Union. Most notably, he denounced former leader Joseph Stalin in his infamous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress on 25 February 1956, blaming many of the USSR's problems on Stalin and his cult of personality[3] (despite the fact that Khrushchev himself had been involved in maintaining this cult,[citation needed] and despite the fact Stalin himself opposed it)[4] and initiating a policy of Destalinisation.
Mao Zedong harshly criticized Khrushchev and broke with the CPSU in response to Khrushchev's revisionism, leading to the Sino-Soviet split.[5]
Early life and career[edit | edit source]
Nikita Khrushchev was born in a peasant family in 1894 in Kalinovka, Russian Empire. His father worked successively as a bricklayer, miner, and railway worker; in 1911, the Khrushchev family moved to the Donbas region, to Yuzovka (present-day Donetsk), where the younger Khrushchev first worked as a miner but eventually finished an apprenticeship in metallurgy, and finding full-time employment at a metalworking factory.
As a skilled metalworker, Khrushchev was exempt from conscription into the First World War.[6] As a result, he spent that time involved in labor organizing, combining demands for better working conditions with demands for an end to the war. During this same time, he married and had two children.
Khrushchev joined the Communist Party in 1918 but would not begin advancing to any leadership positions until late 1920s, after the party leadership, recognizing Khrushchev's abilities as a mine foreman, instructed him to attend the Industrial Academy in Moscow in 1929 for higher education,[6] which he had not received earlier in life.
Khrushchev was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1938, making him the leader of the Ukrainian SSR; in this position, he received criticisms from the union party leadership for admitting too many people into the Ukrainian party, and being too tolerant of Ukrainian nationalism and chauvinism. In 1949, he was summoned to Moscow, where he became a member of the Politburo.[7]
Death of Stalin[edit | edit source]
Khrushchev was suspected by many Marxist–Leninists and even many non-MLs of bearing responsibility for the death of then-incumbent leader Joseph Stalin, who officially died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 5 March 1953. Stalin's health had been deteriorating for quite some time, but the circumstances of his death were indeed suspicious. Stalin's son Vasily believed that he had been poisoned,[citation needed] and Albanian leader Enver Hoxha claimed in his memoirs that Anastas Mikoyan, a close ally of Khrushchev, admitted to him that he and his associates had murdered Stalin.[8]
Mandate as General Secretary[edit | edit source]
Under Khrushchev's mandate, the percentage of industrial workers in the CPSU reduced to 30% and the number of white-collar officials increased to 50%.[9] He prioritized consumer goods over heavy industry and decentralized state planning.[7]
In 1954, he began the Virgin Lands program to cultivate sparsely populated fertile land, mainly in Kazakhstan and Siberia. 300,000 volunteers participated in the campaign and plowed 27 million hectares of new land in two years. The campaign was initially successful but began to decline in 1957.
In 1964, the Soviet government forced Khrushchev to retire and reverted some of his policies.[7]
Secret Speech[edit | edit source]
In 1956, Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin in his "Secret Speech" and made many false claims against him. He labeled his political opponents, including Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgy Malenkov, and Lavrentiy Beria as "Stalinists."
In June 1957, Malenkov's anti-revisionist faction won the majority in the Presidium, but Khrushchev argued that only the Central Committee could remove him from power.[9] The Central Committee then purged Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich from the Presidium.[7]
Khrushchev Thaw[edit | edit source]
Khrushchev's reduction of press regulation lead to the spread of liberal ideas and allowed the publication of novels by the anti-Semite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He greatly increased party recruitment, leading to some non-communists joining the party.[7]
Ideological deviations[edit | edit source]
State of the whole people[edit | edit source]
Khrushchev claimed that the CPSU, and the broader Soviet state, had become a "state of the whole people"[10], instead of just the working class and peasants.[7]
In Khrushchev's view, the Soviet Union had reached such an advanced stage of socialism that class antagonisms had substantially dimished within society. As such, the state need not be a tool of internal class repression; instead, the Soviet state's was more and more growing into a purely administrative apparatus, in which ever-increasing democratic representation from the people resulted in "total economic democracy".[10]
Khrushchev justified this idea by saying that the state would remain long into the intermediate stages of communism.[11] The "State of the Whole People" was supposed to embody the interests of all Soviet citizens, not just those of a particular class, as the domestic Soviet bourgeoisie had supposedly been eradicated altogether.
This theory is widely considered by Marxist-Leninists to have been erroneous and revisionist.[2] Marxist-Leninists instead uphold the idea that class struggle continues under socialism, including both internal and external bourgeois subversion and attempts at capitalist restoration.[12]
Khrushchev's declaration of a sufficiently developed stage of socialism to no longer have a domestic bourgeoisie was premature and right-deviationist in nature, as it posited that through sheer idealist "will", the Soviet people had advanced socialism to a new stage and essentially "won" the class struggle. This was one of the major points of the Sino-Soviet split.
Peaceful coexistence[edit | edit source]
After the introduction of nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War, many people across the world began to fear the concept of a nuclear war, especially as tensions escalated between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. In response to these forces, much of the world saw movements for peace and cooperation.
In the CPSU, this translated into a conciliatory policy of détente with the imperialist powers, including suggestions of "peaceful coexistence" with the west, and concretely in Marxism, a "peaceful competition" between capitalist and socialist "world systems" which, due to the self-destructive nature of capitalism, would eventually resolve into an inevitable victory for socialism.[13]
The Chinese leadership characterized this as betrayal of Marxism, a capitulation to imperialism, and abandonment of the principles of struggle.[14]
National question[edit | edit source]
Khrushchev believed that a single Soviet nation would eventually replace the existing nationalities of the USSR. Regardless, Khrushchev also made frequent reference to "the peoples" and "the Soviet peoples,"[13] which implies that he did not believe this had happened yet.
There was an increase in bourgeois nationalism in response to this declaration.[7]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑
Khrushchev, Nikita; Crankshaw, Edward; Talbott, Strobe (1971).: Khrushchev Remembers. Bantam Books. p. 106Finally, the nationality question entered into my thinking. It's true, I'd already worked in the Ukraine and had always gotten along well with Ukrainian Communists and non-Party members alike. Nevertheless, as a Russian, I still felt some awkwardness among Ukrainians. Even though I understand the Ukrainian language, I'd never mastered it to the extent that I could make speeches in it.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 “The Programme put forward by the revisionist Khrushchev clique at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU is a programme of phony communism, a revisionist programme, against proletarian revolution and for the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletarian party.
The revisionist Khrushchev clique abolishes the dictatorship of the proletariat behind the camouflage of the "state of the whole people", changes the proletarian character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union behind the camouflage of the "party of the entire people", and paves the way for the restoration of capitalism.”
Mao Zedong (1964). On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World). [MIA] - ↑ Vijay Prashad (2017). Red Star over the Third World: 'Polycentric Communism' (p. 117). [PDF] New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
- ↑ “You speak of your "devotion" to me. Perhaps it was just a chance phrase. Perhaps. But if the phrase was not accidental I would advise you to discard the "principle" of devotion to persons. It is not the Bolshevik way. Be devoted to the working class, its Party, its state. That is a fine and useful thing. But do not confuse it with devotion to persons, this vain and useless bauble of weak-minded intellectuals.”
J.V. Stalin (1930). Letter to Comrade Shatunovsky. [MIA] - ↑ “Ever since Khrushchov seized the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, he has pushed through a whole series of revisionist policies which have greatly hastened the growth of the forces of capitalism and again sharpened the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the roads of socialism and capitalism in the Soviet Union.”
Mao Zedong (1964). On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World). [MIA] - ↑ 6.0 6.1 Nikita Khrushchev (1970). MEMOIRS OF NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV. Vol. 1, Commissar (1918-1945).
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Roger Keeran, Thomas Kenny (2010). Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union: 'Two Trends in Soviet Politics' (pp. 29–41). [PDF] iUniverse.com. ISBN 9781450241717
- ↑ “All this villainy emerged soon after the death, or to be more precise after the murder, of Stalin. I say after the murder of Stalin, because Mikoyan himself told me...that they, together with Khrushchev and their associates, had decided...to make an attempt on Stalin’s life”
Enver Hoxha (1981). With Stalin: Memoirs (p. 31). [MIA] - ↑ 9.0 9.1 TheFinnishBolshevik (2019-05-07). "The Khrushchev Coup (Death of Stalin & Khrushchev’s Rise to Power)" ML-Theory. Archived from the original on 2022-01-16. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 “Thus, now class relations in our country have entered a new stage. "Proletarian democracy" is becoming "socialist democracy of the whole people".”
Nikita Khrushchev (1963). Communism -- Peace and Happiness for the Peoples (Collected Speeches of Nikita Khrushchev from January-December 1961): 'Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U., October 17, 1961' (p. 112). [MIA] - ↑ “The state will remain long after the victory of the first phase of communism. The process of its withering away will be a very long one; it will cover an entire historical epoch and will not end until society is completely ripe for self-administration. For some time, the features of state administration and public self-government will intermingle. In this process the domestic functions of the state will develop and change, and gradually lose their political character. It is only after a developed communist society is built in the U.S.S.R., and provided socialism wins and consolidates in the international arena, that there will no longer be any need for the state, and it will wither away.”
Nikita Khrushchev (1963). Communism -- Peace and Happiness for the Peoples (Collected Speeches of Nikita Khrushchev from January-December 1961): 'On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Report to the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U., October 18, 1961' (p. 112). [MIA] - ↑ “For a very long historical period after the proletariat takes power, class struggle continues as an objective law independent of man’s will, differing only in form from what it was before the taking of power.
After the October Revolution, Lenin pointed out a number of times that:
a) The overthrown exploiters always try in a thousand and one ways to recover the "paradise" they have been deprived of.
b) New elements of capitalism are constantly and spontaneously generated in the petty-bourgeois atmosphere.
c) Political degenerates and new bourgeois elements may emerge in the ranks of the working class and among government functionaries as a result of bourgeois influence and the pervasive, corrupting influence of the petty bourgeoisie.
d) The external conditions for the continuance of class struggle within a socialist society are encirclement by international capitalism, the imperialists’ threat of armed intervention and their subversive activities to accomplish peaceful disintegration.
Life has confirmed these conclusions of Lenin’s.
In socialist society, the overthrown bourgeoisie and other reactionary classes remain strong for quite a long time, and indeed in certain respects are quite powerful. They have a thousand and one links with the international bourgeoisie. They are not reconciled to their defeat and stubbornly continue to engage in trials of strength with the proletariat. They conduct open and hidden struggles against the proletariat in every field.”
Mao Zedong (1964). On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World). [MIA] - ↑ 13.0 13.1 Nikita Khrushchev (1963). Communism -- Peace and Happiness for the Peoples (Collected Speeches of Nikita Khrushchev from January-December 1961).
- ↑ Mao Zedong (1964). Under the signboard of "peaceful coexistence", Khrushchov has been colluding with U.S. imperialism, wrecking the socialist camp and the international communist movement, opposing the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations, practising great-power chauvinism and national egoism and betraying proletarian internationalism. All this is being done for the protection of the vested interests of a handful of people, which he places above the fundamental interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the socialist camp and the whole world.. [MIA]