De-Stalinization

De-Stalinization

Stalin's heirs

Stalin's heirs

Stalin's heirs (Malenkov, Beria, Molotov and Khrushchev) had several common goals:

• Maintaining the one-party
• One-ideology state
• Expand its economy
• Control all public institutions and their personnel
• Secure the Soviet Union’s domination of Eastern Europe
• Expand communist influence around the world

In addition, several of the veterans were convinced that such goals were unattainable unless a reform programme were quickly to be implemented.

Stalin's heirs

Malenkov wanted softer relations with the West; he also favoured the boosting of industrial consumer-goods production and the intensification of agricultural techniques. Beria agreed with this. Khrushchev’s priority was agriculture, and he urged the ploughing up of virgin lands in Kazakhstan as a cheap way to raise output rapidly. The conflict intensified between Malenkov and Khrushchev over the nature of the reforms to be adopted. Khrushchev’s survival in power depended on the germination of wheat seed in the ploughed-up steppe of central Asia. Fortunately for him, the 1955 grain harvest across the USSR was twenty-one per cent higher than in the previous year.

The secret speech

The secret speech

The speech was a turning-point in the USSR’s politics. Its unifying topic was Stalin. The speech was given over to the abuses perpetrated by Stalin in the following three decades. Khrushchev stressed that Stalin was a blunderer as well as a killer. His undeclared purpose was to show the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party that the attack on Stalin would not involve a dismantlement of his entire system.

Consequences

Consequences

First to express discontent were Polish industrial workers. The episode was yet another indication of the unpopularity of the Soviet Army, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the KGB throughout Eastern Europe. But things went badly for the USSR. Budapest’s workers and intellectuals were pressing for the regime’s fundamental reform. On 23 October a popular disturbance took place in Budapest. In the following week a revolt against Soviet domination occurred. On 4 November 1956 the tanks of the Soviet Army moved against the rebels. The Hungarian revolt was castigated by Khrushchev as a counter-revolution inspired by the West

Consequences

The annual harvest figures were generally encouraging. Wheat output rose by over fifty per cent between 1950 and 1960. Milk and meat production had increased by sixty nine and eighty-seven per cent respectively in the seven years after Stalin’s death. Soviet economic achievements under Khrushchev were undeniable. Gross national income had grown by fifty -eight per cent by 1965 and industrial output by eighty -four per cent.