Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev:

NIKITA SERGEYEVICH KHRUSHCHEV:
THE ROAD TO POWER

Dept. of Political Science, Govt. Arts & Commerce College, Indore

Senior Research Fellow, University Grants Commission

Although we know that Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich, was born on April 17, 1894, in a mine-worker’s family in the Village of Kalinovka in the Kursk province and that he worked, when he was only a child, as a herdsman and then as a metal worker in the factories and mines of the Donbass, our knowledge of the details about his family ground, childhood and early youth is all still in a state of flux. Contrary to the position in the rest of the world, in the Soviet Union the future is certain, shaped by plans and governed by “inevitable” laws of development, while the past is most uncertain.

The task of the biographers of Soviet leaders is often similar in a way to that of archaeological researchers. Soviet public life is absolutely depersonalised in the sense that the private life of public figures is taboo. According to Marxist principles subjective and personal aspects are of no consequence. None of Stalin’s marriages, for instance, were ever reported in the Soviet Union. The Soviet press and radio never mention the family life, hobbies and idiosyncrasies of public figures. Until Khrushchev’s visit to America, serious students of Soviet affairs refrained from writing anything definitive about his marriages and his children. On the eve of his departure, the foreign journalists in Moscow reported that he was married for the first time in 1920, 1921, 1922 and for the second time in 1938. On September, 1959, in Washington Mme Nina Petrovna Khrushcheva gave a press conference and in a revolutionary departure from Soviet practice, revealed that Khrushchev’s first wife died “during the famine,” and that she herself married him in 1924, when his two children by his first wife were six and eight years old.

In the Soviet Union public figures exist only in their official political capacities. The provincial newspapers also naturally respect this rule. The local party secretary exists on their pages as party secretary and nothing else. One could say that the function is everything and the human being behind the function is nothing–as far as the public eye is concerned. The biographer has to read hundreds or thousands of newspaper articles, conference reports, speeches and interviews in order to establish a few “personal and private facts” which could be obtained in five minutes about the public figures of the outside world.

In this strangely depersonalised and dehumanised world men start to be visible when, and as far as, they act out their public functions. Hence the Khrushchev-story has to begin with his “Party-birth”, with the time when he was chosen to become a member of Stalin’s apparatus. From then on there is increasingly more circumstantial material, and later more and more direct evidence, for tracing the development of this almost anthropologically different human species–the Communist apparatchik.

As an apparatchik makes his way to the higher rungs of the hierarchical ladder, there is increasingly more direct documentary evidence on his actions and general behaviour.

Khrushchev’s rise in the hierarchy had been uncommonly, unbelievably swift. He was then forty years old but as to the all-important “Party-age” he was much younger. He had joined the party only in 1918, when he was twenty-four, and had stepped on to the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder of the party apparatus as late as 1925, when thirty-one years old. In 1934 he reached the uppermost region of Soviet power by becoming first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. On the anniversary of the revolution he stood there on the top of the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square, among the “great leaders” of the party and Government headed by Stalin.

Khrushchev represented a new type among the Soviet leaders. He was entirely a product of Stalin’s apparatus. Although only four years younger than Molotov and roughly of the same generation as many of the “old” Bolsheviks who took part in the conspiratory struggles before the revolution, Khrushchev was, not one of the fathers but, a child of the Bolshevik revolution.

The fathers of the revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and the others, were European revolutionary intellectuals, shaped by the revolutionary heritage of the nineteenth century. They are fully comprehensible even to people unfamiliar with the Soviet system. Stalin’s personality was already shaped partly by the party monolith created by Lenin and perfected by himself. Yet large regions of Stalin’s personality are immediately comprehensible to the external world. Khrushchev, who was a semi-literate peasant worker and an adult when he joined the party, had nothing of intellectual-emotional ground of the fathers of the revolution. He learnt to think from the party and knew no other system than the Soviet one. His personality is just as enigmatic as the Soviet world. Khrushchev, the functionary, grew up together with the party apparatus. His personality is only comprehensible through the story of his incredibly dangerous climb up the ladder of Communist hierarchy.

Khrushchev, as a member of the Communist Party, did not belong to the class of intellectuals who had the interest and the will-power to go on reading and learning. He was certainly not of this type. The cultured intellectual, after embracing Marxism, had to relinquish, often through a very painful process, his old habit of thinking, discussing and arguing. The possibility that the opponent of Marxism can be right in the least little detail is firmly excluded. A Marxist must be immune to outside argument. Marxism, as the supreme science of human society, and Marxist dialectics, the method for every science, are infallible. And Krushchev, an uneducated and a roughly-going man, had no intellectual habits to give up. His complete acceptance of Marxist theory was not hindered by a previous cultural ground. He knew no science, no other system of thought, no other philosophy, to other economic theory but the Marxist one.

The Marxists whom Khrushchev met were immensely sure of themselves. They could, according to his impression, calmly and simply refute and annihilate any counter-arguments. For a really good Marxist the world with all its puzzles is not a terribly complicated, incalculable and unknowable thing, but something easy to understand and explain.

Thoughts are simple tools if you are taught how to use them. And if you have learnt thinking (that is: Marxism), then it is of little importance how cultured you are. Marxism teaches you what makes the human world and the world of nature tick. Marxism gives the simple worker immense superiority over the confused intellectuals, over the aristocrats and millionaires of the mind. The revolution gives all this intellectual superiority to the workers. Lenin’s remark that Marxist theory is a terribly strong weapon is quite correct.

Khrushchev and his fellow-students learnt in party schools and Rabfaksthat the stars in heaven, the Sun, the earth, all life on the earth, every activity is governed by scientific laws. These are like the laws ordered by the Tsar or by the police except that they are stronger laws, because no human beings, no armies, nothing can change them. What these scientific laws ordain is inevitable. It happens whether we like it or not.

Khrushchev was to learn words and sentences explaining the scientific laws, by heart. He was to learn by heart: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” He was also to cram: “The activity of the Bolshevik Party must not be based on the good wishes of ‘outstanding individuals’, not on the dictates of ‘reason’, ‘universal morals’ etc., but on the laws of development of society and on the study of these laws.” He was told, during his training in party schools, that the real meaning of democracy is dictatorship.

“Democracy is a state which recognises the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organisation for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against the other.” ^l

And again:

“Soviet Socialist Democratism does not in any way contradict one-man management and dictatorship; the will of the class is sometimes given effect to by a dictator who sometimes does more alone and often is more necessary.” ²

Thus Khrushchev learnt with utmost sincerity all those lessons which were thought necessary by the Communist Party to make him a staunch die-hard comrade.

In various speeches Khrushchev often mentioned how hard he strove at the Rabfakto master the sciences. He certainly must have excelled in learning Marxism and in behaving as a loyal party-man, because barely a year after his entering the school, the Yuzovka City Party Committee sent his name to the Rabfak Party Committee as the comrade who should be elected Party Secretary. The Vydvizhenets–“one who pushed himself forward”–was now pushed forward by his superiors in the party apparatus. The Rabfak had several party cells. Khrushchev became the superior of all the cell-secretaries–in fact the most important man in the Rabfak, in real influence outranking even the dictator of the school and all the teaching staff. He became the representative and the watch-dog of the party over the entire school, over all the teachers and students.

After finishing the workers’ faculty N. S. Khrushchev was in leading party-work in the Donbass and then in Kiev. In 1929 he began to study in the J. V. Stalin Industrial Academy in Moscow where he was elected secretary of the party committee. From January 1931, Khrushchev was secretary of the Baumann and then the Krasnopresnenski raion Party Committee of Moscow. During 1932-34 he worked at first as second, and then as First Secretary of the Moscow city and as the second secretary of the Moscow oblast committees of the party; in 1935 he was elected first secretary of the Moscow oblast and city committees of the party where he worked until 1938. In these years Khrushchev carried out organisational work of great magnitude in executing the plans projected by the party and government for the socialist reconstruction of Moscow, for developing public services in the capittal, and for the improvement of the living conditions of workers and employees.

In January 1938 Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine; in 1939 he was elected as a member of the Politbureau. During the Great Fatherland War of 1941-45, Khrushchev was with the army in the field, but he simultaneously completed his work at all other fronts–social, economic and political. He conducted work of great magnitude in the organisation of all-peoples partisan movement in the Ukraine against the German Fascist invaders. As political head of the Ukraine, as member of the Soviet Politbureau and as one of the leaders of the local military council, Khrushchev was directly involved in all political, economic and military operations. He was in charge of economic mobilisation, of plans for evacuation of industries and of population. He had to see to it that all the important industrial equipment should be quickly dismantled and evacuated to the East. He had to give general orders for destroying equipment left behind. And the quick evacuation of hundreds of factories, of equipment, supplies, live-stock, was one of the sensations of this period of the great war. It was praised by Soviet and Western observers alike and even German commentators expressed a grudging admiration. Thus Khrushchev’s administrative and organisational talents were fully vindicated.

After the war the political situation in the Soviet Union became very much complicated as Stalin became more and more capricious, irritable and brutal. His persecution mania reached unbelievable dimensions. He separated himself from the collective life. He chose to decide everything by himself without any consideration for anyone or anything. The purge-cyclones were, raging over all parts of the Soviet Union and the Satellite Empire. Many were expelled from the party. After that they were arrested and executed. But Khrushchev came out of the dangers unharmed. Rather his position became stronger.

From December 1949 until Stalin’s death in 1953 Khrushchev worked in daily contact with Stalin. On the latter’s 70th birthday Khrushchev wrote a pamphlet praising Stalin’s genius. It was published in Moscow in Russian and in many foreign languages. The title of the English version is: “Stalin-Friendship among the Peoples Makes Our Motherland Invincible”. Although Stalin was very suspicious and capricious, Khrushchev’s rivals and enemies had not been able to manoeuvre Stalin into liquidating him. In fact, Stalin thought Khrushchev useful in providing a counter-weight against other very ambitious people in his entourage. Suspicious as Stalin was, he felt that Khrushchev constituted no danger to his rule. And this fact raised Khrushchev’s position, and he gradually strengthened his hold on the party during the regime of Stalin.

The day Stalin died Khrushchev was a member of the Presidium and one of the secretaries of the Central Committee. He was ranked as Number Five in the leadership. He became the actual head of the apparatus on March 14, when Malenkov had to relinquish his first secretaryship. This was the outcome of the struggle for power among all the leaders. Khrushchev himself had comparatively little to do with it. He was rightly placed. He had a very long past in the apparatus. He had been continuously a member of the Central Committee for the past nineteen years and of the Politbureau or Presidium for the past fourteen. The fact that he had the party apparatus in his hand made it possible for him to exploit the further intrigues between the rivals for accession, and to use the enormous power of the apparatus in order to achieve his official accession to the first secretaryship. This rank was as yet not spelled with capital letters. It was his own doing, however, that he soon became the First Secretary and the dictator of the Soviet Union. With the apparatus in his hands this was to be expected.

Khrushchev became Prime Minister of the Soviet Union in 1958 after ousting Malenkov and Bulganin and defeating all his opponents. He dealt with the situation tactfully and foiled the attempts of the Malenkov and Mikoyan group and of the Molotov-Kaganovich faction to demote him entirely, in the Spring of 1957. When the campaign for a summit meeting was on, Khrushchev had to convince the Central Committee that the real head of the Soviet Union must be the Premier, since otherwise the figurehead, Bulgarian, would have to negotiate with President Eisenhower and the other Western leaders. A few days before the end of the March session of the Supreme Soviet, Mikoyan told Western reporters at an Embassy reception in Moscow that they should not expect any “Government changes” at this session. But at the March 27 session Voroshilov, as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Presidium, proposed that “dear Nikita Khrushchev” should be elected Prime Minister in succession to Bulganin. Voroshilov spoke at length about Khrushchev’s “outstanding personality”, “creative endeavour”, “inexhaustible energy” and “untiring labour”. Supreme Soviet voted him into Premiership. Upon that Khrushchev expressed his sentiments: “By your decision you have just expressed great confidence in me and have done me a great honour. I shall do everything to justify your confidence and shall not spare health, strength or life to serve you”.

Khrushchev, like many others, had a deep-rooted hatred for Stalin and for those who had an unshakable faith in Stalin’s policies although he (Khrushchev) worked with Stalin and praised him during the latter’s regime. Perhaps, it was for tactical purposes. But after the death of Stalin anti-Stalin feelings grew steadily in force and scope in Russia. Even Stalin’s heirs did not want to defend and preserve the Stalin myth in its entirety. The die-hard Stalinists, led by Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov, were prepared to make some concessions as long as Stalinist dictatorship (minus the bloody purges) was preserved in tact. The middle-road apparatchik faction led by Khrushchev, was all along against too far-reaching anti-Stalinisation. They feared that Party dictatorship would suffer. During the three years of the post-Stalin era, Khrushchev himself alternated between linking his name to the Stalin myth and distancing himself from it.

But on the 25th February, 1956 Khrushchev delivered a long speech making an all-round exposure of Stalin’s mass-murders. He said:

“Stalin originated the concept “enemy of the people”. This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven: this term made possible the use of the most cruel repression, violating all forms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had had reputations. This concept “enemy of the people”, actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one’s views known on this or that issue, even those of a practical character”….…

This led to glaring violations of revolutionary legality, and to the fact that many entirely innocent persons, who in the past had defended the party line, became victims. We must assert that in regard to those persons who in their time had opposed the party line, there were often no sufficiently serious reasons for their physical annihilation. The formula “enemy of the people” was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals.”

Although this speech was delivered by Khrushchev, he was not very happy with the contents of the speech. In fact, he was forced by Mikoyan, Malenkov and their associates to present it. They thought that by this act Khrushchev would make it impossible for himself ever to aspire again to one-man dictatorship. But Khrushchev did everything with his insertions to show that he had nothing to do with the murder cases and that Stalin was exclusively responsible for them.

Also, in making the official exposure of Stalin, Khrushchev had a chance to blacken his enemies as Stalinist and award the halo of anti-Stalinism to his adherents and to those of his rivals whom it was expedient at the moment to placate. Consequently, he took great pains in his last minute insertions to show, to prove, to announce, that Malenkov was the evil spirit and alter-ego of Stalin during the war, in fabricating the Leningrad affair and in other matters. He showed that Kaganovich tried to defend Stalin because he was Stalin’s accomplice. Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov were accorded mixed treatment. Thus Khrushchev, in exposing the sins of Stalin, also had an opportunity to blacken the faces of his opponents, and to win the faith of the Communist Party in his own leadership.

The theses of the speech are:

1. Marxist-Leninist refutations of ideological pretexts for one-man dictatorship, for terror and mass repression. Hence the thesis is refuted that “as we march forward towards socialism, class-war must allegedly sharpen.” The “enemy of the people” concept is sharply denounced.

2. Proofs that according to Marxist theory and Lenin’s practice ultimate power rests in the Party Congress and the Central Committee plenum. “There was no matter so important that Lenin himself decided it without asking for advice and approval of the majority of the Central Committee members or of the members of the Politbureau.”

3. That without democratic majority rule in the Central Committee and the Presidium, and without Socialist legality, there is no defence against “the willfulness of individuals abusing their power.”

It is quite evident from the above theses that Khrushchev is against the concept of one-man dictatorship. Also, he believes that majority principle, to decide policies in the party meetings, should be adopted. Further, he insists that war is not inevitable to defeat capitalism. He, in his television interview to the Columbia Broadcasting System on June 2, 1957, stated: “With regard to the ideology of capitalist and socialist countries, we have never concealed that there will be a struggle in this field, an ideological struggle……Some people reproach me for allegedly changing my point of view, since I once said that if an atomic war came about it would be capitalism that would perish in that war. This I repeat today. But we think that capitalism should be destroyed not by means of war…..but through an ideological and economic struggle……” Thus Khrushchev appears as a revisionist of the old Marxist- Leninist theses.

Keeping in view his policy of peace, he placed a programme of seven-year plan before the Twenty-first Party Congress at the end of January, 1959 for the building up of communism, which was finally approved by the Congress. His theses and report on the seven-year plan described its main tasks as follows:

1. the creation of the material and technical basis of communism;

2. the full satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of the Soviet people;

3. the consolidation of the economic and defence power of the USSR;

4. ensuring the victory of the USSR in the peaceful economic competition with the capitalist countries of the West.

The seven-year plan was the most important campaign in the Kremlin struggle for world supremacy, but through peaceful competition. Khrushchev claimed that United States economic power would be equalled by the USSR in 1970, five years after the end of the seven-year plan:

“If we calculate per head of the population, another five years will probably be needed after the fulfilment of the seven-year plan to catch up and outstrip the United States industrial output. Thus by that time, or perhaps even sooner, the Soviet Union will advance to the first place in the world both in the absolute volume of production and in production per head of the population. This will be a historical world victory for Socialism in peaceful competition with capitalism in the international area.” ³

Khrushchev pointed out that in this peaceful competition the United States, they have to rely on political as well as economic factors. Among these Khrushchev attributed a great deal of importance to the “scientific laws” about the “inevitable crisis” and inherent contradictions of the capitalist-imperialist system. These “laws” promulgated by Marx and Engels based on mid-nineteenth century experience, and those derived by Lenin from the world situation in the first two decades of the twentieth century, are according to Khrushchev still valid in the second part of the twentieth century. “Capitalism,” he emphasised, “is incapable of freeing itself from the death grip of its own contradictions.”

Two other important political factors are:

1. The plan “will raise to an unparalleled degree the force of attraction of communist ideas,” especially in the less developed countries of the world.

2. The economic progress of the entire Socialist camp, including China, and the consolidation of its strength and unity under Soviet leadership.

The Congress heard also something of the difficulties in the way towards victory. Aristov, one of the most powerful leaders under Khrushchev, referred to the heavy demands that are to be made on the Soviet engineering industry during the next seven years. He said that some engineering works were already overloaded and still had to deal with aid commitments to China, India, and other countries. It should be noted in this context, that the planning expert Saburov, confessed that the anti-party group had opposed the poliicy of giving too much aid to under-developed countries.

Khrushchev spoke about ideological dangers:

“Some workers under-estimate the harm of bourgeois influences upon Soviet youth, thinking that the bourgeoisie is far from us, and that our youth is beyond its reach. But this is an error. We cannot ignore the possibility of bourgeois influence and are obliged to wage a struggle against it, against the penetration of alien views and morals among Soviet people and particularly among the young.”

Speaking about the transition to communism (“to each according to his needs”) Khrushchev emphasised that this can be attained only when there is “an abundance of goods”. But the satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of the people does not mean the satisfaction of “whims” or “luxuries” as in the capitalist countries.

His thesis on the transition to communism contained a very severe attack on the Mao and the Chinese leadership. He did not name them, but Mao is unmistakably one of the “comrades” whom he accused of inflicting damage on the building of communism and of having distorted and compromised the communist cause.

Khrushchev is a man of the atomic age, and he is quite aware of the consequences of the thermonuclear war. That is why he tries to base his theory, policy and action on the real situation of the present world and not on dogmatic generalisations based on the situation in the last century. He fully understands that nuclear warfare by its very nature is exceedingly dangerous, particularly for dictatorships. If A– or H– bombs were dropped on the principal cities of the Soviet and Satellite Empire, thereby cutting off or annihilating central direction of the organs of repression, MVD, KGB, police, etc., popular revolts could break out everywhere. All his experience since Stalin’s death has shown to Khrushchev and the apparatus that populations, armies, students, workers, even communists “are not to be trusted”. Wherever the system of oppression appeared to be weakened, small and large-scale revolts followed. The general disorder and disorganisation following a nuclear attack would not turn the British or American population against their regimes. “Nuclear war would entail for the free world many dangers, but not the danger of revolts again the British or American “systems”. In Soviet Russia the regime itself would be in the greatest of dangers.” A regime, which in the last analysis depends on the party apparatus (less than half a per cent of the population) and its secret police–cannot risk breaks in the “monolithic unity” and strength of the entire machinery of oppression.

Further, he knows that his country has not yet got over the after-effects of the Stalin era and of the II World War. A third war could dangerously reduce the proportion of Russians within the USSR to that of the non-Russian majority of the inhabitants. And a third atomic war could annihilate the total population of the USSR. Rebutting the view that the recent events in the Caribbean were a victory for the United States, Mr. Khrushchev said on the 7th November, 1962, ⁴ after a sombre passage wherein he told his listeners how close the world had been to a thermonuclear war, that there was only one victor–reason, What is needed, according to him, in regulation of international disputes a flexibility.

Thus Khrushchev’s regime stands for many bloodless successes in the international arena through a policy of compromise and mutual concessions and many achievements on the home front by permitting a far higher living standard and a far easier and safer political climate for the average citizen.

Khrushchev was and is a pragmatist in Marxism-Leninism, Marxist “theses”, and the dogmatic approach are used by him only on occasions when it suits his aims. In foreign affairs his approach is often non-ideological and peaceful. He feels that today there are mighty social and political forces possessing formidable means “to prevent the imperialists from unleashing war and, if they actually try to start it, to give a crushing rebuff to the aggressors and frustrate their adventurist plans.” ⁵ To be able to do this, all anti-war forces must be vigilant and prepared, must act as a united front and never relax their efforts in the battle for peace.

In fact, Khrushchev wants to defeat capitalism, not by fighting a devastating war, but by attracting the peoples of the world towards the values of socialism, which, according to him, are: free, democratic, and open society; tolerance and individualism; belief in the basic human rights; belief in absolute moral principles; the right to strike, the right to disagree; the non-acceptance of an exclusive political dogma; and a non-militarized society. And his socialism comprises, not only the Marxian values like economic equality, democratic and free society, and dignity of human labour, but it also maintains the democratic values such as the freedom of expression, the right to differ, and faith in basic human rights, and absolute moral principles. He firmly asserts that there is no harm if Russia accepts certain democratic principles and fits them in her own life as many of her socialist values have been adopted by the Western Democracies.

Thus he dismisses completely the idea of waging a physical war against the capitalist countries. But the war for men’s minds remains. This “peaceful, ideological war” can be waged, on both sides, with Khrushchev’s blessings. This war might even influence Khrushchev himself if waged on both sides.

Ntkita Sergeyevich Khrushchev is at the cross-roads. Emerging from the blood-red chaos of the Russian revolution, surviving the nightmare decades of the Stalin era, intriguing, manreuvring, fighting his way to the top, he struggles now with tremendous problems. Dogma-bound, he is emotionally guided by the petrifaction of Marx’s genuine anger at the social conditions of the last century. These emotions, kept alive by a sort of collective self- hypnosis of communist leaders, seek to justify tyranny and hatred of freedom and individualism by peopling the free world with the ghosts of bygone ages. His peasant common sense and pragmatism pull him towards present reality, while the occupational disease of dictators has the opposite tendency. However, it is hoped that his great dreams, although they appear quite fantastic to dogma-bound communists, will pave the way for the survival of humanity at least for a few decades more.

^l Lenin: Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1937, Vol. IX, p. 70.
² Lenin: Works, 4th Russian edition, Vol. XXX, p. 444. 
³ Khrushchev’s speech, January 27, 1959.
⁴ Khrushchev’s speech at Kremlin in regard to Cuban crisis on the 7th Nov., 1962.
⁵ Khrushchev by George Paloczi-Horvath (Secker & Warburg, London, 1960.) p. 288.