An ordinary miracle of Nikita Khrushchev: the “wolf” who abolished the “law of the jungle”

It must, however, be noted that the words quoted above were spoken non-publicly: they are known only from the memories of his son. According to Sergei Nikitovich, his father said this when he returned home on October 14, 1964 (the Khrushchevs then lived in a mansion on the Lenin Hills) after the plenum of the Central Committee, which removed him from all his posts. But there is no doubt about the reliability of the source: similar thoughts can be found quite often in the memoirs of Nikita Sergeevich himself, dictated by him after his resignation.

For example, this: “If we do not recognize the right of party members to change leadership, then I don’t know at all what the party will turn into. Such a party will not be able to attract the masses, because it will no longer be a dictatorship of a class, but a dictatorship of the individual.”

And while in power, he often spoke on this topic. Here is his statement made at the January plenum of 1961: “The time has passed when leaders were hereditary. Now, if it works well, they welcome it, if it works poorly, they change it. This is how it will be, this is how it should be. This is the law, this is democracy.”

And these were not just words. In the same year, 1961, at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a new party charter was adopted, which provided for the systematic renewal of the composition of all elected party bodies: members of governing bodies could be elected for no more than three consecutive terms, secretaries of primary party organizations – no more than two terms. It was planned to extend the same practice to government agencies.

True, this rule, which was strict at first glance, had immeasurable exceptions: especially authoritative and honored party leaders were not prohibited from exceeding the “urgent” limit (if this was supported by at least 75 percent of the delegates of the corresponding congress, conference or general meeting). So, one can only guess how many terms Nikita Sergeevich has given himself.

On the one hand, his age at the time of his resignation was already quite retirement age: six months before his resignation, Khrushchev celebrated his 70th birthday. According to Sergei Nikitovich, in the family circle and in conversations with colleagues on the Presidium of the Central Committee, his father more than once spoke about his desire to retire. He even named a specific deadline.

“It happened at the dacha in the late autumn of 1963,” recalled Sergei Khrushchev. “We were walking in the light of the lanterns along the front asphalt road leading from the gate to the house, when suddenly my father started talking about the situation in the Presidium… “I’ll make it until the 23rd Congress and resign,” he said then. Then he began to say that he had grown old, and the rest of the Presidium members were grandfathers of retirement age.”

For reference: the XXIII Congress of the CPSU was held from March 29 to April 8, 1966, that is, a year and a half after Khrushchev’s resignation. However, it is absolutely impossible to determine how sincere the Soviet leader was when he dreamed out loud about retiring.

Even if he didn’t cheat his soul at all then, it still didn’t mean anything. Firstly, a person does not always act guided by his deepest desires. And secondly, desires do not always remain unchanged. Moreover, the desires of such impulsive people as Nikita Khrushchev, who sometimes changed several times during the day.

In any case, Nikita Sergeevich, of course, did not expect that the renewal of power would begin with him. And that, in general, is where it will end: after Khrushchev’s resignation, the idea of ​​forced personnel rotation was put to rest. First de facto, and then de jure: soon the paragraph that irritated the nomenklatura was excluded from the charter.

And as for Khrushchev’s removal, there was still democracy here. It looked much more like a coup d’etat rather than a democratic procedure. Nevertheless, Nikita Khrushchev had reasons to be proud of himself even in this case. After all, it was he who laid the tradition of a bloodless change of power.

Contrary to popular belief, Nikita Sergeevich did not occupy post No. 1 immediately after Stalin’s death. The successor to the “leader of the peoples” was Georgy Malenkov, who after the leader inherited the post of head of government and Stalin’s office in the Kremlin. Khrushchev was then just a secretary of the Central Committee – one of nine.

Although, as a fact, of course, he was the first among formal equals, in the original post-Stalin power hierarchy he occupied only the third position, behind not only Malenkov, but also Lavrentiy Beria, deputy chairman of the government and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In a word, power did not fall on Nikita Sergeevich. He made his way to the top on his own, eliminating one competitor after another. And at first there was some blood.

It was Khrushchev who was the soul and organizer of the conspiracy against Beria, who, no matter how he begged for mercy, was dealt with without any pity, in full accordance with the algorithm of Stalin’s purges: arrest, mock trial, execution. One can, of course, say that Beria deserved it – as Stalin’s henchman and one of the organizers of the repressions. But they, the participants in the conspiracy, were the same henchmen and organizers, all of them were also tied in blood.

No, there was no smell of any higher justice here. There was also, in legal terms, the necessary self-defense: there is no evidence that Beria was plotting something against the rest of the leaders of the party and government, or preparing a coup. And very little was personal. If there was one at all. In Khrushchev’s memoirs one can find many places where he speaks of Beria with sympathy.

There was only a cold political calculation: Beria was eliminated, so to speak, for preventive purposes. As a person who possessed a powerful power resource and could play his own game, which was not coordinated with other members of the leadership, and therefore posed a huge potential threat to them.

This story says a lot about Khrushchev’s character. He was neither a carefree klutz nor a “rotten”, “herbivorous” liberal, as he is sometimes portrayed. No, he was a real “predator”, a “wolf”, brought up in the “jungle” of the Stalinist regime, where you had to gape, show weakness – they immediately eat you. “He outwitted everyone!”, Vyacheslav Molotov said about Khrushchev after his resignation. Either with hatred or with admiration.

But what is even more amazing is what he did, having seized power, Khrushchev radically changed the “law of the jungle”: now it was possible to challenge the “king of beasts” – and still survive. A clear illustration of the softening of morals was the fate of the members of the “anti-party group” that attempted to overthrow Khrushchev in 1957.

According to the well-known propaganda cliché, it consisted of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov “and Shepilov, who joined them.” But in fact, the circle of conspirators is at least twice as wide. It also included Voroshilov, Bulganin, Pervukhin and Saburov.

“They say that after the shameful defeat of the Stalinist guard, Kaganovich, who had patronized Khrushchev for many years, called him and asked: “Nikita, what will happen to us?” Fyodor Burlatsky wrote in his memoirs (he led a group of consultants to the CPSU Central Committee, in fact served as an adviser to Khrushchev). – Khrushchev answered him with a question: “What would you do if you took it? Would they rot in Tmutarakan or put you against the wall? And I’ll tell you simply: go… you know where.” And then a strong, unprintable word followed. It – this word – meant a new tradition: defeated politicians were not killed, but simply removed.”

In fact, not everyone was even suspended. At least not all at once. For example, Kliment Voroshilov worked for another three years as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and served as a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. And in May 1960 he was even awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

“Could anyone dream that we could tell Stalin that he doesn’t suit us and invite him to resign?” Sergei Khrushchev reports his father’s words spoken in a telephone conversation with Anastas Mikoyan late in the evening of October 13, 1964, on the eve of his overthrow. “There would be no wet place left of us. Now everything is different. The fear has disappeared, and the conversation is on an equal footing.”

This is, of course, Khrushchev’s main achievement, setting the tone for assessments of his era, forcing him to be more lenient about all his “twists” and with even greater admiration for the positive things that were accomplished under him.

There were as many “twists” as you wanted. Rudeness, rudeness, conceit, tyranny – Nikita Sergeevich had all this in stock. Just look at his legendary “attacks” on the creative intelligentsia.

“Khrushchev was our hope, I wanted to tell him, in good spirit, about the situation in literature, believing that he would understand everything,” Andrei Voznesensky described his feelings from one of these public vices. “But as soon as I, nervously, began my speech, when someone began to interrupt me from behind… “Mr. Voznesensky,” it roared, “get out of our country, get out!”… I turned around. A few meters away from me, Khrushchev’s face, distorted with anger, screamed… Chapter. Powers jumped up, shaking his fists above his head: “Mr. Voznesensky! Out! Comrade Shelepin will issue you a passport.” Next came an absolutely monstrous stream. For what?! Or has he gone crazy?.. “This is the end,” I realized.”

Yes, definitely an ugly scene. But – no “end” came. But in a physical, not even a creative sense. The poet continued to publish, go on creative trips abroad – and return without hindrance. What is better: Khrushchev’s rudeness or the politeness of the Stalinist Inquisition? Ideally, of course, it is better to have neither one nor the other. But the ideal is unattainable to this day, so the question is still rhetorical.

Other results of the Khrushchev era should be viewed from the same angle. “Stalin took Russia with a plow and left it with an atomic bomb,” Winston Churchill allegedly said. In fact, the aphorism so beloved by the Stalinists does not belong to the British politician, of course. But it’s not completely fake.

In fact, a statement similar in meaning was made by the Polish and British historian and publicist Isaac Deutscher. Literally it reads like this: “He got a Russia plowed with wooden plows and left it equipped with nuclear reactors.”

And it is true. Albeit somewhat exaggerated: iron plows were already in use then. But yes, the iron horse had not yet come to replace the peasant horse. However, this is only part of the truth. To complete the picture, it is necessary to add that Stalin accepted the country, albeit with a plow, but not starving, well-fed, fed by the NEP.

By the way, Nikita Khrushchev left an interesting story in his memoirs about how things were with the food supply of the population in those years (in the mid-1920s, he worked in the Donbass as secretary of the party committee in the Petrovo-Maryinsky district): “Agriculture rose directly to eyes. It was just a miracle… In the fall (1925 – “MK”) there was literally an influx of goods and agricultural products – vegetables, watermelons, melons and poultry… And all this was cheap… Until 1928 there was a surplus. meat.”

Nikita Sergeevich himself, alas, did not dare to repeat the NEP. And in addition he made a lot of hesitations and obvious miscalculations in his agricultural policy. But unlike the Stalin era, no one died of hunger under him.

Yes, he accepted a country with reactors and atomic bombs. But the inheritance also included a poor village, worn out by extortions and taxes, and, to put it mildly, not prosperous cities, the bulk of the population of which huddled in overcrowded communal apartments and barracks. And bombs, in the absence of means of delivery to the territory of the “probable enemy,” were, by and large, of little use.

The “inheritance case” should also include secret execution sites with ditches scattered throughout the country, filled with the bodies of victims of repression, the “GULAG archipelago” with hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, “special settlements” with millions of deportees… In general, it was a “rich” inheritance.

What did he leave behind? Left a sharply increased standard of living. He left behind millions of apartments inhabited by former residents of barracks and communal apartments. He left the cosmodromes and the glory of the country that was the first to launch man into space. He left a nuclear missile shield, which made any attack from any enemy, both probable and improbable, meaningless…

Well, and the most important thing is Khrushchev’s “miracle”: all this was somehow achieved without “great turning points” – without millions dying of hunger, and without mass political repressions. Those who were repressed, on the contrary, were rehabilitated, and those who were lucky to survive were released. Feel the difference.