Between 1941 and 1953, the Soviet Union defeated fascist Germany and rebuilt from the devastation of the war. By 1948 overall industrial output exceeded that of 1940, and by 1952 it exceeded 1940 by two and a half times.38 The Soviet Union developed an atomic bomb and forced the West into a Cold War stalemate. Admittedly, problems existed, notably acute agricultural shortages, and even the achievements exacted a certain cost in terms of lives, living standards, socialist democracy, and collective leadership, but they had occurred nonetheless.
It is impossible to understand the divergence of Nikita Khrushchev’s policies from Stalin’s without appreciating the persistence of ideological diversity and debate in the Party. A fascinating piece of CPSU history involved the struggle between Georgi Malenkov and Andrei Zhdanov after World War II. Both men had impeccable revolutionary credentials. Before the war, Zhdanov had headed Party ideological work, and during the war he had been in charge of Leningrad’s heroic resistance to the German siege. Malenkov had an equally important wartime role. As a member of the State Defense Committee in charge of the country, Malenkov was responsible for the Party and government personnel and operation. At the end of the war, though they disagreed about postwar prospects and priorities, Zhdanov and Malenkov emerged as Stalin’s two top deputies. Zhdanov thought the promising prospects for international peace should govern Party policies. Winning the war had required giving priority to production and technical know-how, but with an enduring peace at hand, Zhdanov thought the Party should give priority to ideology. Moreover, the Party should emphasize improving living standards and increasing consumer goods. In 1946 and 1947, for example, Zhdanov and his allies launched a campaign against ideological weaknesses in literature and culture and a campaign against “private farming.” One of Zhdanov’s targets was Nikita Khrushchev, the Party leader in the Ukraine, whom Zhdanov and his supporters accused of laxness in admitting new members to the Party and of “bourgeois nationalist” errors with respect to Ukrainian histories published during his watch.
In contrast, Malenkov believed the international dangers remained real and that the Party’s priorities must remain the development basic industry and military strength. Malenkov’s belief in the priority of industrial development placed him solidly with Stalin and against Bukharin. (When Khrushchev later echoed Zhdanov’s priorities of increasing consumer goods and raising living standards, Malenkov continued to advocate a stress on industrial development.) In 1946, Stalin sided with Zhdanov, but by 1947 after the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan signaled aggressive anti-Soviet course for American foreign policy, Stalin agreed with Malenkov. In 1948, Zhdanov died, his closest allies were demoted, and two of them were tried for treason and executed.39 The policy of strengthening industry and the military remained pre-eminent. The Zhdanov-Malenkov struggle showed that serious political differences over the direction of socialism continued at the highest levels even under Stalin, and they resembled earlier polarities and tendencies.40
With Stalin’s death in 1953, the political struggles over the direction of socialism continued. At first, Khrushchev became the head of the Party, and Malenkov became head of the government. The Party’s collective leadership agreed on the need to put Stalin’s repression behind them and to improve the living standards of the people. All of the Party Presidium joined with Khrushchev in a secret plan to arrest and depose Lavrenti Beria, the head of the secret police, who aspired to the top Party position after Stalin’s death and whose name had become synonymous with excessive repression.41 The Central Committee also began releasing and rehabilitating some of those who had been jailed for political offenses, particularly recent victims, such as members of the so-called doctor’s plot, a group of doctors accused of conspiring against Stalin’s health. The Central Committee also established a commission to give an accounting of the past repression, its extent and the degree to which it was or was not justified.42
In 1956 the unity of the top leaders foundered on Khrushchev’s handling of the repression under Stalin. At midnight on the last day of the Twentieth Congress in February 1956, Khrushchev delivered a “secret speech,” a four hour condemnation of Stalin’s “cult of the individual” and the imprisonment, torture, and execution of thousands of innocent people, including loyal Party members. Even though the Central Committee voted to have this speech read to Party meetings throughout the country, some members of the CC took exception to it. Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgi Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovich, and K. E. Voroshilov thought that Khrushchev took an unbalanced approach that neither gave Stalin credit for his positive contributions nor acknowledged the legitimacy of some repression. Their misgivings were reinforced and extended to others by the uprisings in East Germany and Hungary that the speech seemingly sparked. In June, the Central Committee revealed a growing opposition to Khrushchev’s approach when it passed a resolution crediting Stalin’s accomplishments while condemning his abuse of power.43 Subsequently, Khrushchev himself presented a more evenhanded view of Stalin, even telling his opponents in the leadership, “All of us taken together aren’t worth Stalin’s shit.”44 Opposition to Khrushchev, however, soon emerged on other issues.
Highly impulsive and sometimes inconsistent, Khrushchev represented an approach to building socialism that often resembled Bukharin and Zhdanov and foreshadowed Gorbachev. This approach cut across the entire spectrum of issues from ideology to agriculture, foreign affairs, economics, culture, and the operation of the Party. Though it is important to appreciate the continuity of certain ideas in the history of the CPSU, obviously the value of any particular policy depended upon its success in defending or advancing socialism at a particular time and under particular circumstances. Most would agree, for example, that Khrushchev’s advancement of the idea of peaceful co-existence and his reduction of Soviet military ground forces represented appropriate and successful policies, whatever their lineage. Others of his ideas were more dubious. Both before Khrushchev consolidated his hold on the Party in 1957, Molotov and others opposed the main thrust of his policies, and in 1964 after forcing Khrushchev into retirement, the Party reversed many of his initiatives. Khrushchev’s ideas, however, did not disappear entirely and would flower again under Gorbachev.
The best way to understand the differences between the thrust of Khrushchev’s policies and those of his critics, like Molotov, (as well as Gorbachev’s policies and his critics like Yegor Ligachev), was to see them as polarities even though in practice the differences sometimes amounted to matters of emphasis. For example, Khrushchev believed in a quick and easy path to communism, while his critics projected a more protracted and difficult road. Khrushchev looked for an “easing of the contest” with the U.S. and its allies abroad and “political relaxation” and “consumer communism” at home.45 His critics saw a continuation of class struggle abroad and the need for vigilance and discipline at home. Khrushchev saw more in Stalin to condemn than to praise; Molotov and others more to praise than condemn. Khrushchev favored incorporating a range of capitalist or Western ideas into socialism, including market mechanisms, decentralization, some private production, the heavy reliance on fertilizer and the cultivation of corn, and increased investment in consumer goods. Molotov favored improved centralized planning and socialized ownership, and continuing the priority of industrial development. Khrushchev favored broadening the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletarian vanguard role of the Communist Party to put other sectors of the population on an equal footing with workers; his critics did not.