A Little About Khrushchev

From the report: “Only six portraits of Stalin were published in Pravda in 1952, while 147 portraits of Khrushchev were published in the same newspaper in 1964.”

Nikita Khrushchev is usually associated with the “thaw”, space flights and the mass migration of people from communal slums to relatively comfortable five-story Khrushchev buildings. It is believed that, unlike Stalin and Lenin, “Tsar Nikita” shied away from shedding human blood.

However, it was Khrushchev who demanded an increase in the “quota” of death sentences. And Khrushchev was removed from power because he, in fact, ruined the country…

It is believed that Nikita Sergeyevich was removed by force — as a result of an intra-party conspiracy started by Leonid Brezhnev. A common story says that Khrushchev left for vacation in Pitsunda, and the conspirators led by Brezhnev took advantage of his absence from Moscow and seized power. At the same time, Khrushchev was almost held at gunpoint by KGB officers loyal to Brezhnev… However, this is only a legend that filmmakers like, but has nothing to do with reality. Although a little blackmail did take place.

Brezhnev and his support group put Khrushchev before a choice: either at the October plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, presidium member Dmitry Polyansky publicly voices his report on the antics of the head of the Soviet state, or he quietly and imperceptibly retires, and then the report will not be made public. Having familiarized himself with the text of the report, Khrushchev preferred the second.

Why? Because if the report were made public, the General Secretary would have to be tried. And he himself understood this well…

For a long time, the full text of Dmitry Polyansky’s report was available only to a narrow circle of specialists and was considered secret. Some historians even believed that there was no full text at all, and that Polyansky was operating with some scattered calculations prepared for him by the KGB.

Nevertheless, the report did exist — fifty pages of typewritten text. And the “office” had the most direct relation to the report: as the Russian historian and archivist Rudolf Pikhoya noted, the document “is full of special information, which Polyansky, who was responsible for agricultural policy, could not have done by himself due to the nature of his work.

The collection of such information (…) could only be carried out with the sanction of the Central Committee or at the request of the Party and State Control Committee under the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The report contains a lot of data that could only have been obtained from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the KGB.”

And as KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny sighed, Polyansky’s report was not supposed to be preserved. It was even printed – secretly, in parts — by several old typists who had worked in counterintelligence since the 1930s…

So what was this report about?

“Last year alone, Khrushchev was on trips abroad and around the country for 170 days, and now, when 1964 has not yet ended, he has been absent from work for 150 days. If we add to this that in 1963 he held 128 ceremonial receptions, lunches and breakfasts, then how much time is left for work?” Polyansky asked rhetorically. — Only six portraits of Stalin were published in Pravda in 1952, while 147 portraits of Khrushchev were published in the same newspaper in 1964.”

Here’s your fighter against the personality cult! However, the report also made some truly serious accusations that were not connected with Khrushchev’s morbid vanity or his frequent departures from Moscow.

Polyansky cited data from the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences: under Stalin, the average annual growth rate of the economy reached 10.6 percent, and during the decade of Khrushchev’s rule, it fell by more than half — to five percent. The growth rate of labor productivity also fell… But most of all, Khrushchev got it for what he is now praised for: the construction of five-story buildings.

“Khrushchev disbanded the USSR Academy of Architecture because it did not agree with his conclusions that such houses were the cheapest and most convenient,” Polyansky noted. “It turned out that the cost of one square meter of space, taking into account the cost of utilities, is much more expensive in five-story buildings than in 9-12-story buildings.”

The construction of Khrushchev-era buildings in the country led to the fact that the density of development in cities fell sharply, and transport, water, heating and other utilities became unacceptably stretched. It has been calculated that for the money spent on the construction of one five-story building (plus utilities), it would have been possible to build two nine-story buildings, saving on water supply and sewerage…

It is believed that it was Khrushchev who gave freedom to the collective farmers, freeing them from workdays and starting to pay them money instead of grain. In fact, this also turned out to be a myth: if under Stalin, a collective farmer received 8.2 centners of grain as payment for his labor before the war and 7.2 centners after, then under Khrushchev the monetary equivalent was 3.7 centners of grain.

“If on average each collective farmer produces 230-250 workdays per year,” wrote Polyansky, “this means that his monthly earnings are 40 rubles. This is more than two times less than the average monthly salary of other workers. This is precisely why people flee the collective farms.” The flight of collective farmers led to shortages of bread:

“Khrushchev even proposed introducing a rationing system — 20 years after the war! We were forced to allocate 860 tons of gold to buy grain from the capitalists. The average annual growth rate of agricultural output was supposed to be eight percent. In reality, it was 1.7 percent, and 1963 ended with negative indicators.”

That is, another six months of Khrushchev’s stay in power — and the Soviet Union would have experienced famine…

It is known that under Stalin, prices for certain types of goods and services were reduced every year on April 1. Under Khrushchev, the reverse process began: prices began to rise — both for food and for essential goods.

“Prices on the collective farm market increased by 17 percent, in consumer cooperatives — by 13 percent,” wrote Polyansky.

Another myth debunked in the report is that under Khrushchev, officials were allegedly laid off. It turns out that the opposite is true:

“…If in the first year after the liquidation of ministries, committees and departments the apparatus was somewhat reduced, then their number almost doubled, and the total number of administrative personnel in the country in just five years has grown by more than 500 thousand people. Expenses for its maintenance in the last year and a half alone have increased by almost 800 million rubles.”

But the worst thing that the authors of the report accused Khrushchev of was that he split the countries of the socialist camp.

“In essence, three groups were formed,” wrote Polyansky. “Countries following the USSR, China and Yugoslavia and Romania. A very real threat of a split arose.”

And Khrushchev himself was largely to blame:

“He publicly called Mao Zedong an “old galosh”, who found out about it and, of course, was furious.”

Here it is, the real reason for the deterioration of Soviet-Chinese relations! Khrushchev also had trouble with the Romanians:

“…During his stay in Romania, he rudely interfered in their internal affairs, shouting that they knew nothing about agriculture.” And Khrushchev called Fidel Castro “a bull ready to pounce on any red rag.” However, Khrushchev compensated for his rudeness towards foreigners with excessive generosity.

“In Guinea, with the help of the USSR, an airfield, factories, and a power station were built,” the report noted. “And all of this was thrown down the drain. The so-called socialist Sekou Toure kicked us out of there and did not even allow us to use the airfield we built for them in Conakry for flights to Cuba. In Iraq, we relied on Qasem and launched a large-scale construction project there — 200 facilities!

Meanwhile, Qasem was overthrown, and outright enemies of the USSR came to power. The same thing happened in Syria. Indonesia, having received a lot of aid, does not want to pay our loans. About 200 million gold rubles were given to India, Ethiopia and other countries as gratuitous aid. The amount of Soviet loans for just 20 developing countries was 3.5 billion(!) rubles.”

That’s generosity! Meanwhile, the Russian Non-Black Earth Region was slowly dying, Siberia was drinking itself to death, and residents of the central zone began to go to Moscow for food…

By the way, it is interesting that the report also listed the “personal gifts” that Khrushchev gave to those he liked: he gave Sekou Toure an IL-18 plane, and two representative “Chaikas” to the Egyptian leader Nasser. There were also gifts to the British Queen — priceless museum treasures.

But Khrushchev did not forget his beloved self either: “On his orders, swimming pools were built at his dachas in Crimea and Pitsunda, about five million rubles were spent (at the then official exchange rate of 60 kopecks per US dollar. — Yu. Ch.). Khrushchev’s son has four cars, his son-in-law has two, his wife and daughter have one car each, but the family has four more personal cars.” And the modest Khrushchev also kept 110(!) domestic servants…