The Khrushchev era (1953-64)
After Stalin’s death (5 March 1953), the country’s governing bodies tried to prevent a person from becoming dictatorship by installing a “collective leadership”, but they were unable to prevent violent disputes over the leadership of party and state. According to a decision of the Central Committee in mid-March 1953, Prime Minister GM Malenkov had to resign from his position as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which N. S. Khrushchev took over. After GM Malenkov and NS Khrushchev had successfully operated LP Beria’s disempowerment, arrest and execution (June and December 1953, respectively), a duel broke out between them. According to payhelpcenter, the tactically more flexible one NS Khrushchev prevailed because he credibly assured that the quality of life could be increased sustainably by increasing agricultural productivity, without neglecting the interests of heavy industry. NS Khrushchev relied on an extensive measure, namely the new land campaign in Siberia and Kazakhstan, GM Malenkow rather on a more protracted and more expensive intensification of agriculture. The success of NS Khrushchev’s policies on the one hand and the pressure of the military and heavy industry on the other, which successfully resisted a diversion of investment flows and thus contributed to GM Malenkov’s To thwart the plan to stimulate consumer goods production, Malenkov forced to resign from the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers in early February 1955. With his “secret lecture” on the methods of rule and the “personality cult” of Stalin, Khrushchev headed the XX. CPSU party congress in 1956 initiated the de-Stalinization, which was, however, controversial, as the attempt of the “anti-party group” around GM Malenkov, Molotov and LM Kaganowitsch in July 1957 to overthrow NS Khrushchev showed. With the assumption of the office of the Prime Minister in 1958 Khrushchev could in contradiction to the principle of collective leadership to combine the highest party office with the highest office of the state. In cultural policy there were alternating phases of loosening (thaw) with such increased party control.
In order to overcome the foreign policy isolation of late Stalinism, the Soviet Union initiated a phase of détente diplomacy in 1953 on the basis of peaceful coexistence. In the summer of 1953, the Korean War was settled with the signing of a ceasefire agreement. There were a number of, albeit unsuccessful, conferences with the former war allies on the German question (Berlin Conference, 1954). In May 1955 the Soviet Union signed the Austrian State Treaty. In September 1955 (visit by K. Adenauer in Moscow), the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to establish diplomatic relations and the repatriation of the last German prisoners of war. With the diplomatic support of the Bandung Conference (April 1955), the Soviet leadership sought to make the striving of the peoples of Asia and Africa for national independence fruitful for the expansion of Soviet influence. Since the Suez Crisis (1956), the Soviet Union has increasingly emerged as a promoter of Arab interests (Middle East conflict).
Soviet | Union: State and party leadership
| Soviet Union: State and party leadership | |
| Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR | |
| Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin | 1922-1938 |
| Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet | |
| Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin | 1938-1946 |
| Nikolai Michailowitsch Schwernik | 1946-1953 |
| Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov | 1953-1960 |
| Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev | 1960-1964 |
| Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan | 1964-1965 |
| Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny | 1965-1977 |
| Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev | 1977-1982 |
| Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov | 1983-1984 |
| Konstantin Ustinowitsch Tschernenko | 1984-1985 |
| Andrei Andreevich Gromyko | 1985-1988 |
| Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev | 1988-1990 |
| President | |
| Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev | 1990-1991 |
| Heads of government | |
| Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars | |
| Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | 1917-1924 |
| Alexei Ivanovich Rykov | 1924-1930 |
| Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov | 1930-1941 |
| Yossif Vissarionovich Stalin | 1941-1946 |
| Chairman of the Council of Ministers | |
| Yossif Vissarionovich Stalin | 1946-1953 |
| Georgi Maximilianowitsch Malenkow | 1953-1955 |
| Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin | 1955-1958 |
| Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev | 1958-1964 |
| Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin | 1964-1980 |
| Nikolai Alexandrovich Tikhonov | 1980-1985 |
| Nikolai Ivanovich Ryschkow | 1985-1991 |
| Valentin Sergeevich Pavlov | 1991 |
| Communist Party leader | |
| Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | until 1924 |
| General Secretary of the Central Committee | |
| Yossif Vissarionovich Stalin | 1922 *) – 1953 |
| First Secretary of the Central Committee | |
| Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev | 1953-1964 |
| Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev | 1964-1966 |
| General Secretary of the Central Committee | |
| Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev | 1966-1982 |
| Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov | 1982-1984 |
| Konstantin Ustinowitsch Tschernenko | 1984-1985 |
| Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev | 1985-1991 |
| *) Initially head of the Central Committee; 1924–1928 / 29 power struggles from which Stalin emerged as party leader. | |
While LP Berija was apparently ready not to support the SED regime in the GDR any further and to start negotiations on the reunification of a neutral Germany, the suppression of the uprising in the GDR on June 17, 1953 led to his overthrow and ushered in a conservative turn in the Soviet Union Politics one. In the Eastern Bloc, which had given itself a military organization with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, following NS Khrushchev’s “secret speech” of the XX. Party congress started a wave of de-Stalinization. Despite the bloody suppressed uprising in Poznan (late June 1956) and the assurances of the Polish Communist Party leader W. Gomułka that his country would remain a member of the Warsaw Pact, tried NS Khrushchev to retain maximum direct Soviet influence over Poland. In Hungary, on the other hand, the popular uprising (October / November 1956) could only be put down by the intervention of Soviet troops.
