De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union - Essay Example

Tom Hilberg 13 June 2007 De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union Josef Stalin was one of the most powerful and influential tyrants of the twentieth century. His policies caused the Soviet Union to be rapidly transformed from an agricultural nation to an industrial nation in the 1930s and caused his country to become one of the two superpowers in existence after World War II. However, his brutal style of dictatorship caused the deaths of millions and the imprisonment of millions more during his reign. During the years that Stalin was in power, there was high levels of secrecy in nearly all government functions. Due process, free speech, and other rights did not exist, and people were regularly arrested for perceived disloyalty to Stalin or the Soviet System. Massive purges and the disappearance of anyone who challenged Stalin were very regular occurrences. Stalin's reign of terror had widespread negative effects on the political system of the Soviet Union and still affects Russian and Eastern European politics today. After Stalin's death in 1953, the committee that was left in charge of the Soviet Union immediately set out to reform the government and limit the influence of Stalinist policies. Khrushchev and Gorbachev were two Soviet leaders who attempted to reform the Soviet System to end authoritarianism. The policies of both were somewhat successful, but neither were able to reform the system. The Soviet Union collapsed when Gorbachev was in power. This was followed by a period of government that was free and democratic but highly corrupt and economically disastrous. In 1998 the authoritarian Vladimir Putin was elected to be the president of Russia. In 1953 Joseph Stalin died. It has been suggested by many that he was assassinated with poison by his opponents but this has not been proven. After his death, there was some confusion as to who was in charge due to the fact that a purge that was done a short time before his death had eliminated many senior officials in the Communist Party. A committee that included the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev and a self appointed Premier of the Soviet Union Georgi Malenkov ended up as the leaders of the USSR. Lavrenity Beria was the First Deputy Prime minister and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was merged with the MGB at the time. Beria appeared to be very liberal and instituted liberal policies after Stalin's death, but he was also an official in charge of Stalin's Great Purge, and his power base was the secret police. Stalin's policies were unpopular with most people and the members of the committee promised that many reforms would be made. A large number of high-ranking officials in the Communist Party secretly opposed Stalin and his policies. There was conflict in the party ranks between those who supported Stalinist policies and the current reformist leadership. Between 1953 and 1955 Khrushchev and Malenkov ordered many liberal reforms. Prices for many goods were reduced, amnesty was given to some political prisoners in the gulag system, forced labor was abandoned and the level of restrictions on private plots was reduced. Beria was accused of being a British agent, given a show trial, and executed in 1953.Malenkov was forced to resign due to blackmail in 1955. After this, Khrushchev became the Premier of the Soviet Union in 1958 and the undisputed leader of the USSR Khrushchev was a major reformist. In 1956, Khrushchev gave a speech to the party leaders called "On the Personality Cult and its Consequences. In this speech he formally attacked the policies of Stalin and exposed his crimes. A policy of de-Stalinization was announced. His plans were to reform the Soviet Union so that it would become a more liberal state and to change the USSR into a pure communist nation that would be economically stronger that the United States over a period of twenty years. The democratic planning ideas of the soviet economist Evsei Lieberman were highly influential in the economic policies of Khrushchev and every other reform leader in the USSR. Khrushchev announced that there would be "peaceful coexistence" with western countries. Million of prisoners were released from the gulags. There were attempts to raise living standards, such as a forty-hour work week and an increase in the production of consumer goods. Some restrictions on speech, work, production on individual farm plots, and travel were eliminated. Khrushchev decided not to occupy Poland when Wladyslaw Gomulka was elected without consulting the Soviet leadership. In 1957 a group of Stalinists known as the Anti-Party group attempted to remove Khrushchev from the position of premier, but this attempt was a failure. After the attempt to depose Khrushchev, none of the members of the Anti-Party Group were killed, imprisoned, or given phony trials. Instead they were given low-level assignments. Khrushchev's policies reduced the level of arbitrary rule in the Soviet Union and caused the Communist Party to be in complete control of the military and the secret police, which was a reversal from the way it was when Stalin was in power. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB were split, and the MGB became the KGB. However, Khrushchev did not succeed in significantly reforming the Soviet Union. After the problems with Poland the 1956 Hungarian revolution was stopped by an invasion done by the Soviet Army. Later in is reign many of his agricultural and industrial policies failed. The Virgin Lands Campaign failed due to frequent droughts. Plans to increase meat and dairy production plans to reorganize collective farms, and plans to grow other crops all failed. Corruption was a major problem for his policies: "In classic Soviet style, Khrushchev made one Larionov, a regional boss in Ryazan near Moscow, a 'Hero of Socialist Labor' for 'fulfilling and even overfulfilling' meat quotas. Soon a Gogolian story which, as Taubman points out, could be called 'Dead Cows' on the model of 'Dead Souls,' was unfolding. Larionov's flunkies slaughtered all their own livestock to keep their meat-pyramid scheme going, then '...fanned out to other provinces, buying up cattle as far away as the Urals. Since those provinces too had meat targets to fulfill, they set up police roadblocks, which [Larionov's] operatives circumvented by smuggling cattle at night along little-used roads. The desperate Larionov levied taxes payable in meat, not just on farms and farmers but on schools and other institutions. In response, people bought meat at state stores and delivered it to collection stations, which in turn sold it back to the state' " (Dolan, 2003). Economic growth slowed due to poorly-planned industrial reforms and agricultural problems. The iron curtain did not fall, and diplomatic relations with the west remained poor. China gradually abandoned Soviet policies for Maoist ones in the 1960s, which led to a decline in the status of the Soviet Union. Poor diplomacy by Khrushchev encouraged the split. Khrushchev did not practice good diplomacy with President Kennedy and this led to the Cuban Missile crisis. Khrushchev was removed from the position of premier by the Presidium in October of 1964. After Khrushchev was eliminated, Alexsey Kosygin became the premier and Leonid Brezhnev became the First Secretary of the Communist Party. Kosygin was a reformer and Brezhnev was more of a moderate. There were many disagreements between the two such as the fight over whether heavy and military industries or light industries should be emphasized. Brezhnev was clearly the most influential of the two, and his economic policies of heavy industrial and military production were followed. During the period of time between 1964 and 1982, almost no new reforms were made, but Stalinism did not return. Diplomatic relations with the west improved, and numerous treaties were signed. The Soviet economy stagnated during this time. Industrial production grew more slowly and grain needed to be imported. In 1982 Brezhnev was replaced by a the reformer Yuri Andropov, who became the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Andropov replaced a large number of the older ministers, regional department secretaries, and Central Committee department leaders with his younger supporters. He supported Kosygin's economic policies, which were based on light industry and the increased production of consumer goods. Kosygin also began a large-scale anti-corruption campaign. He was only able to maintain power for two years before he was replaced by Konstantin Cherneko and his supporters. Cherneko pursued a mix of some liberal policies and some anti-reform policies. He supported more market-based and light industry-based economic policies but also stopped the corruption investigations and increased the level of restrictions on free speech and the numbers of attacks on dissidents. Cherneko also supported the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev. Cherneko's reign only lasted until 1985. In that year, the major reformist Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Gorbachev won the election by defeating Grigory Romanov, who was falsely accused of being an opponent of reform. Gorbachev's platforms were referred to as glasnost (openess), uskoreniye (acceleration), or perestroika (reconstruction). They were designed to revitalize the Soviet economy after it had stagnated for a long period of time. Corruption was attacked again. The conservative Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko was replaced by the reformist Eduard Shevardnadze. The reforms were often slow to be implemented due to resistance from many of the more conservative bureaucrats. The Chernobyl disaster was handled poorly due to poor information given to higher level officials about the incident. In 1987 Gorbachev announced plans for multi-party elections and the possibility of people who were not members of the Communist Party holding office. Many opponents of Stalin, such as Leon Trotsky, were declared officially rehabilitated. In 1988 he officially began the policy of glasnost, which lifted many restrictions on freedom of speech. He even allowed citizens to criticize his own policies. The Law on cooperatives was introduced. This law allowed private businesses in manufacturing, services, and foreign trade. Some large state companies were split up. The Soviet Union also achieved better relations with western countries during the Gorbachev years due to the fact that Gorbachev was more likely to try to deal with western leaders such as Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan diplomatically. Gorbachev was more popular in the west than any other communist leader. People from western countries were more likely to visit the Soviet Union and Soviet citizens were more likely to visit the west.In 1990, Gorbachev was elected to the position of President of the Soviet Union. Although Gorbachev's reforms at first appeared to be a great success, he was unable to solve many of the problems facing the Soviet Union. Ethnic strife between peoples of various nationalities in the country became an increasing problem. Many ethnic minorities were opposed to Russian domination. The 1989 elections resulted in many pro- national independence politicians being elected to The Congress of People's Deputies. The army was needed to restore order after numerous nationalist riots throughout the later part of the 1980s. In 1989 the Warsaw Pact ended as many pro-Soviet governments were overthrown. The Soviet Union itself began to fall apart. Republics often declared that they had the right to veto laws from the USSR. Lithuania declared itself independent, and the two other Baltic states soon followed. Boris Yeltsin, who opposed Gorbachev and declared that Russian laws held priority over USSR laws, became the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR. Gorbachev planned to replace the Soviet Union with the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics, which was a new organization that allowed the national republics greater freedom. On January 10, 1991 Gorbachev sent an ultimatum to the Lithuanian Government that ordered that the Soviet Constitution be restored and that laws in violation of this constitution be revoked. A few days later a force that included members of the KGB and the Russian Army went into Lithuania and clashed with Lithuanian citizens. On January 20 and 21, Russian Ministry of the Interior soldiers invaded Latvia and killed four people. These military actions were all ordered by conservative forces that opposed Gorbachev's rule. A newer Soviet constitution and treaty that gave different republics more freedom was planned, but even this failed and by the middle of 1991 it was likely that the USSR would split. In August 1991 a hard-line group known as the State Emergency Committee attempted to seize power and replace Gorbachev with the vice president Gennady Yanayev. The coup failed and Gorbachev later started a purge that eliminated hard-line groups from offices. However, Gorbachev became increasingly powerless after the coup. Many of the Soviet republics declared themselves independent. Boris Yeltsin was increasingly more powerful that Gorbachev in the Russian Soviet Republic due to the fact that he had the support of the army. Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine declared that the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 8, 1991. Gorbachev was forced to resign and he agreed that the Soviet Union would officially end on January 1, 1992. There are many similarities between Gorbachev and Khrushchev. Both were reformists that tried to reform a system that was illiberal, arbitrary, and often corrupt. Both men rose to power by being skilled at forging alliances and receiving the support of both conservative and liberal elements in the Communists party. Improving relations between the USSR and the west was a priority for both of them. Khrushchev and Gorbachev both partially succeeded in bringing greater freedoms to the people in the USSR. Both of them faced challenges from hardline elements within the communist party which they succeeded in stopping. The democratic centralist planning model advocated by Evsei Liebermann influenced the economic policies of both. Both men increased the levels of economic freedom slightly by allowing private plots and even private corporations in the case of Gorbachev and both emphasized manufacturing and light industry instead of heavy industry and defense spending. Khrushchev made sure that the Communist Party was more powerful than the military and the secret police. However, both had flaws that would cause their downfall. Khrushchev practiced poor agricultural policies, such as the exploitation of marginal lands and an ill-fated attempt to increase meat and dairy production by using corn as feed.These policies caused a stagnation of agricultural production and many other problems for the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's economic policies mostly failed and his agricultural policies caused food shortages. His diplomacy was more successful. Although Khrushchev remained popular with most people, he became unpopular with the Party elite due to his failed programs and poor diplomacy. Gorbachev suffered from declining popularity within the Communist leadership and the general populace due to the rise of Yeltsin and other nationalist politicians and declining living standards brought on by his poor agricultural policies. Both Khrushchev and Gorbachev tried and failed to eliminate corruption. Very high levels of corruption by factory and commune managers was part of the reason that his agricultural policies failed. His economic policies were more successful, but corruption in factories was still a problem. Gorbachev faced corruption in the Communist Party bureaucracy that caused a poor reaction to the Chernobyl disaster and many economic problems. Khrushchev had to hide his true beliefs and rise to power through intrigue, which was an effect of the Stalinist system. This caused many to doubt his sincerity. Gorbachev had to make an alliance with more conservative members of the party to come into power. This caused problems due to corruption and poor control over the military and secret police in the Baltic states in 1991. Ultimately, neither Khrushchev nor Gorbachev managed to effectively reform the Soviet Union. While both of them could definitely be said to have made major changes and pul more liberal policies into place, some problems were never eliminated. Corruption remained high under both Khrushchev and Gorbachev, which caused the economic policies of both to either have limited successes or fail completely. The Soviet Union collapsed under Gorbachev's leadership and while this cause Russia and the other countries to be liberalized, Gorbachev's plan was for a more liberal but united USSR. The switch to capitalism in Russia was disastrous due to the influence of corruption in the Soviet System and the lack of the rule of law, and this led to the later election of the more autocratic Putin. Works Cited Dolan, John. "No Respect, No Respect at All." The Exile. 10 July 2003. 13 June 2007. < http://www.exile.ru/2003-July-10/no_respect_no_respect_at_all.html> Koestler, A. Darkness at Noon. Trans. Daphne Hardy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941. Lewin, Moshe. The Gorbachev Phenomenon. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1991. Medvedev, Roy and Zhores Medvedev. Khrushchev: The Years in Power. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978. Read More