Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the nature of Khrushchev’s government in the period 1956
to 1964.
Passage A
By the late 1950s, Khrushchev had gradually put together a ‘grand design’: a coordinated set of new domestic and international goals and policies. He then tried to develop various reform programmes to implement these central ideas. Khrushchev was not very successful in attaining his objectives, the result of poor planning, formidable bureaucratic resistance and inertia and unfavourable external developments. Khrushchev, by almost any measure, was less effective and efficient in achieving his chief goals than Stalin was in achieving his. Khrushchev’s power and prestige were, to a far greater extent than Stalin’s, dependent on the successes of his policies. Whereas Stalin could govern either through or over the Party, Khrushchev found it more and more difficult to do either.
The first secretary (Khrushchev) vigorously strove to use the contributions of the specialised elites to implement his vision of the national interest and to refine operational, not strategic decisions. Khrushchev sought competence and initiative wherever he could find them, in order to help translate his general goals into reformist policies. He was less clear about the means by which these goals were to be achieved. Khrushchev does not seem to have given careful thought to the interrelationships between ends and means, or he lacked the political-administrative skills to link them. Khrushchev made an enormous contribution to Soviet politics by rejecting terror. But this decision eliminated any possibility of his ruling over the major bureaucracies and having them compete with one another to realise his objectives.
Adapted from: Erik P. Hoffman, ‘Changing Soviet Perspectives on Leadership and Administration’, in The Soviet Union Since Stalin, published in 1980.
Passage B
Khrushchev fostered a relationship between the political system and society which involved full participation of the populace in political life. It is also reflected in attempts, sponsored by Khrushchev, to open up decision-making procedures to popular scrutiny and participation, a process hailed as reflecting the withering away of the state.
Although the encouragement of popular participation in the forms Khrushchev encouraged may have brought the system closer to some of its ideological socialist roots, its immediate political impact was to call into question the role and position of office-holders at all levels of the system. By opening issues up to public scrutiny, Khrushchev automatically exposed decision-makers at all levels to the same scrutiny. If previously decisions had originated from the anonymity of closed committee meetings, then the opening of those meetings eliminated any anonymity. Furthermore, public scrutiny could lead to public accountability, and therefore to a much more uncertain and perhaps even dangerous environment for officials to operate in. When confronted by opposition in the Party Presidium, Khrushchev sought to circumvent this by ignoring this body and appealing directly to the Central Committee, or by announcing a decision in public in an attempt to lock the Presidium in behind him. Why was Khrushchev able to pursue such policies? The power he was able to exercise over personnel disposition enabled him to promote supporters in such a way as to consolidate his personal power base. As such, he used the same technique as that which had been used with such effect by Stalin.
Adapted from: Graeme Gill, ‘Khrushchev and Systemic Development’, in Khrushchev and Khrushchevism, published in 1987.
[30]
Answer
