What were the reasons for Stalin and Brezhnev's dislike of Khrushchev?
Last Updated: 26.06.2025 05:50
Indeed, the reminiscences of one of the most obstinate and rhetorically gifted of these former zeks arguably did more than any single person to bring down the curtain on the Soviet regime: the future novelist and chronicler of Stalinist tyranny, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
Stalin, in his own deeply skewed way, actually liked Khrushchev, though much in the way a monarch did a prat boy.
Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon engaging in the great Kitchen Debate in Moscow in 1959, while Leonid Brezhnev, directly behind Nixon, listens intently.
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Brezhnev's conspiring with other Politburo members to depose Khrushchev likewise was not driven so much by animus as by acute frustration over the havoc the Soviet leader had caused through his frenetic domestic and foreign policy undertakings. Khrushchev had set out in earnest to revitalize the flagging Soviet economy not only by cutting conventional military spending, which many in the military complex found disguieting, but also by initiating a host of projects, notably, the Virgin Lands scheme, which failed to generate the economic payoffs that Khrushchev had promised.
Likewise, Khrushchev's foreign policy, one essentially predicated on finding ways to place a “bee in the bonnet” of his American nemeses, drew the world perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in what is remembered as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
He apparently regarded Khrushchev as a crafty, resourceful peasant, one who was trustworthy, to the degree that that quality could be gauged within the coistered, sycophantic Soviet inner circle, as well as one reasonably well-equipped to carry out complicated and demanding tasks. He tended to treat the squat Khrushchev as something of a court buffoon, someone on whom he could rely to supply comic relief among the other Politburo members, each of whom also was subjected to ridicule at one point or another. Once, after ascending back into the Boss’ good graces after one misundeestanding, Khrushchev, in the presence of other members of the inner circle, was playfully rapped on his head by a pipe-wielding Stalin, purportedly sounding out the presence of gray matter.
It's worth stressing, though, that Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policies, badly needed as they were to breathe new life into the Soviet experiment, left a pall of uncertainty among those in the highest reaches of Soviet leadership. Tens of thousands of Gulag survivors returned to their cities and villages, likely carrying enormous reserves of rage against the Soviet regime.
As Khrushchev related in his memoirs, this presented an enormous strain on his physical and emotional health as he was entrusted with numerous responsibities aside from serving at the time as Moscow party chairman. The following morning typically involved a mad dash to his Moscow office to play furious catchup, while fighting back chronic sleep deprivation.
To be sure, Stalin would have dispensed with Khrushchev as readily as he would have any other member of his inner circle - something of which Khrushchev was readily and painfully aware. Yet, Stalin, as his health declined and death seemed increasingly imminent, frequently invited him to his dacha near Moscow for dinner and movie viewing.
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Under the circumstances, it’s arguably not surprising that Brezhnev and the other new stewards of Kremlin leadership resolved to apply the breaks. Yet, this had the counterintuitive and ultimately destructive effect of dragging the Soviet Union back to the highly bureaucratized sclerosis that had prompted Soviet reforms under Khrushchev.