Political Science

Khrushchev A Political Life   A Critical Review

The book, Khrushchev A Political Life by William Tompson is another book that depicts the life and times of Nikita S. Khrushchev.  Khrushchev was considered a very colorful personality for a leader of the former Soviet Union.  Through his book, Tompson, a political science professor from the University of Texas, gives not only a very good historical account of the subject but also a very comprehensive and revealing analysis of a man who was respected and reviled at the same time as the leader of one of the erstwhile powerful nations in the world and of the communist bloc which proves to be very helpful in understanding the things that went on behind the Iron Curtain which most of the outside world could not know.  Tompson made use of vast resources from Russia not previously made available to scholars to provide fresh insight in the goings-on within the Soviet Union during those tense years of the Cold War where the likelihood of a third world war was very strong.  These primary sources came mainly from the Russian Center for Preservation and Utilization  of Documents of Recent History or formerly known as the Central Party Archives and from the Moscow City Archives.  Furthermore, this  fresh  set of materials Tompson used  also helps confirm or reinforce prior works about Khrushchev as well as impressions made about him. Through his book, Tompson, shows the readers a Khrushchev that was quite different from the bellicose man who became notorious for pounding his shoe on the table at the United Nations General Assembly and made a bold bluster,  We will bury you  to the west. What Tompson intended to depict was that Khrushchev was probably the first Soviet reformer long before Mikhail Gorbachev came into the scene almost 30 years later.

A man of humble origins, his political star rose when he cast his lot with the emerging communist movement.  As political commissar, he was regarded as a sycophant of Stalin, sending several  enemies of the state  to a much cruel fate whether the gulags or execution.  He had distinguished himself in the second world war as political commissar responsible for rallying the troops to check the German advance. Following the war, his image as a  war hero  brought him to a collision course with his ersthwhile superior, Joseph Stalin.  Following Stalins death in 1953, he propelled himself to power after casting aside other contenders to the highest office in the Kremlin and once there, began to undo the things Stalin did in what would later be known as De-Stalinization where he implemented measures that sought to expunge Stalin and his contributions to the Soviet Union from removing his remains from Lenins Tomb to changing the name of the city of Stalingrad to Volgograd.  It was quite ironic that a man who served as the political commissar to Stalin, the one who was also involved in carrying out the purges under the latters regime would someday turn against him albeit posthumously (Tompson, 1995).  In addition to expunging and vilifying Stalin, Khrushchev launched a series of sweeping reforms as a way of distancing himself from Stalin.  Such reforms were the repudiation of the use of terror which Stalin had liberally exercised throughout his regime that saw the imprisonment and deaths of others whom Khrushchev felt did not deserve it and were mere victims to Stalins paranoia or whims.  He also released millions of political prisoners from the gulags (prison camps) and abolished special tribunals conducted by state security agencies that were a staple in the Stalinist era.  He also encouraged factory workers to form their own councils as well.

In explaining why all of a sudden Khrushchev made a sudden about-face with regards to Stalin, Tompson provides a plausible inference on what provided the impetus to Destalinization.  This mostly had to do with the time he served as a political commissar during the  Great Patriotic War.   Although it was his duty, as well as his junior-ranking commissars, to maintain ideological purity as well as to enforce the will of Stalin among the (demoralized) Red Army, he was dishearted by Stalins lack of common sense when he would order his armies not to yield or take  one step backwards  (under the pain of death) even if it means dying in the process.  This stance taken by Stalin had cost the Red Army millions in lives that would have proven valuable in the later stages of the war.  But at the same time, he admired the courage and tenacity of the Soviet people as they stood up to the relentless and brutal advance of Hitlers armies.  In addition, he somehow resented the way Stalin was practicing the communist ideology by creating a personality cult centered on himself which would be emulated by Mao Zedong of China and Kim Il-sung of North Korea.  Khrushchev felt this personality cult was incompatible to the communist concept of  rule by the proletariat  and doing so would make it appear that the leadership was only paying lip service.

Anotner possible factor that contributed to Khrushchevs shift in political belief was from a more personal nature which had something to do with the death of his son Leonid who was a fighter pilot during the war.  Yet despite distancing himself from Stalin, Khrushchev felt he was remaining true to the tenets of the communist ideology which had nurtured him all throughout his political career and he felt he would be committing a disservice or an act of  sacrilege  had he deviated from the path.  This was evident when he sent forces to crush the 1956 uprising in Hungary which got  carried away  by his reforms.  He wanted to prove that just because he did not want to run the Soviet Union the way Stalin did, he would still stick to some of his policies which he considered beneficial to the state (Tompson, 1995).

Yet despite his professed devotion to the communist ideology, he was regarded as a  revisionist  by hard-liners within the communist party who saw a departure from the Marxist-Leninist tenets and sought a return to it.  Despite the suppression of the uprising in Hungary, their fears were further reinforced when Khrushchev himself was favoring rapprochment with their  enemies  such as the United States and its allies and even  rogue  communist states like Yugoslavia whose leader, Josip Broz Tito refused to toe the line of Moscow.  They felt he was  corrupted  by western ways owing to his visits to the United States where he picked up some ideas such as self-service lines in cafeterias as well as getting friendly with the likes of President Dwight Eisenhower and his Vice-President Richard Nixon.  Khrushchev was also criticized for  appeasing  Tito rather than assuming a tougher stance in trying to force him to toe the party line (Tompson, 1995).  What also got them a lot worried was his willingness to pull out their ballistic missiles form Cuba during the missile crisis of 1962 although he was considered not so genial by his western counterparts.  For the hard-liners, this became too much and they conspired to have him  retired  from the Kremlin and the communist party. Although he was a  renegade,  his valuable contributions were taken into consideration which was the reason why he was allowed to retire in relative comfort though under close surveillance for the remainder of his life until his death in 1971.

In conclusion, Tompsons book is another noteworthy contribution to those who would want to know more of the politics of the Soviet Union.  In addition, through his depiction of the main protagonist, Khrushchev, Tompson shows us a man who was probably the first reformer of the Soviet Union although the words  perestroika  or  glasnost  were not used until the time Gorbachev came along.  Probably one  issue  of this book is that the materials Tompson used came from those who were sympathetic to Khrushchev and it would be said that Tompson attempted to give an apologistic view of the late Soviet leader by showing him to be misunderstood.  Nonetheless, his work is still considered a valuable contriburtion to understanding how the Soviet Union declined.