Thaw historical period. Khrushchev's "thaw"

On December 24, 1953, the famous Soviet satirist Alexander Borisovich Raskin wrote an epigram. For censorship reasons, it could not be published, but very quickly spread throughout Moscow literary circles:

Today is not a day, but an extravaganza!
The Moscow public rejoices.
GUM opened, Beria closed,
And Chukovskaya was published.

The events of one day described here need to be deciphered. The day before, on December 23, the former all-powerful head of the NKVD - MGB - Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was sentenced to capital punishment and shot - Soviet newspapers published information about this on December 24 not even on the first, but on the second or third page, and even then downstairs, in the basement.

Directly on this day, after reconstruction, the Main Department Store, or GUM, opened. Built back in 1893 and embodying the best achievements of Russian early modernist architecture, in the 1920s GUM became one of the symbols of NEP, and in 1930 it was closed for a long time as a retail outlet: for more than 20 years it housed premises of various Soviet ministries and departments. The day December 24, 1953 marked The New Frontier in the history of GUM: it again became a publicly accessible and widely visited store.

And on the same day, on the front page of Literaturnaya Gazeta, the organ of the Union of Writers of the USSR, an article by critic, editor and literary critic Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya “On the Feeling of Life’s Truth” appeared. This was Chukovskaya’s first publication in this newspaper since 1934. Since the end of the war, the Soviet press and publishing houses did not indulge her at all with attention: the daughter of the disgraced poet Korney Chukovsky, in 1949 she herself fell under the rink of the campaign to combat cosmopolitanism. She was accused of “undeserved and sweeping criticism” of works of Soviet children's literature. However, it was important not only that Chukovskaya was published, but also that her article again sharply polemicized her with the dominant trends and central authors of Soviet children's literature of the 1950s.

Alexander Raskin's epigram marks an important chronological milestone - the beginning of a new era in political and cultural history Soviet Union. This era would later be called the “Thaw” (after the title of the story of the same name by Ilya Ehrenburg, published in 1954). But this same epigram also marks out the main directions of development of Soviet culture in the first decade after Stalin’s death. The coincidence, the chronological combination of the three events noticed by Raskin, was apparently not accidental. And those leaders of the Communist Party, who at that moment were authorized to make decisions, and the most sensitive representatives of the cultural elite, who observed the development of the country, very keenly felt the deep political, social and economic crisis in which they found themselves. Soviet Union towards the end of Stalin's reign.

None of the thinking people, apparently, believed the charges that were brought against Lavrenty Beria during the investigation and in court: in the best traditions of the trials of the 1930s, he was accused of spying for British intelligence. However, the arrest and execution of the former head of the secret police was perceived quite unequivocally - as the elimination of one of the main sources of fear that Soviet people had experienced for decades before the NKVD bodies, and as the end of the omnipotence of these bodies.

The next step in establishing party control over the activities of the KGB was the order to review the cases of leaders and ordinary party members. First, this revision affected the processes of the late 1940s, and then the repressions of 1937-1938, which much later received the name “Great Terror” in Western historiography. This was how the evidentiary and ideological basis was prepared for the denunciation of Stalin’s personality cult, which Nikita Khrushchev would carry out at the end of the 20th Party Congress in February 1956. Already in the summer of 1954, the first rehabilitated people began to return from the camps. Mass rehabilitation of victims of repression will gain momentum after the end of the 20th Congress.

The release of hundreds of thousands of prisoners has given new hope to the most different people. Even Anna Akhmatova said then: “I am a Khrushchevite.” However, the political regime, despite a noticeable softening, still remained repressive. After Stalin's death and even before the start of mass liberation from the camps, a wave of uprisings swept through the Gulag: people were tired of waiting. These uprisings were drowned in blood: in the Kengir camp, for example, tanks were deployed against the prisoners.

Eight months after the 20th Party Congress, on November 4, 1956, Soviet troops invaded Hungary, where an uprising had previously begun against Soviet control of the country and a new, revolutionary government of Imre Nagy had been formed. During the military operation, 669 Soviet soldiers and more than two and a half thousand Hungarian citizens died, more than half of them were workers and members of volunteer resistance units.

Since 1954, mass arrests stopped in the USSR, but individual people were still imprisoned on political charges, especially many in 1957, after the Hungarian events. In 1962, internal troops suppressed massive—but peaceful—worker protests in Novo-Cherkassk.

The opening of GUM was significant in at least two respects: the Soviet economy and culture turned towards the common man, focusing much more on his needs and demands. In addition, public urban spaces acquired new functions and meanings: for example, in 1955, the Moscow Kremlin was opened for visits and excursions, and on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the never completed Palace of the Soviets, in 1958 they began to build not a monument or a state institution -nie, but publicly accessible outdoor swimming pool "Moscow". Already in 1954, new cafes and restaurants began to open in large cities; in Moscow, not far from the NKVD - MGB - KGB building on Lubyanka, the first automatic cafe appeared, where any visitor, having inserted a coin, could, bypassing the seller, get a drink or snack. The so-called industrial goods stores were transformed in a similar way, ensuring direct contact between the buyer and the product. In 1955, the Central Department Store in Moscow opened up access for customers to the sales floors, where goods were hung and placed within easy reach: they could be removed from a shelf or hanger, examined, touched.

One of the new “public spaces” was the Polytechnic Museum - hundreds of people, especially young people, gathered there for evenings and specially organized discussions. New cafes opened (they were called “youth cafes”), poetry readings and small art exhibitions were held there. It was at this time that jazz clubs appeared in the Soviet Union. In 1958, a monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky was unveiled in Moscow, and open poetry readings began near it in the evenings, and discussions immediately began around the readings on political and cultural issues that had never been discussed before in the media.

The last line of Raskin's epigram - “And Chukovskaya was published” - requires additional comment. Of course, Lydia Chukovskaya was not the only author who received the opportunity to be published in the USSR in 1953-1956 after a long break. In 1956 - early 1957, two volumes of the almanac “Literary Moscow”, prepared by Moscow writers, were published; The initiator and driving force of the publication was the prose writer and poet Emmanuil Kazakevich. In this almanac, the first poems by Anna Akhmatova appeared after more than a ten-year break. It was here that Marina Tsvetaeva found her voice and the right to exist in Soviet culture. Her selection appeared in al-manah with a foreword by Ilya Ehrenburg. Also in 1956, the first book by Mikhail Zoshchenko after the massacres of 1946 and 1954 was published. In 1958, after lengthy discussions in the Central Committee, the second episode of Sergei Eisenstein’s film “Ivan the Terrible,” which had been banned for screening in 1946, was released.

The return to culture begins not only of those authors who were denied access to print, to the stage, to exhibition halls, but also of those who died in the Gulag or were shot. After legal rehabilitation in 1955, the figure of Vsevolod Meyerhold became allowed to be mentioned, and then became increasingly authoritative. In 1957, for the first time after a more than 20-year break, prose works by Artem Vesely and Isaac Babel appeared in the Soviet press. But perhaps the most important change is associated not so much with the return of previously prohibited names, but with the opportunity to discuss topics that were previously undesirable or completely taboo.

The term “thaw” appeared almost simultaneously with the beginning of the era itself, which began to be designated by this word. It was widely used by contemporaries and is still in use today. This term was a metaphor for the onset of spring after long political frosts, and therefore promised the imminent arrival of a hot summer, that is, freedom. But the very idea of ​​a change of seasons indicated that for those who used this term, the new period was only a short phase in the cyclical movement of Russian and Soviet history and the “thaw” would sooner or later be replaced by “freezes”.

The limitations and inconvenience of the term “thaw” are due to the fact that it deliberately provokes the search for other, similar “thaw” eras. Accordingly, it forces us to look for numerous analogies between different periods of liberalization - and, conversely, does not make it possible to see similarities between periods that traditionally seem to be polar opposites: for example, between the thaw and stagnation. It is equally important that the term “thaw” does not make it possible to talk about the diversity and ambiguity of this era itself, as well as the subsequent “frosts”.

Much later, in Western historiography and political science, the term “de-Stalinization” was proposed (apparently, by analogy with the term “denazification”, which was used to refer to the policies of the Allied powers in the Western sectors of post-war Germany, and then in Germany). With its help, it seems that it is possible to describe some processes in culture in 1953-1964 (from the death of Stalin to the resignation of Khrushchev). These processes are poorly or inaccurately captured using the concepts behind the “thaw” metaphor.

The very first and narrow understanding of the de-Stalinization process is described using the expression “the fight against the cult of personality,” which was used in the 1950s and 60s. The phrase “cult of personality” itself came from the 1930s: with its help, the party leaders and Stalin personally criticized the decadent and Nietzschean hobbies of the beginning of the century and apophatically (that is, with the help of negations) described the democratic , non-dictatorial character of the Soviet supreme power. However, the very next day after Stalin’s funeral, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Georgy Malenkov spoke about the need to “stop the policy of the cult of personality” - he did not mean capitalist countries, but the USSR itself. By February 1956, when at the 20th Congress of the CPSU Khrushchev delivered his famous report “On the cult of personality and its consequences,” the term received a completely clear semantic content: the “cult of personality” began to be understood as the policy of autocratic, brutal -whom Stalin’s leadership of the party and the country from the mid-1930s until his death.

After February 1956, in accordance with the slogan “fight against the cult of personality,” Stalin’s name began to be erased from poems and songs, and his images began to be blurred out in photographs and paintings. Thus, in the famous song based on the poems of Pavel Shubin “Volkhov drinking” the line “Let’s drink to our homeland, let’s drink to Stalin” was replaced with “Let’s drink to our free homeland”, and in the song based on the words of Viktor Gusev “March of the Artillerymen” back in 1954 instead of “ Artillerymen, Stalin gave the order! They began to sing “Artillerymen, an urgent order has been given!” In 1955, one of the main pillars of socialist realism in painting, Vladimir Serov, writes new option paintings "V. I. Lenin proclaims Soviet power.” IN new version In the textbook picture, behind Lenin one could see not Stalin, but “representatives of the working people.”

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, cities and towns named after Stalin were renamed, his name was removed from the names of factories and ships, and instead of the Stalin Prize, which was liquidated in 1954, the Lenin Prize was established in 1956. In the fall of 1961, Stalin's embalmed corpse was taken out of the Mausoleum on Red Square and buried near the Kremlin wall. All these measures were taken in the same logic as in the 1930s and 40s, images and references to executed “enemies of the people” were destroyed.

According to Khrushchev, Stalin's cult of personality was manifested in the fact that he could not and did not know how to influence his opponents through persuasion, and therefore he constantly needed to resort to repression and violence. The cult of personality, according to Khrushchev, was also expressed in the fact that Stalin was unable to listen and accept any, even the most constructive, criticism, therefore neither members of the Politburo, nor even more so ordinary party members, could have a significant influence on the political decisions made. Finally, as Khrushchev believed, the last and most visible manifestation of the cult of personality to the outside eye was that Stalin loved and encouraged exaggerated and inappropriate praise addressed to him. They found expression in public speeches, newspaper articles, songs, novels and films, and, finally, in the everyday behavior of people for whom any feast had to be accompanied by an obligatory toast in honor of the leader. Khrushchev accused Stalin of destroying the old party cadres and trampling on the ideals of the 1917 revolution, as well as serious strategic mistakes during the planning of operations during the Great Patriotic War. Behind all these accusations against Khrushchev was the idea of ​​Stalin’s extreme anti-humanism and, accordingly, the identification of the revolutionary ideals trampled by him with humanistic ideals.

Although the closed report at the 20th Congress was not publicly released in the USSR until the end of the 1980s, all these lines of criticism implicitly marked out problem areas that could begin to be developed in culture under the auspices of the fight against Stalin’s personality cult.

One of the key themes of Soviet art in the second half of the 1950s was criticism of bureaucratic methods of leadership, the callousness of officials towards citizens, bureaucratic rudeness, mutual responsibility and formalism in solving the problems of ordinary people. It was customary to castigate these vices before, but they invariably had to be described as “individual shortcomings.” Now the eradication of bureaucracy was to be presented as part of the dismantling of the Stalinist system of management, which was becoming a thing of the past right before the eyes of the reader or viewer. The two most famous works of 1956, focused precisely on this type of criticism, are Vladimir Dudintsev’s novel “Not by Bread Alone” (about an inventor who alone stands against the collusion of a plant director and ministerial officials). officials) and El-Dar Ryazanov’s film “Carnival Night” (where innovative-minded youth discredit and ridicule the self-confident director of the local House of Culture).

Khrushchev and his associates constantly talked about a “return to Leninist norms.” As far as one can judge, in all his denunciations of Stalin - both at the 20th and 22nd Congress of the CPSU - Khrushchev sought to preserve the idea of ​​the Great Terror as a repression primarily against “honest communists” and the “Leninist old guard”. But even without these slogans, many Soviet artists were, apparently, quite sincerely convinced that without the revival of revolutionary ideals and without the romanticization of the first revolutionary years and the Civil War, it would be completely impossible to build the future communist society.

The revived cult of revolution brought to life a whole series of works about the first years of the existence of the Soviet state: the film by Yuli Raizman “Communist” (1957), the artistic trip of Geliy Korzhev “Communists” (1957-1960) and other opuses. However, many understood Khrushchev’s calls literally and talked about the revolution and the Civil War as events taking place here and now, in which they themselves, the people of the second half of the 1950s - early 1960s, directly take part . The most typical example of this kind of literal interpretation is Bulat Okudzhava’s famous song “Sentimental March” (1957), where the lyrical hero, a modern young man, sees for himself the only option for ending life path- death “on that one and only Civil”, surrounded by “commissars in dusty helmets.” The point, of course, was not about a repetition of the Civil War in the contemporary USSR, but about the fact that the hero of the 1960s could live in parallel in two eras, and the older one was more authentic and valuable for him.

Marlen Khutsiev’s film “Ilyich’s Outpost” (1961-1964) is structured in a similar way. It is considered perhaps the main film of the Thaw. Its complete director's cut, restored after censorship interventions in the late 1980s, opens and closes with symbolic scenes: at the beginning, three military patrol soldiers, dressed in uniforms from the late 1910s and early 1920s, walk through the streets of the night before dawn in Moscow. to the music of the “Internationale”, and in the finale, in the same way, soldiers of the Great Patriotic War march through Moscow, and their passage is replaced by a demonstration of the guard (also consisting of three people) at the Lenin Mausoleum. These episodes have no plot intersections with the main action of the film. However, they immediately set a very important dimension of this film narrative: the events taking place in the USSR in the 1960s with three young people barely twenty years old are directly and directly related to the events of the revolution and the Civil War, since the revolution and the Civil War are for these heroes are an important value reference point. It is characteristic that there are as many guards in the frame as there are central characters - three.

The very title of the film speaks of the same orientation towards the era of revolution and Civil War, towards the figure of Lenin as the founder of the Soviet state. At this point, there was a discrepancy between the film’s director Marlen Khutsiev and Nikita Khrushchev, who forbade the release of Ilyich’s Outpost in its original form: for Khrushchev, a young doubting hero who is trying to find the meaning of life and answer the main questions for oneself, is not worthy of being considered the heir to revolutionary ideals and protecting “Ilyich’s Outpost.” Therefore, in the re-edited version, the film had to be called “I’m Twenty Years Old.” For Khu-tsi-ev, on the contrary, the fact that the revolution and the “International” remain high ideals for the hero serves as a justification for his mental tossing, as well as the change of girls, professions and friendly companies. It is no coincidence that in one of the key episodes of Khutsiev’s film, the entire audience of the poetry evening at the Polytechnic Museum sings along with Okudzhava, who performs the finale of that same “Sentimental March.”

How else did Soviet art respond to calls to combat the cult of personality? Since 1956, it has become possible to speak directly about the repressions and the tragedy of the people innocently thrown into the camps. In the second half of the 1950s, it was not yet allowed to mention people who had been physically destroyed (and in later times, the Soviet press usually used euphemisms like “he was repressed and died”, and not “he was shot”). It was impossible to discuss the scale of state terror of the 1930s - early 1950s, and a censorship taboo was generally imposed on reports of extrajudicial arrests of the earlier - “Leninist” - time. Therefore, until the early 1960s, almost the only possible way to depict repression in a work of art was the appearance of a hero returning or returning from the camps. It seems that perhaps the first such character in censored literature is the hero of Alexander Tvardovsky’s poem “Childhood Friend”: the text was written in 1954-1955, published in the first issue of “Literary Moscow” and subsequently included in the poem “ Beyond the distance is the distance.”

The taboo on depicting the camps themselves was lifted when in the 11th issue of the magazine “New World” for 1962, under the direct sanction of Nikita Khrushchev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published - about a typical the day of one prisoner in the Gulag. Over the next year, this text was reprinted twice more. However, already in 1971-1972, all editions of this story were confiscated from libraries and destroyed, it was even torn out from issues of the magazine “New World”, and the author’s name in the table of contents was covered with ink.

People returning from the camps at that time experienced big problems with social adaptation, search for housing and work. Even after official rehabilitation, for most of their colleagues and neighbors they remained dubious and suspicious persons - only because, for example, they went through the camp system. This issue is very accurately reflected in Alexander Galich’s song “Clouds” (1962). The song was distributed only in unofficial tape recordings. Its main character, who miraculously survived after twenty years of imprisonment, pathetically ends his monologue with a statement about “half the country,” quenching, like himself, “in taverns,” the longing for the forever lost years of life. However, he does not mention the dead - they will appear in Galich later, in the poem “Reflections on Long Distance Runners” (1966-1969). Even in Solzhenitsyn's One Day, the deaths in the camps and the Great Terror are barely mentioned. The works of authors who then, in the late 1950s, spoke about extrajudicial executions and the real scale of mortality in the Gulag (such as Varlam Shalamov or Georgy Demidov) could not be published in the USSR under any circumstances .

Another possible and actually existing interpretation of the “fight against the cult of personality” was no longer focused on Stalin personally, but suggested condemnation of any kind of leaderism, unity of command, and assertion of the primacy of one historical figure over others. The expression “cult of personality” was contrasted with the term “collective leadership” in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s. He set both the ideal model of the political system, which was supposedly created and bequeathed by Lenin, and then roughly destroyed by Stalin, and the type of government that was supposed to be recreated first in the triumvirate of Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev, and then in cooperation between Khrushchev and the Presidium of the Central Committee of the party (and the Central Committee as a whole). Collectivism and collegiality had to be demonstrated at all levels at that time. It is no coincidence that one of the central ideological manifestos of the mid- and late 1950s became Makarenko’s “Pedagogical Poem”, screened in 1955 by Alexey Maslyukov and Mieczyslawa Mayewska: and Makarenko’s novel, and the film presented a utopia of a self-governing and self-disciplining collective.

However, the term “de-Stalinization” may also have a broader interpretation, which allows us to connect together the most diverse aspects of the social, political and cultural reality of the first decade after Stalin’s death. Nikita Khrushchev, whose political will and decisions largely determined the life of the country in 1955-1964, saw de-Stalinization not only as a criticism of Stalin and the end of mass political repressions, he tried to reformulate the Soviet project and Soviet ideology as a whole. In his understanding, the place of the struggle with internal and external enemies, the place of coercion and fear should have been replaced by the sincere enthusiasm of Soviet citizens, their voluntary dedication and self-sacrifice in building a communist society. Hostility with the outside world and constant readiness for military conflicts should have been replaced by interest in everyday life and in the achievements of other countries and even sometimes in exciting competition with “capitalists”. The utopia of “peaceful coexistence” was violated every now and then during this decade various kinds foreign political conflicts, where the Soviet Union often resorted to extreme, sometimes violent measures. Khrushchev’s guidelines were most openly violated on his own initiative, but at the level of cultural policy there was much more consistency in this regard.

Already in 1953-1955, international cultural contacts intensified. For example, at the end of 1953 (at the same time when “GUM opened, Beria closed”) exhibitions of contemporary artists from India and Finland were held in Moscow and the permanent exhibition of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts was reopened (since 1949 the museum was occupied by an exhibition donated by kov “to Comrade Stalin on his 70th birthday”). In 1955, the same museum held an exhibition of masterpieces of European painting from the Dresden Gallery - before the return of these works to the GDR. In 1956, an exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso was organized in the Pushkin Museum (and later in the Hermitage), which shocked visitors: mostly they did not even know about the existence of this kind of art. Finally, in 1957, Moscow hosted guests of the World Festival of Youth and Students - the festival was also accompanied by numerous exhibitions of foreign art.

The focus on mass enthusiasm also implied a turn of the state towards the masses. In 1955, at one of the party meetings, Khrushchev addressed the functionaries:

“People tell us: ‘Will there be meat or not? Will there be milk or not? Will the pants be good?“ This, of course, is not an ideology. But it’s impossible for everyone to have the correct ideology and walk around without pants!”

On July 31, 1956, construction of the first series of five-story buildings without elevators began in the new Moscow district of Cheryomushki. They were based on reinforced concrete structures made using new, cheaper technology. Houses built from these structures, later nicknamed “Khrushchev-kami,” appeared in many cities of the USSR to replace the wooden barracks in which workers had previously lived. The circulation of periodicals was increased, although there were still not enough magazines and newspapers - due to a shortage of paper and due to the fact that subscriptions to literary publications where sensitive topics were discussed were artificially limited according to instructions from the Central Committee.

Ideologists demanded that more attention be paid to the “common man” in art, as opposed to the pompous films of the late Stalin era. An illustrative example of the embodiment of the new aesthetic ideology is Mikhail Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man” (1956). Sholokhov is an author who is very sensitive to changing conditions. His hero, driver Andrei Sokolov, himself tells how he miraculously survived in Nazi captivity, but his entire family died. He accidentally picks up a little orphan boy and raises him, telling him that he is his father.

According to Sholokhov himself, he became acquainted with Sokolov’s prototype back in 1946. However, the choice of character - a seemingly ordinary driver with a desperately gloomy life story - was indicative specifically for the Thaw era. At this time, the image of war radically changes. Since Stalin was recognized as having made serious mistakes in the leadership of the Soviet army, especially at the initial stage of the war, after 1956 it became possible to portray the war as a tragedy and talk not only about victories, but also about defeats, about how people suffered from these errors " simple people”, that losses from war can neither be completely healed nor compensated by victory. From this perspective, the war was depicted, for example, by Viktor Rozov’s play “Eternally Living,” written back in 1943 and staged (in a new version) at the Moscow Sovremennik Theater in the spring of 1956—in fact, the premiere of this play and became the first performance of the new theater. Soon, another key film of the Thaw, “The Cranes Are Flying” by Mikhail Kalatozov, was made based on this play.

Functionaries of the Central Committee and leaders of creative unions encouraged artists to turn to the images of the “common man” in order to develop in society a sense of collective solidarity and a desire for selfless sacrificial labor. This rather clear task outlined the limits of de-Stalinization in the depiction of human psychology, relations between man and society. If certain subjects did not evoke a surge of enthusiasm, but rather reflection, skepticism or doubt, such works were banned or subjected to critical defeat. Insufficiently “simple” and “democratic” stylistics also easily fell under the ban as “formalistic” and “alien to the Soviet audience” - and stirring up unnecessary discussions. Even less acceptable for the authorities and for the artistic elite were doubts about the fairness and correctness of the Soviet project, about the justification of the victims of collectivization and industrialization, about the adequacy of Marxist dogmas. Therefore, Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, published in Italy in 1957, where all these ideological postulates were called into question, aroused indignation not only among Khrushchev, but also among a number of Soviet nomenklatura writers - for example, Konstantin Fedin.

There was, apparently, a whole cohort of executives and representatives of the creative intelligentsia who adhered to the same view as Khrushchev on the mission of art and the mood that, in principle, could be expressed in it. A typical example of such a worldview is an episode from the memoirs of composer Nikolai Karetnikov. In the fall of 1955, Karetnikov came to the home of the famous conductor Alexander Gauk to discuss his new Second Symphony. The central part of the symphony was a long funeral march. After listening to this part, Gauk asked Karetnikov a series of questions:

"- How old are you?
- Twenty-six, Alexander Vasilyevich.
Pause.
-Are you a Komsomol member?
— Yes, I am a Komsomol organizer of the Moscow Union of Composers.
—Are your parents alive?
- Thank God, Alexander Vasilyevich, they are alive.
No pause.
- They say your wife is beautiful?
- It's true, very true.
Pause.
- You are healthy?
“God has mercy, I seem to be healthy.”
Pause.
In a high and tense voice:
-Are you fed, shod, dressed?
- Yes, everything seems to be fine...
Almost shouts:
- So what the hell are you burying?!
<…>
- What about the right to tragedy?
“You have no such right!”

There is only one way to decipher Gauck’s last remark: Karetnikov was not a front-line soldier, none of his family died during the war, which means that in his music the young composer was obliged to demonstrate inspiration and cheerfulness. The “right to tragedy” in Soviet culture was as strictly dosed and rationed as scarce products and manufactured goods.

A conventional name assigned to the period of the second half of the 50s - early 60s, associated with the political course in domestic and foreign policy.

The term was introduced by the Soviet writer I. Ehrenburg, who published the story “The Thaw” in the magazine “New World” in 1954. Signs of the “Thaw” appeared in the life of the country after Stalin’s death: there was a relative liberalization in the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR.

Report onXX congress. Criticism of the cult of personality.

A landmark event in the political life of the country was the report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,” read by Khrushchev at a closed meeting of the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956 and which became an absolute surprise for the delegates of the congress. The report spoke for the first time about the crimes of I.V. Stalin against the party, he was opposed to V.I. Lenin. It contained not only general discussions, but also a story about the fate of several arrestees. These were members of the Central Committee and the Politburo: N. Voskresensky, A. Kuznetsov, N. Postyshev and others. Khrushchev spoke about the torture of them and about their letters before execution. It is interesting that in the USSR the full text of Khrushchev’s report was first published in the open press only in 1989.

In 1957, a decree was issued prohibiting the naming of states and public figures to streets and cities during their lifetime. On the other hand, criticism of the “cult of personality” allowed Khrushchev to deal with his political opponents within the country, as well as to change leadership in a number of countries in Eastern Europe. The foreign policy effect of the report was also ambiguous and led to a serious cooling of relations with Albania, China, North Korea and Romania. In 1956 there were major unrest in Poland and Hungary.

Rehabilitation.

The rehabilitation of victims of Stalinism began almost immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin and the execution of L.P. Beria, but it gained greater scope after the report of N.S. Khrushchev, when a commission was created headed by him to investigate violations of the law during the period of the cult of personality. By the fall of 1956, the majority of political prisoners were released, among them were party leaders, as well as miraculously surviving Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. At the same time, the rehabilitation did not affect the “dispossessed” and a number of prominent party figures: G.E. Zinovieva, L.B. Kameneva, N.I. Bukharin and others. A legislative reform was carried out: “declaring an enemy of the people” was excluded from the list of punishments, and the number of articles on liability for political crimes was reduced. The number of Gulag prisoners was reduced by more than 2 times.

In 1956-1957 The statehood of a number of republics, arbitrarily liquidated under Stalin, was restored, and their residents (Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, etc.) were allowed to return to their homes. However, here too the leaders of the CPSU were inconsistent: the Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans were not given such permission.

At the XXII Congress of the CPSU in October 1961, the words of N.S. were again heard. Khrushchev, who condemned Stalin and his defenders. According to the resolution of the congress, on the night of October 31 to November 1, Stalin’s body was taken out of the Mausoleum and buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall. Monuments to Stalin were also secretly demolished throughout the country. The only exception was the monument in his hometown Burn. On November 30, the Moscow metro station named after the leader was renamed Semenovskaya. Stalin's closest associates, Kaganovich, Malenkov and Molotov, who were retired, were expelled from the party.

Economic and social reforms.

During the “thaw” period, the Soviet economy was modernized, space exploration began, and in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly into space. The state's social obligations expanded, pensions were introduced, the working day was shortened, education fees were abolished, and the standard of living in the city and countryside increased noticeably. However, acute social contradictions also persisted, which led to conflicts, the most famous of which were unrest in

Foreign policy.

Economic successes allowed the USSR to solve broad foreign policy problems - to maintain its sphere of influence (including by military means, as in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956) and expand the “socialist camp”. One of the first initiatives of N.S. Khrushchev was the restoration of Soviet-Yugoslav relations in 1955. In the 50-60s. Communists and their allies came to power in several countries in Asia and Africa, and even in close proximity to the United States in Cuba. The new principles of the USSR foreign policy were proclaimed: a variety of forms of transition various countries towards socialism, the need for peaceful coexistence, and the possibility of preventing military action.

In confirmation of the new foreign policy course, the USSR reduced its armed forces by almost 2 times. From 5.8 million people at the beginning of 1955, the number was increased to 3.6 million people by December 1959. As part of this, military bases around the world were eliminated. In the spring of 1958, testing of thermonuclear weapons ceased.

The first post-war summit meetings between the USSR and the USA take place. Despite this, in 1962 an acute crisis broke out, putting the world in immediate danger of a nuclear war. IN next year There was a split in the “socialist camp” associated with the Soviet-Chinese conflict.

"Sixties".

Criticism of the “cult of personality”, the beginning of the rehabilitation of the repressed, some freedom and successes of Soviet society (in science and technology) aroused the enthusiasm of the intelligentsia, especially young people, who later formed a whole generation of the social movement known as the “sixties”. This was the title of an article by S. Rassadin, published in the magazine “Yunost” in 1960, which dealt with writers and readers of the new generation. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the art song genre became popular. The founder and most prominent representative of this trend was Bulat Okudzhava. Together with talented poets of that time: R.I. Rozhdestvensky, E.A. Evtushenko, A.A. Voznesensky and B.A. Akhmadulina, he performed at extremely popular evenings at the Polytechnic Museum. At the same time, both in society and in the party there were heated discussions between “physicists” (technocrats) and “lyricists” (humanitarians), between Stalinists and anti-Stalinists.

Expansion of cultural ties.

Cultural contacts between the USSR and the outside world are expanding. In 1956, on the initiative of I. Ehrenburg, the first exhibition of forty works by Picasso took place in Moscow. She immediately revealed an ambivalent attitude towards him - a restrained official reaction and queues of thousands at the Museum of Fine Arts. A.C. Pushkin, where it took place. In the summer of 1957, the International Festival of Youth and Students was held in Moscow. In 1959, on the initiative of the Minister of Culture E.A. Furtseva resumed the Moscow International Film Festival. The festival's big prize was won by S. Bondarchuk's film “The Fate of a Man.” In 1963, a scandal broke out because the main prize was given to Frederico Fellini's film fantasy "8 ½".

Literary magazines.

For the first time in the history of the USSR, literary magazines became platforms where supporters of different opinions had the opportunity to publish their articles. Conservative authors, who considered the “thaw” a harmful deviation from the course towards building communism, published mainly in the magazines “October” and “Neva”. Anti-Stalinist positions were taken by the editors of the magazines Yunost and Novy Mir, as well as Literaturnaya Gazeta (since 1959). At the same time, supporters of both directions referred to the ideas of Lenin, but had different attitudes towards the era of Stalin. In the 1950s films were released that both glorified the party ("Communist", directed by Yu. Raizman) and ridiculed the Soviet leaders ("Carnival Night", directed by E.A. Ryazanov). Films also appeared that were not ideological in nature, but addressed the theme of war in a new way: G.N. Chukhrai “Ballad of a Soldier”, M.M. Kalatozov’s “The Cranes Are Flying,” which won the Palme d’Or at the 1958 Cannes International Film Festival.

Participants in legal disputes of that time did not go beyond the ideology of building socialism. Attempts by even famous writers to go beyond these boundaries were considered unacceptable. Thus, in 1957, he published the novel “Doctor Zhivago” in the West, which described the events of the civil war from a non-Bolshevik perspective. For this novel in 1958 B.L. Pasternak was awarded the prestigious international Nobel Prize in Literature. But in the USSR, Pasternak’s work was condemned as anti-Soviet, and under pressure from the authorities he was forced to refuse the prize.

Attitude to the church.

At the end of the 50s. In connection with the course towards building communism, the state policy towards the church is again becoming tougher, and persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church has resumed. Secretary of the Central Committee L.F. Ilyichev, in a speech in December 1961, declared: “Religion, which has always been an anachronism in modern conditions, is now becoming an intolerable obstacle on our path to communism.” Achieving a “society without religion” was declared a program goal. Not only did atheist propaganda intensify, but also the number of religious associations decreased. So in 1958 there were only 18.6 thousand, including Orthodox - 13.4 thousand, in 1961 - 16 and 11 thousand, respectively.

The end of the "thaw".

On December 1, 1962, an exhibition dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists (MOSH) of the USSR was to open in the Moscow Manege. The exhibition received the approval of E.A. Furtseva. Part of the exhibition’s works was presented by the exposition “ New reality”, prepared by more than 60 artists representing an artistic movement organized in the late 1940s by the painter E.M. Belyutin, who carried out the traditions of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Khrushchev, who came to the exhibition, walked around the large hall three times where the exhibition was located. He then rapidly moved from one picture to another, then returned back, gradually losing his temper, he began to abuse the artists and their works. The next day, immediately after the publication of the Pravda newspaper with an accusatory article, many Muscovites came to the Manege, but the exhibition had already been removed. However, there was no persecution of the artists.

On November 29, 1963, the feuilleton “Near-Literary Drone” appeared in print, in which the poet Joseph Brodsky was ridiculed. The writer was arrested and sentenced to 5 years of exile for parasitism. After which something unprecedented happened for Soviet society: an open campaign began in defense of the poet. About two dozen writers spoke out for his acquittal. Letters in defense of Brodsky were signed by D.D. Shostakovich, S.Ya. Marshak, K.I. Chukovsky, K.G. Paustovsky, A.T. Tvardovsky, Yu.P. German and others. Under pressure from wide public outcry, in 1965 the poet was returned from exile. In 1972, I. Brodsky left the country, and in 1987 he became a laureate Nobel Prize.

As part of the campaign to debunk the “cult of personality” I.V. Stalin, former prisoner A. Solzhenitsyn was allowed to publish the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” which tells about life in Stalin’s camps. This story, shocking in its brutal truth, was published in November 1962 in Novy Mir with special permission from the Presidium of the Central Committee, and brought Solzhenitsyn great fame. The magazine issue became a real rarity, many began to rewrite the story by hand, and this is how “samizdat” arose. The duality of the “Thaw” era is evidenced by the fact that, having allowed the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the party leadership at the same time banned the publication of a novel in “The First Circle,” which tells about Solzhenitsyn’s work during the years of imprisonment in the “sharashka” in Marfino.

The strengthening of voluntarism in Khrushchev’s policies, endless reforms and transformations, plans for reforming the party, the introduction of the principle of rotation in appointments to positions, as well as the First Secretary’s rudeness in communication gradually led him to isolation and undermined Khrushchev’s authority both among the people and in the party leadership. Under these conditions, Khrushchev’s inner circle decided to remove him from power, which was done at the October plenum of 1964. The country calmly greeted Khrushchev’s removal from office and the end of the “thaw.” This is what N.S. himself wrote. Khrushchev in his memoirs about this controversial period: “Deciding on the coming of the thaw, and going towards it consciously, the leadership of the USSR, including me, was at the same time afraid of it: lest it lead to a flood that would overwhelm us, and with which we it will be difficult to cope... We wanted to release the creative powers of people, but in such a way that new creations would contribute to the strengthening of socialism. It’s like what, as people say, you want it, and you inject it, and your mother doesn’t tell you to. That's how it was."

After Stalin's death on March 5 1953 A protracted crisis of power began in the USSR. The struggle for personal leadership lasted until the spring of 1958 and went through several stages.

On first Of these (March - June 1953), the struggle for power was led by the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (which combined the functions of both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB) L.P. Beria (with the support of G.M. Malenkov) and Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev. Beria, at least in words, planned to carry out a serious democratization of Soviet society in general and party life in particular. It was proposed to return to Lenin’s – democratic – principles of party building. However, his methods were far from legitimate. So, Beria announced a broad amnesty so that then, “ with an iron hand“to restore order and, on this wave, come to power.

Beria's plans were not destined to come true. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was associated in the mass consciousness only with Stalin's repressions, his authority was minimal. Khrushchev decided to take advantage of this, defending the interests of the party bureaucracy, which was afraid of change. Relying on the support of the Ministry of Defense (primarily G.K. Zhukov), he organized and led a conspiracy against the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. June 6 1953 Mr. Beria was arrested at a meeting of the government presidium, and was soon shot as “an enemy of the Communist Party and Soviet people" He was accused of plotting to seize power and working for Western intelligence agencies.

From the summer of 1953 to February 1955, the struggle for power entered second stage. Now it has turned between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, G.M., who was losing his position. Malenkov, who supported Beria in 1953 and gained strength N.S. Khrushchev. In January 1955, Malenkov was sharply criticized at the next Plenum of the Central Committee and was forced to resign. N.A. Bulganin became the new head of government.

Third stage (February 1955 - March 1958) was a time of confrontation between Khrushchev and the “old guard” of the Presidium of the Central Committee - Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, Bulganin and others.

In an effort to strengthen his position, Khrushchev decided to make limited criticism of Stalin’s personality cult. In February 1956 on XX Congress of the CPSU he made a report " About the cult of personality" I.V. Stalin and his consequences" Khrushchev's popularity in the country increased significantly and this further alarmed the representatives of the “old guard”. In June 1957 By a majority vote, they adopted a decision at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee to abolish the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee and to appoint Khrushchev as Minister of Agriculture. However, relying on the support of the army (Minister of Defense - Zhukov) and the KGB, Khrushchev managed to convene a Plenum of the Central Committee, at which Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich were declared an “anti-party group” and stripped of their posts. In March 1958, this stage of the struggle for power ended with the removal of Bulganin from the post of head of government and the appointment of Khrushchev to this post, who also retained the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee. Fearing competition from G.K. Zhukov, Khrushchev dismissed him in October 1957.

Khrushchev's criticism of Stalinism led to some liberalization public life society (“thaw”). A wide campaign was launched to rehabilitate victims of repression. In April 1954, the MGB was transformed into the State Security Committee (KGB) under the USSR Council of Ministers. In 1956-1957 political charges against repressed peoples are dropped, except for the Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars; their statehood is restored. Internal party democracy was expanded.

At the same time, the general political course remained the same. At the 21st Congress of the CPSU (1959), the conclusion was made about the complete and final victory of socialism in the USSR and the transition to full-scale communist construction. At the XXII Congress (1961) a new program and party charter were adopted (the program for building communism by 1980)

Even Khrushchev’s moderately democratic measures aroused anxiety and fear among the party apparatus, which sought to ensure the stability of its position and no longer feared reprisals. The military expressed dissatisfaction with the significant reduction in the army. The disappointment of the intelligentsia, which did not accept “dosed democracy,” grew. The life of workers in the early 60s. after some improvement, it worsened again - the country was entering a period of protracted economic crisis. All this led to the fact that in the summer 1964 a conspiracy arose among senior members of the party and state leadership directed against Khrushchev. In October of the same year, the head of the party and government was accused of voluntarism and subjectivism and sent into retirement. L.I. was elected first secretary of the Central Committee (since 1966 – General Secretary). Brezhnev, and A.N. became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Kosygin. Thus, as a result of numerous transformations in 1953-1964. The political regime in the USSR began to move towards limited (“Soviet”) democracy. But this movement, initiated by the “tops,” did not rely on broad mass support and, therefore, was doomed to failure.

Economic reforms N.S. Khrushchev

The main economic problem of the USSR after the death of Stalin was the crisis state of Soviet agriculture. In 1953, a decision was made to increase state purchase prices for collective farms and reduce mandatory supplies, write off debts from collective farms, and reduce taxes on household plots and sales on the free market. In 1954, the development of virgin lands of Northern Kazakhstan, Siberia, Altai and Southern Urals (development of virgin lands). Ill-considered actions during the development of virgin lands (lack of roads, wind protection structures) led to rapid depletion of the soil.

The start of reforms has brought encouraging results. However, in the conditions of the arms race, the Soviet government needed huge funds for the development of heavy industry. Their main sources continued to be agriculture and light industry. Therefore, after a short break, administrative pressure on collective farms is again intensifying. Since 1955, the so-called corn campaign - an attempt to solve agricultural problems by expanding corn plantings. " Corn epic» led to a decrease in grain yields. Since 1962, purchases of bread abroad began. In 1957, MTS was liquidated, the worn-out equipment of which was to be bought back by collective farms. This led to a reduction in the fleet of agricultural machinery and the ruin of many collective farms. The attack on household plots begins. In March 1962, agricultural management was restructured. Collective and state farm administrations (KSU) appeared.

Khrushchev saw the main problem of Soviet industry in the inability of sectoral ministries to take into account local peculiarities. It was decided to replace the sectoral principle of economic management with a territorial one. On July 1, 1957, the Union Industrial Ministries were replaced by the Councils of the National Economy ( economic councils, СНХ). This reform led to an inflated administrative apparatus and disruption of economic ties between the regions of the country.

At the same time, in 1955-1960. A number of measures were taken to improve the life of the population, mainly urban. Salaries increased regularly. A law has been adopted to lower the retirement age for workers and employees, and the work week has been shortened. Since 1964, pensions have been introduced for collective farmers. They receive passports on the same basis as city residents. All types of tuition fees have been cancelled. There was massive housing construction, which was facilitated by the industry’s mastery of the production of cheap reinforced concrete building materials (“Khrushchev buildings”).

Early 60s revealed serious problems in the economy, which was largely destructured by thoughtless reforms and storming (the slogan “Catch up and overtake America!” was put forward). The government tried to solve these problems at the expense of the workers - wages were reduced and food prices increased. This led to an undermining of the authority of the top management and an increase in social tension: spontaneous uprisings of workers took place, the largest in November 1962 in Novocherkassk, and, ultimately, to the resignation of Khrushchev himself from all posts in October 1964.

Foreign policy in 1953-1964.

The reform course pursued by the Khrushchev administration was also reflected in foreign policy. The new foreign policy concept was formulated at the 20th Congress of the CPSU and included two main provisions:

1. the need for peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems,
2. multivariate ways to build socialism with simultaneous confirmation of the principle of “proletarian internationalism.

The urgent task of foreign policy after the death of Stalin was to establish relations with the countries of the socialist camp. Since 1953, attempts at rapprochement with China began. Relations with Yugoslavia were also regulated.

The positions of the CMEA are strengthening. In May 1955, the Organization was created as a counterweight to NATO Warsaw Pact.

At the same time, serious contradictions were noticeable within the socialist camp. In 1953 Soviet army takes part in the suppression of workers' protests in the GDR. In 1956 - in Hungary. Since 1956, relations between the USSR and Albania and China became more complicated, whose governments were dissatisfied with the criticism of Stalin’s “cult of personality.”

Another important area of ​​foreign policy was relations with capitalist countries. Already in August 1953, in a speech by Malenkov, the idea of ​​the need to ease international tension was first voiced. Then, in the summer 1953 g., a hydrogen bomb was successfully tested (A.D. Sakharov). Continuing to promote the peace initiative, the USSR unilaterally carried out a series of reductions in the number of armed forces and declared a moratorium on nuclear tests. But this did not bring fundamental changes to the Cold War environment, since both the West and our country continued to build up and improve weapons.

One of the main issues in relations between East and West remained the problem of Germany. Here, the issues of the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany were still not resolved, in addition, the USSR prevented the inclusion of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO. The strained relations between Germany and the GDR led to a crisis situation, the reason for which was the unresolved fate of West Berlin. August 13 1961 the so-called Berlin Wall .

The peak of the confrontation between East and West was Caribbean crisis caused by placement in 1962 American nuclear missiles in Turkey and the retaliatory deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The crisis, which brought the world to the brink of disaster, was resolved through mutual concessions - the USA withdrew missiles from Turkey, the USSR - from Cuba. In addition, the United States abandoned plans to eliminate the socialist state in Cuba.

A new round of tension begins as a result of the US armed intervention in the Vietnam War and sharp opposition to it in the Soviet Union (1964).

The third new direction of the USSR's foreign policy was relations with Third World countries. Here our country encourages the anti-colonial struggle and the creation of socialist regimes.

The culture of the USSR during the “thaw”

Speech by N.S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the condemnation of the crimes of senior officials made a great impression and marked the beginning of changes in public consciousness. The “thaw” was especially noticeable in literature and art. Rehabilitated V.E. Meyerhold, B.A. Pilnyak, O.E. Mandelstam, I.E. Babel, G.I. Serebryakova. S.A.’s poems are beginning to be published again. Yesenin, works by A.A. Akhmatova and M.M. Zoshchenko. At an art exhibition in Moscow in 1962, the avant-garde of the 20-30s was presented, long years not exhibited. The ideas of the “thaw” were reflected most fully on the pages of “The New World” (chief editor – A.T. Tvardovsky). It was in this magazine that the story of A.I. was published. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

From the second half of the 50s. International ties of Soviet culture are expanding - the Moscow Film Festival is being resumed, and since 1958 the International Competition for Performers has been opened. P.I. Tchaikovsky; The exhibition of the Museum of Fine Arts is being restored. Pushkin, international exhibitions are held. IN 1957 The VI World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Moscow. Expenditures on science have increased, many new research institutions have been opened. Since the 50s a large scientific center is being formed in the East of the country - the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences - Novosibirsk Akademgorodok.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s. The USSR plays a leading role in space exploration - October 4, 1957 the first artificial Earth satellite was launched into low-Earth orbit, April 12, 1961 The first flight of a manned spacecraft took place (Yu.A. Gagarin). The “fathers” of Soviet cosmonautics were rocketry designer S.P. Korolev and rocket engine developer V.M. Chelomey.

The growth of the international authority of the USSR was also greatly facilitated by successes in the development of the “peaceful atom” - in 1957, the world’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker “Lenin” was launched.

In secondary schools, the reform is carried out under the slogan of “strengthening the connection between school and life.” Compulsory eight-year education on a “polytechnic” basis is being introduced. The duration of study increases to 11 years, and in addition to the matriculation certificate, graduates receive a certificate of specialty. In the mid-60s. Industrial classes are cancelled.

At the same time, the “thaw” in culture was combined with criticism of “decadent tendencies” and “underestimation of the leading role of the party.” Such writers and poets as A.A. were subjected to severe criticism. Voznesensky, D.A. Granin, V.D. Dudintsev, sculptors and artists E.N. Unknown, R.R. Falk, humanities scientists R. Pimenov, B. Weil. With the arrest of the latter, the first political case against ordinary citizens during the “Thaw” begins. The expulsion from the Union of Writers B.L. in 1958 received wide resonance throughout the world. Pasternak for publishing abroad the novel Doctor Zhivago. For political reasons, he was forced to refuse to receive the Nobel Prize.

Dmitry Babich, RIA Novosti columnist.

What was the “thaw” and why is it called Khrushchev’s? The answer to this question is not as simple as it may seem to people who are familiar with our history only from Soviet textbooks and simplified Western reference books. Firstly, Ilya Ehrenburg’s story “The Thaw” was published in 1954, when the state was still actually led by the then Prime Minister Malenkov. Secondly, Khrushchev himself categorically did not accept such a “slush” name for his reign. “The concept of some kind of thaw was cleverly planted by this swindler, Ehrenburg!” - Nikita Sergeevich threw in his hearts when, at the end of his reign, he attacked Ehrenburg with criticism for gallomania. But history has decreed that Khrushchev’s rule is forever associated with the title of Ehrenburg’s story.

Some historians believe that there were actually two thaws. The first began almost immediately after Stalin's death in March 1953 and is associated with the names of Beria and Malenkov. The second began after a short break with Khrushchev’s report at the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956 and ended with Khrushchev’s removal from office, that is, it ended with the October Plenum of 1964, the anniversary of which we celebrate today.

Much has been written about the “second” thaw, but almost nothing about the first. Rudolf Pihoy’s book “The Soviet Union: The History of Power 1945 -1991” sheds some light on these events. Pihoya, having headed the Rosarkhiv after the glorious August revolution of 1991, managed to publish many interesting documents and devoted an entire chapter to the “first thaw” entitled “Slowly Melting Ice.” Already on March 10, 1953, the day after Stalin’s funeral, Malenkov, who became Chairman of the Council of Ministers on March 5 and in this capacity headed the funeral commission, suddenly criticized the Soviet press at the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, saying: “We consider it obligatory to stop the policy of the cult of personality.” The investigation into the anti-Semitic “case of doctors” who allegedly tried to poison Stalin stopped immediately after the death of the “leader” - obviously not without Beria’s sanction. Already on April 3, 1953, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution on the complete rehabilitation of “wrecker doctors.” The rehabilitation of convicts also took place in several other political trials; Beria proposed limiting the powers of the Special Meeting (the notorious OSO, “famous” for sentences such as “ten years without the right of correspondence”).

Under these conditions, the arrest of Beria on June 26, 1953 on completely far-fetched charges in the Stalinist style (“agent of international imperialism,” “spy,” “enemy who wanted to seize power for the restoration of capitalism”) was perceived by many as a return to the Stalinist order. Anti-Semitic rumors spread among the people that Beria was supposedly connected with the Jewish “killer doctors” he had rehabilitated. At the July 1953 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, something like a brief restoration of Stalinism took place. When discussing the issue of “anti-state actions of Beria,” Lavrentiy Pavlovich was accused of denying Stalin’s genius, an attempt to restore relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia, and a course toward appointing national personnel as heads of the union republics. (All three ideas, as we now know, are quite sound and feasible.) Part of the population received the news about the end of the first thaw with satisfaction. In Russia, freedom often comes as an unwelcome guest.

All this, of course, does not mean that Beria was not a criminal and was not responsible for the repressions of the thirties and fifties. Nevertheless, the pragmatic mind of this criminal correctly understood one thing - it was impossible to continue living like Stalin.

Having sent Beria to the next world, Khrushchev adopted one of his “reformist” ideas - to blame Stalin alone for the repressions (plus Beria himself and his closest assistants). This was done during the second thaw, which began with a secret report on Stalin’s personality cult, read by Khrushchev on February 25, 1956 at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. While Khrushchev was delivering the text, the report was forbidden to be written down or transcribed, so we only know the edited version, which arrived at the party organizations about ten days later. But the purpose of the report is clear - through the condemnation of Stalin, to rehabilitate the CPSU in the eyes of the people. The idea is by no means a “thaw” idea. But Khrushchev’s report violated the main Stalinist taboo - the unambiguous positive assessment of the party’s role in the life of the country.

He provoked a discussion in society: what is Stalin’s fault, and what is the entire communist project? Then another question was added: in what way and to what extent is Stalinism connected with the political tradition of Russia? This discussion became a real thaw. And this discussion continues in our society to this day.

Khrushchev himself did not want this discussion. Being a devout communist, Khrushchev did not view the initial period of Soviet power as a “winter”, followed by a warm democratic summer. Officially, the entire Soviet period was still proclaimed as the “spring of humanity.” The release of prisoners from the Gulag was not advertised until the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962; Khrushchev preferred to be proud not of this liberation, but of space flights, housing construction, plowing of virgin lands and other projects of a national scale.

It couldn't be any other way. According to his biography, Nikita Sergeevich was a typical “promoter” who owed his career to the October Revolution. In this sense, Khrushchev's biography was the biography of almost the entire elite of his time. The early career was facilitated by repressions, which cleared the way for “promoted people” back in the thirties. But seeing with my own eyes the destruction of the “class enemy”, and at the same time many innocent people who fell under the hot hand, left fear in my soul. Among the selfish and powerful “promoters” (to which Khrushchev belonged), this fear resulted in a desire to stop the practice of shooting and imprisoning party officials themselves (“restoration of Leninist norms of party life,” “socialist legality”). For more subtle and conscientious souls (for example, the poet Alexander Tvardovsky, who also owed his advancement in the social hierarchy to the Soviet regime), this fear resulted in a feeling of guilt before the “dispossessed” generations, in a noble and painful search for the truth about what happened to the country .

Tvardovsky is a symbolic figure for the Thaw, embodying all the tossing and contradictions of the era. Editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, holder of various orders - and publisher of Solzhenitsyn. A Komsomol member of the twenties - and an unfortunate son painfully worried about the fate of his dispossessed father. Tvardovsky’s diaries, recently published in the magazines Znamya and Voprosy Literatury, are snapshots of the thaw that only superficial people can call irrelevant and “overcome” by the cosmetic democratization of perestroika and the nineties.

Here is an entry in Tvardovsky’s diary dated February 25, 1961: “I am impressed by Stoletov’s story about a VAK story. A woman scientist, the director of a certain research institute or station located in the Moscow region, who, among others, raised a young, capable guy who became a candidate of science under her leadership. She was imprisoned in 1937, on the eve of defending her doctoral dissertation, which she let this guy meet. By the time of her rehabilitation, the young man is a doctor and director of her institute. She makes sure that the dissertation defended by the young man is her work word for word, submits an application, pointing out plagiarism, but saying nothing about the fact that she knows who imprisoned her. During rehabilitation, she was shown (this happened, for example, with Petrinskaya) a denunciation of a young man. But how to prove that the dissertation is hers? There are no traces - he cleaned everything up.”

A typical Thaw story. There is a crime, but it is indecent to talk about it and, in general, is ordered to be forgotten. And now what - they never report? They inform - and sometimes not even for the sake of a career, but at the call of the heart, out of love for art, even out of principle. Or is there no legality for our own people now? There is, and even purer than, the “socialist legality” that Malenkov, Molotov and other party officials built back then for their own safety. Although legality for one’s own people is still better than Stalin’s total lawlessness: at the beginning of the Thaw, Beria had to be shot, and at the end of it, Molotov, Malenkov, and then Khrushchev himself managed to quietly end his life in retirement. And this is the achievement of the thaw. Ambiguous, like the monument to Khrushchev by Ernst Neizvestny - made of black and white stone.

On the evening of March 5, 1953, after several days of sudden illness, I.V. died. Stalin. In the last hours of his life, the leader’s inner circle shared power, trying to legitimize their position and revise the decisions of the 19th Congress of the CPSU. The head of the government was G.M. Malenkov. L.P. Beria received the post of Minister of Internal Affairs, which included the Ministry of State Security. N.S. Khrushchev remained Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. The “disgraced” Mikoyan and Molotov regained their positions. To this day, there are different versions about Stalin’s illness and death: natural death, murder, deliberate delay in calling doctors. It is clear that Stalin's death was beneficial to many of those around him.

The struggle for power in the spring-summer of 1953 was associated with determining the country's development strategy. Numerous problems required solutions. The country could not maintain a huge army, have 2.5 million prisoners, spend money on “great construction projects,” continue to exploit the peasantry, incite conflicts around the world, and create new enemies. The instability of the ruling layer and threats of repression worsened the controllability of the state. All members of the political leadership understood the need for change. But everyone determined the priorities and depth of the inevitable changes in their own way. The first ideologists of the reforms were Beria and Malenkov. Since June 1953, Khrushchev became a supporter of reforms. A more conservative position was taken by Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov.

At the initiative of Beria, on March 27, 1953, an amnesty decree was adopted, according to which about 1 million people sentenced to up to 5 years were released: those who were late for work and truants, women with children under 10 years old, the elderly, etc. Contrary to popular belief, the amnesty did not apply to murderers and bandits, but it did not affect political prisoners either. This action (more than a third of prisoners who had acquired criminal experience in the camps and were not equipped in the everyday sense were released) caused a wave of crime in the cities.

At the beginning of April 1953, the “doctors’ case” was terminated. The official report spoke for the first time about the responsibility of Ministry of Internal Affairs employees who used “prohibited interrogation methods.” Soon, those convicted in other post-war political trials (“Mingrelian case”, “Aviators’ case”) were released. In June 1953, Beria submitted to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee a proposal to limit the rights of the Special Meeting under the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Steps were taken to reform the Gulag system “due to economic inefficiency”; a number of enterprises were transferred to line ministries.

Beria's initiatives went beyond the competence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He advocated changing the personnel policy in the republics, proposing, in particular, broad promotion of national personnel to the leadership. Beria insisted on normalizing relations with Yugoslavia, as well as abandoning the costly construction of socialism in the GDR and creating a neutral, united Germany. The phenomenon of Beria in the history of the USSR has not yet been fully explored. He gained a reputation as a villain and executioner. It seems that such an assessment suffers from simplicity.

Of course, Beria is responsible for crimes committed by the authorities, but to the same extent as his comrades Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Khrushchev and others. Beria, by virtue of his position, was the most informed person in the leadership, knowing better than anyone the “pain points” of the system, all the information about what the population of the country was primarily opposed to flowed to him through the security agencies. Beria's activity aroused fears among other members of the political leadership of his “sworn friends.”

Beria was feared and hated by the army leadership. The local nomenklatura was controlled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was not responsible for anything, but interfered in everything. His comrades began to suspect Beria of preparing his own dictatorship. Thus, Beria became a symbol of threat. He was feared and hated by all major political forces. By preliminary agreement between Malenkov, Khrushchev and Defense Minister Bulganin, on June 26, 1953, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, Beria was arrested. The performers of the “operation” were Marshal Zhukov, commander of the Moscow Military District Moskalenko and several officers.

At the beginning of July 1953, a plenum of the Central Committee was held, at which the image of a state criminal, a spy of “international imperialism”, a conspirator, “an enemy who wanted to restore power for the restoration of capitalism” was created. From now on, Beria becomes, according to modern researcher R.G. Pihoi, “a kind of drain of the history of the party, the source of everything that did not correspond to the canonized ideas about the role of the party.” Thus, a specific “political intriguer” was declared guilty of everything, and not the system of power, not Stalin. In December 1953, at a closed meeting of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Beria and his closest assistants were sentenced to death for treason.

The beginning of the "thaw".

The “Beria case” acquired a powerful public resonance, raising hopes for a change in the political atmosphere in the country. An important result of the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee was the confirmation of the principle of party leadership. The logical result was the introduction at the September 1953 plenum of the post of First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, which Khrushchev received. It was he who gradually began to seize the initiative for transformations, later called the “Khrushchev Thaw.”

Time from late 1953 to early 1955. characterized by a power struggle between Khrushchev and Malenkov. Their rivalry unfolded against the backdrop of defining strategy economic development countries. Malenkov intended to change priorities in economic development by increasing specific gravity production of consumer goods. Khrushchev insisted on maintaining the previous Stalinist course on the primary development of the heavy defense industry. A particularly acute situation arose in agriculture, which had to be brought out of a state of complete devastation.

In August 1953, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Malenkov announced a reduction in taxes from peasants and the provision of basic social rights to peasants (primarily the partial issuance of passports). The new agricultural policy was finally formulated at the September (1953) plenum. It was directly stated about the dire situation in the countryside. Khrushchev announced a significant increase in government purchase prices for agricultural products, the cancellation of collective farm debt, and the need to increase investment in the agricultural sector of the economy.

These measures made it possible to somewhat improve the food situation, stimulated the development of private production of meat, milk, and vegetables, and made life easier for millions of citizens of the USSR. In 1954, to solve the grain problem, the development of virgin and fallow lands began in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan.

The next step was the selective rehabilitation of victims of Stalin's terror. In April 1954, those convicted in the so-called “Leningrad case” were rehabilitated. During 1953-1955 All major political cases of the post-war period were reviewed, extrajudicial bodies were abolished, their rights were restored and prosecutorial supervision was strengthened, etc. But the political processes of the 1930s were practically not revised.

In addition, rehabilitation was very slow. In 1954-1955 Only 88 thousand prisoners were released. At this rate, it would take decades to process millions of applications. Strikes and uprisings began in the camps themselves. One of the largest was the uprising in Kengir (Kazakhstan) in the spring and summer of 1954 under the slogan “Long live the Soviet Constitution!” The uprising lasted 42 days and was suppressed only with the help of tanks and infantry.

The “undercover” struggle between Khrushchev and Malenkov ended in victory for the former. In February 1955, a session of the Supreme Council relieved Malenkov from the post of head of government. At the previous January (1955) plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Malenkov was blamed for his economic and foreign policy views (for example, discussions about the possible death of humanity in a nuclear war). A weighty argument was his involvement in the repressions.

He was for the first time publicly accused of collaborating with Beria, of being responsible for the “Leningrad affair” and a number of other political processes of the 40s and early 50s. The consequence of this was new rehabilitations. During 1955-1956 The topic of repression and attitude towards Stalin is gradually becoming the main one in society. Not only the fate of the party and political leadership depended on its decision, but also the place of the party in political system countries.

Considering the history of the first post-Stalin decade, we should especially note the importance XX Congress of the CPSU. It became a turning point in the development of Soviet society and radically changed the situation in the international communist movement thanks to Khrushchev’s secret report “On the cult of personality and its consequences,” read on February 25, 1956 at a closed meeting.

The decision of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee to read this report at the congress was not unanimous. The report came as a shock to the vast majority of delegates. For the first time, many learned about Lenin’s so-called “testament” and his proposal to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. The report spoke of purges and “illegal methods of investigation,” with the help of which absolutely incredible confessions were wrested from thousands of communists.

Khrushchev painted the image of Stalin as an executioner, guilty of the destruction of the “Leninist Guard”, who shot the 17th Congress. Thus, Khrushchev sought to blame Stalin, Yezhov and Beria for everything bad in the past and thereby rehabilitate the party, the ideas of socialism and communism. This made it possible to bypass the question of the system of organization of power, in the depths of which the debunked “cult” matured and developed.

Khrushchev particularly focused on Stalin’s guilt in the initial period of the war. But there was no complete picture of the repressions: the revelations did not concern collectivization, the famine of the 1930s, repressions against ordinary citizens, and the fight against Trotskyists and oppositionists of “all stripes” was recognized as one of Stalin’s most important achievements. In general, the report did not claim theoretical depth and analysis of such a phenomenon as Stalinism.

The closed meeting of the 20th Party Congress was not recorded in shorthand and the debate was not opened. It was decided to familiarize communists and Komsomol members with the “secret report,” as well as “non-party activists,” without publishing it in the press. They read an already edited version of Khrushchev’s report. This caused a huge public outcry. The entire spectrum of opinions was present: from disappointment with the incompleteness of the question of the “cult”, demands of the party trial of Stalin, to rejection of such a quick and sharp rejection of values ​​that were unshakable just yesterday. There was a growing desire in society to get answers to numerous questions: about the cost of transformation; about what of the tragedies of the past was generated by Stalin personally, and what was predetermined by the party itself and the idea of ​​building a “bright future.”

The desire to introduce criticism within a certain framework was manifested in the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of June 30, 1956 “On overcoming the cult of personality and its consequences.” It was a step back compared to the “secret report” at the 20th Congress. Stalin was now characterized as “a man who fought for the cause of socialism,” and his crimes as “certain restrictions on intra-party Soviet democracy, inevitable in conditions of a fierce struggle against the class enemy.” In this way, Stalin's activities were explained and justified. The application of the principle: on the one hand, an outstanding figure devoted to the cause of socialism, on the other, a person who abused power, was supposed to remove the severity of criticism of the orders of the recent past, and even more so not to transfer this criticism to the present.

Over the next 30 years, criticism of Stalin in Soviet historiography was limited and opportunistic. This was manifested in the fact that, firstly, Stalin’s activities were separated from the construction of socialism and thereby, in essence, the administrative command system was justified. Secondly, the full scale of the repressions was not revealed and Lenin’s closest associates Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and others were not rehabilitated. Thirdly, the question of personal responsibility of Stalin’s closest circle and numerous perpetrators of terror was not raised.

Nevertheless, the significance of criticism of Stalin’s personality cult cannot be overestimated. There has been a turn towards democracy and reforms in society. The system of total fear was largely destroyed. The decisions of the 20th Congress meant a renunciation of the use of repression and terror in the internal party struggle and guaranteed security for the upper and middle layers of the party nomenklatura. The rehabilitation process not only took on a massive, ubiquitous character, but was also embodied in the restoration of the rights of entire peoples who suffered during Stalin’s time.

The policy of de-Stalinization pursued by Khrushchev, his numerous economic initiatives, which were not always distinguished by thoughtfulness and integrity, and adventurous statements (the slogan “Catch up and surpass America in meat and milk production per capita,” put forward in May 1957) caused growing discontent among the conservative part of the party. state apparatus. An expression of this was the speech of the so-called “anti-party group” within the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee.

Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, using the support of the majority, tried at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee in June 1957 to remove Khrushchev from the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee (it was planned to eliminate this post altogether) and appoint him Minister of Agriculture. Accusations were brought against him of violating the principles of “collective leadership”, of forming a cult of his own personality, and of rash foreign policy actions. However, Khrushchev, having secured the support of members of the Central Committee, demanded the urgent convening of a plenum. An important role was played by the support of Khrushchev by the Minister of Defense G.K. Zhukov.

At the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the actions of Khrushchev's opponents were condemned. A manifestation of some democratization of the party was the fact that for the first time in many decades, the plenum of the Central Committee, rather than a narrow circle of members of the Presidium, acted as the decisive authority. Finally, the oppositionists themselves remained free and members of the party. They were removed from the Central Committee and demoted. Khrushchev was given the opportunity to continue his reform activities. However, the rational that was contained in Khrushchev’s criticism was not noticed for the time being by either himself or his circle.

The role of G.K. Zhukova in June 1957 showed the leadership the potential for army intervention in political life countries. During Zhukov’s visit to Yugoslavia and Albania in the fall of 1957, Khrushchev indiscriminately accused him of “Bonapartism” and overestimating his military merits. He was accused of “severing” the Armed Forces from the party and creating the prototype of the future special forces without the approval of the Central Committee of the Central Intelligence School. At the end of October 1957, Zhukov was removed from the post of Minister of Defense. From March 1958, Khrushchev began to combine leadership of the party and the state (he took the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR), which was the beginning of his sole rule.

He owed his triumph to the political elite of that time and, above all, to the party apparatus. This largely determined his future political line and forced adaptation to the interests of this layer. At the same time, the defeat of the “anti-party group”, the removal of Zhukov and the transformation of Khrushchev into the sole leader deprived him of any legal opposition that would restrain his not always thoughtful steps and warn against mistakes.

Socio-economic reforms.

The primary task of the economic policy of the new leadership was some decentralization of industry management and the transfer of enterprises to republican subordination. Another direction was the course to accelerate technological progress. The result was the emergence nuclear power plant and icebreaker, commercial jet aircraft Tu104, accelerated development of the chemical industry.

In the military sphere, nuclear submarines and missile-carrying aircraft appeared. Epochal events that go far beyond purely scientific achievements were the launch on October 4, 1957 of the world's first artificial satellite Earth and on April 12, 1961, a spaceship with a man on board. The first cosmonaut in the world was Yu.A. Gagarin.

In 1957, a restructuring of economic management began, the main goal of which was the transition from a sectoral to a territorial principle. A Council was created in each economic region National economy. In total, 105 economic councils were created and 141 ministries were liquidated. The reform pursued the following goals: decentralization of management, strengthening of territorial and interdepartmental relations, increasing the independence of production subjects.

Initially, the reform brought tangible results: the decision-making path was shortened, counter transportation of goods was reduced, and hundreds of similar small industries were closed. In the 50s, according to some researchers, the growth rates of industrial production and national income were the highest in Soviet history. But this did not fundamentally change the dead-end economic system itself. The fundamentals of the administrative command system remained unchanged. Moreover, the capital's bureaucracy, which had lost part of its power, showed dissatisfaction.

Reforms in the agricultural sector were even less successful. Here Khrushchev’s impulsiveness and improvisation were especially clearly manifested. For example, the introduction of corn was in itself a reasonable step for the development of livestock farming, but the development of new varieties in relation to Russian conditions required at least 10 years, and the return was expected immediately. In addition, the “queen of the fields” was planted all the way to the northern regions of the Arkhangelsk region.

The development of virgin lands turned into yet another campaign, supposedly capable of immediately solving all food problems. But after a short-term growth (in 1956-1958, virgin lands produced more than half of the harvested bread), harvests there fell sharply due to soil erosion, droughts and other natural phenomena that scientists warned about. This was an extensive development path.

Since the late 50s. the principles of material interest of collective farmers in the results of labor began to be violated again. Administrative reorganizations and campaigns began, inevitable in the existing system. A striking example was the “meat campaign in Ryazan”: a promise to triple meat production in 3 years.

The result was a sharp reduction in the number of cows put under the knife, and the suicide of the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU. Similar things, albeit on a smaller scale, happened everywhere. At the same time, under the banner of eliminating differences between city and countryside and building communism, restrictions and even elimination of peasants’ personal farmsteads began. The outflow of rural residents and, above all, young people to cities has increased. All this caused irreparable damage to the village.

The most successful were social reforms. Illiteracy was finally eliminated. The practice of forced (so-called “voluntary”) government loans has ceased. Since 1957, industrial housing construction began in the cities of “Khrushchev” five-story buildings. They began a change in the type of housing for millions of people: from communal apartments to separate apartments.

In 1956, old-age pensions were introduced in all state sectors (before that they were received by a limited number of workers), and in 1964 they began to be issued to collective farmers for the first time. Anti-worker laws were repealed: criminal liability for absenteeism and systematic lateness to work. Wages and the population's consumption of industrial and food products have increased significantly. There was a reduction in the working day (up to 7 hours) and the working week.

Spiritual life.

The first decade after Stalin's death was marked by significant changes in spiritual life. “The Thaw” (after the title of I. G. Ehrenburg’s story) marked the beginning of the liberation of public consciousness from dogmas and ideological stereotypes. Representatives of literature were the first to respond to the changes that began in society (works by Dudintsev, Granin, Panova, Rozov, etc.).

The work of Babel, Bulgakov, Tynyanov and others was rehabilitated. After the 20th Congress, the magazines “Moscow”, “Neva”, “Youth”, “Foreign Literature”, “Friendship of Peoples” and others appeared. A special role was played by the magazine “New World”, headed by Tvardovsky. Here, in November 1962, Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published, telling about the life of prisoners.

The decision to publish it was made at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee under personal pressure from Khrushchev. A feature of the “thaw” was the emergence of so-called “pop” poetry; young authors Voznesensky, Yevtushenko, Rozhdestvensky, Akhmadulina gathered large audiences in Moscow. Cinema achieved significant success during this period. The best films: “The Cranes Are Flying” (dir. Kalatozov), “Ballad of a Soldier” (dir. Chukhrai), “The Fate of a Man” (dir. Bondarchuk) received recognition not only in the USSR, but also in the world. The CPSU Central Committee recognized the previous assessments of the work of outstanding composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and others as unfair.

However, the “thaw” in spiritual life was also a contradictory phenomenon, since it had well-defined boundaries. The authorities found new methods of influencing the intelligentsia. Since 1957, meetings between the leaders of the CPSU Central Committee and figures of art and literature have become regular. At these meetings, everything that did not fit into the official ideology was condemned. At the same time, everything that was personally incomprehensible to Khrushchev himself was denied. The personal tastes of the country's leader acquired the character of official assessments.

The loudest scandal erupted in December 1962, when Khrushchev, while visiting an exhibition in the Manege, criticized the works of young avant-garde artists, which were difficult for him to understand. One of the most striking examples of persecution of cultural figures was the “Pasternak case.” Publication in the West of the novel Doctor Zhivago, which was not allowed to be published in the USSR by censors, and the award to B.N. Pasternak's Nobel Prize resulted in persecution of the writer. He was expelled from the Writers' Union and, in order to avoid expulsion from the country, refused the Nobel Prize. The intelligentsia was still required to be “soldiers of the party” or to adapt to the existing order.

Foreign policy.

Considering foreign policy in the Khrushchev decade, it is necessary to note its contradictory nature. In the summer of 1953, a compromise was reached between the USSR and the USA, which resulted in the signing of an armistice in Korea. In the mid-50s, Europe consisted of two opposing blocs. In response to West Germany's accession to NATO, in 1955 the countries of the socialist bloc created the Warsaw Pact Organization.

But at the same time, the foundations for stabilization in this part of the world began to be laid. The USSR normalized relations with Yugoslavia. At the 20th Congress of the CPSU, theses were substantiated about the peaceful coexistence of the two systems, about their peaceful competition, about the possibility of preventing wars in the modern era, about the variety of forms of transition of different countries to socialism. At the same time, the actions of the Soviet leadership in the international arena were not always in line with these ideas.

The process initiated by the 20th Congress caused a crisis within the socialist camp. In the countries of Eastern Europe, which built socialism on the Stalinist model, a departure from this model began. These processes became especially acute in Poland and Hungary. In Poland, the Communist Party managed to maintain power by updating the country's leadership. In Hungary in October 1956, thousands of anti-Soviet demonstrations began, which escalated into armed action. Bloody reprisals began against state security and party officials. Under these conditions, the Soviet Union used armed force.

The pockets of armed resistance were suppressed. On November 7, 1956, the new leader of Hungary, J. Kadar, arrived in Budapest in a Soviet armored vehicle. The USSR created a precedent when, by force Soviet weapons resolved disputes in the socialist camp and fulfilled the well-known in Europe of the first half of the 19th century. the role of Russia as a gendarme who brought “order” to Poland and Hungary.

In the USSR, helping one's ally was considered an international duty. Maintaining a forceful balance between the USSR and the USA, as well as ensuring peace “from a position of strength” after the events in Hungary became the main line of foreign policy behavior of the Soviet Union. The Hungarian events were also reflected in the USSR. They became one of the reasons for the student unrest that swept across almost the entire country.

Berlin remained one of the hottest spots in the world from 1958 to 1961. In August 1961, by decision of the political leadership of the Warsaw Pact countries, the Berlin Wall was erected overnight, a strip of fortifications that completely isolated West Berlin from the rest of the GDR. She became a symbol of the Cold War. The main instrument for maintaining the balance of power was the arms race, which concerned, first of all, the production of nuclear charges and the means of delivering them to targets. In August 1953, the USSR announced the successful testing of a hydrogen bomb, and the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles continued.

At the same time, Moscow understood the danger of further escalation of arms. The Soviet Union launched a series of disarmament initiatives, unilaterally reducing the size of its army by 3.3 million people. But these measures were not successful. One of the reasons was that peace initiatives were accompanied by constant saber-rattling. In addition, peace-loving statements were often combined with impulsive improvisations by Khrushchev, such as “We will bury you (that is, the USA)!” or that the USSR makes “rockets like sausages.”

The Cold War reached its climax in the fall of 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out. In 1959, revolutionary rebels led by F. Castro came to power in Cuba. In April 1961, with US support, Castro's opponents tried to land on the island. The landing force was destroyed. A rapid rapprochement between Cuba and the USSR began. In the summer of 1962, Soviet missiles appeared in Cuba, posing a direct threat to the United States. The confrontation reached its peak at the end of October 1962. For several days the world was on the brink of nuclear war. It was avoided only thanks to a secret compromise between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Soviet missiles were withdrawn from Cuba in exchange for the US promise to renounce aggression against this country and the dismantling of American nuclear missiles in Turkey.

After the Caribbean crisis, a period of relative detente began in Soviet-American relations and international relations in general. A direct line of communication was established between the Kremlin and the White House. But after Kennedy's assassination (1963) and Khrushchev's resignation, this process was interrupted.

The events of 1962 deepened the split in Soviet-Chinese relations, which began after the 20th Congress. Chinese leader Mao Zedong believed that there was no need to fear a nuclear war and accused Khrushchev of capitulation. Much attention was paid to the development of relations with the states of the “third world” (developing countries). During these years, the colonial system collapsed. Dozens of new states were being formed, primarily in Africa. The USSR sought to extend its influence to these parts of the world. In 1956, the Egyptian leadership nationalized the Suez Canal.

In October 1956, Israel, England and France began military operations against Egypt. The Soviet ultimatum played a huge role in stopping them. At the same time, economic cooperation with Egypt, India, Indonesia and other countries is developing. The USSR provided them with assistance in the construction of industrial and agricultural facilities and personnel training. The main foreign policy result of this period was to prove that, with mutual desire, both superpowers (the USSR and the USA) can conduct a dialogue with each other and overcome international crises.

The Thaw Crisis.

High growth rates of industrial production in the 50s. served as the basis for optimistic forecasts. In 1959, the XXI Congress of the CPSU declared that socialism in the USSR had won a complete and final victory. The new, third Party Program adopted at the XXII Congress (1961) set the task of creating the material and technical base of communism by 1980. For this, the task was put forward to “catch up and overtake America in the main types of industrial and agricultural products.” The utopianism of the program goals of this document is obvious today. Only a small part of the planned plans was achieved.

At the same time, the propaganda of the communist myth became increasingly disconnected from reality. In 1963, a food crisis broke out in the country. There was not enough bread in the cities, and huge queues lined up for it. For the first time in the history of the USSR, grain was purchased abroad (in the first year, 12 million tons were purchased, which cost the state $1 billion). After this, purchases of imported grain became the norm. In 1962, the government announced an increase in prices for meat and dairy products (in fact, the first price increase officially announced by the state after the war and the abolition of the rationing system).

This immediately caused mass discontent and indignation, especially in the working environment. Workers' discontent reached its apogee in Novocherkassk, where a 7,000-strong workers' demonstration took place. With the knowledge of the top leaders of the CPSU Mikoyan and Kozlov, she was shot by the troops. 23 people died, 49 were arrested, seven of them were sentenced to death.

Removal of N.S. Khrushchev.

All this led to a decline in Khrushchev's authority. The failure of his domestic policy was obvious. In army circles, dissatisfaction with Khrushchev was caused by large-scale cuts in the armed forces. Officers who served for many years were forced to go into civilian life without a profession, without a sufficient pension, and without the opportunity to find the desired job. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were deprived of a number of privileges. The party and economic bureaucracy was dissatisfied with the countless reorganizations of management structures, which led to frequent changes of personnel. Moreover, adopted at the XXII Congress new Charter The party provided for the rotation (renewal) of personnel, which especially affected the interests of the nomenklatura, which sought to get rid of the “irrepressible reformer.”

Khrushchev's vulnerability was significantly increased by his mistakes in personnel policy and some personal qualities: impulsiveness, a tendency to make ill-conceived, hasty decisions, low level culture. Moreover, it was in 1962-1963. An ideological campaign to excessively praise Khrushchev (“the great Leninist”, “the great fighter for peace”, etc.) began to grow, which, against the backdrop of economic difficulties and the recent exposure of the cult of Stalin, further undermined his authority.

By the fall of 1964, Khrushchev’s opponents had secured the support of the leaders of the army, the KGB and the party apparatus. On October 13, 1964, Khrushchev, who was on vacation in Pitsunda (Caucasus), was summoned to Moscow for a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, at which he was presented with a long list of charges. Only Mikoyan spoke in his defense. At the plenum of the Central Committee that opened after this, Khrushchev was removed from all his posts and sent into retirement. Officially, this was explained by the state of health of the country's leader. L.I. was elected First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Brezhnev, and the post of head of government was taken by A.N. Kosygin. Plenum participants emphasized the need for collective leadership.

Thus, Khrushchev’s removal occurred as a result of a formally legal act at the Plenum of the Central Committee, “by simple voting.” This resolution of the conflict without arrests and repression can be considered the main result of the past decade. Khrushchev's resignation, despite the fact that it was the result of a conspiracy, did not cause discontent in the country. Both the population and the nomenclature greeted the decisions of the plenum with approval. Society longed for stability. Few people realized that along with Khrushchev’s resignation, the era of the “thaw” also ended.