Yuri Andropov. Part 3. Khrushchev's Hard Times

2024 Author: Adrian Jeff | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:06

Yuri Andropov. Part 3. Khrushchev's hard times

Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982. By the decision of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Yu. V. Andropov was appointed General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. To take this position, the candidate for which was the Central Committee manager Konstantin Chernenko, Yuri Vladimirovich was helped by "the status of the main ideologist of the party" inherited after Suslov, who passed away in February 1982 …

Part 1. An intellectual from the KGB

Part 2. In relationships that defame himself, he is seen …

Life, Yura, is like a wet deck.

And in order not to slip on it, move slowly.

And be sure to choose a place

to put your foot every time !

Parting words to young Andropov from his senior friend

Now, Andropov has concentrated the function of an olfactory advisor and sound ideologist in his hands. Of course, Yuri Vladimirovich won not only in age, since he was younger than the "Kremlin elders", but also because he understood well: if he allowed one of the Brezhnev clan's contenders to power, all the changes that had begun in the country during Leonid Ilyich's lifetime would be stopped.

With the tacit consent, or rather, with the tacit support of Brezhnev, which consisted of non-interference in the affairs of the KGB, which had begun the fight against corruption, Andropov, imperceptibly for the whole people, approached reforms. Unfortunately, due to the state of health of Yuri Vladimirovich, they were not fully deployed, and after his death, stupidly and ineptly, waiting for the praise of the West, to the roar of the collapsing Union, they were carried out in a distorted form by Gorbachev.

Andropov himself, who knew the situation in the country "on all fronts" and beyond its borders better than others, admitted that he did not have a concrete plan, but he knew one thing for sure: the USSR should not turn off the planned path of socialist transformations. Observing the heyday of the skin archetype in the highest echelons of power, expressed in bribery and corruption, he understood that there could be no other way for a people who had existed in a socialist formation for more than 60 years.

We had to think about what to do to get the country out of the economic crisis, which found itself in it not without the help of Nikita Khrushchev's spontaneous and thoughtless reforms, which began in the post-Stalin period and lasted throughout his stay in power. What did Andropov have to do with Khrushchev's reforms? The most direct. Andropov will have to heal the wounds inflicted on the Soviet Army and security services, improve international relations, and confront the dissidents, whose movement has grown thanks to Nikita Sergeevich, whom Leonid Brezhnev not accidentally appointed to the post of chairman of the USSR KGB in 1967.

"Optimization" of the Armed Forces of the USSR

It seemed that the restless Khrushchev bulldozed not only the famous exhibition of abstract artists "New Reality". The blow was struck in all areas of the national economy of the USSR, its domestic and foreign policy, the army, the state security system, science and culture. Under him, the process of replacing local cadres and their conservation in the party leadership began.

Having concentrated all power in his hands, Nikita Sergeyevich hastened to get rid of his former allies and those who helped him to get this power. Knowing about the nationwide popularity of the urethral marshal Zhukov, who was returned after Stalin's disgrace from Sverdlovsk and was appointed to the post of Minister of Defense of the USSR, four months later, taking advantage of the absence of Georgy Konstantinovich, Bonapartism . The wording is intricate.

In fact, Zhukov, who traveled a lot around the world, saw different armies and the level of their training, was interested in strengthening the defense of the USSR. To this end, he conducts a number of measures to create army special forces units, reconnaissance and sabotage and anti-sabotage detachments and groups, special forces schools, draws attention to the physical training of the military, expresses dissatisfaction with unnecessary, in his understanding, time-consuming ideological work among personnel, forgetting that one should not aim at the most sacred thing - the party ideology. It seemed to the dubious Khrushchev that the marshal did not deliberately inform him and was preparing "militants" for seizing power in the USSR.

By the same decree, Marshal of Victory was removed from the Presidium of the Central Committee and the Central Committee of the CPSU, and by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR he was relieved of his post as Minister of Defense of the USSR with dismissal. Following this, the "optimization" of the USSR Armed Forces began.

Khrushchev, with his megalomania, dreamed of world leadership and his great role as helmsman in the course of disarmament, so he, on his own behalf, although hiding behind government decisions, initiated a number of measures aimed at destroying Stalin's programs in the field of arms and security, publicly declaring this at any international forums.

Wanting to set an example of the peaceful policy of the USSR and the abolition of the Iron Curtain, Khrushchev directed his efforts to reduce the military potential of the "excess power" of the Soviet superpower. Ready-made aircraft and ships of the ocean-going navy, which were in various stages of release, were launched “under the knife” and for scrap metal. A peace-lover with a village mentality, who absolutely did not understand the olfactory policy of the West, step by step surrendered the country, in vain hoping for praise and reciprocal broad gestures from the Western states. Of course, not a single state in the world followed the Khrushchev example, observing the actions of the new Kremlin master.

In 15 years, together with the Minister of Defense Industry of the USSR, and then the Minister of Defense, the same workaholic as himself, Marshal Ustinov, Khrushchev's mistakes will be corrected by Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov.

In the 80s, as a blueprint, only with an amendment to the military potential of that time, for the sake of the same olfactory West, Mikhail Gorbachev hastened to get rid of the "excess of Soviet military power". The reorganization of the Soviet Union, begun by Khrushchev, "cleaned up" was successfully continued by Mikhail Sergeevich and completed by Yeltsin. Not a single Western militarist could have dreamed of such at for the self-liquidation of the USSR.

During the reign of Nikita Khrushchev, several delayed-action mines were laid under the administrative-territorial division of the USSR. One of them concerned the Crimea, the other - the North Caucasus.

They call corn the queen of the fields

The introduction by Nikita Sergeevich of American agricultural ideas, designed for American farming, and not at all for collective farms, the preference of some crops over others that did not correspond to our landscape, climatic conditions, or the consumer, largely weakened agriculture in the USSR.

The elimination of MTS - machine and tractor stations in the village led to the fact that collective farms were left without transport. Not all collective farms were ready to buy out the equipment they needed to work and pay high salaries to qualified tractor drivers, drivers, combine operators, repairmen, as was the case earlier in the MTS. By 1958, the number of such specialists, rural technical intelligentsia reached 2 million people. Left without work, many of them moved to the city.

Where centralization was needed, Khrushchev carried out decentralization; where it was necessary to do without it, a campaign was conducted to enlarge the collective farms with a reduction in their real number by half. The idea of creating "agro-cities" by combining several collective farms and villages "under one roof" required large investments, which the collective farms did not have. Those who could not and were not ready to join the "collective farm unions" were enrolled in the "unpromising".

The next step was the liquidation of "unpromising villages". Residents of such villages were torn from their homes and, striking first of all a blow to demography, were sent to the development of virgin and fallow lands of the Volga region, South Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Far East. The Russian muscle gene pool suffered, the Russian village was destroyed, bringing the time of "sausage trains", empty counters, and lack of food in a country capable of feeding not only itself but also half the world.

Errors in the economy and the course towards the decentralization of the national economy, carried out through the liquidation of branch union and republican ministries with the creation of economic councils (councils of the national economy) on a territorial basis, led to complete chaos and disruptions in supply, financing, the formation of a gap in sectoral ties and the beginning of the very same the collapse of the USSR, completed by the "great perestroika". The subsequent actions of Brezhnev to restore industrial ministries and the sectoral management system did not save the situation.

Khrushchev's imbalance in the field of heavy industry is incomparable with Stalin's. Under Stalin, this was a necessity justified by industrialization and the post-war restoration of the USSR. Under Khrushchev, the tilt towards heavy industry completely blocked the light industry, creating a shortage of consumer goods, slowing down the development of an already modest service sector, forming "black markets", speculation and blackmail.

The reforms carried out by Khrushchev undermined the existing state system of the USSR in all directions. In the country, which was created as a socialist state, in which, thanks to Stalin, the principle prevailed: "To each according to his work", during the management of Nikita Sergeevich, equalization was introduced. You could work as long as you like, and this did not affect the salary in any way. Then, in the 50s and 60s, the very devaluation of labor took place, which under Brezhnev resulted in the principle: "As they pay, we work!"

The plan was fulfilled and overfulfilled due to the additions, the quality of the goods produced decreased. Research and development institutes have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, filling indefinite government orders for indefinite enterprises for an indefinite time. Their male half of the employees, not burdened with work and responsibility for the quality and volume of what was done, spent all their working time in smoking rooms, discussing Sunday fishing and football, and the female half stood in queues for a shortage, which became ordinary food and consumer goods.

With idleness in the workplace and lack of interest in their work in smoking rooms, it was not long to agree to some kind of anti-Sovietism. Educated, but not realized either in their technical or in their creative potential, specialists longed for a different, foreign life, where freedom prevails in everything.