October 9, 2020

Oct. 14, 1964

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Fifty-six years ago, on October 14, 1964, Nikita Khrushchev, secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and premier of the government of the Soviet Union, was removed from office by his own party.

Following a secret meeting of the Communist Party Presidium and later the Central Committee, Khrushchev was removed from his post, and Leonid Brezhnev was appointed as his successor. The official party line was that Khrushchev was retiring at his own request, because of his age and the deterioration of his health. Aleksei Kosygin was appointed as premier in Khrushchev’s place.

There was no official retirement ceremony, not even formal comments, with Khrushchev not making any public appearances following the announcement. It was unclear if he had been arrested, sent into exile or was awaiting trial and possible execution.

Khrushchev’s fall from power was swift and sudden. The Communist newspaper Pravda noted in its issue on October 17, without mentioning Khrushchev’s name, that many if not all of the ills of the Soviet system were dumped on the outgoing Soviet leader.

Clarence Manning, in his commentary for The Ukrainian Weekly, noted: “…far too many of the statesmen of the free world accepted Khrushchev on his own valuation of himself as an honest Russian peasant, crude perhaps, but with a keen mind and an endless supply of homely proverbs, even if many of them were coarse, vulgar, almost obscene and invariably tactless. One statesman after another felt that Khrushchev was sincere in his efforts at peaceful co-existence, although they failed to take into account the role which he assigned to wars of liberation as a means of separating the less developed countries from the general development of the free world to bring them into bondage in the new Soviet colonial empire.”

Khrushchev’s notorious Soviet agricultural experiments failed and caused lasting effects of destruction of the resources and population, and inevitably failed to compete with the United States. Dr. Manning added, “It is small wonder that both his companions and rivals became tired of his boasting and his inexhaustible enthusiasm for new ventures.”

Even China denounced Khrushchev as a betrayer of communism and of endeavoring to introduce capitalism into the Soviet Union. China also called for Khrushchev’s ouster from the party, and it was surprising for observers to witness Khrushchev’s fall from power.

It remained unclear if Khrushchev’s successors had been a major factor in the change of leadership, but Dr. Manning suspected that, based on the pattern of past Communist leaders, Khrushchev was not expected to make a comeback. However, he added, the Communist Party would recommit itself to world domination under the Red flag.

“The free world, if it is to secure the victory for the principles that it represents and in which it believes, must continue the struggle even more vigorously not only to retain what it has, but also to extend freedom to people and countries suffering under the yoke of Communist oppression,” Dr. Manning concluded.

The recent events in Belarus, with the public’s overwhelming vote to oust the longtime president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, from office, are reminiscent of Khrushchev’s. For the Soviet leader, the change came from above, while, in Mr. Lukashenka’s case, the change has come from below. A democratically free Belarus still poses a threat to Moscow, just as Ukraine had demonstrated. President Vladimir Putin’s Soviet mentality and governing style have reduced the threat of change within Russia from above, but Mr. Putin’s increased number of personal troops who are ready to defend him from the people does show his increasing fear of change from below.

Source: “Farewell to the butcher,” by Clarence A. Manning, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 24, 1964.

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