Why was Khrushchev removed from power in 1964 Essay Example

important factor for the downfall of Khrushchev. Secondly, the Sino-Soviet split.

In the early 1960's, there was an obvious rift between the Soviet Union and Communist China. There was an evident personality clash between Khrushchev and the Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. Khrushchev wanted "peaceful co-existence" with America. Tse-Tung wanted the opposite, he took the view that the world should be Communist and they should overthrow the leaders and make Communism supreme. Khrushchev was rumored - in this clash - to have called Tse-Tung "a worn out old boot". This is typical of Khrushchev. There were also border clashes.

In account of the split, Russia had a competitor for the ruling of the communist world. Thirdly, the Industrial Reforms. When Khrushchev took over the Soviet Union, he left the soviet running of industry intact. There were masses of flaws in the running of the industry. In his power struggle, he took the side of the hard-line Stalinists, in favour of traditional heavy industries. This made him popular among colleagues. However, when he had complete control of Russia, he changed his views and took the side of "cotton-dress industrialisation", this meant more emphasis on consumer goods.

There was an overthrowing attempt but it fell through. Khrushchev was very devious but he got his own way and there was more emphasis on consumer goods in industry. His main reform was in 1958 when he introduced 105 regional economic councils "the sovnarkhozy". Every sovnarkhoz had to manage the affairs of its region. The sovnarkhozy was just something for Khrushchev to use to hide behind the "metal-eaters". The sovnarkhoz was discarded after Khrushchev's downfall. There were low wages in industry, no overtime but

there was no unemployment.

This led to over manning in factories. Fourthly, and again most importantly, the Virgin Lands project. When Khrushchev took over, Russia was finding it hard to feed itself, due to a large population increase. Collectivisation was proving to be inefficient and unproductive. Russia needed an agricultural reform. Khrushchev made gigantic state farms in remote uncultivated parts of Russia namely Siberia and Kazakhstan. He did not choose the Ukraine because it had an extremely unreliable climate and suffered bouts of drought.

There was a low morale of collective workers because they were not making a profit, this equalled low work, and maybe the Virgin Lands project was just the boost they needed to make their lives more interesting. The Virgin Lands project was not the only solution to Russia's agricultural problems, maybe private agriculture would have produced better outputs, but Khrushchev quickly ruled it out because it would be going against communist principles. There were three main differences between state farms and collective farms; I will outline them in a table below.