In any event, only two weeks after receiving the Politburo order, Khrushchev was able to report to Stalin that 41,305"criminal and kulak elements" had been arrested. Khrushchev in power did not moderate his personalityhe remained unpredictable, and was emboldened by the spectacular successes in space. Encyclopedia.com. Handicapped by orders from Stalin that under no circumstances should the city be abandoned, the Red Army was soon encircled by the Germans. Khrushchev Remembers - The New York Times [176] Preschool education was increased as part of Khrushchev's reforms, and by the time he left office, about 22% of Soviet children attended preschoolabout half of urban children, but only about 12% of rural children. [68], After Uranus forced the Germans into retreat, Khrushchev served on other fronts of the war. [42] In his memoirs, Khrushchev noted that almost everyone who worked with him was arrested. [254] Hoping to torpedo Khrushchev's efforts at dtente with the U.S., Mao soon thereafter provoked the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, describing the Taiwanese islands shelled in the crisis as "batons that keep Eisenhower and Khrushchev dancing, scurrying this way and that. [9] Yuzovka, which was renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961, was at the heart of one of the most industrialized areas of the Russian Empire. Afterward, a Cold War pitted the United States and its western European allies against the USSR, which had now annexed many more territories in eastern Europe. His domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. As a result, several hundred thousand honest people perished. They had three children together: daughter Rada was born in 1929, son Sergei in 1935 and daughter Elena in 1937. //]]>. In Josef Stalin's time, one of the most powerful officials of this kind was Georgy Malenkov, who functioned largely as Stalin's number-two man-in-charge of personnel, or de facto second secretary. Second-in-command Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster He instructed Komsomol officials to "smother foreign guests in our embrace". Joseph Stalin | Encyclopedia.com How to use second-in-command in a sentence. [45], Party leaders were given numerical quotas of "enemies" to be turned in and arrested. When Stalin took power in 1922, Comintern continued to operate.However, when the USSR joined the Allies in 1941 during the Second World War, Stalin dissolved Comintern in 1943 to ease the growing tensions with the West. During the 1920s, Stalin edged Zinovyev and Kamenev out of power, established a dictatorship and exiled Trotsky. New York: Dodd, Mead. His rule was characterized by his attempts at de-Stalinization and improving the Soviet Unions international relationships. [31], Nixon invited Khrushchev to visit the United States, and he agreed. Who was Stalin's 2nd in command? - Answers The second secretary had the authority to appoint and dismiss nomenklaturists at the various levels of Party and government rule. [206] While visiting IBM's new research campus in San Jose, California, Khrushchev expressed little interest in computer technology, but he greatly admired the self-service cafeteria, and, on his return, introduced self-service in the Soviet Union. Mr. IsaacDeutscher concluded his controversial biography of Joseph Stalin, published in 1949, by classing the Soviet ruler as a "great revolutionary despot" like Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte. In August 1939, after first attempting to form an anti-Hitler alliance with the Western powers, he concluded a pact with Hitler, which encouraged the German dictator to attack Poland and begin World War II. [258] In the dispute between Mao and Khrushchev, Albania was on the side of China, labelling Khrushchev "Rrapo Lelo", after an Albanian anti-communist peasant. The USSR lost about 267,000soldiers, including more than 200,000men captured, and Stalin demoted Timoshenko and recalled Khrushchev to Moscow. [175], While the vocational proposal would not survive Khrushchev's downfall, a longer-lasting change was a related establishment of specialized high schools for gifted students or those wishing to study a specific subject. [78] The partisans, many of whom fought as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), were gradually defeated, as Soviet police and military reported killing 110,825 "bandits" and capturing a quarter million more between 1944 and 1946. Joseph Stalin learned Russian at the church school in his hometown of Gori, Georgia. The Second in Command is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by William J. Stalin's second in command, he was murdered. Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II. . The circumstances of Leonid's death remain obscure and controversial,[64] as none of his fellow fliers stated that they witnessed him being shot down, nor was his plane found or body recovered. While Stalin hinted at arresting and executing Khrushchev, he allowed the commissar to return to the front by sending him to Stalingrad. Stalin was of Georgiannot Russianorigin, and persistent rumours claim that he was Ossetian on the paternal side. [279] Upon publication of the memoirs in the West, Izvestia denounced them as a fraud. [214] The admission stunned Khrushchev and turned the U-2 affair from a possible triumph to a disaster for him, and he even appealed to U.S. As there were limited numbers of Central Committee seats from each oblast, the division set up the possibility of rivalry for office between factions, and, according to Medvedev, had the potential for beginning a two-party system. [162] The costs of the machinery, plus the costs of building storage sheds and fuel tanks for the equipment, impoverished many kolkhozes. Stalin formed a tense alliance with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II, in which Soviet troops helped liberateNazi concentration camps. After the Social Democrats (Marxist revolutionaries) of the Russian Empire had split into their two competing wingsMenshevik and Bolshevikin 1903, Dzhugashvili joined the second, more militant, of these factions and became a disciple of its leader, Lenin. Instead, other sanctions were imposed on Soviet dissidents, including loss of job or university position, or expulsion from the Party. [40] He briefly advocated Bolshevik cooperation with the provisional government of middle-class liberals that had succeeded to uneasy power on the last tsars abdication during the February Revolution. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev[b] (15 April[O.S. [163] Without the MTS, the market for Soviet agricultural equipment fell apart, as the kolkhozes now had neither the money nor skilled buyers to purchase new equipment. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), A woman is flanked by portraits of Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin. Kennedy, in contrast, had been led to believe that the test-ban treaty could be concluded at the summit, and felt that a deal on Berlin had to await easing of eastwest tensions. Informed in advance of the speech but not (until one hour before) the content, Khrushchev and his advisors feared an invasion of Cuba. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 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Introduction [ edit] An excerpt of NKVD Order No. Nagy was arrested, and was later executed. But far be it from me to inflate my significance. On 12 October, Brezhnev called Khrushchev to notify him of a special Presidium meeting to be held the following day, ostensibly on the subject of agriculture. This rarely happened; there were no major political trials under Khrushchev, and at most several hundred political prosecutions overall. Many inhabitants therefore initially welcomed the invasion, though they hoped that they would eventually become independent. [36] Khrushchev rose rapidly through the Party ranks, first becoming Party leader for the Bauman district, site of the Academy, before taking the same position in the Krasnopresnensky district, the capital's largest and most important. That same year, Lenins health began to deteriorate. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Beria was tried in secret and executed in December 1953 with five of his close associates. That struggle was entirely unnecessary, and was very expensive for the Soviet Union. [46] Khrushchev related in his memoirs that he was also denounced by an arrested colleague. Stalin approved only part of the plan, but 640,000Red Army soldiers would still become involved in the offensive. The Soviet Succession: Lenin and Stalin - JSTOR Beginning in February 1954, Khrushchev replaced Malenkov in the seat of honour at Presidium meetings; in June, Malenkov ceased to head the list of Presidium members, which was thereafter organized in alphabetical order. coast. His function was to administer crucial personnel matters throughout the given political-administrative region or locale in the USSR. [288] While the Soviet standard of living increased greatly in the ten years after Khrushchev's fall, much of the increase was due to industrial progress; agriculture continued to lag far behind, resulting in regular agricultural crises, especially in 1972 and 1975.