Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

. . .As Kliuchevsky pointed out, only a single year in Peter the Great’s whole reign, 1724, passed entirely without war, while no more than another thirteen peaceful months could be added for the entire period. Connected to the enormous strain of war was the inadequacy of the Muscovite financial system, which was over-burdened and in a state of virtual collapse even before Peter the Great made vastly increased demands upon it. The problem for the state became simply to survive, and survival exacted a heavy price. Under Peter the Great the population of Russia might have declined. Miliukov, who made a brilliant analysis of Petrine fiscal structure and structure and economy, and other scholars of his persuasion have shown how military consideration repeatedly led to financial measures, and in turn to edicts aiming a stimulate Russian commerce and industry, to changes in the administrative system without whose improvement these and other edicts proved ineffective, to attempt to foster education in whose absence a modern administration could not function and on and on. It has been further argued, on the whole convincingly, that in any case Peter the Great was not a theoretician or planner, but an intensely energetic and practical man of affairs. ` Page 227

. . . The reformers, led by Nikita Khrushchev , argued for major innovations. Khrushchev (1894-1971) who had joined the party as an uneducated coal miner in 1918 at twenty-four and bad risen steadily to a high-level position in the 1930s, was emerging as the new ruler by 1955

To strengthen his position and that of his fellow reformers within the party, Khrushchev launched an all-out attack on Stalin and his crimes at a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. In gory detail he described to the startled Communist delegates how Stalin had tortured and murdered thousands of loyal Communists, how he he had trusted Hitler completely and bungled the country’s defense, and how he had “supported the glorification of his own person with all conceivable methods.” For hours Soviet Russia’s top leader delivered an attack whose content would previously have been dismissed as “anti-Communist hysteria” in many circles throughout the Western world.

Khrushchev’s “secret speech” was read to Communist party meetings through the country and strengthened the reform movement. The Liberalization -- or “de-Stalinization” as it was called in the West -- of Soviet Russia was genuine. The Communist party jealously maintained its monopoly on political power. But Khrushchev shook it up and brought in new blood. The economy was made more responsive to the needs and even some of the desires of the people, as some resources were shifted from heavy industry and military toward consumer goods and agriculture. Stalinist controls over workers were relaxed, and independent courts rather than the secret police judged and punished nonpolitical crimes. ~Page 981