Perhaps every leader of the Soviet state who remained in office for any serious term was remembered by the public for his epoch-making deeds. They are scolded or praised, but their names are surely familiar to every student. And not just names, but entire eras that are associated with them - so different. The Stalinist associations are an atmosphere of repression and total fear of the authorities, the Gorbachev ones are the reforms so abused today, the complex name of which has been included in other languages of the planet - “perestroika”. The years of the reign of Khrushchev N. S. left in the people's memory, first of all, the processes of de-Stalinization, the thaw and grandiose undertakings, which ended in failure. Among the latter - the development of virgin lands and the "corn saga". At the same time, Khrushchev, whose reign lasted from 1953 to 1964, made as a head of state a considerable contribution to his technical and scientific development. Recall the main events of the era.
Khrushchev: the years of reign and the thaw
This process was initially associated with the XX Congress of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which laid the foundation for a new era for the country. It was here that in February 1954 the new secretary read a report debunking the Stalinist cult of personality, as well as theses on the variety of ways to achieve socialism. The harsh and sometimes cruel measures of the past era, stemming from the uncompromising nature of yesterday’s ideologists of the communist idea in the fight against the counter, were condemned. As an alternative, the idea of the peaceful existence of states with different economic systems was proposed, and a course was taken to reduce control over the ideological life of society. In this regard, Khrushchev, whose reign was marked by de-Stalinization, marked the beginning of the end of the USSR as a totalitarian state. In other words, now control over the mass ideology was only declining, leading ten years later to sixties writers, after twenty years to the condemnation of power "in every kitchen", and after thirty with a little the whole system was also shaken. At the same time, the mass rehabilitation of previously innocent convicts, the return of the Crimean Tatars to their homeland , and the liberation from the shackles of the cultural sphere are certainly positive consequences of the thaw. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a significant upsurge in Soviet cinema and literature.
Khrushchev: years of rule and the international situation
And here the era is very contradictory. On the one hand, there is an international detente: a weakening of the Union’s overall foreign policy, the first visits of Western leaders (for example, Charles de Gaulle) to the country, the very fundamental recognition of the coexistence of the two systems, and the improvement of relations with Yugoslavia led by Tito. The latter was long presented by the Stalinist government as a “fascist clique” (due to Tito’s own line in the development of his country, in contrast to a number of puppet governments in Eastern and Western Europe). On the other hand, it is precisely in this era that the enormous buildup of nuclear potential between East and West, the first real threat of a monstrous nuclear war (Caribbean crisis), the symbolism of the Iron Curtain takes on its material embodiment in the form of the Berlin Wall. Relations with China are greatly deteriorating, whose government, headed by Mao Zedong, categorically did not accept criticism of the Stalin era, considering the new course of the Soviets an apostasy from the ideas of communism. During the reign of Khrushchev, the USSR achieved considerable success in the scientific and technical sphere. First of all, they, of course, embodied in a space race in which Russian scientists, without exaggeration, won that time by sending the first satellite into space, the first man, losing to the Moon, but then the first to reach Venus.