Why was Nikita Khrushchev deposed as the leader of the USSR?

Nikita Khrushchev during World War II

Nikita Khrushchev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Khrushchev served as a General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as a Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.

Remarkably in 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was forced to leave his post. The Party leadership comprised of a special “troika” representatives, (Alexey Kosygin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Anastas Mikoyan) deposed Khrushchev. Eventually, Brezhnev assumed the central role among the three and under his rule the Soviet Union expanded its sphere of influence to include much of Southeast Asia, Africa, parts of Central America and the Caribbean.

Why was Khrushchev deposed? How did Khrushchev fall from power? How had he alienated the Communist Party leadership? Khrushchev was seen as enough of a concern that until his death, in 1971, the Soviet government closely monitored him. This article will explore how Khrushchev lost the confidence of the Soviet Communist Party and was removed from office.

Khruschev Rejection of Stalin

Khrushchev became famous and best recognized for his rejection of the “personality cult” that Stalin had fostered during his own thirty-year rule. Khrushchev also attempted the revival of the Communist campaign to suppress all remnant religious institutions in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Khrushchev supported the invasion and crackdown on Hungary in 1956, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the deployment of Soviet weapons in Cuba in 1962.

In this regard, Khrushchev is something of an enigma. His foreign policy, position on religion and Marxist-Leninist doctrine were hardline, but he was a reformer because he allowed criticism of Stalin and even permitted some anti-Stalinist literature to be published and disseminated in USSR’s society. He allowed criticism of Stalin, despite suppressing criticism of the Soviet Republic. Khrushchev also hoped to raise Soviet citizens’ standard of living so they could benefit from the transference of the ownership of “the means of production” to the State.

His De-Stalinization policies reduced the powers of the secret police and opened up new academic and cultural freedoms. Historians believe that Khrushchev’s efforts in these areas provided a context for the reformist policies of Mikhail Gorbachev later. Khrushchev’s downfall mainly resulted from his lack of a clear ruling strategy, limited diplomatic skills and the complex, multifaceted aspects of domestic and international destabilization that occurred during his tenure in office. Without Khrushchev being removed from office, it is unlikely that the Soviet Union could have experienced the revival and the growth of its sphere of influence that occurred during the Brezhnev era.[1]

Struggle for power and assuming leadership of the Soviet Union


De-Stalinization and domestic policies

Khrushchev in 1959

By the end of 1955, due to the policy, pursued by Khrushchev, thousands of political criminals had returned home and shared their experience in the Soviet labor camps. With several million political prisoners newly released, Khrushchev eased and freed the domestic political atmosphere. Continuing investigation into the abuses further revealed Stalin’s crimes to his successors. Khrushchev believed that once he successfully removed the stain of Stalinism, the Party would inspire even greater loyalty among the people. Beginning in October 1955, Khrushchev insisted on revealing Stalin’s crimes before the delegates to the upcoming 20th Party Congress. Some of his colleagues opposed the disclosure and managed to persuade him to make his remarks in a closed session. [3]

The 20th Party Congress opened in 1956, and Khrushchev delivered his so-called “Secret Speech” to a closed session of the Congress and strictly limited to many Soviet delegates. The speech was the nucleus of a far-reaching de-Stalinization campaign intended to destroy the image of the late dictator as an infallible leader and to revert official policy to an idealized Leninist model. Observers outside the Soviet Union have suggested that Khrushchev’s primary purpose in making the speech was to consolidate his position of political leadership by associating himself with reform measures while discrediting his rivals in the Presidium (Politburo) by implicating them in Stalin’s crimes.

The secret speech, although subsequently read to groups of party activists and “closed” local party meetings, was never officially published. Nonetheless, it caused shock and disillusionment throughout the entire Soviet Union, harming Stalin’s reputation and the perception of the political system and party that had enabled him to gain and misuse such great power. It also helped give rise to a period of liberalization known as the “Khrushchev thaw,” during which censorship policy was relaxed, marking a Soviet literary renaissance. Thousands of political prisoners were released, and thousands more who had perished during Stalin’s reign were officially “rehabilitated.”


First unsuccessful attempt to remove Khrushchev and his further policies

In June 1957, Khrushchev was almost overthrown from his position, and, although a vote in the Presidium went against him. Still, he managed to reverse this by replacing Bulganin as prime minister and establishing himself as the clear leader of both the Soviet state and Communist party. With the help of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Khrushchev managed to prevent what he referred to as an Anti-Party Group that attempted to oust him from the party leadership, and he became Premier of the Soviet Union in March 1958.

Confirmed in power and his new role, Khrushchev promoted and set a new policy of “Reform Communism” throughout the Soviet Union. In an attempt to humanize the Soviet system – but without sacrificing its ideology – he placed greater emphasis on producing consumer goods, in contrast to the Stalinist emphasis on heavy industry. Khrushchev began seeing the US and the West much more as a rival instead of an evil entity. He aimed at showing off the superiority of Soviet over American and Western products. This position further alienated Mao Zedong. As the Chinese Cultural Revolution proceeded, there was no worse insult than to be scorned for being a "Chinese Khrushchev," the equivalent of an ideological turncoat. Unsurprisingly, during the following years, all this also led to further alienation with the People’s Republic of China and what would soon become their own "Cold War" triggered by the Sino-Soviet Split in 1960.

Liberalization, political, military and agricultural reforms


In 1958, Khrushchev for the first time opened a public Central Committee meeting to hundreds of Soviet officials. This expansion of the Central Committee allowed Khrushchev even greater control. Anyone who dissented from him would have to make their case in front of a large, disapproving crowd. By this time, after all, the Communist Party had solidified into the so-called nomenclature – 10 million-strong elite of bureaucrats, managers, and technicians intending on guarding their power and prerogatives at all cost. [5]


Khrushchev foreign and defense policies: on the brink of nuclear war

Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961




In 1961, his blustering Vienna conference with the new U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, failed to achieve a substantial agreement on the pressing German question; the Soviet Union built the infamous Berlin Wall shortly after that. Increased missile buildups had followed Soviet success in lofting the world's first space satellite in 1957. Khrushchev made a dangerous gamble in 1962, over Cuba, which almost made a Third World War inevitable. He secretly attempted to deploy Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba. Once detected by the US, and during the following tense confrontation in October 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles on the promise that the United States would make no further attempt to overthrow Cuba’s communist government.

Nevertheless, Chinese communists unfavorably and harshly criticized the Soviet Union for mishandling this settlement. The Sino-Soviet split, which began in 1959, reached the stage of public accusations in 1960. China’s ideological insist on all-out “war against the imperialists,” and Mao Zedong’s annoyance with Khrushchev’s co-existence policies was exacerbated by Soviet refusal to assist the Chinese nuclear weapon buildup and to rectify the Russo-Chinese border. The Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty reached between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1963, although generally welcomed throughout the world, intensified even further Chinese denunciations of Soviet “revisionism”.[6]

Khrushchev’s forced removal from office

Khrushchev, Valentina Tereshkova, Pavel Popovichm and Yury Gagarin in 1963

Khrushchev’s rivals in the Communist party deposed him largely due to his erratic and cantankerous behavior, regarded by the party as a tremendous embarrassment on the international stage. The failures in agriculture, the quarrel with China, and the humiliating resolution of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis added to the growing resentment of Khrushchev’s own arbitrary administrative methods, were the major factors in his downfall.

On October 14, 1964, after a palace coup orchestrated by his “loyal” protégé and deputy, Leonid Brezhnev, the Central Committee forced Khrushchev to retire from his position as the party’s first secretary and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union because of his “advanced age and poor health”. The Communist Party subsequently accused Khrushchev of making political mistakes, such as mishandling the Cuban Missile Crisis and disorganizing the Soviet economy, especially in the agricultural sector. However, Khrushchev considered his own forced retirement a breakthrough and achievement. He did not oppose after he left office, there were no executions after his coup, and his retirement was “negotiated” as between equals.[7] Following his ousting, Khrushchev spent seven years under house arrest. He died at his home in Moscow on September 11, 1971.

Nikita Khrushchev was the catalyst of political and social change. In his seven years of power as first secretary and premier, he broke with Stalin dictatorship and established a basis for liberalizing tendencies within Soviet communism. His doctrine of peaceful co-existence with the noncommunist world, a drastic break with established Soviet communist teaching, was somewhat successful. He publicly recognized the limitations as well as the power of nuclear weapons, and his decision to negotiate with the United States for some form of nuclear-testing control was of vast importance.




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Updated January 19, 2019