Khrushchev: the man who flattered Stalin and wrecked Soviet agriculture

Khrushchev: the man who flattered Stalin and wrecked Soviet agriculture

The figure of Nikita Khrushchev still sparks debate among economic historians. Known as a mere careerist who survived Stalinism by crawling, his legacy is far more complex: he signed mass executions, took part in the seizure of Ukrainian grain that caused the famine of the 1930s, and later, as leader, pushed agricultural reforms that left the USSR having to import grain from its enemies.

## Submission as a survival strategy

Khrushchev was not an old-guard Bolshevik. That, precisely, is what saved him. Stalin saw in him a man with no power base of his own, but useful. According to testimony, Stalin humiliated him by forcing him to drink and dance. In return, Khrushchev signed tens of thousands of execution orders and worked with Kaganovich in stripping Ukrainian peasants of their grain to pay for industrialization. Between 1930 and 1936, the USSR imported technology from the United States, France and Germany, paying with expropriated wheat. The result was a famine that, by some estimates, may have cost five million lives across the USSR.

## The reformer who broke the countryside

When Khrushchev came to power, he tried to change course. His famous corn reforms – hence his nickname "Mr. Corn" – and his political revisionism triggered the split with China and dismantled much of the Stalinist agricultural structure. The result was paradoxical: the USSR, which had been self-sufficient in grain, began to suffer poor harvests and had to buy cereals from Canada and the United States, paying in gold. Moreover, his policies of wage cuts and price increases sparked strikes that were suppressed by the KGB. The "propiska", or internal passport, restricted mobility, a control that lasted until the collapse of the union.

## Uncomfortable comparisons

Some analyses compare Soviet collectivization with price controls in Venezuela, which likewise produced parallel markets and famine. Unlike the Chinese-Vietnamese model, which combined economic opening with political control, the USSR never managed to solve its food deficit. Not even Gorbachev, with his half-hearted opening, could prevent the collapse. On the role of the West in the Second World War, opinions polarize: some argue that without Lend-Lease and the second front the USSR would not have won; others maintain that the Red Army, with its industry relocated to the Urals, was already self-sufficient.

Khrushchev's legacy is that of a man who, to save himself, helped destroy the agriculture he later tried to reform without success. History has not delivered its verdict.