than Malenkov and Molotov in improving rela-
tions with the West, with China and with
Yugoslavia. Malenkov also proved himself indeci-
sive and slow-witted in the face of Khrushchev’s
ruthless manoeuvring. Khrushchev had pro-
gressed since Stalin’s death from being the most
senior secretary to first secretary of the party.
Unlike Beria, who was executed, Malenkov was
bloodlessly demoted and remained a member of
the Praesidium. Khrushchev nevertheless contin-
ued to be fettered by the collective leadership of
the Praesidium, where hardliners like Molotov
had only been temporarily eclipsed. On no one
would Stalin’s mantle of absolute power fall.
Khrushchev was not yet strong enough to
combine the position of head of the government
with that of party chief, so Bulganin replaced
Malenkov as premier.
But Khrushchev was riding high. A man of
great energy, he displayed a down-to-earth bluff-
ness, despising formality and protocol; what he
lacked in consistency and steady application of
carefully prepared policies, he made up for in
boldness. He tried to cut through the stultifying
dead weight of state bureaucracy by making a per-
sonal and human impact, quite unlike the aloof-
ness and austerity of the Stalinist period, and by
pragmatism, trying first one way and then
another. He was convinced that the governing
leadership had to win more popular consent, to
persuade and cajole, and to minimise the use of
state force. With Russia’s backward agriculture
lacking incentives, Khrushchev again raised prices
of agricultural products, increased investments in
farm machinery and fertilisers and extended the
virgin lands. More state farms, run like industrial
enterprises, were established as the virgin lands
were opened up. An impressive rise in agricultural
output was achieved, though at a high cost in
resources, and agricultural productivity remained
low by comparison with advanced countries like
the US, even if a more favourable comparison
could be made with the less efficient small French
or southern German farms. As in Soviet industry,
over-centralisation of planning led to much waste
and inefficiency.
Less hidebound by ideology in the narrow
sense, Khrushchev was ready to try new remedies.
He nevertheless held to the central tenet of
Stalinist ideology that ultimately the Soviet Union
had to be ruled from above not only politically
but with regard to the determination of economic
priorities and paths of development. The differ-
ence between the Stalinist and the post-Stalinist
period lies in Khrushchev’s genuine effort to
make communism work for the people to give
them a better quality of life. That was the purpose
of economic and social reform: attempts were
made to alleviate the extreme shortage of housing
and to provide minimum wages; workers were
free to change their jobs; at least some basic legal
rights for the ordinary citizen began to emerge;
but the most remarkable change of all was the
massive release of political prisoners from the
Gulag, which began only after Malenkov’s fall.
This was the most visible indication of the ending
of Stalin’s mass terror regime, though the leader-
ship would continue to protect the system against
individuals who were thought to endanger it, by
imposing sentences of imprisonment, exile or
more subtly, in later years, detention in psychi-
atric hospitals. Rights were granted only to those
ready to work within the system, not to those
who were accused of actively propagating views
against it. Thus censorship remained, though it
was less stifling: criticisms of specific features of
Soviet life were tolerated, writers and artists could
breathe more freely, and foreign visitors to the
Soviet Union were encouraged. But neither
Khrushchev nor his communist successors ever
granted anything like the freedoms ordinary
people in the West enjoy.
A Soviet citizen could not leave the country
without the most careful scrutiny of their past,
even when visiting a fraternal communist Eastern-
bloc state; visits to the West were generally per-
mitted only to members of official delegations
accompanied by a KGB minder; other members of
the family had to stay behind as hostages, and
wives were not allowed to join husbands. The fate
of Soviet Jews who wished to emigrate to Israel
was particularly harsh, given that it was forbidden
to make a declaration of allegiance to anything but
the Communist Party and Soviet state. National-
ism continued to be suppressed. The Orthodox
Church was one symbol of national consciousness