Reform_In_The_Khrushchev_Era

Reform In The Khrushchev Era Soon after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 Nikita Khrushchev positioned himself as the new leader of the communist party in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev’s rise to power was well executed and had strikingly similar characteristics to that of Stalin’s rise to power. “Like Stalin he climbed to power on the back of a party and proved himself a master of political infighting” (McCauley 216). Khrushchev saw a nation suppressed by the years of fear and terror inflicted through the dictatorship of Stalin. He wanted to improve all aspects of the Soviet Union and would attempt to accomplish this through a series of reforms. Although he showed great political power in his rise to power his political insecurities were exploited once he was at the top. “His personal style of leadership was acceptable in an underdeveloped country but the Soviet Union of his day had outgrown him” (McCauley 220). His inability to thoroughly evaluate and foresee consequences led to the ineffectiveness of his reforms. He simply tried to do too much too fast with little knowledge of the fundamental problems. Martin McCauley states in his book Khrushchev and Khrushchevism, “Khrushchev could not grasp the root causes of the khrushchev, khrushchev’s, mccauley, power, opposition, stalin, reforms, soviet, union, political, great, system, party, increase, sector, policies, move, lack, economic, under, rise, production, local, led, however, hanson, control, central, agriculture, years, without, top, took, time, thus, terms