When the great helmsman of all Soviet people fell asleep, the country plunged into deep mourning and depression. All with bated breath waited for what the party and the government would say and order, and, most importantly, who would say on behalf of the aforementioned. It is from those times that the funeral tradition has developed in the Kremlin: whoever is the first to stand at the grave and speak a mourning speech, he will be anointed for the Tsa.. - the rule of the country.
Most of the population, trained by decades of Stalin's rule, was ready to sacrifice itself, following the example of the builders of the Egyptian pyramids. However, there were people in those days who, having remembered the “friend of all children” and “the father of nations,” - having tasted vodka and ate a cucumber with sauerkraut - decided that now their time had come.
The first version of the post-Stalinist upgrade
Beria-Malenkov-Khrushchev and Bulganin, who joined them, became the first version of an upgrade of the political and social system of the post-Stalin era.
Nowadays very few people remember, but after Stalin, Comrade Malenkov, who was convenient to him, stood at the head of the country, put there by the efforts of Beria. During Stalin's lifetime, Comrade Malenkov was what it is now customary to call a speechwriter - in addition to his official post. Most of the Stalinist reports in the late forties and early fifties were written by Georgy Malenkov.
It seemed to Beria and Malenkov that in order to gain a foothold in power and not allow themselves to be devoured by the rest of the Kremlin gray wolves, it was necessary to crush all state structures and, most importantly, the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. They reacted to the party structures with a shortsighted recklessness.
It was the post of Chairman that Malenkov took, and the ministerial portfolios were divided between the "comrades-in-arms" who supported him and Beria. Comrade N. S. Khrushchev did not get a public position. He was put on an insignificant - according to the highly nomenklatura criteria of the time - almost a nominal post of secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Checkmate Nikita Khrushchev
It took Nikita Khrushchev a little less than two years to displace his rivals in an unusual - calm - manner, with the help of covert party games, and sometimes very risky steps. And not just to displace, but to intercept and safely appropriate them, almost democratic, undertakings.
So, it was Beria who carried out the transfer of a number of large industrial enterprises from the GULAG system to departmental ministries, began the process of softening and ending the already launched flywheel of new repressions (the case of doctors, etc.), carried out an amnesty and carried out the rehabilitation of several tens of hundreds of prisoners - it was a drop in the sea of the Gulag, and it almost did not concern political prisoners, but it was then that many thousands of innocent convicts began to hope for change.
In a matter of months, he began to turn from a devil into one of the most "liberal" reformers, but they did not hate him less. Especially all the Kremlin assessors, since it was he who had all the threads connecting each of them and their entourage with the repressions of the 30-50s.
Malenkov, on the other hand, was the author of the idea of debunking the personality cult, reforming agriculture, freeing collective farmers from socialist slavery and the priority of light industry over heavy industry. In general, he was an adherent of the ideas of the NEP.
Khrushchev with two preemptive strikes - first at Beria, and then at Malenkov - got rid of rivals superior to him in intellect, but not in ambition.
It was Malenkov's attempt to turn the governing of the country from the Stalinist model to the Leninist - collegial one - when the party leader heads the government and at the same time directs the activities of the party's supreme bodies, and played a cruel joke with him, since collegiality is possible only under democracy, and not under authoritarian totalitarianism.
At one of the sessions of the Presidium of the Central Committee, to which Malenkov arrived a little late, his place was taken by Khrushchev. To the interrogative remark - "We decided to return to the Lenin tradition and I should chair it, as the head of the government," - Khrushchev answered him dismissively: "What are you, Lenin?"From that moment on, the star of the weak-willed and executive Malenkov finally fell from the Kremlin sky.
Of course, Nikita Sergeevich did not dare to take such an extravagant step. Somewhat earlier, Malenkov's patron Beria was appointed an "agent of international imperialism," convicted and shot. It was on him, and not on Stalin, whom Khrushchev feared even after his death, who was largely blamed for the repression - as a conspiracy against the Soviet people. Accusations of involvement in the repression became a convenient mechanism for Khrushchev to remove all dangerous and objectionable rivals who had to repent and then resign. That is how Khrushchev removed practically everyone who for many years was especially close to Stalin: Molotov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and others. Why none of them tried to "bring" Khrushchev to the same responsibility, because his zeal in this matter was not a secret for anyone - this is a question for psychoanalysts.
Khrushchev personally took advantage of Malenkov's ideas with great benefit, but mainly only in terms of debunking the personality cult. His understanding of the economy and his surprisingly voluntaristic treatment of it, ultimately, after a meteoric rise, prepared by Malenkov, led to an equally rapid decline, right up to the shooting of a rally in Novocherkassk in 1962. Thus, the country was finally done with the outlined, but did not have time to begin, consistently progressive economic reforms.
Zugzwang for Khrushchev
For five years, successively, Khrushchev eliminated all of his numerous competitors, each of whom, after Stalin's death, could claim the first role in the state: from Beria to Zhukov, who had been helping him all this time.
In March 1958, the formation of a new government began in the USSR. As a result, Khrushchev achieved his appointment as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. At the same time, he retained the post of First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. In fact, this meant a complete victory for Khrushchev. The power struggle after Stalin was over.
One thing Comrade Khrushchev could not take into account - not only he knew how to weave conspiracies behind the Kremlin walls. Having removed from the path everyone who, like him, was a direct witness of Stalin's death, leaving not only enemies, but also if not friends, then comrades-in-arms, the last of whom was Zhukov sent into exile, he became a victim of an absolutely identical conspiracy against it, organized by Shelepin-Semichastny-Brezhnev and Suslov and Podgorny who joined them, who were tired of Khrushchev's uneducated and unpredictable restlessness from one extreme to the next.
