How much power did Khrushchev have?

[Blanquist]

I love his memoirs. But when talking about how he would have done things differently is he just thinking about how history will look at him or was he just powerless to do anything differently?

There is such a big contrast with what was and what he says should have been.

Reading his memoirs I almost fall in love with him.

[Bostana]

Enough to Fuck up the USSR

[Brosa Luxemburg]

The M-L's on this site are going to have fun with you :D

[Alfonso Cano]

Reading his memoirs I almost fall in love with him.


Well, perhaps one day they will clone him, so you may fulfill your love-making fantasy with him... :rolleyes:

[ComradeOm]

Khrushchev had less power than Stalin but more than his successors. He was the last Soviet leader who could be said to have personal control of the government, as opposed to merely being the most prominent Politburo member. That said, he was still operating within decided institutional constraints and never approached the peak of Stalin's personal influence

Still, take his memoirs with a pinch of salt. He, like most of his contemporaries, is hardly a trustworthy source. Most obviously, his whole Stalin narrative (ie, how he suffered under Stalin and was in opposition to him, etc) tends to obscure how he spent around two decades as a good and dutiful Stalinist

[Die Neue Zeit]

In addition to what ComradeOm said, Khrushchev was a bit of a regionalist, to put it mildly.

This regionalism can be divided into three periods: between Stalin's death and the failure of the Anti-Party Group (1957), between said failure and Party bifurcation (1962), and between said bifurcation and his ouster.

If Stalin was tolerant of ministerialism, then Khrushchev went against that to the point of having regionalist excesses:

http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/research/SovietProvinces/documents/Titov.Manchester.Dept.Party.Organs.paper.Sep.pdf

He may have had personal control of the central government, but he never had a tight leash on the regions.

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

Have fun with this one... M-L's see him as the biggest liar to walk the face of the planet:D.