The War State: The Cold War Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex by Michael Swanson

Author:Michael Swanson [Swanson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Politics, War, bay of pigs, cuban missile crisis, Cold War, Military-Industrial Complex, the power elite
ISBN: 9781484080764
Google: eeMEngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18480409
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter VI - Targeting Everything Red

How would you describe Nikita Khrushchev? In a photo, he looks like a fat man with a chubby face. He was a natural optimist and a survivor. He had risen from humble beginnings as a metalworker in a Ukrainian steel factory to become a commissar for the Soviet Communist Party during the violent Russian revolution. He then rose in the party to become Stalin’s governor in the Ukraine, where he supported Stalin’s purges as all commissars did. During World War II, he assisted in the defense of Stalingrad against the Nazis and after the war became one of Stalin’s closest advisers.

As dictator, Stalin ruled at the dinner table. Every night he would gather his henchmen and over food and late-night drinking sessions make decisions for the fate of Russia. When he became displeased with one of his men, the target would often disappear never to be seen again. Toward the end of his life, his closest associates began to fear that he would launch another giant purge and kill them all. But then he had a stroke and died.

Khrushchev and Stalin’s other cronies decided that they did not want to live in such personal danger again. Instead of one-man total dictatorship, they moved to create something akin to rule by committee. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union had an inner circle of about a dozen people called the Presidium. Stalin used it as an administrative arm to run the government, but his successors used it as the ruling body over Russia.

Its members came from the state bureaucracy and the Communist Party. They dedicated their lives to the state. The Presidium met weekly and kept its sessions secret. When the Presidium members approved a resolution, they made it a rule that they all had to back it without any sign of disagreement even if their decision came after an intense debate. In recent years, though, transcripts of many of their meetings have been released and we now have a better understanding of Soviet policy than was available to even the CIA during the time. We can now know the reasons behind things that were mysteries to American leaders when they happened, such as why Khrushchev sent nuclear missiles to Cuba and provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis.

One thing the Presidium members did after Stalin died was to quickly charge Lavrentiy Beria, his KGB head, with numerous crimes and have him executed. They all feared that Beria would turn himself into another Stalin and kill them, so they got him first. They then appointed Georgi Malenkov as premier, Khrushchev as the first secretary of the Communist Party, and Molotov as foreign minister. By 1954, after about two years of behind-the-scenes political jockeying, Malenkov resigned his position and Khrushchev became chairman of the Presidium, making him head of the Soviet state. He, in effect, became something akin to a dictator of Russia who had to answer to the Presidium committee.

Khrushchev became the leader of a deeply troubled empire.

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