KHRUSHCHEV AT 70: AN APPRAISAL OF HIS LEADERSHIP STYLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00927A004400080003-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
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• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 3
• Content Type: REPORT

2006/09/27: CIA-RDP79-00927AO04400080003-5
loy 17 April 1964
OCI No. 0327/64B
Copy NO.
SPECIAL REPORT
KHRUSHCHEV AT 70: AN APPRAISAL OF HIS LEADERSHIP STYLE
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
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17 April 1964
Khrushchev arrives at his 70th birthday on 17
April with more than ten years' experience as leader
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Dur-
ing this period he has developed methods of opera-
tion, a certain style of rule, and a personal im-
pact on policy which cannot easily be disregarded
by those who eventually succeed him.
This week's occasion, like the later decen-
nial birthdays of Stalin, calls for a gathering of
the Communist clan and dutiful tributes not only to
the man himself but also to Moscow's special place
in the Communist world. It is, then, more than a
personal anniversary; it becomes a natural land-
mark from which to assess Soviet policy as a whole.
Unfortunately for Khrushchev, however, April
1964 is not the most propitious time for doing this.
There is very little in the recent record which can
be hailed as vindicating his policies and providing
a special cause for celebration.
No matter how other Com-
munist leaders may assess the
situation, Khrushchev most cer-
tainly sees his setbacks and dis-
appointments as only temporary
discomfitures. In this respect
he epitomizes the old-time Com-
munist revolutionary--holding al-
ways to the idea that it is only
the long-term pros-
pect which really
counts. And fortu-
nately for Khrushchev
personally, he enjoys
a special status which
can accommodate this
unbounded optimism.
His political primacy
no longer depends upon
his achieving a con-
tinuing string of pol-
icy successes.
For Khrushchev at 70, the
important thing--other than the
maintenance of this special power
position--is that he should be
recognized as the very antithesis
of Stalin, the one person who,
while retaining the basic Com-
munist framework, could bring
the party back into full power,
reform the secret police, re-
orient the economy and military
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services, and make the
Soviet Union a first-
rate world power.
Certainly by his
own reckoning there are
still good years left
to continue this work,
and to complete his
programs for chemistry
and agriculture and
start any number of
new major projects.
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Here again the natural Khrushchev
optimism comes into play, and it
may have been boosted by the
feeling that he is more fit to-
day than he was two or three
years ago. In any case, by ex-
ternal appearances, he retains
most of his stamina and drive,
and his temperament--to the ex-
tent it has changed at all--
seems more even than in earlier
years.
As part of the process of
maintaining his special senior-
ity, there has been a steady
effort, both by Xhrushchev per-
sonally and by the propaganda
machine, to refine the image he
projects on the public scene.
The picture intended is a com-
posite of world statesman, be-
nevolent father figure, and man
of the people, with all traces
of the party ruffian neatly
erased. As a result, he has
been elevated to become one of
the great military leaders of
World War II and currently the
great hope for peace in the
world. The crudities are edited
from his speeches, and he is
even shown to be merciful to
old enemies such as Voroshilov
and Bulganin.
Despite these various ef-
forts to popularize the man,
there are very few indications
that he is in fact a respected
leader. Although he is fre-
quently credited with raising
living standards or harnessing
the police, it is more often
Malenkov who is considered the
real liberalizer. Even to the
party hierarchs, Khrushchev is
the "old man" who is both feared
and distrusted. To the govern-
ment bureaucracy, he often sym-
bolizes the party agitator who
forces through the temporary ex-
pedient in his quest for the
short-term gain. To the proud.
army careerists he is the po-
litical commissar and military
fraud. To many intellectuals
he is an untutored tough. To
the general public he is still;
essentially what is known in the
Soviet Union as "one of them"--
the bosses who impose themselves
arbitrarily on the people from
above.
In part it is because he
maintains himself to a large
degree by means of entrenched
personal power that Khrushchev
is seemingly disinclined to
face the problem of his own suc-
cession. Although he made ges-
tures toward a settlement by
singling out first Kirichenko
and later Kozlov, there are
hardly any indications at all
that he provided them with the
opportunities to develop their
personal networks of operation.
The big impediment has always
been the fear of starting some-
thing which could eventually
impinge on his own control.
Then there is Khrushchev's ego
and optimism, telling him that
there is really no rush and that
he can outdistance an Adenauer
or anyone else for that matter.
Thus it was only a half-
hearted move--reminiscent more
of Stalin than anyone else--
when Khrushchev brought two of
his closest followers, Brezhnev
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and Podgorny, somewhat to the
fore last summer, not only so
that they could be assessed bet-
ter, but probably also to com-
pete at the highest operating
levels. Perhaps one of them
will be invested as second sec-
retary at the party congress
next year, but he is unlikely
under Khrushchev to enjoy any
major independent political
power.
Yet even if Khrushchev de-
cides to do nothing more about
the succession, it is clear that
he will leave behind him methods
of operation and a certain style
of rule which cannot be easily
disregarded. He has brought the
image of the leader out of the
Kremlin and into the country and
has made himself the continuing
and almost sole spokesman on both
foreign and domestic policy. He
has fostered the impression that
he is truly expert in his knowl-
edge of practical problems and
that he is actively engaged in
improving the lot of the people.
He has developed a system of rule
which has succeeded in stabiliz-
ing the relative weights of the
various power groups in Soviet
society and he has been able to
delegate day-to-day authority to
free himself for long periods of
rest, extensive trips abroad,
and preoccupation with special
problems when the need arises.
earlier one, ending with the
fall of Marshal Zhukov in Octo-
ber 1957, was rooted in the
fight to re-establish primacy
of the party and to achieve
Khrushchev's personal supremacy.
It was during this time that
Khrushchev--acting in the true
Stalin fashion--allied himself
first with one faction and then
another, turning on each in due
time, until the police had been
neutralized, the governmental
bureaucrats routed, and his ri-
vals in the leadership sent into
exile. The question of party
supremacy seems to have been
so well settled during this pe-
riod that it is unlikely to re-
emerge as a major issue d"wring
a post-Khrushchev succession
struggle.
The more recent period has
seen Khrushchev attempting
Party and State Administration
Khrushchev's efforts to re-
order the Soviet system of party
and state administration can be
divided into two periods. The
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Khrushchev, in World War II lieutenant
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Defense Minister Malinovsky, February 1963
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gradually to reshape the admin-
istrative mechanism to fit the
political and economic exigencies
of the time and to increase the
effectiveness of his own command.
Various efforts have been made
to sharpen the decision-making
process, and as'a result small
working groups are often pre-
ferred to meetings of the larger,
formally constituted organiza-
tions. Issues of special sensi-
tivity are handled by a senior
"inner presidium"--Khrushchev,
Mikoyan, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Sus-
lov. This team, which at one
time included Kozlov, apparently
served as a special task force
during the Cuban crisis, for in-
stance.
Preference for these smaller
groups was bound to alter some-
what the character of the party
presidium. Currently it com-
prises an odd assortment of real
leaders, second-echelon adminis-
trators, elderly retainers, and
assorted aspirants from the prov-
inces. Gone is the idea of a
committee of equals or even near
equals. Instead, presidium mem-
bership in itself has taken on
more of an honorific meaning
than it ever did in the past.
As for the party central com-
mittee, it is used almost ex-
clusively as a sounding board
for pronouncements from the lead-
ership and not as an organ of
decision making or debate.
Khrushchev in addition has
engineered several moves intended
to prevent concentrations of
power below him. The marked ex-
pansion of .the party secretariat
and the concomitant prolifera-
tion of responsibilities for
day-to-day party administration
was a move in this direction.
He has also developed a network
of geographic bureaus and func-
tional committees in the party
--each with ample rights in its
own field., but structured in
such a way that they cannot be-
come a special tool of any one
of the senior secretaries. In
the governmental bureaucracy-sev-
eral economic overlords have
been appointed, but they are as-
signed exclusively to manage-
ment functions and have not been
brought into the policy-making
councils of the party.
In other areas of admin-
istration, Khrushchev's train-,
ing and experience and the dic-
tates of the system itself have
worked together to frustrate
his efforts. He realizes the
need for real decentralization
in economic planning, for in-
stance, but in practice is un-
willing to forsake the time
honored principle of party con-
trol. He acknowledges the im-
portance of material incentives
but thus far has shied away
from any major effort which
would significantly alter the
rate of production of producer
goods. He refuses to admit that
there are permanent and critical
drawbacks in the collective farm
system and makes only desultory
moves against the vested inter-
ests and entrenched bureaucracy
which abound in the planning sys-
tem. He has in fact tried rem-
edies, but usually has resorted
only to organizational shuffling
and reshuffling and to selective
personnel changes. In effect,
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there remains the dichotomy be-
tween Khrushchev's conditioned
"common sense" approach and the
needs for the scientific order-
ing of the stystem.
The contrast between Khru-
sh.chev's extensive personal in-
volvement in the operation of
the economy, particularly agri-
culture, and the remote con-
trol'Stalin exercised from the
confines of the Kremlin is par-
ticularly sharp. Khrushchev
himself once explained that
Stalin refused to listen to his
lieutenants concerning the poor
state of agriculture and "knew
the country and agriculture only
from films. And those films had
dressed up and beautified the
existing situation in agricul-
ture. Many films so pictured
farm life that the tables were
bending from the weight of tur-
keys and geese. Evidently Stalin
thought that it was actually so.
The last time he visited a vil-
lage was in January 1928, when
he visited Siberia in connec-
tion with grain.deliveries."
Just how much Khrushchev
really understands about agri-
culture is hard to tell. He
often puts on impressive per-
formances, displaying knowledge
of vast amounts of detail, dis-
pensing advice freely, and dog-
gedly ferreting out mistakes and
weaknesses. Despite his claim
to a special grasp of agricul-
tural matters, however, he has
no formal agronomic education
and no "in-the-fields" experi-
ence. Moreover, he has tended
to accept the advice of which-
ever scientist--including the
biological sciences quack, Trofim
Lysenko--promised the greatest
immediate results. On the other
hand, Khrushchev has become in-
creasingly receptive to Western
practices, particularly since
the disastrous long-run effects
of his earlier policies have be-
come evident.
Khrushchev's personal style
of leadership in agriculture has
Khrushchev, by comparison,
believes firmly in the neces-
sity for.personal'intervention
and direct command. He can ar-
gue a firsthand knowledge of So-
viet agriculture derived from
numerous junkets through the
rural districts of the country,
talks with farmers and agrono-
mists in the field, and care-
ful study of Western agricultural
practices.
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led him to lean more heavily on
personal advisers and unoffi-
cial channels than on established
agencies. Not long ago, Khru-
shc.he.v, talking with Westerners,
made a show of forgetting Agri-
culture Minister Volovchenko's
name, as though he were just
too unimportant to be remembered.
Andrey Shevchenko, long one of
the Soviet leader's personal
team, now is the most powerful
influence on Khrushchev in agri-
cultural matters. Nevertheless,
Shevchenko, a gifted agronomist
who has twice visited the United
States to study agricultural
techniques, must still contend
with Lysenko and others for Khru-
shchev's ear. This reliance on
extragovernmental-_ agencies and
personnel in agriculture con-
trasts sharply with his strong
dependence on the regular gov-
ernment bodies in the industrial
field.
Khrushchev's horizons in
solving Soviet agricultural prob-
lems have been limited by his
Socialist convictions and by the
need for continued rapid develop-
ment of industry. By Western
standards, therefore, his agri-
cultural policies have smacked
more of temporary expedients
than basic solutions. Neverthe-
less, as a result of his inces-
sant prodding, imaginative gam-
bles (such as the New Lands Prog-
ram), organizational gambits,
and publicity programs, the
level of net agricultural produc-
tion has been raised by about,
50 percent since 1953. Although
hopelessly below the increase
planned by 1965, this is enough
to increase per capita consump-
tion significantly. Thus some
progress has been made toward
his long-term goal of making So-
viet agriculture as efficient
and productive as any in the
world, and proving that the So-
viet system can be made to work
in agriculture as well as in
industry.
In addition, Khruushchev's
personal interest and atten-
tion have elevated agriculture
to a level of respectability--
although not yet of material
satisfaction--approaching that
of the industrial sector; and
he has imparted some feeling
that the regime has an interest
in and concern for the welfare
of the rural population.
Control of the Intelligentsia
Khrushchev is not equipped,
either by inclination. or by
training, to understand the as-
pirations of the Soviet creative
intelligentsia. He likes sing-
able tunes and righteous heroes
who win their battles. Artistic
struggles to communicate com-
plex inner worlds are irrelevant
to his own concern to shape the
external world. Nevertheless,
he feels his responsibility as
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the authoritative voice of the
party. In the uncongenial milieu
of culture he may well see him-
self as "the simple wise old
worker with clear and precise
answers to everything"--a stock
figure in Soviet literature whose
common sense and devotion to the
party magically combine to solve
all fictional problems.
Khrushchev also sees him-
self, however, as the leader of
a world power whose international
prestige is damaged by heavy-
handed party intervention in cul-
tural affairs. Moreover, he has
become aware that his own tastes
in art are not universally re-
spected. In an apparent attempt
to improve his image, he has
presented himself in the guise
of patron of the arts and has
occasionally acceded to personal
appeals for permission to pub-
lish controversial works.
Khrushchev's efforts to
reconcile the statesman who ap-
preciates creative endeavors
with the simple party worker who
knows little about art but knows
the "right" answers underlie the
ambivalence in his policy. Con-
fusion has also been generated
by the apparently ad hoc basis
on which he responds to personal
appeals. Some decisions have
been based on considerations of
artistic prestige or personal
influence and have had no po-
litical implications beyond com-
plicating the task of the liter-
ary disciplinarians who must at-
tempt to define "party=minded-
ness." On other occasions, how-
ever, he has approved a work be-
cause it fitted in with a spe-
cific political aim of his own,
with little or no thought to
its repercussions in the cul-
tural world.
Possibly because Khrushchev
is unsure of his own judgment
in the field, culture is an area
in which others in the leader-
ship apparently feel free to
operate. Kozlov, Kosygin, Ily-
chev, and Polyansky were all in-
volved in the maneuvering dur-
ing the fall of 1962 and the
winter of 1963, and probably
this is by no means the com-
plete picture.
It is doubtful that Khru-
shchev has had any specific pol-
icy goal in culture beyond pro-
tecting the party's authority
and nurturing the country's
prestige. The abandonment of
Stalinist terror and his tend-
ency to make spot decisions on
the basis of "common sense" ra-
ther than doctrine have tended,
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however, to work to the advan-
tage of the liberal intellec-
tuals. They have developed a
community of interests and
mutual support which transcends
party loyalty and on occasion
has led to the open flouting
of party discipline. As a re-
sult, the cultural overseers
have seen their old Stalinist
concepts of "party-mindedness"
and "ideological principledness"
become badly eroded and have
had their own authority circum-
vented by personal appeals to
Khrushchev.
The influential liberal
intellectuals have shown no
desire to overthrow the regime
as Khrushchev apparently feared
in 1957. They have, however,
shown an increasing insistence
on the right to stand aside and
comment objectively on their
world rather than serve as tools
of the party. The line between
"healthy" criticism and "danger-
ous" criticism can become a
fine one, and Khrushchev and
his successors will be increas-
ingly called upon to try to
make the distinction.
Foreign Policy
Khrushchev's conduct of
foreign policy through most of
the period of his ascendancy
has been marked by the same
ebullient self-confidence, bold
innovations, and flexibility
that have characterized his
domestic programs. His inten-
tion to impose a new style and
direction on Soviet policy was
symbolized at the 20th party
congress in 1956 by attacks on
the "ossified forms" of Molotov's
diplomacy and by major ideolog-
ical reformulations on the is-
sues of war and revolution.
These themes were repeated at
the 22nd congress in October
1961, when Khrushchev charged
that Molotov and "his like" did
not understand the changes that
had occurred in world politics
and Brezhnev hailed the abandon-
ment of "obsolete methods and
ossified dogmas."
While Soviet foreign policy
under Khrushchev's guidance
has displayed considerable ver-
satility and resourcefulness
in making pragmatic adjustments
to the realities of the nuclear
age, the Soviet premier's be-
havior since the spectacular
failure of his Cuban missile
venture has reflected a grow-
ing recognition that the wide-
ranging political offensive
against the West which was
launched in 1957-58 has run its
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course without yielding the ex-
pected results. Events over the
past three years, particularly
the Cuban fiasco, have called
into question the fundamental as-
sumptions of this strategy--that
time and long-term trends in the
East-West contest were working
to the advantage of the USSR and
the socialist camp. Khrushchev's
adjustments to this situation
have been symbolized by the lim-
ited test ban treaty last summer
and the relaxation of pressures
on Berlin and other exposed
areas.
One of the most important
factors that has shaped Khru-
shchev's foreign policy outlook
has been his strong desire to
gain world recognition of the
USSR's status as the great-power
equal of the US. This impulse
has been evident in his dealings
with American leaders and public
figures and in the pleasure he
finds in personal contacts with
other non-Communist statesmen. His
conduct has long reflected feel-
ings of personal and national
inferiority and excessive sensi-
tivity to any real or imagined
affronts to his prestige or that
of the USSR. Khrushchev has
often displayed deep resentment
over what he regards as the stub-
born refusal of the Western pow-
ers to accord the Soviet Union
the recognition and rights due
a country that has achieved
great-power status by its own
efforts. His violent reaction
to the US handling of the U-2
incident in May 1960 was the
most striking manifestation of
these attitudes.
Another characteristic of
Khrushchev's foreign policy ap-
proach is great confidence in
his ability to determine ac-
curately the risks in any ven-
ture and to control the course
of events in such a way as to
maximize advantages and minimize
the danger of losing control of
a situation. Throughout his
long Berlin offensive, Khru-
shchev frequently voiced con-
fidence that the West would
not go to war over a separate
peace treaty with East Germany.
He has tried to impress Western
visitors by displaying detailed
knowledge of the policies and
intentions of his opponents as
well as his own ability to ma.
nipulate developments without
risking a military collision.
Following the confrontation 25X6
between Soviet and American
tanks at the Berlin wall
October 1961, Khrushchev
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25X6
Khrushchev has relied
heavily on bluff and intimida-
tion tactics and on his tech-
nique of alternating deliberate
creation of crises with propos-
als for high-level negotiations
and hints of Soviet concessions.
His long campaign to alter the
status of West Berlin and achieve
some form of Western recogni-
tion of East Germany has been
based on a combination of re-
peated pressures and inducements
calculated to draw the West into
negotiations under conditions
favorable to the USSR.
Khrushchev has also shown
a.penchant for clever strategems
designed to entrap and confuse
opponents and to increase pres-
sures on them to grant conces-
sions. His exploitation of the
U-2 incident was intended to
produce a storm of protests
against US policy and to embar-
rass President Eisenhower on the
eve of the Paris summit confer-
ence. Khrushchev confined his
initial announcement of the shoot-
down to bare details and then
sat back to await the expected
disavowal from Washington. Af-
ter the US issued the cover story
of a missing NASA research U-2,
Khrushchev announced that he had
withheld information that the
pilot and aircraft were in So-
viet hands, "because had we told
everything at once, the Ameri-
cans would have invented another
version; just look how.many.
silly things they have.said..".
In February 1962,, after
the US publicly announced de-
tection of an underground nu-
clear explosion in the USSR,
Khrushchev declared that this
test had been staged deliberately
to disprove the West's conten-
tion that on-site inspections
were necessary to enforce a pro-
hibition on all nuclear. tests.
There is reason to believe
that Khrushchev has encouraged
circulation of rumors abroad
that his efforts to improve rela-
tions with the West were facing
strong opposition within the top
leadership. These hints of Khru-
shchev's political vulnerability
clearly were intended to persuade
Western governments that some
concessions were necessary to
help Khrushchev resist his do-
mestic enemies.
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The outcome of Khrushchev's
attempt to exploit the U-2 in-
cident and to deploy missiles
to Cuba point up his greatest
weakness in the field of foreign
policy--his vulnerability to
self-deception and his ignorance
or disregard of the mentality
and reactions of his opponents.
In the case of the U-2,
Khrushchev's miscalculation de-
rived from his gamble that by
absolving President Eisenhower
of all personal responsibility
for the U-2 flight, he could pre-
vent events from getting out of
hand and endangering the summit
meeting and his "detente" policy
of that period. But the Presi-
dent's assumption of personal
responsibility shattered this
scheme and exposed Khrushchev
to charges by Communist critics
that he had been deceived and
that his peaceful coexistence
strategy had been proved a fail-
ure.
Khrushchev's radical mis-
judgmen_t of the probable US re-
action to the deployment of'mis-
siles to Cuba appears to have'
been the product of two main
factors. His misreading of the
US conduct of the Bay of Pigs
operation in April 1961 and the
shift in US policy in Laos rep-
resented by acceptance of a coali-
tion regime pledged to neutrality
seems to have led him into the
fatal error of underestimating
American resolution. Khrushchev
also allowed himself to believe
that the high stakes involved
in the missile venture justi-
fied a sharp reduction in the
margin of safety which had
characterized his previous ma-
jor foreign decisions. The
great advantages he anticipated
from using the threat of So-
viet missiles in Cuba to force
a major diplomatic showdown on
Berlin made Khrushchev vulner-
able to:what one"former Western
ambassador in Moscow has de-
scribed as "an incurable po-
litical shortsightedness which
prevents him from foreseeing
the remoter consequences of
his words and actions." (SE-
CRET)
SECRET
Approved For Release 2006/09/27: CIA-RDP79-00927AO04400080003-5
 Approved Releases TIA-RDP79-Ot 7AO04400080003-5
SECRET
Approved For Release 2006/09/27: CIA-RDP79-00927AO04400080003-5