The World: The Man Between Two Eras

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When Nikita Khrushchev finally fell from power, it was with astonishing abruptness. On an October day in 1964, he was talking by radiotelephone to the three cosmonauts who were Russia's latest space heroes. Hugely proud of Soviet triumphs in space during his years in power, Khrushchev told them of the grand reception planned for their return to Moscow. Then, chuckling loudly, he uttered a strangely prophetic farewell: "Here is Comrade Mikoyan. He is literally pulling the telephone from my hands. I don't think I can stop him."

Three days later, the Soviet news agency Tass issued a terse announcement: Nikita Khrushchev had been "released" from his duties "at his own request" for reasons of "age and deteriorating health." During the week in which he was ousted, China made a bid for superpower status by detonating its first nuclear weapon. Khrushchev's successors are still preoccupied with Peking's challenge as a rival center of Communist orthodoxy. In the next three months, the triumvirate that now rules Russia—Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny—will visit eight nations in an extraordinary flurry of diplomatic activity. One of their prime goals will be to blunt China's recent skillful initiatives in foreign affairs, particularly its contacts with the U.S. and with Moscow's restless neighbors to the west—Yugoslavia, Rumania and Albania.

Harebrained Schemes. A variety of factors contributed to Khrushchev's downfall: his role in precipitating the Cuban missile crisis; his part in opening an unbridgeable abyss between Moscow and Peking; his emphasis on consumer production and economic decentralization, which infuriated the "metal eaters" of the armed forces and heavy industry; his concentration on missiles at the expense of conventional military forces; his flawed agricultural experiments.

Two specific events, however, may have triggered his fall. He had insisted on convening a Communist summit at which the Chinese were to be formally condemned as traitors to world Communism, but 26 invitations were issued by the Kremlin and only 15 acceptances were received. Second, Khrushchev had planned a January trip to Bonn for conferences with the then Chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, a venture that many of Khrushchev's colleagues evidently feared would lead to a deal with West Germany. In due course, Pravda summarized the Khrushchev era as a time of "harebrained schemes, immature conclusions, hasty decisions, bragging and phrasemongering."

Arduous Road. Khrushchev once told his family that he wanted to be remembered for three things: building the Moscow metro, eliminating the dreaded Lavrenty Beria from Soviet life, and debunking Stalin at the 20th Party Congress. All were notable accomplishments, particularly the last. But his place in history would be even more secure if he had brought his country farther than halfway along the arduous road from a backward dictatorship to a modern society that permits free expression. Instead he ended one era without really embarking on a new one. Lacking the power and personal penchant to move Russia too far toward freedom, he was ever the man of the partial transition.