Talk:Khrushchev Thaw

Stalin
Delirium. The author of the peaceful coexistance theory is Stalin.--14:50, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delirium is an interesting comment here. Stalin made several failed attempts of "peaceful coexistance" with all kinds of figures, such as his pact of peace with Hitler, as well as his peaceful cooperation with Mao Zedong.

Stalin approved cooperation with the German military during the 1930s. Thousands of Nazi officers were training and studying in the 1930s in several Soviet cities. There was a Luftwaffe airforce school in Lipetsk, south of Moscow, where Soviet and Nazi pilots and technical specialists had training and exchange for several years before the Second World War.

Khrushchev was Stalin's close associate in the 1930s and 1940s. But then, after the 1956 speech, Mao Zedong became disappointed with Khrushchev's change of character, which led to a dramatic decay in the Chinese - Soviet relations for several decades, and even military conflicts along the China-Soviet border. As if there were a gang of delirious decision makers, who are tireless in creating problems for themselves and for others, just to keep being busy with familiar things. Thanks, Nixer, for the definition. Regards Steveshelokhonov 21:08, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice
Not supposed to do this as this isn't a forum, but great little article. I just learned a nice little piece of history. 19:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Aaron Bowen, for your nice comment. It prompted me to begin updating this article with important details, although I did not start this article, I also added images and references. Enjoy. Regards, Steveshelokhonov 20:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Content overlap
Please keep in mind that we have an article History of the Soviet Union (1953–1985). Please make sure that these texts complement each other and keep the overlap minimal. `'Míkka 21:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Updating this article with sources and references
SECOND WARNING: References!

Once again you have made a great expansion of an article, Khrushchev Thaw, and once again you quoted the text quite sparingly. Please supply the references ASAP, or I will regretfully have to delete your contribution: you have already been warned about the most basic rule of wikipedia. While it is tolerated to have short bare-bone articles unreferenced(and we usually don't harass older artices created when the wikipedia policies were less defined), such a massive new addition, which contains quite a few opinions, in addition to simple facts, requires solid attributions. For example: "Khrushchev and Zhukov needed each other to eliminate their mutual enemies in the Soviet elite." &,dash; who says that? `'Míkka 19:09, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * References are on the way as I am working on the article now, at this moment, and I'd like to be allowed to complete this work without being interrupted. Please be patient for a few hours (at least), like you were with the article on the "Leningrad Affair". It takes time for me to type, and to read again and to make further improvements and updates. This requires no rush and no pressure (please), as this is a serious work on a very serious theme. Thank you. Regards, Steveshelokhonov 19:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a copy of my recent message: Thank you, Míkka, for your corrections and updates. This part of the Soviet history is little known to the world, because it was kept secret due to its serious threat to the central Soviet leadership in Moscow. Most of my knowledge about this came in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, when my parents revealed that several of my relatives were arrested, executed and died during the dictatorship of Stalin. Now I got documents about my arrested and executed relatives, as well as about some other people; this knowledge had greatly increased my awareness of some less known history of the Soviet era. Thank you again. Regards, Steveshelokhonov 18:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Attention: This is a work in progress. Adding UNREASONABLE WARNINGS, by interrupting an unfinished work, and demanding attention now, not big news. Here is help: a thoughtful work needs no rush, until the improvement is achieved. Someone who wants improvements in Wikipedia articles - please help. Someone who behaves like demonstrating impatience in the middle of a movie, by asking "What's in the END?" please be patient. History does not have an end. There is also no end to sources and references, and when and how the sources are added to an article is my work, because the original author did not add any sources here before I updated this article. Please be patient for the sake of getting better results for Wikipedia. Also please respect my work and time I keep donating to improve articles in Wikipedia, some poor articles indeed. Please, help find out who was interrupting my diligent work for the second time in one week, by blocking the "Save page" clicks. Please help them to think before they act, about how their actions affect the end result, and how they may look after all, in the eyes of many thoughtful people. Help, please. Steveshelokhonov 22:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I usually yield when someone is in the middle of a move or work, this is a polite and cooperative manner that helps the better end result. Steveshelokhonov 22:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Relax and wait until a swarm of neo-communists will try to destroy your work. Then you will thank me for my warnings which you take as a nuisance now. I know what I am doing, OK? You are lucky this page is not frequented by political activists. In the future, if you like undisturbed work, I would suggest you to start writing in a local workspace, like, User:Steveshelokhonov/Scratchpad, and when it is reasonably ready, move into the main article space. `'Míkka 23:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Mikka. I'm not waisting time on neo-coms, because the history repeats itself and they'll end up in the same place as their idols, as we are illuminating with this and other articles. I'll yield you the article now. Cheese, Steveshelokhonov 23:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

User Míkka, please do not mess with this article until you read the sources and become better prepared, please be thoughtful
Dear user Míkka, PLEASE DO NOT MESS with this article for some time, while we are making improvements, corrections, and various updates to this important article. "We" refers to my friends and myself, who actually lived through all this time in the Soviet Russia, so we know this through our own experience. I saw Khrushchev's speeches, and I stood in the bread lines during the 1960s food crisis in the USSR, then I studied more, including a few months at the Library of Congress, and at the Library of the British Museum. In addition I own a few books in Russian and in English, which I mention as references in this article.

Your intervention in my work on this article does not help Wikipedia, you actually disrupted my work several times, so I had to allocate additional hours of my own time for my further work on this article. Please be thoughtful about your edits, because some of your edits in this article are simply not adequate, albeit you are welcome to read the sources and educate yourself to become prepared for future edits. There is enough work for you to improve other articles in Wikipedia, so please find a theme where your experience is adequate to the task, and may be more useful at this time. However, you are welcome to come back to help with this article, after you do some homework on this era in history.

I started working on this article when it was 3,849 bytes and had no images, and it had very little to do with reality. Now, at 30, 026 bytes and with several pictures the article is probaly halfway to what it should be, so I'll keep working at my own pace. As I wrote to you before, Mikka, history does not have an end, so is the khowledge; you are welcome to come back later. Regards, Steveshelokhonov 23:02, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Yevtushenko as one of the figures of the Khrushchev's Thaw, and he continues the legacy
He is one of the real figures of the Khrushchev's Thaw who was traumatized in his childhood under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and then welcomed the Khrushchev's Thaw in his 20s. Then Yevtushenko emerged as internationally recognized writer, especially known for his poems about the Baby Yar (eponymous title) which he performed live during the "Thaw" as a soloist with the "Baby Yar" symphony by Shostakovich.

I am proud to know Yevtushenko in person. We first met in Moscow through a mutual friend of ours; Yevtushenko invited me to his home in Peredelkino, a suburb of Moscow. Then I hosted him in St. Petersburg, and introduced him to some of my friends there and in Europe; together wih my friends I attended several of his public performances in various places. We also discussed his plans for making a movie about Stalin, which he eventually filmed later, in the 1990s.

Yevtushenko's current activity is the living legacy of the Khrushchev's Thaw. He lives in both Russia and the US, he is lecturing at University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and still gives performances internationally. Still, Yevtushenko's emotional trauma from the Stalin's dictatorship during his childhood is sometimes misunderstood by the people who did not live in that era in the Soviet Union. So I am trying to make a comprehensive article about the 10 years of the Khrushchev's Thaw and its background. It was a pivoting time in the Soviet history and the Soviet Union had changed forever, as Gorbachev said several times, referring to the Khrushchev's Thaw as predecessor of his perestroika.Steveshelokhonov 23:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

U.S.-U.S.S.R. co-operation in outer space
I'm surprised there is no mention of the 1961/03 moon landing proposal. Nikita Khrushchev slowly warmed to the idea of a joint venture. Sergei Khrushchev shares his fathers thoughts on the matter in more detail here. smb (talk) 23:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Initially the possibility of a joint space program was in preliminary discussion prior to the planned visit of Eisenhower in reciprocation to Khrushchev's visit to the US. The idea was in careful discussion after the 1957 launch of Sputnik, but all talks were aborted and the Eisenhower's visit was cancelled, because the spirit of cooperation was severely damaged by the U-2 spy plane incident. The American U2 spy plane was shot down flying above the USSR territory, that made Khrushchev think twice, as the Soviet military leaders were already very suspicious of Khrushchev. By 1963, both JFK and Khrushchev were "lame ducks" with serious internal opposition, and also had severely damaged relations due to the Cuban missile crisis, so the JFK's idea of "among other possibilities a joined expedition to the Moon" was never discussed seriously in the Soviet Union's real power - the Red Army. Khrushchev's own thoughts and plans did not mean much by the end of 1963, he was already doomed to be arrested a few months later. With his brave De-Stalinization, Khrushchev made himself too many powerful enemies, including Leonid Brezhnev and other neo-Stalinists. So the words of JFK remained nothing more than his words, while the real answer from the Soviet side was the arrest of Khrushchev and the more vicious Cold War and destructive Arms Race. It would be nice to have it the way JFK proposed, but Khrushchev's end was already doomed, so the idea did not have any serious attention, or chances with Brezhnev and the next Soviet leadership. Steve  shelok  honov  04:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If memory serves, the idea was first suggested by some "egghead" at RAND Corporation (Dodd L. Harvey & Linda C. Ciccoritti, 'U.S.-Soviet Cooperation in Space', 1974). John F. Kennedy also cast about for ideas, and perused similar lines of thought. To quote Asif Siddiqi: "Previous overtures from Kennedy on this issue had been rejected outright as a result of the Soviet military's great reluctance to engage in any major joint space endeavor. It seems that Khrushchev, however, had been steeling for a fight to change the military's position on the issue, certainly a difficult undertaking given the kind of secrets that would be put at risk in implementing such a joint project." (Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 2000) Serious people in high places vehemently opposed the plan, but nevertheless, the offering and eventual willingness of both parties to co-operate is surely worth a line or two? This page is named Khrushchev Thaw and not Red Army Thaw after all. smb (talk) 23:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to add a few lines about this proposal of JFK. He mentioned: "among other possibilities a joined expedition to the Moon" in his speech. But we must remember that no reply, or discussion followed, there was no answer from the Russians, mainly because the pro-Stalinist hard-liners had completely different set of prioroties. To make matters worse, Brezhnev sent none other than Dmitry Ustinov to "arrest" Khrushchev on vacation. Khrushchev and Ustinov were both close to Stalin during WWII, and later Ustinov remained a staunch Stalinist and the enemy of Khrushchev. Ustinov was in charge of the entire Soviet space program, so, he could not allow Khrushchev's ideas materialize, and he did not let his enemy to launch such a nice cooperation. However, this direction of ideas were developed 12 years later with the Apollo-Soyuz program, but now it was done by Ustinov and his people. Steve  shelok  honov  06:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Food crisis and the end of the Khrushchev's era
Khrushchev really started losing his power after the 1962 food crisis, because he failed to deliver his promises of prosperity. His popularity fell sharply after he ordered shooting at hungry workers, while the crisis was also fueled by the redenomination of the Soviet ruble, which did not help the food crisis. I remember standing in the bread lines in the early 60s USSR, just before and after the Novocherkassk massacre. The official media in the Soviet Union was at the point where the well-manipulated propaganda was pushing the public opinion to hate Khrushchev and his ideas of bringing the American corn to replace the Russian wheat fields, calling this the main reason for the famine and bread lines. The true reason for food shortages was massive extermination of strong independent farmers (Kulaks) who were providers of excellent organic food, but they did not want to be communists, so farmers were exterminated by orders of Lenin and Stalin, and food shortages eventually became inevitable, but the Brezhnev's neo-Stalinist propaganda tried to brainwash people again. The power struggle between two factions within the Communist party continued, and Khrushchev lost the battle for liberalization, just like his follower Gorbachev would lose it again three decades later, in the coup. Steve shelok  honov  04:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

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Passportization
"Khrushchev finally liberated millions of peasants; by his order the Soviet government gave them identifications, passports, and thus allowed them to move out of poor villages to big cities".

This reform occurred during the Brezhnev era, when the Council of Ministers approved new "Regulations on passports in the USSR" (in August 1974). According to these regulations, collective farmers got the right to have passports like other citizens. New passports began to be issued in 1976.

Khrushchev only started the process of the passportization of the peasantry by allowing conversion of collective farms into state farms (sovkhozy), whose workers had salaries and passports.

More info in Russian:

https://newizv.ru/news/society/03-05-2021/iz-rabstva-na-svobodu-v-mae-1957-goda-hruschev-nachal-izbavlyatsya-ot-kolhozov

https://babel.ua/ru/texts/34878-sorok-pyat-let-nazad-krestyane-v-sssr-vpervye-poluchili-pasporta-do-etogo-oni-bolshe-50-let-byli-krepostnymi-pri-kolhozah-kak-eto-bylo-mnogo-arhivnyh-foto Ybelov (talk) 21:32, 7 November 2022 (UTC)