Word: khrushchevism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Khrushchev: It is unpleasant to be dealing with a government whose leader is first presented as a demigod, then as a featherbrained, lamentable puppet...
Like a giant moth attempting to break out of a cocoon, Soviet Communism is trying to rid itself of a doctrine conceived a century ago in a far different world. Though Lenin had to revise Marx to fit the Russian pattern, it was Nikita Khrushchev who launched the official decline of the doctrine. Faced with the necessity of solving countless economic and social problems, today's Soviet planners find such Marxist theories as class revolution and "the dictatorship of the proletariat" just plain nuisances. The Chinese are right, of course: the Russians are revisionists. In a very real sense...
...committee rather than by a single man-and thus is afflicted with too many cooks in the kitchen. They are an elite of highly trained and sophisticated technical managers, who call themselves a kollektivnost rukovodstva, (collectivity of leadership). Though they continue to follow the general policies set down by Khrushchev, they have replaced the lush disorder and impulsiveness of his personalized government with more deliberate, rational procedures. They move only after elaborate consultations, try to be not only secretive but faceless as well, and generally appear cautious, bureaucratic and dull...
...present regime overthrew Khrushchev not only because it found many of his actions boorish and his policies impetuous, but also because he had a way of forcing his will on the Politburo and the Central Committee...
...caused countless crises and acted as a continual threat to world peace. Today, it is much more inclined to caution than before, partly because collegial leadership breeds indecision and partly because Russian foreign policy has suffered some notable defeats in recent years. One of the reasons that Nikita Khrushchev was ousted was his foreign adventurism, which led to such Soviet setbacks as the forced withdraw all of its missiles from Cuba. Since then, Russia has had to pay the cost of backing the Arabs in their Middle East debacle and has seen its onetime chief ally, China, become a vituperative...