Word: khrushchevism
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...SATELLITES. He proclaimed the right of each national Communist Party to self-determination, but he let this concept go too far, losing control and causing disarray in the Eastern alliance. Rumania, for instance, would not play ball with Russia's self-serving Comecon (common market); and Hungary, which Khrushchev brutally suppressed during the 1956 rebellion, became daring enough to allow scornful "political cabaret" acts to have free reign. All this illustrated the dictator's classic problem: once he loosens his grip, it is hard to know where, when, or if things will stop...
...GERMANY. Khrushchev scandalized many comrades by his planned trip to Bonn in January for conferences with Chancellor Ludwig Erhard. Coming on top of his offhand treatment of Walter Ulbricht's East Germany (the long-promised separate peace treaty has yet to be signed), this caused the suspicion that Khrushchev might want to make some sort of deal with West Germany, a country regularly denounced as neo-fascist by Moscow propaganda...
...CULT OF PERSONALITY." He condemned it in Stalin, but he erected one around himself. His clowning, boorishness, shoe-pounding and endless references to buffaloes, wolves, tigers and housecleaners could at first be refreshing, in a weird way. But gradually Khrushchev became, in the words of the French Communists, "too Grand Guignol." Besides, he was stubborn and intractable. There were growing signs that the comrades were getting desperately tired...
...More Airlift. All of these factors, to a greater or lesser degree, were present throughout Khrushchev's ten-year reign. Indeed, his leadership of Russian Communism was gravely threatened once before. In 1957, a group of Stalinist rebels led by Malenkov met in the turbulent wake of Nikita's 20th Party Congress denunciation, which took Stalinism apart. Khrushchev was then...
Always keenly sensitive to the political pulse-in those days at least-Khrushchev winged back to Moscow, called on Marshal Georgy Zhukov, then Defense Minister, who airlifted dozens of supporters into Moscow to back him in the subsequent Central Committee fight. That time he won; this time he didn't. Perhaps the opposition now was too solid; perhaps he could no longer find supporters in the armed forces; perhaps he was too weary to make the effort...