23.2 Opposition from within the party

Question 1

What opposition was there in the party?

Answer 1

Not everyone was pleased with Khrushchev’s control of power.

• Liberal reformists like Bulganin (K’s side)
• ‘Hardline conservative pro-Stalinists’ like Molotov and Malenkov. They were not forgiving of K’s attack on Stalinism in 1956 and tried to remove him in 1957 to restore Stalinism

Question 2

How was Khrushchev able to secure power and in what year?

Answer 2

Khrushchev secured leadership alongside Bulganin in Feb 1955

• Appealing to CC prior to the vote vs him in the Presidium and expelling the ‘anti-party’.
• Security was not achieved however until K dismissed Zhukov subduing the Red Army

Question 3

How was political opposition treated under Khrushchev?

facts of pp

Answer 3

• Not like Stalin’s time at the top it was mostly demotion and at lower levels the political prison population reduced.
• By 1955 250k appeals from pp considered (only 4% released)
• BUT by 1956 8-9m pp rehabilitated = 2m returned from gulags + 2m from special settlements, 1957 only 2% prison population were pp.

Question 4

What lead to an increase in dissidence under Khrushchev and how was this clear?

+ How did the hardliners demonstrate their opposition?

Answer 4

There was an increase in dissidence with talks of multi-party elections and human rights after Khrushchev’s de-stalinisation speech and lenient treatment of pp.

+ Hardliners led opposition in violent demonstrations in Georgia 4-10 March 56

Question 5

What was opposition from the general public like and why?

Answer 5

Limited as they had been conditioned under Stalinist terror