Russia

If the claim was credible, the implications were awesome. In 1961 Iurii Gagarin orbited the Earth, becoming the world’s first traveller in space. Given the technological competence demonstrated in the Soviet space and nuclear programmes, the economic pre-eminence that Khrushchev forecast implied military pre-eminence, and promised pre-eminent political influence in the world too. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had what the United States lacked: a working model of empire with a directly controlled inner sphere; a sphere of indirect but nonetheless effective control, as in Mongolia, North Korea and Eastern Europe; and, beyond that, a sphere of influence including such diverse states as Cuba, the United Arab Republic, North Vietnam and Ghana. Its arsenal of influence also included channels for cultural, scientific and professional exchange as well as responsive Party organizations round the globe. And in the shorter term, at least, Khrushchev’s claim showed every sign of proving justified. Six years later gross national product of the Soviet Union had increased by nearly 60 per cent and industrial output by 84 per cent. ¹⁶

These were heady days for Khrushchev. He participated in an impromptu televised debate with Vice-President Nixon, publicly upbraided President Eisenhower for ordering US spy-planes to overfly the Soviet Union, and put the captured pilot of one which had been shot down on public display. In fact the United States and the Soviet Union were already on the way to convergence. This development, had its costs, however. Mao did not favour rapprochement, and denounced it. This fractured Communist solidarity. It also lost the Soviets their submarine base at Valona on the Adriatic, for Albania sided with China. Distant Beijing seemed preferable to Moscow as a protector of so small and vulnerable a state. Then Kennedy was elected president of the United States and Khrushchev had to face a double standoff with him over Berlin and Cuba.

In Berlin the East German authorities had felt constrained to counter the steady flight of population — including an ever increasing proportion of young, technically trained people — to the West. In 1961, in desperation, they had erected a wall between the eastern and western sectors of the city. This action reflected badly on the Soviet Bloc’s image, but the West felt unable to contest it. In the following year Kennedy did contest the movement of Soviet missiles to Cuba, however, and Khrushchev responded by withdrawing them — though not before eliciting an undertaking from Kennedy to remove US missiles from Turkey, which were as uncomfortably close to the Soviet heartlands as Soviet missile sites in Cuba were to the United States. The Cuban missile crisis removed that problem, but the Soviet Union had suffered an unnecessary public humiliation and Khrushchev was soon sacked for ‘adventurism’.

The fact that German forces had come so close to penetrating the Caucasus in 1942—3 had prompted Moscow to order the immediate deportation of over 3 million native people — including Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans and nearly half a million Chechens and Ingush ¹⁷ — to less hospitable regions far behind the lines. Their status as suspected traitors led to gratuitous ill-treatment, and barely half the number that were moved out were ever to return. After Stalin’s death, however, the repressive line towards the nationalities eased somewhat. A degree of decentralization was introduced, more Party members belonging to minorities were promoted to posts in central government, and tolerant policies on language and culture were reintroduced. Nevertheless, it was recognized that the ‘national question’ would not disappear as quickly as Marxist theory had suggested and so, while the Chechens, Ingush and Kalmyks deported in 1943 were allowed to return to their former homes with an apology from Khrushchev himself for the ‘abuses’ they had undergone, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks remained unrehabilitated, in exile.

Soviet attempts to manage a multinational, multi-ethnic empire recalled tsarist preoccupations, and the policies followed embraced both old and new methods. The Baltic republics were favoured, as in tsarist times, as a testing ground for innovation, which helped to soothe feelings hurt by their loss of independence in 1939 and their reabsorption into the Soviet Union at the end of the war. However, Central Asia, despite considerable investments to establish cotton-growing, remained backward economically and its peoples largely unacculturated. On the other hand, economic and social development, as well as Soviet policies of positive discrimination, led to previously neglected minorities, including Kazakhs, Buriats, Kabar-dinians and Yakuts, overtaking ethnic Russians in the proportion of their population receiving a higher education.