As Stalin's former die-hard fan, Khrushchev can be described as a saddle before and after the horse and obeys orders during Stalin's 30 years in power in the Soviet Union. However, after Stalin's death, Khrushchev changed his previous attitude of support and turned to criticize the various methods implemented by Stalin in his later years.
The changes before and after were obvious to all in the Soviet Union.
In addition, Khrushchev's attitude towards the previous president changed because in 1956, three years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev ordered Stalin's body to be dragged out of the mausoleum for cremation, a move that made people even more suspicious
What was the feud between Khrushchev and Stalin that led him to give such an order?
All this has to start with Khrushchev's "bearing the burden of humiliation" in the Kremlin.
A well-known favorite of the Kremlin
In the past, Khrushchev not only carried out Stalin's orders unconditionally politically, often went to war everywhere, but also cared for and obeyed Stalin in life.
For a long time, whenever Stalin was tired of work in the Kremlin and would go to sleep on the back of the collapse, Khrushchev was in charge of standing guard beside him.
It is rumored that as long as Khrushchev was on duty, Stalin was very relieved, and even the guards were sent outside, leaving only Khrushchev, who was more attentive than the female secretary, to take care of him.
Occasionally, when Khrushchev returned to the palace to report on his achievements, Stalin would invite everyone to drink when he was interested, and when everyone was almost drunk, Stalin would suddenly jokingly order Khrushchev to say: Let's dance for everyone!
At this time, Khrushchev, who was the chairman of the Ukrainian People's Council, was not at all timid, and he was able to become a man who was good at dancing at banquets, which always made Stalin laugh.
But in Khrushchev's memoirs, these are not the most profound parts of his memories of getting along with Stalin, what really made Khrushchev really care about only two things:
One is that his son Leonid was sentenced to death by Stalin; The second is the extreme care he was with Stalin in his later years.
Speaking of Leonid, he was the son of Khrushchev and his first wife, because of the special family situation since he was a child, he became a street gangster at an early age.
During the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union, Leonid began to enlist in the army and eat military salaries, but he did not change his habits of gangsterism, and soon shot and killed a Red Army commander by mistake because he was drunk. Just because Khrushchev was the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine at that time, Leonid's case was closed.
Shortly after the end of the case, Leonid joined the Red Army.
Later, Leonid worked beside his father, and his life gradually became extravagant, and once he went to a drinking party, and then got into an argument with an officer, this time he was still drunk, and shot and killed the officer.
Khrushchev ran to Stalin's side in time after the incident, kowtowed to Stalin on his knees, and begged Stalin to pardon his son.
Stalin was furious, but did not give the usual stern orders, and after a moment's hesitation, Stalin made another decision: Leonid could be pardoned, but he had to go to the front to fight in order to be guilty of his crimes.
Before his son left, Khrushchev told him over and over again: This time you must behave well and be a new person.
But as the saying goes, a dog can't change to eat, and although Leonid tried to become a pilot before crossing the line of fire, he flew the plane to the enemy camp as soon as the battle began.
This incident could have been explained, but Leonid had no political sense, and after being captured by Nazi Germany, Leonid quickly admitted that he was the son of Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, and he immediately surrendered on his own initiative without the enemy's sugar-coated offensive.
It should be mentioned here that Leonid was not the son of the first member of the Politburo of the CPSU to be captured by the enemy, and the one ahead of him was none other than Stalin's son Yakov.
It's just that Yakov has much more backbone than Leonid, and under the coercion of the enemy, Yakov would rather die than give in, and in the end the enemy had to give up his persuasion to surrender.
When the Soviet military searched for Leonid all over the place, and later saw Leonid appear in the enemy's propaganda newspapers, they all blew up, because the newspaper wrote like this:
Look at our newest ally, the son of the high chief of the enemy, Khrushchev, whose name is Leonid, who is in favor of Germany, who not so long ago threw up his hands and voluntarily surrendered to us and expressed his complete opposition to the stupid attacks of his father and the Soviet state.
This time, Leonid made a different scene, and he became the target of the German Nazis for political propaganda, which was a great irony and insult to the Soviet state.
Stalin was furious, and he ordered the military headquarters to use all means to kidnap Leonid back to the Soviet Union.
It is said that Stalin's orders were given to two people: General Abakumov, who led the military espionage unit, and Lieutenant General Pavel Sudapradov, who specialized in cross-border kidnapping and assassination. In short, both of them were experts in the hoe team, and soon after, Leonid was secretly tied back to the Soviet Union.
Stalin immediately decided to carry out the verdict of the Moscow military tribunal: to execute Leonid as soon as possible.
But Khrushchev again heard about this matter, and he took turns running to Beria, Serov, and Stalin, the second-in-command of the Soviet Union at that time, and begged Stalin to convene a plenary meeting of the Politburo to retry his son's crimes.
But the outcome of the meeting was regrettable. At the very beginning of the meeting, the Moscow Regional Committee Shcherbakov put forward the idea that "everyone should be equal before the law, and the son's sins cannot be pardoned because of the merits of the father."
The second spokesman was Beria, who was the head of the Soviet secret police and was very clear about Leonid's past actions, and after counting the evidence of Leonid's crimes, he also expressed support for the decision to execute Leonid.
In the end, it was Stalin who summed up the meeting presentation, in which he solemnly called Khrushchev "Nikita Sergeyevich (is Khrushchev's name and patronymic)", and then said:
If I had such a son, as a father, I would accept this just verdict with a heavy heart!
That's all,Stalin's words were finalized, and Leonid was soon executed.
This time after the verdict,Khrushchev began to hold a grudge against Stalin.
The second thing Khrushchev remembers was his political dissent to Stalin, who in his later years was suspicious and fickle, leaving Khrushchev with a lasting fear.
In the four months leading up to his death, Stalin turned to **ism, not only suspecting the intentions of those around him, but also carrying out the "Great Purge" after that
Beginning in 1952, Stalin changed the people around him, whether they were high-ranking cadres, staff members, or domestic servants, who disappeared after a while, many of whom were killed, and others, like many of whom were imprisoned during the anti-rebellion campaign.
Khrushchev later described this period as follows:
Our Politburo** said goodbye to his family in the morning, but never knew if he would be able to return in the evening.
His cronies, including Beria and Khrushchev, had the same fears.
Although he was repeatedly questioned politically, Khrushchev did not show it at that time, but was as good as his favorite servant.
Khrushchev's opposition, which erupted after Stalin's death, felt as if it had been gathering momentum for a long time, waiting for this moment to come.
Harsh criticism of the 20th Congress of the CPSU
In his book of memoirs, published in old age by Dokuchaev, the deputy head of the Main Directorate of Guards of the KGB of the USSR, Khrushchev personally said to his cronies after coming to power:
Despite the fact that Stalin is now a zombie, I will avenge my son.
Shortly thereafter, Khrushchev fulfilled his oath at the 20th Congress of the CPSU.
Khrushchev became the head of the CPSU on the ninth day after Stalin's death, and then spent more than two years purging all the forces of Stalin's rule.
The first high-ranking person to be executed by Khrushchev was Beria, the former second-in-command of the Soviet Union, who was also one of the key figures in condemning his son to death.
After that, Khrushchev restructured the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which originally had the power of reconnaissance, arrest, and trial, into a KGB group, and sent his confidant Sherepin to become the chairman of the KGB. After some time, Khrushchev dismissed Malenkov, who disagreed with him, and replaced his close friend Bulganin as chairman of the Council of Ministers.
At this point, the forces originally cultivated by Stalin were basically dismantled, and from then on, the Soviet Union officially entered the track of "de-Stalinization".
Of course, this alone is far from enough, everything Khrushchev did was to prepare for the next meeting of the "20th Congress" of the CPSU.
In 1956, three years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev came up with a "secret report" that shocked the world at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was called "On *** and Its Consequences".
Generally speaking, Khrushchev's proposal to "improve the socialist system and rehabilitate the unjust, false and wrongly decided cases caused by Stalin's political purge case" has its specific positive significance.
once commented: Stalin is "a three-point mistake, a seven-point achievement", and Khrushchev is "courageous, can also poke the basket, I am afraid that the future life will not be easy", which can be said to perfectly summarize the achievements of these two people's lives.
After the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev completely lifted his previously hazy political veil and ordered the guards to drag Stalin's body out of Lenin's tomb and then cremate it.
After the cremation was completed, Stalin's ashes were buried under the walls of the Kremlin.
Naturally, this behavior was criticized by all walks of life, and from then on Khrushchev received a new title - the man who stood on the grave of his mentor and danced.
At the same time, with the occurrence of the incident of "Khrushchev ordered the cremation of Stalin's body", various doubts about Stalin's death were also exposed. This has added new suspicions to the cremation incident.
The hidden circumstances of Stalin's death
Regarding Stalin's death, the Soviet historian Dobryukha once questioned the following:
Why did Stalin's autopsy report differ from his own physiological characteristics after his death? The first is that Stalin's second and third toes of his left foot were connected during his lifetime, and the muscles of his left elbow and wrist joints were also atrophiedWhy don't these antemortem features appear on the postmortem report?
The second is that many of the dimensions and proportions of Stalin's body parts have been fixed, but the autopsy report shows a large number of detailed differences, such as questions about length, thickness, and so onWhy didn't anyone come out to answer?
It should be added here that after Stalin's death, many of the people who had worked at the Kontsevo dacha were lost, and it is known that two guard officers committed suicide by swallowing guns, a physician who dissected Stalin's body (Rushakov) died suddenly, and a director of the poison laboratory**.
There is a different understanding, perhaps answering the question posed by Duobu Liuha, namelyStalin died when he was in the Kremlin, and it was his stand-in who later moved to the Kontsevo villa.
Of course, the facts are inconclusive, these can only be conjectures.
At the same time, someone came up with another answer, that is, "Stalin was ** theory".
The answer came from Khrushchev.
First of all, Khrushchev once commented in his memoirs: Stalin regarded in his later years those who disagreed with him as "public enemies of the Soviets", and then this decision caused hundreds of thousands of honest people to die in the expansion of the rebellion, so that everyone around him lived in fear every day.
The second is the declassified recording of Khrushchev in mid-July 1963, in which he does not deny that he has a "corresponding connection" with Stalin's death.
In short, judging from Khrushchev's impatience after Stalin's death, whether it is the many benefits Khrushchev received after Stalin's death, or the personal grievances that have been buried between the two men during his lifetime, Khrushchev may become the object of suspicion to a certain extent.
Some people who hold the opinion that "Stalin's so-called sudden cerebral hemorrhage was killed by someone" also firmly believe that Stalin was actually killed in the Kontsevo villa, and that there was no other substitute.
In short, regardless of the inference, these doubts about Stalin's death ultimately point to the basic facts:
Less than two months after Stalin's death, Beria, who had accompanied Stalin with Khrushchev, was secretly arrested and executed. Perhaps not only because Beria was the second-in-command and "the judge who decided to kill Khrushchev's son", but also because he knew too much.
And Khrushchev's order to cremate Stalin's body may really be to cover up some kind of secret.
Epilogue
As the archives on the mystery of Stalin's death have been declassified in recent years, the official Soviet narrative has been repeatedly questioned, but it will take until 2028 for the entire archive of the death mystery to be declassified, and before that, the relevant doubts will become isolated evidence.
References:
The Soviet Union after Stalin", edited by Meng Wei, Xiong Zhen, Wang Lianxi, etc. Evolved Russia [m].2010
Stalin", written by the "Archives" column of the documentary channel of Shanghai TV Station. Death Code [m].2014