Khrushchev's thaw is connected primarily with the 20th Congress of the CPSU Central Committee, where a new stage in the life of the Soviet state was laid. It was at this congress in February 1954 that the report of the new head of state was read, the main theses of which were the debunking of the personality cult of Stalin, as well as the variety of ways to achieve socialism.
Thaw Khrushchev: briefly
Hard measures of the times of War Communism, later collectivization, Industrialization, mass repressions, demonstration processes (like persecution of doctors) were condemned. Alternatively, peaceful coexistence of countries with different social arrangements and rejection of repressive measures in building socialism was proposed. In addition, a course was taken to weaken the state's control over the ideological life of society. One of the main characteristics of a totalitarian state is precisely a rigid and ubiquitous participation in all spheres of public life - cultural, social, political and economic. Such a system initially brings up in its own citizens the values and worldview they need. In this respect, according to a number of researchers, Khrushchev's thaw put an end to totalitarianism in the Soviet Union, changing the system of relations between power and society to an authoritarian one. Since the mid-1950s, the mass rehabilitation of convicts in the Stalin era has begun, and many political prisoners who survived to this time were released. Special commissions for Consideration of cases of innocent convicts. Moreover, whole nations were rehabilitated. Thus, the thaw of Khrushchev allowed the Crimean Tatars and Caucasian ethnic groups deported during the Second World War to return to their homeland by Stalin's willful decisions. Many Japanese and German prisoners of war, who later turned out to be in Soviet captivity, were released to their homeland. Their number was estimated at tens of thousands. Khrushchev's thaw triggered large-scale social processes. A direct consequence of the weakening of censorship was the liberation of the cultural sphere from shackles and the need to sing praises to the current regime. In the 1950s and 1960s, the rise of Soviet literature and cinematography was necessary. At the same time, these processes provoked the first visible opposition to the Soviet government. Criticism, which began in a mild form in the literary works of writers and poets, became a subject of public discussion as far back as the 1960s, engendering a whole stratum of opposition-minded "sixties".
International detente
During this period, there is a softening in the foreign policy course of the USSR, one of the main initiators of which was also Khrushchev. The thaw reconciled the Soviet leadership with Yugoslavia Tito. The latter for a long time appeared in the Union of the times of Stalin, as an apostate, almost a fascist minion only because he independently directed, without instructions from Moscow, his state and went Own way to socialism. During the same period, Khrushchev met with some Western leaders.
The Dark Side of the Thaw
But relations with China are beginning to deteriorate. The local government of Mao Zedong did not take the criticism of the Stalinist regime and considered Khrushchev's softening by apostasy and weakness toward the West. And the warming of the Soviet foreign policy course to the west did not last long. In 1956 during the "Hungarian spring" the Central Committee of the CPSU demonstrates that it does not intend to release Eastern Europe from the orbit of its influence, drowning in the blood of a local uprising. Suppressed similar performances in Poland and the GDR. In the early 60's, the aggravation of relations with the United States literally puts the world on the threshold of a third world war. And in the domestic policy, the boundaries of the thaw were quickly identified. The rigidity of the Stalin era will never return, but arrests for criticism of the regime, exclusion, demotion and other similar measures are fully practiced.