[MUSIC] In 1962, in December, Khrushchev attended the avangardist exhibition in one of Moscow's exhibition halls. His impressions were very emotional. Shit, filth, ban it, ban everything, stop this, I order. I'm telling you as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Soviet people do not need this. Watch them all. All admirers of this have to be rooted out. Well, nobody was imprisoned, but such reaction could not have been missed by the Soviet society. In March 1963, Khrushchev had a meeting with creative intelligentsia. The poets whom I mentioned earlier were a particular goal of this meeting. And Khrushchev started shouting. This is Andrei Voznesensky here. He tried to read his poems and he tried to speak, but Khrushchev did not let him. You don't like it here. You have patrons over there, abroad. Go to your masters. I can give you your passport right away. Gromyko, give him the passport. Gromyko was foreign minister at that time. There were more serious cases. In June 1962, there were a lot of workers' protests because there were food shortages and salaries were very low. The most serious case was Novocherkassk, 1962. About 5,000 workers and citizens protested against the behavior of the management of one of the factories and against the poor supplies of food. They attacked the factory administration and then they broke into the building of the city party committee. This was suppressed by the army and the KGB troops. 26 people were killed, among them children. 87 were wounded. Seven were executed. Seven among the arrested were executed. Many other were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. All were later rehabilitated. One important episode was that General Shaposhnikov, commander of the tank units sent to stop the strikers, refused to use tanks against them. If he did then thousands would have been dead. These are some of the victims of the Novochercassk shooting. One of Khrushchev's ideas was the development of virgin lands. This is the map of where these virgin lands were. It was mostly in the central Asia. The grey areas are the areas which Khrushchev wanted to be developed. Thousands of young people enthusiastically moved to develop virgin lands. But difficulties were enormous. Poor living conditions, not enough machinery, not enough fertilizers. Nobody studied the potential of this land and it was very uneven. There were droughts, dust storms, etc. Some harvests were very good, but some were not at all. And gradually, the productivity, the fertility of this land was exhausted. This is the poster advertising virgin lands. Develop virgin lands. These lands are invaluable. Every year we must get more bread for the people from virgin lands. It did not work out like that. In a few years virgin land stopped giving bread. Khrushchev's other magic trick to raise agricultural production was maize. He was attracted by the American example where maize was one of the major cultures. Maize was planted everywhere on Khrushchev's initiative and instigation. It was planted irrespective of climate and at the expense of traditional wheat and rye. Of course, Soviet 'Kolkhozniks' did not know how to deal with maize. Maize did improve the situation with green fodder. But most of grain harvests were poor almost completely. By 1963, grain shortages made the government buy grain abroad. Nothing worked because it was still command administrative system of managing Soviet economy from the top. Without proper investigation, without proper study, and without a proper plan. Khrushchev's position was severely weakened by the Cuban missile crisis. In response to the American installation of nuclear missiles in Turkey, the Soviet government decided to install its missiles in Cuba. They decided to do it secretly. But Khrushchev was forced to back down. The rest of the leadership saw this as a serious victory for the West. In this map, you see exactly by the date how it happened. In 1964, the leadership had enough of Khrushchev. He was unceremoniously removed by the plenum of the central committee and charged with voluntarism, subjectivism, and multiple mistakes in domestic and foreign policy. But he too lived out his life in peace. Here you see the information by the plenum of the central committee about the appointment of two new leaders. Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin, October 1964. [MUSIC]
