Prologue - The New World Order
Even before the war, Stalin and the state where almost one and the same, Stalin was the state, the personification of the peoples collective wills, desires and hopes. In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, Stalin was treated almost as a divine figure in official state press. When Mao and Tito came to Moscow to confirm their positions with in the Soviet Bloc, they were intimidated by the sheer devotion to Stalin of the Soviet establishment. However Stalin was not the man he once was, the stresses of the war and poor diet had taken their toll upon the man of steel. A week before the signing of the COMECON economic assistance treaty and communist international military alliance - The Berlin Pact, Stalin suffered a stroke. While he recovered enough to be present at the event, it was a sign of coming end of the Stalinist era. Since as late as 1949 when Stalin suffered his first heart attack elements with in the Soviet union had begun preparing for Stalin's death, when the NKVD heard of such events Stalin suspected a coup in the works and began setting on another purge. The first victims of the growing Purge were the doctors of high level officials, often Jewish, Stalin had seen a plot by agents of an Israeli state that had turned its back on the sacrifices of the USSR and was now doing the bidding of its American masters. A Jewish Oblast was set up in Eastern Siberia and the USSR's remaining Jewish populations were expelled to ''protective relocation''.
Soviet technology began to lead to the world into the future, bearing the fruits of investment and German ''repatriations''. In 1952 the Soviet Union put a satellite into space, the Sputnik-1, over the coming years the USSR would put the first dog in space before in 1959 Yuri Gargarin became the first human in space, later that year Valentina Tereshkova became the first women in space. Korolyov's pioneering rocketry had gifted the USSR a dominating lead in global space exploration. In the west there was a palpable feeling that they were losing this idealogical contest, western Leaders feared Soviet ''atom ships overhead'', western youth became infatuated with the tales and exploits of the Soviet cosmonauts heading to the stars. Such developments spurred the US to create NASA, however it was years behind advances made by the космос - Kosmos, the Soviet Space agency. The real contender with the USSR in the race to the stars was the British Royal Aeronautical and Space Corps, a highly advanced program born from the fruits of British war time rocketry and Frank Whittles genius.
To the Sun! To the stars!
The USSR made great strides from German war time innovations, the jet engine was greatly adapted and saw massive proliferation in the Soviet Union by the end of the war. Adapted from captured and recovered German engines and home grown Soviet designs the jet engine revolutionised the Soviet air force and civil aeronautics. Once again the USA was slowly catching up, but Soviet technological leads were only met by the British. In the area of nuclear physics, globally advancement was slow and sluggish, the Soviet nuclear program had been started in 1940 led by Igor Kurchatov. By 1951 the first Soviet weapon had been completed and tested in secrecy in Northern Siberia, believed at the time to be the first ever nuclear weapon detonation when public knowledge of nuclear weapons was released in 1955 it shocked the Soviets when the US first tested their weapon in late 1949.
First Soviet Nuclear Weapon, tested in Yakutia - March 1951
In 1953 Stalin died, his death sent the Communist bloc in mourning and shock. Beria was quick to secure his role as successor for Stalin, however others were not so eager to see the Stalinist era of purges and cult of the personality continue. As Beria was drawing up a list of his rivals he wished to remove, a cadre of reformers led by Nikita Khrushchev were able to depose Beria via shrewd political deal making within the Peoples Congress and the party structure, once Beria was removed from office, he was quickly arrested and eventually executed under the exact crimes he had sent many to the firing wall for.
Khrushchev, the 4th Premier of the USSR
Khrushchev's accession was a major turning point in the Soviet Union, a break from the Stalinism of Beria and Stalin. Khrushchev would be a vital reformer of the entire Soviet model, from economics, to foreign policy to social interactions, a firebrand and some times bumbling Khrushchev would set the world on a new course. While Stalinism was preoccupied with international image and prestige, Khrushchev sought to bring back the Socialism into Communism, was the main aim of communism not the betterment of the lives of the workers? Khrushchev's main goals as soon as he came into office outside of securing his power, was a wide range of policies to improve the living standards, rights and positions of the Soviet peoples. Khrushchev denounced the personality cult of Stalin at the party congress of 1954, with this speech he began a wide raning process of de-Stalinisation, the removal of hard-liners from positions of power, the reform of the stalwart of Stalinist thought, the NKVD into the KGB, the release of millions of political prisoners from the gulags, rolling back on press censorship, widening of the freedom to speech (but not of speech) and a more democratic system of electing party leaders from the Soviet republics.
“Our goals are clear. Our tasks are certain. Get to work, comrades!”
Alongside his political reforms, Khrushchev began a radical reform of the economy. Stalinist doctrine emphasised heavy industries, while the Soviet union was economically powerful, her coffers full and her resources abundant, the vast majority of her people lived in poverty. The order would redirect the economic emphasis from the traditional heavy industries to consumer goods, housing, infrastructure and social amenities. In 1954 a flurry of new housing complexes, apartments, housing blocks began to be built, the age of the ''commieblock'' had been born as millions of Soviet citizens moved from their wooden hovels to the socialist homes of the future. Car factories opened up and car ownership would slowly increase year on year, many Soviet citizens by 1960 owned their first radio or even a television set! Fridges, radiators, baths, water heaters began to enter the home place. The tranSiberian was greatly expanded and improved, great road and railways connected the Caucuses, Ukraine, Karelia to the Moscow core. Food shortages had always been a common theme, the Virgin lands campaign corrected this, while almost a disaster when inappropriate seed and a lack of machinery was directed to the scheme, the Winters of 1954-1957 were harsh ones, the food shortages worse than ever as the crop failed, but reform of the policy ensured that 1958's harvest was a fruitful and bountiful one. Year on year the crop yields increased. Where the USSR had to import food in the years of 1955-1958 afterwards the USSR became an exporter of food, its shops well stocked and its peoples pantries full, with staples such as wheat, corn, barley now successfully tackled the Virgin lands movements from 1961 onwards focused on increasing the annual output of diary products and meat.
''Break Virgin lands!''
But the most influential and revolutionary of the reforms was the computerisation of the economy. On a factory visit in 1954 Khruschev was fascinated with the technical skills of Sergey Alexeyevich Lebedev to such an extent he poured funding into Lebedev's work, first came a series of military computing devices and then in 1959 Sergey proposed the computerisation of the entire economy to eliminate the slack, human error and corruption from the command economy. Over the coming decade the USSR's industry would become hyper efficient for the time with the help of computers. An entire new ministry, the ministry of trades and values was formed completely comprised of computer engineers integrating the efficiency of computing into the work of the other ministries.
One of the trade ministries computers
The death of Stalin had sent shock waves around the communist bloc, Khrushchevs' rise and subsequent denunciation of Stalin had caused rifts, namely between the Asian communist states and the USSR. The Asian communist model was based on the Stalinist model of taking a peasant society and pulling it into industrialisation and crushing dissent, Mao had vowed to move the Chinese nation away from the guiding hand of Moscow. Unable to muster the internal support to break the link, Mao formally requested that the PRC be given the rights owed to it and that it follow its own path to communism, basically to follow its own independent policies and foreign affairs. Moscow flatly refused greatly cooling the relations between Mao and Moscow, however the Pro Moscow lobby in China, many of who had fought with the USSR and are only where they are thanks to the efforts of Moscow during the liberation, halted the excesses of Mao. In order to sooth relations Moscow afforded the PRC its own domestic economic policies, in 1958 Mao undertook the great leap forward leading to the great famine in China and the modest growth of industry in China. China's clout had been quashed and remained squarely in the Soviet orbit. In contrast Kim Il Sung's Korea rapidly expanded industrially through Soviet assistance, by 1968 Korea would boast the largest industrial base of the East Asian Communist bloc, double that of China.
''WHEN THE ARMY AND PEOPLE UNITE AS ONE, LET US SEE WHO IN THE WORLD CAN CHALLENGE US''
In Europe affairs went differently, the Soviet spring had sparked an Hungarian Summer. Reformers in Hungary quickly lost control as mass popular actions broke out into open insurrection 1956, while the world was fixated on the Suez crisis, the Communist bloc moved to crush a nationalist revolution in Hungary. It halted reform in the European bloc for years and raised disquieting questions with in the Soviet establishment as too the direction of the thaw was taking them. The revolution was quickly and forcefully crushed.
The Soviet garrison putting down the revolt.
The direct road to world war 3 began in 1954, in Japan. Unlike the other states conquered and liberated, Japan was a different case, the blend between feudalism social structure and the industrialised nature of the nation threw complication into the imposition of a hardline Stalinist state, the lack of any native communist party of reasonable standing left the occupying Soviet powers to pursue a pragmatic approach. The feudal structures were so heavily ingrained it would take decades to remove them, so to whittle them down a social democratic system was set up with land reform and social reforms to be weened in. However it was not too last, the Imperial family were able to escape in the dying days of the war and surrender to the Americans on Okinawa, ever since then with American aid, Japanese reactionaries had been agitating against Soviet rule. In 1954 things came to a head, with Soviet occupation troops having been repatriated the previous year , popular protests erupted across the nation, in the space of 3 days a CIA backed revolution overwhelmed the Japanese security services, crowds stormed and burned the Soviet embassy and looted the KGB office in Tokyo, a special meeting of the People's Diet formally renounced all relations with the USSR and entered into the protection of the Americans and restored the Emperor. Powerless and not willing to risk World War three, Khrushchev backed down, critically damaging his standing.
The loss of Japan was a bitter pill to swallow
The Soviet Union would bide its time, scheming and finding any means to correct the humiliation of Japan. Defence spending tripled, Soviet ICBM's were stationed in the Western USSR and Kamchatka, Soviet forces in Europe were increased and the submarine forces began regular patrols around NATO coast lines. A mutual hatred had now grown into something more serious. The KGB and Soviet agents fuelled leftist civil wars across Latin America and central Africa, the communist party of Mexico received massive donations from an unnamed foreign power and became heavily militant, Soviet agents were suspected in industrial sabotage in the United States and in the workings of wild cat strikes. The USSR and with it the communist members pulled out of United Nations committees to seek a resolution to the partitions of Greece and Denmark, the red threat had come. In 1963 the third Arab Israeli war crippled global energy supply, the global economy crashed and when the Israeli armies overran Syria and Iraq the Soviet Union threatened intervention, the energy crisis would last until 1965.
The 4 months war shook the globe
1959-1961 would see the USSR gain satisfaction for Japan. A group of rebels in Cuba under the leadership of Fidel Castro were able to overthrow the American puppet Batista and set about forming a socialist state, they came to the USSR requesting aid and support to safe guard the revolution, Moscow jumped at the opportunity to oblige them. By 1960 20,000 Soviet ''advisor's'' were in country, weekly economic aid ships from the USSR docked in Havana, the Americans protested and looked on with ire. American recon flights were flying hourly over Cuba, it came as a shock with their previously untouchable U2 spy aircraft began to be shot down over the island, a failed American supported invasion by Cuban exiles prompted a Soviet fleet to head to Cuba containing two nuclear fuelled carriers, an atomic battleship, several cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers. Cuba was firmly secure in the Soviet orbit for the time being, while US intelligence could not confirm,it was suspected that the Soviets were able to station medium range R-12 missiles in Cuba. The cold war was heating up.
A ship of the newly formed Soviet Caribbean fleet in port at Havana