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Jonathan Harris
Lexington Books

Party Leadership Under Stalin and Khrushchev: Party Officials and the Soviet State, 1948-1964

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AuthorJonathan Harris
PublisherLexington Books
PublishedSep 15 2018
Book FormatHardcover
ISBN-139781498528382
Dimensions9.1 X 6.1 X 0.9 inches
Weight 1.25 pounds
BISAC
CategoriesHistory > Russia & the Former Soviet Union
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

This study demonstrates that the full time party officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) used the term party leadership to both disguise and signal their efforts to lead the Communists who manned the Soviet state. In 1946, Stalin had made the newly formed Council of Ministers of the USSR, led by its Bureau (Presidium) directly responsible for planning and administering the Soviet economy. As a result, the full time officials clashed constantly and publicly over the relative importance of their direct intervention in production as opposed to ideological education and personnel management in their efforts to provide party leadership of the state from 1946 until 1964. Zhdanov and Malenkov clashed over the issue until Zhdanov's death in 1948 and Malenkov clashed with Khrushchev over the same issue from 1949 until Stalin's death in 1953. This conflict became more explicit once Malenkov was named Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Khrushchev first secretary of the CC/CPSU in 1953 and continued until Malenkov's ouster in 1955. Khrushchev clashed with Chairman Bulganin over the same issue from 1955 until 1958. Khrushchev's decision to replace Bulganin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers not only complicated the discussion of party officials' role but led to a series of extremely contradictory reforms. Khrushchev simultaneously bolstered party officials' capacity to intervene directly in industrial production and strengthened the Council of Ministers' control over the same process. The ensuring administrative confusion, when coupled with Khrushchev's overt disdain for the ideological education of Communists helped to undermine his authority and led to the decision of his colleagues to oust him in 1964.

Author Bio

I teach Medieval History and offer a first-year introductory course in the topic called ‘Rome to Renaissance’. My research and second and third-year teaching focus on Byzantium (or the Byzantine empire). Effectively that means Eastern Europe in the period 602-1453 CE and the now vanished Christian state centred on the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Byzantium is not well-known in this country but it is the origin of the Orthodox Christian culture of Russia, Greece and other eastern European countries.

I have always been interested in how Byzantium interacted with the world around it, both with its Christian neighbours to the west and Muslim ones to the east. I wrote my PhD on the refugees who left Constantinople when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the moment when Byzantium came to an end. Many of them headed west to Italy, France and even, in a few cases, to England. Later I became interested in the enigma of the Crusades. The First Crusade was launched by the Pope in 1095, partly with a view to helping the Byzantine emperor against the Seljuk Turks. Yet just over one hundred years later, the Fourth Crusade captured and sacked the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. I explored this paradox in Byzantium and the Crusades, which is now in its second edition.

The work of mine that has probably had the most impact is The Lost World of Byzantium. Published in 2015, it has since been translated into Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Romanian and Russian. It aims to be an accessible (and hopefully entertaining) first taste of this mysterious yet fascinating society. My latest publication is a textbook for university students: Introduction to Byzantium, 602–1453.

Source: Royal Holloway University of London

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