AHC: Wank Khrushschev

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The challenge here folks is to get Premier Khrushchev to be see as the greatest of all the Soviet leaders from 1917 - 1991 with any number of PoDs after his OTL assumption to power.
 
Well... He pretty much was the greatest and best of them. He had no real war to worry about, represseion at home had been reduced considerably from the Stalinist nightmare, quality of life was constantly improving under him while Soviet influence in the world was rising.

Lenin had his civil war.
Stalin starved the nation nearly to death and deluded himself into thinking Hitler wont attack.
Brezhnev to Chernenko were just living off of everything created by Stalin and Khrushschev.
And Gorbachev ended it all with a signature on a piece of paper.

If his successors had continued the way he ruled the country instead of blowing it all to hell the Soviet Union would still be around today.
 
Well... He pretty much was the greatest and best of them. He had no real war to worry about, represseion at home had been reduced considerably from the Stalinist nightmare, quality of life was constantly improving under him while Soviet influence in the world was rising.

Lenin had his civil war.
Stalin starved the nation nearly to death and deluded himself into thinking Hitler wont attack.
Brezhnev to Chernenko were just living off of everything created by Stalin and Khrushschev.
And Gorbachev ended it all with a signature on a piece of paper.

If his successors had continued the way he ruled the country instead of blowing it all to hell the Soviet Union would still be around today.
Funny that you consider Mr. "Those corn fields look pretty, let's make everyone in the USSR grow them" to be the greatest leader of the USSR.
 
To be fair the bar for "greatest leader of the USSR" is very low.
Well, in my opinion, Lenin was the most capable of the USSR leaders, he won one of the worst civil wars in the 20th century and didn't do too badly in rebuilding the nation afterwards, but to each his own.
 
Well, in my opinion, Lenin was the most capable of the USSR leaders, he won one of the worst civil wars in the 20th century and didn't do too badly in rebuilding the nation afterwards, but to each his own.
He also started said civil war which cost 10(?) million Russian lives.
Then there's the whole "let's kill the Kulaks and see what happens to our food production" thing.
Or that one time when he opened fire on the industrial workers who enabled him to seize power in the first place.
Or giving command of the red army to a bunch of sociopaths.
Or... and it got worse - the official semi-motto of Russia.
 
Soviet missiles are secretly placed in Cuba. For some unknown reason, he launches a decapitation strike on DC and a subsequent first strike on the SAC and major bomber bases are hit before the US can respond. Soviet tanks roll in Western Europe. Outside of a few bases and cities, the USSR avoids significant damage although eastern and western Europe suffer significant devestation. An armistice is signed after Soviet tanks reach the Pyrenees. He is lauded in the Soviet Union as a hero and widely seen within the country as the USSR's greatest leader until it collapses. Of course, he's seen as a butcher, war criminal and every other derogative name possible in every other country of the world.
 
The two big things have to be the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Virgin Lands programme I'd say. If the Soviets can get the weapons deployed and operational before the Americans fully learn of them - not wholly impossible, IIRC the US managed to miss an entire Russian reinforced combat brigade that was deployed in Cuba for over a decade - then it allows Khrushchev to stand up somewhere very public like the UN and announce their existence, specifically linking their deployment with that of American weapons in NATO states. This makes it much harder for the US diplomatically, Khrushchev can then either retain the weapons as part of the Soviet nuclear deterrent until they have a suitable number of operational ICBMs back home or make a public offer to remove them in return for the US doing likewise in Europe and Turkey.

Following on from that with his position much secure he can take things more slowly and methodically with the Virgin Lands programme. IIRC the initial trials went okay but the early successes caused them to then expand it too fast with shortages of farm equipment and fertiliser, amongst other factors, helping to cripple things. If expanded slower than in our timeline it would potentially let the kinks be ironed out of things. Increasing production means that less hard currency will then be needed to import foreign grains to make up the USSR's minimum needs. Those savings and being able to transition to relying more on nuclear weapons so that spending on conventional forces can be scaled back would allow Khrushchev to reallocate more resources to consumer goods like he wanted to.
 
Have Korolev work on the Soviet manned Lunar program from the getgo (1961) instead of wasting time with Chelomei. Also, devote more resources to the space program than in OTL, even if it means a little less consumer goods for Russian people.

With a little bit of luck and effort, the Soviets can get to the Moon before the Americans, it would have been a huge propaganda coup, and this, coupled with the peak of Soviet living standards which in OTL happened around 1971, would have cemented Krushchev as being considered the absolute best Soviet leader.

He'd also need to outmanouver his enemies better to make it to 1971, but it can be done.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_manned_lunar_programs
 

Deleted member 97083

Funny that you consider Mr. "Those corn fields look pretty, let's make everyone in the USSR grow them" to be the greatest leader of the USSR.
Corn was and is the most successful feed crop, including in the US which was and still is the largest food exporter. That Khrushchev chose corn as an industry to expand wasn't the dumb part. The dumb part was that he chose to grow corn in uninhabitable cold areas as a monoculture, instead of specializing corn cultivation in the USSR's warmest areas exclusively, and concentrating on up-to-date fertilizing and mechanical harvesting methods in those areas, which would have gotten the results he wanted.
 
I've often wondered what might have happened if Khruschev had pushed nixtamalization during the maize push. It would increase the nutrient value of the corn and apparently makes it taste better too.

That in turn would mean they'd need to grow less of it.

fasquardon
 
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