George Bowt

“Let’s catch America and pass!” It is interesting how the implementation of the slogan will now look in detail. What was thought? 55 years ago Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev threw such a slogan to the masses in all his broad spirit. By the way, there was more than one biting slogan of this kind. The most famous relates to the fact that “the present Soviet people will live under communism.” And before we catch up with them (or after? He didn’t specify), Khrushchev warned the Yankees: “We’re going to bury you!” It was a time of bold dreams and resounding slogans calling to a bright distance.

A simple (albeit cunning) man, Khrushchev would compete with America in things that were close and intelligible to humans: meat, milk, and butter. It seemed to the first secretary of the Central Committee that this was the easiest thing, it was enough to push the party vertical order down. There was also, of course, competition in space, quite successful unlike milk and meat. The USSR also made rockets “like sausages” (an image also invented by Nikita Sergeevich). Washing machines, refrigerators, transistor receivers, etc. Some household appliances, such as Despite the fact that they were far from the “breadth” of Brezhnev, they became goods in mass demand. And the famous Khrushchevs, collective panel housing construction! It was a dream back then, too, very tangible.

That is, during the Khrushchev era, the ruling party finally matured in the idea that, at the dawn of communism, the Soviet people should still be more or less well fed, shod and not in the bunker.

The plans, as always, the management was brilliant, but the implementation “on the ground” also failed as always. To fulfill their meat plans, the district party secretaries ordered all cattle to be slaughtered in succession so that the gauges jumped many times at a time. And then they fell. Most of the animals owned by private owners had to be handed over to collective farms. And other administrative pleasures. Old-timers still remember the egypt epic. Khrushchev observed and was impressed by the magnificent crops he had grown in the same America. They began to sow already at the behest of the party beyond the Arctic Circle.

However, the corn on the permafrost, an infection, did not grow. And the stupid cows did not want to breed at an accelerated pace at the behest of the CPSU. Meat disappeared. And in response to the “price increase at the demand of the working people” (in the USSR, of course, this was the only way prices were raised), a brutally suppressed revolt with dozens of victims broke out in Novocherkassk.

The race with America culminated in 1963, when the USSR began to buy grain from abroad. And this continued until the end of the Union’s existence. Khrushchev, on the other hand, did not edit the Holodomor. Practically liberal. But how romantic!

Really enlightened with such ideas. Why do Americans have all kinds of kitchen televisions and we don’t? And we should have! In the summer of 1959, the American exhibition in Sokolniki (actually an exhibition of the American way of life) went down in history. Khrushchev there literally grappled with the then Vice President Nixon and tried to convince him that even color television in the USSR was better than American television, but Soviet citizens at that time really did not know about it.

Haven’t we started to compare ourselves to America, to compete with it, or rather to contradict it – in everything?

No, Khrushchev was not that innovative here. He simply spread ideas of “catching progress” in a form accessible to the townspeople and the secretaries of the district committees. He actually did the same with Peter the Great or the Stalinist Bolsheviks. They also wanted to capture and outrun America, England, France and others. And I must admit, it didn’t cause any delirium in anyone. Such tasks seemed quite achievable to many. It just needs to push harder – and the advantages of the socialist system over the capitalist exploitative system will certainly come into play. At the same time, if Stalin took on the task of capturing and overtaking the advanced capitalist countries technically and economically, Khrushchev added to it purely everyday, ignorant things.

And the Americans immediately accepted the challenge. Hoping that the Soviet people, seeing at the exhibition how ordinary Americans live, will like to live in the same way and will begin to demand that their leaders spend less on intercontinental missiles and other “war”, and more on the production of furniture, household appliances and individual prefabricated houses. By the way, does this reasoning logic remind you of anything?

Sometimes it seems to me that Khrushchev was overthrown by his party comrades, not only because he nearly plunged the world into a nuclear war during the Caribbean crisis, but because his bizarre organizational adventures had forever clouded the party bureaucratic quagmire, but also because he was fueled by ideas of “catching and overtaking America”. He said he would learn a lot from it without adopting any social and political institution. Perhaps his party comrades thought at some point, “We don’t need this.”

We haven’t competed with anyone for a long time. They were going to capture Portugal but then they changed their minds. Geopolitics is of course more interesting. Then we were on our own. Or you are afraid of comparing yourself to someone else. They thought that it was impossible to keep up with the people they missed so much before. I think there is a problem here. Because without competition there is no development. And the criteria for success cannot be defined otherwise than by comparison and competition. Raising the question of whom we want to focus on on a subject does not mean denying ourselves, it means trying to better ourselves. The slogan “We will bury you”, addressed to America by Khrushchev, should not be taken literally. He didn’t intend to cover it with nuclear ash. He aimed to gain the upper hand in peaceful competition by embracing the best. So what was wrong with that?

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.