History of Russia - Soviet Union - The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years

The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years

In the power struggle that erupted after Stalin's death in 1953, his closest followers lost out. Nikita Khrushchev solidified his position in a speech before the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956 detailing Stalin's atrocities.

In 1964 Khrushchev was impeached by the Communist Party's Central Committee, charging him with a host of errors that included Soviet setbacks such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. After a period of collective leadership led by Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny, a veteran bureaucrat, Brezhnev, took Khrushchev's place as Soviet leader. Brezhnev followed emphasis on heavy industry, instituted the Soviet economic reform of 1965, and also attempted to ease relationships with the United States. In the 1960s the USSR became a leading producer and exporter of petroleum and natural gas.

Khrushchev and Brezhnev years were time when Soviet science and industry peaked. The world's first nuclear power plant was established in 1954 in Obninsk. Baikal Amur Mainline was built.

The Soviet space program, founded by Sergey Korolev, was especially successful. On 4 October 1957 Soviet Union launched the first space satellite Sputnik. On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in the Soviet spaceship Vostok 1. Other achievements of Russian space program include: the first photo of the far side of the Moon; exploration of Venus; the first spacewalk by Alexey Leonov; first female spaceflight by Valentina Tereshkova. More recently, the Soviet Union produced the world's first space station, Salyut which in 1986 was replaced by Mir, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station, that served from 1986 to 2001.