Changes

==Domestic issues==

==Domestic issues==

===Destalinization===

===Destalinization===

Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956 in one of the most spectacular and detailed speeches in world history.  The secrets were out but this new "glasnost" had to be controlled lest it get out of hand, for the Stalin era was built on deceit, disinformation, and false allegations up and down the line and everyone shared in the guilt, especially Khrushchev himself.  Hundreds of thousands of loyal Russians had been shot as "spies" to satisfy Stalin's paranoia. By blaming his predecessor for all of Russia's ills Khrushchev bought time to reform the system.  He ended the worst features of the Gulag and mass executions, and brought back many from Siberia, while maintaining a high enough fear level in people's minds to keep the wheels turning. As for the memories of Stalin, that was solved by erasing him from history--his name was never mentioned, his image never seen--and instead filling the media and the minds with the glorious heroics of the Great Patriotic War against Germany. <ref> Cynthia  Hooper, "What Can and Cannot Be Said: Between the Stalinist Past and New Soviet Future," ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 2008 86(2): 306-327,</ref>

Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956 in one of the most spectacular and detailed speeches in world history.  The secrets were out but this new "glasnost" had to be controlled lest it get out of hand, for the Stalin era was built on deceit, disinformation, and false allegations up and down the line and everyone shared in the guilt, especially Khrushchev himself.  Hundreds of thousands of loyal Russians had been shot as "spies" to satisfy Stalin's paranoia. By blaming his predecessor for all of Russia's ills Khrushchev bought time to reform the system.  He ended the worst features of the Gulag and mass executions, and brought back many from Siberia, while maintaining a high enough fear level in people's minds to keep the wheels turning. As for the memories of Stalin, that was solved by erasing him from history--his name was never mentioned, his image never seen--and instead filling the media and the minds with the glorious heroics of the Great Patriotic War against Germany. <ref> Cynthia  Hooper, "What Can and Cannot Be Said: Between the Stalinist Past and New Soviet Future," ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 2008 86(2): 306-327,</ref>

The space industry demonstrated that modern management could be applied in Russia; it was much applauded but seldom emulated.  There was little reform in heavy industry. Instead of adopting modern principles of management as practiced in other industrialized countries, from the 1950s to the 1990s there was a continuation of the old Soviet pattern of inner-circle intrigues, shuffling the same old bureaucrats and functionaries around the same old posts and flailing around from one set of measures to another. The military carved out its own industrial sector, where productivity was somewhat higher.

The space industry demonstrated that modern management could be applied in Russia; it was much applauded but seldom emulated.  There was little reform in heavy industry. Instead of adopting modern principles of management as practiced in other industrialized countries, from the 1950s to the 1990s there was a continuation of the old Soviet pattern of inner-circle intrigues, shuffling the same old bureaucrats and functionaries around the same old posts and flailing around from one set of measures to another. The military carved out its own industrial sector, where productivity was somewhat higher.

===Housing===

===Housing===

Khrushchev presided over the construction of millions small drab, poorly built apartments for 108 million residents. Most were 5-story walkups (elevators were too expensive for the poor nation); people called them "Krushchoby" (combining his name with the word for slums).  The apartments boosted his popularity because they marked a dramatic improvement over the horrid housing they previously enjoyed, and led to a form of "ownership" whereby tenants were locked into their specific apartment with very little opportunity to move around--rather like rent controlled apartments in New York at the same time.<ref>Taubman (2003), p 382;  Mark B.  Smith,  "Individual Forms of Ownership in the Urban Housing Fund of the USSR, 1944-64," ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 2008 86(2): 283-305, </ref>  

Khrushchev presided over the construction of millions small drab, poorly built apartments for 108 million residents. Most were 5-story walkups (elevators were too expensive for the poor nation); people called them "Krushchoby" (combining his name with the word for slums). Typically there were three generations squeezed into a couple rooms--parents, children, and a widowed mother. (Because of the wars, the old people were mostly women.) The apartments boosted his popularity because they marked a dramatic improvement over the horrid housing they previously enjoyed, and led to a form of "ownership" whereby tenants were locked into their specific apartment with very little opportunity to move around--rather like rent controlled apartments in New York at the same time.<ref>Taubman (2003), p 382;  Mark B.  Smith,  "Individual Forms of Ownership in the Urban Housing Fund of the USSR, 1944-64," ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 2008 86(2): 283-305; Steven E. Harris, "'We Too Want To Live in Normal Apartments': Soviet Mass Housing and the Marginalization of the Elderly Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev," ''The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review'', Volume 32, Number 1, 2005 , pp. 143-174 in Ingentia </ref>  

[[File:Kitchen-debate.jpg|thumb|Vice president Nixon boasts to Khrushchev of the superiority of American kitchens; Leonid Brezhnev, who later overthrew Khrushchev, is on the right]]

[[File:Kitchen-debate.jpg|thumb|Vice President Nixon boasts to Khrushchev of the superiority of American kitchens; Leonid Brezhnev, who later overthrew Khrushchev, is on the right]]

A central feature of the new apartments was the kitchen--people no longer had to eat in communal spaces. The Soviet kitchen was presented as a model of efficiency where one could find a bit of privacy. The kitchen gained ideological importance and was viewed as a central element of the grand program of socialist modernization, further proof of the ultimate triumph of socialism through its superior living standards. Women were to play a special role, and a number of programs and courses offered them training in home economics. The new kitchen was, above all, to be efficient, and the media portrayed this penetration of technology into everyday life as a key element of socialist modernity. In practice, women found that the promised benefits did not materialize, and to the dismay of Soviet propagandists, American Vice president [[Richard Nixon]] came to Moscow in 1959 and in his "kitchen debate" with Khrushchev demonstrated how much superior were American kitchens.<ref> Susan E. Reid, ''The Khrushchev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution," ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 2005 40(2): 289-316, </ref>

A central feature of the new apartments was the kitchen--families no longer had to eat in communal settings. The Soviet kitchen was presented as a model of efficiency where one could find a bit of privacy. The kitchen gained ideological importance and was viewed as a central element of the grand program of socialist modernization, further proof of the ultimate triumph of socialism through its superior living standards. Women were to play a special role, and a number of programs and courses offered them training in home economics. The new kitchen was, above all, to be efficient, and the media portrayed this penetration of technology into everyday life as a key element of socialist modernity. In practice, women found that the promised benefits did not materialize, and to the dismay of Soviet propagandists, American Vice President [[Richard Nixon]] came to Moscow in 1959 and in his internationally publicized "kitchen debate" with Khrushchev demonstrated how much superior were American kitchens.<ref> Susan E. Reid, ''The Khrushchev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution," ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 2005 40(2): 289-316; Susan E. Reid, "Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and the De-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev,"  ''Slavic Review,'' Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 211-252  [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2697116 in JSTOR] </ref>

===Religion===

===Religion===