50 years ago, on October 13, 1964, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee decided to resign the Soviet leader

On the day of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos (October 14 - it was on this day that the change of power became known) the Trinity-Sergius Lavra celebrated its anniversary. During the assembly celebrations, a rumor ran through the ranks: Khrushchev was removed! And many crossed themselves: finally! The long-sexed class hated Tsar Nikita; the anti-church campaign of 1958-1964 was an example of Bolshevik rigidity.

The intellectuals breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone remembers the story of Doctor Zhivago in 1958 and the scandal in the Manege in November 1962, but the Manege was immediately followed by a series of other pogrom meetings - the December 1962 on the Lenin Hills and the March 1963 in the Sverdlovsk Hall . Every time at these meetings, Khrushchev began with health and ended with peace; I turned to the topic of the toilet and could no longer stop: you are looking at the world from inside the toilet! Through all the attacks and attacks, a hidden resentment showed through: “I was a miner - I didn’t understand, I was a political worker - I didn’t understand, I was that one - I didn’t understand. Well, now I’m the head of the party and the prime minister and I don’t understand everything?! Who are you working for?

Happy were the army men who did not forgive the triple reduction of the army in 1955, 1958 and 1960. The scientists whose fate was discussed at the July 1964 plenum calmed down: Khrushchev proposed dissolving the Academy of Sciences and moving the agricultural academy to the village, closer to the land; the proposals were so enchanting that they never decided to publish the materials of the plenum.

And how happy those around him were, hurt by Khrushchev’s tyranny. Stalin once forced him to dance the hopaka and knocked his pipe out on his bald head, mockingly repeating: “Empty, Nikita!”; Now he ordered Foreign Minister Gromyko to hit the plate with a fork, and Marshal Grechko to dance. Why is there no music, it’s boring...

There was not a single layer, not a single group, not a single class that was dissatisfied with the decision of the October 1964 plenum.

Stalinists, anti-Stalinists, dissidents, party members, ordinary people, army officers, security officers - the internally incompatible majority agreed that enough was enough, thank God, I was tired. And it was useless to remind them that it was Khrushchev, for all his incredible quirks, who decided to dissolve the Gulag. Stopped communist terror. Buried Stalin's mummy. He blessed the space experiment and presented Gagarin to the country and the world. It was he who turned the USSR from Maoist China to a painfully difficult, but incredibly important partnership with the United States. He decided to publish Solzhenitsyn; Having gotten involved in the Caribbean adventure, he managed to come to his senses, stop on the edge and, at the cost of losing political weight, rewind history. He launched the construction of “Khrushchev” buildings, which saved tens of millions of fellow citizens from communal collectivism. He stopped the internal party meat grinder and humiliated his enemies, but did not destroy them; he carried out the last bloody coup, killing the “English spy” Beria, and called it a day. All subsequent coups, including his own resignation, took place without violence.

But the majority still remember the standard set: he forced them to sow corn, he knocked his shoe on the UN podium, he gave Crimea to the Ukrainians. Well, just little things.

Go prove that the decision on Crimea was purely bureaucratic and was first discussed under Stalin, shortly after the war, due to confusion in management, and the administrative reassignment on January 25, 1954 was explained by the convenience of building a cascade of hydroelectric power stations on the Dnieper. It never occurred to anyone that the USSR would one day collapse and territorial problems would arise. For example, because of Abkhazia, which has changed its status more than once. Because of Karabakh. And, of course, because of Crimea. And corn also had to be sown - just not to get into a frenzy. And he didn’t hit the podium with his shoe; he banged his fists on the table of the Soviet delegation, and then (as translator Viktor Sukhodrev told me) he broke his wristwatch and, angry, began to thrash with his shoe. As for the podium, it's a completely different story; he deceived the Irishman leading the session and, instead of speaking on the procedure, began to argue furiously with his opponent; The Irishman, in anger, began to pound with the wooden chairman's gavel, the head flew off and, spinning, flew into the hall. The people were passionate. Alive. And on both sides.

Be that as it may, even KGB reports, as noted by historian Nikita Petrov, confirm that the news of the resignation was taken calmly. No worries or dissatisfaction for you. And the point, it seems, was not that Khrushchev, the party’s tough guy, managed to quarrel with everyone. And not only that the apparatus carefully dragged him into conflicts, pursuing its own selfish goals. (Although, especially in recent years, this was done almost openly; for example, he got into a story with intellectuals quite naturally: Suslov was digging under Ilyichev, and the names of the Central Committee employees who were responsible for this process are characteristic - Potseluev and Bezobrazova.) And even not that he, unlike Stalin, was a real, sincere Bolshevik; He hated the Church personally and not by party order - when burying his first wife, he forbade the coffin to be carried through the church, and had to be passed at arm's length through the cemetery fence. And therefore, like any sincere politician, he made a serious mess; Romanticism in politics is much more dangerous than cynicism.

No, it was something else. First of all, two things. Firstly, in political Soviet masochism, in the erotic attraction of the masses to the sadistic leader and sexless contempt for cheerful and humane weaklings. Of course, he couldn't do anything about this. And secondly, the incompatibility of the principles of democracy and unlimited power. If you are the eternal ruler, deign to gnaw the people like a bone in Stalin’s style. Rumbling and pressing tightly with his paw. The bone will obligingly spin under you and ask: bite, bite! And if you want great science, peaceful space, corn fields, block five-story buildings, exceeding the meat plan, American exhibitions in Sokolniki, as well as everyday amenities for ordinary people, don’t sit out in the Kremlin. No need. This is unnecessary. (How many people, by the way, remember that Khrushchev’s last order to Moscow party secretary Yegorychev was to establish the production of plastic toilet seats?)

In Russia there is no need to wobble. If you are a normal tyrant, they will forgive the squeeze on the army, and the indecently harsh resignation of Zhukov, and coupons, and Cuban missiles, and Novocherkassk. Live longer, Father Tsar. And please be stricter with us. If you are an energetic fighter against the cult of personality, they will understand your short reign, applaud your American visit, and go live in barracks on unplowed virgin soil.

But then please leave Olympus on time.

And don’t fall into an absolutist rage, don’t get used to monarchical power, don’t become stupid from a feeling of complete permissiveness, don’t drive people to white heat, don’t fall in love with yourself.

However, there is nothing to blame Khrushchev for here either. He broke the autocratic model, which does not allow the thought of retiring - there is no peace, they only dream of peace; he destroyed the model of impostor, which involves the bullet, the noose and the silver snuffbox. But he did not manage to create a model of power limited in space and time, in powers and terms of execution. I couldn't. Therefore, he lost his sense of reality, as any too lively person placed in a vacuum of absolute power would lose. And he began to waste his irrepressible energy on tyranny.

But can we say that he suffered a crushing defeat on October 14, 1964?

Yes and no.

He was the first of the country's retired leaders to leave the plenum as a retired pensioner, and not an enemy of the people; to his native dacha, and not to Lubyanka. Or without the slightest delay to the morgue. It was a victory. What a victory was the forced retirement, spent in the gardens, under KGB supervision and without the right to go out in public. There was something Diocletian-esque about her, albeit with a folk-like, semi-fairytale coloring. The lingering power, having hit the head, gradually ebbed away, consciousness returned to normal, humanity returned. Khrushchev made peace with many of those whom he had wronged unnecessarily; I read Doctor Zhivago and was very surprised - why, fools, was it banned? And I myself found myself in exactly the same situation when I was transmitting a typewritten copy of my memories abroad. Transmitted, of course, secretly. The publishers demanded confirmation. I had to take a photo wearing a cowboy hat they sent me through my son; the photograph was sent to London: this was the spy password.

He proved that there is life after power . And this was a grand discovery, on par with the victory over repression. A comparison with Gorbachev, who also left amid hooting and whom the great Russian authorities still consider one of the main traitors in the history of the country, naturally suggests itself; For 23 years now he has been proving that life after power is just beginning. By the way, a funny coincidence: both Khrushchev and Gorbachev, hot southern guys, had the misfortune of having last names that end in “yov.” And in Russia they still love leaders whose last names end in “in.”

Nikita Khrushchev: a lesson in belated resignation