July 2 — After lengthy debates in the U.S. Senate, President Lyndon Johnson (Lyndon Baines Johnson) signed the Civil Rights Act, proposed by his predecessor J. F. Kennedy (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) in 1963. The law that entered into force formally put an end to discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin.
August 5 — Vietnam War: U.S. aircraft bomb North Vietnam for the first time (Operation “Piercing Arrow”).
October 14 — Leonid Brezhnev becomes General Secretary of the CPSU and the leader of the USSR, replacing Nikita Khrushchev. On October 13 at 4 p.m., a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee began in the Kremlin.
The meeting lasted until 8 p.m. Khrushchev was presented with an impressive list of accusations: from the collapse of agriculture and grain purchases abroad to the publication in the press of more than a thousand of his photographs over two years. The next day, the meeting continued. Brezhnev, addressing Khrushchev, said: “I have been with you since 1938. In 1957 I fought for you. I cannot make a deal with my conscience… Relieve Khrushchev of the posts he holds; separate the posts.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Khrushchev spoke. In his speech he said: “Together with you I fought the anti-party group. I value your honesty… I tried not to hold two posts, but it was you who gave me these two posts! … Leaving the stage, I repeat: I am not going to fight you… Right now I am both worried and glad, because a period has come when members of the Presidium of the Central Committee have begun to control the activity of the First Secretary of the Central Committee and to speak in a full voice… Am I really a ‘cult’? You smeared me with filth from head to toe, and I say: ‘Correct.’ Is that a cult?! Today’s meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee is a victory for the party… I thank you for giving me the opportunity to resign. Please write the resignation statement for me, and I will sign it. I am ready to do everything in the interests of the party… I thought that perhaps you might consider establishing some kind of honorary post. But I am not asking you for that. Decide for yourselves where I should live. I am ready, if necessary, to go anywhere. Once again, thank you for the criticism, for our work together over a number of years, and for your willingness to give me the opportunity to resign.”
By decision of the Presidium, a resignation statement was prepared on Khrushchev’s behalf. Khrushchev signed it. Then Brezhnev proposed electing Nikolai Podgorny as First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, but he began to refuse and proposed Leonid Brezhnev for the post. This decision was adopted. It was also decided to recommend Alexei Kosygin for the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
There are various versions of who organized N. S. Khrushchev’s removal, but in all variants active participation is noted on Brezhnev’s part in eliminating his former patron. However, no one expected Brezhnev to remain in power for long. He was seen as an interim figure and at first was not perceived as a leader. Yet neither Stalin nor Khrushchev was immediately perceived as a leader either. But neither of them found it so easy to gain power. Stalin had to eliminate almost all members of Lenin’s Politburo; Khrushchev withstood pressure from influential rivals, including figures such as Molotov, who had stood at the foundation of the state since almost Lenin’s time. By the way, it was Khrushchev who set the precedent of sparing the lives of defeated opponents.
The most tragic thing was that L. I. Brezhnev turned out to be completely unprepared to occupy leading positions. His advancement was aided by a coalition of very different forces. This was influenced by dissatisfaction with Khrushchev’s dismissive attitude toward his colleagues, his unwillingness to take their opinions into account in decision-making, fears about adventurous actions and sharp turns in his policy, and, above all, dissatisfaction among the conservative part of the administrative apparatus with constant instability, upheaval, changes, and reforms that could not be anticipated.
These contradictory forces set different tasks for themselves: some assumed a return to Stalinist methods; others advanced a program that, more consistently than under Khrushchev, relied on implementing the anti-Stalinist decisions of the 20th Party Congress. But Brezhnev accepted neither extreme.
Faithful to tradition and conservative by temperament, he feared sudden moves, sharp turns, and major changes most of all. Above all, he took care to nullify Khrushchev’s radical initiatives and to restore what had proven stable back in Stalin’s times. First of all, the sovnarkhozy and the division of party bodies into industrial and agricultural branches were abolished, as they created a host of inconveniences for the administrative apparatus. Major officials returned to Moscow, having found themselves on the periphery against their will.
Instead of the eleven-year school term, which had aimed at polytechnic education, they returned again to a new ten-year term. Peasants got back their household plots. The universal spread of the “queen of the fields,” corn, came to an end. Collective farmers received pension coverage, and a minimum wage was guaranteed for those working in collective farms. The quota for mandatory deliveries was reduced, and purchases of agricultural products at higher prices increased. However, all these agricultural measures had been planned already under Khrushchev. The last burst of innovation was the September Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, where, at A. N. Kosygin’s initiative, an economic reform was proclaimed. But implementing the program of economic transformations proved so difficult that it soon ceased to exist. L. I. Brezhnev’s negative attitude toward the reform played no small role. He tried to do without even moderately serious transformations not only in the economy. The idea of constant renewal, rotation of cadres, was reduced to nothing. In opposition to it, the slogan of stability was advanced, which прежде всего suited the administrative apparatus.