What epithets and nicknames did not endow the Soviet people with Nikita Khrushchev, who, unexpectedly for many, replaced Joseph Stalin himself as the country's leader. "Nikita the Miracle Worker" in this series is perhaps the most affectionate, even complimentary. Many of his miracles, like the "Queen of the Fields" of corn, space flights or the superbomb ("Kuz'ka's mother"), people still remember, but most have forgotten. Not so long ago, they remembered the Crimea, generously donated by Khrushchev's lads from Ukraine, but they hardly know that a completely different kind of generosity could greatly reduce the borders of Kazakhstan - the second largest union republic after Russia.
On January 24, 1959, an extraordinary closed joint meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Collegium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR took place. On it Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, shortly before that, at the end of March 1958, who replaced Marshal N. A. Bulganin as head of the Council of Ministers, said that “the borders between many republics and regions are irrational.” “Some have vast territories, and some“huddle”within narrow boundaries. . Soon they began to prepare a draft of the corresponding resolution of the Central Committee of the Party and the Union Council of Ministers.
But it all started not only and not so much with the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in early 1954. In the middle - second half of the 1950s, the Lipetsk region was established, which was carved out of the territories of the Tambov, Voronezh, Oryol and Ryazan regions. Then the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was recreated, which was immediately transferred to a number of adjacent districts of the Rostov, Stalingrad regions, Stavropol and the Volga port of Burunny in the Astrakhan region, which since 1961 bears the "national" name of Tsagan-Aman.
A little later, a number of districts of the Smolensk, Bryansk and Kaliningrad regions were transferred with the same amazing generosity to neighboring Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. Finally, the main fuel and energy base of the Moscow coal basin and, we emphasize, the entire non-black earth region of the Russian Federation - then the Stalinogorsk district of the Moscow region was transferred to the Tula region.
But there were also much larger projects. And everything had to start, in fact, from Kazakhstan - it was this republic that Khrushchev considered too large in territory. Khrushchev more than once admired the grain successes of Kazakhstan achieved in the first virgin years. The republic received high awards, and Khrushchev in his speeches regularly called on to learn from the Kazakh virgin lands.
But over time, Nikita Sergeevich began to fear many other things, and not only the already formed "anti-party group" headed by Molotov, but a little later - the colossal authority of Marshal Zhukov. The fears of the first secretary of the Central Committee grew stronger in relation to the same Kazakhstan. And in this case, it was not at all about nationalism, the logic was completely different - they say, virgin land records too strongly strengthened the authority of the leadership of the Kazakhstan SSR.
By that time, Kazakhstan had not only become the main grain base of the USSR, but the Kazakh SSR was not only territorially the largest union republic after the RSFSR. It was in Kazakhstan at that time that such strategically important objects as the Baikonur cosmodrome and the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site settled. And all these factors in the aggregate, according to Khrushchev, could well have prompted the Kazakh authorities to try to change something in the top Soviet leadership. For example, we could talk about the "de-Ukrainianization" of the party Central Committee after the departure of Stalin.
Although in reality there has not yet been a hint of such attempts, Khrushchev nevertheless decided in advance to territorially "obkarkat" Kazakhstan. In February 1959, Nikita Sergeevich managed to complain about the fact that Kazakhstan is "too big in its territory" in February 1959 in a private conversation with the then head of Azerbaijan, Dashdemir Mustafayev.
However, back in the fall of 1956, Moscow decided to transfer to Uzbekistan the vast Bostandyk region with an area of about 420 thousand hectares. It was one of the most fertile regions in the southeast of Kazakhstan, but the republic's leadership preferred to only "softly" challenge this decision. It seems that in Kazakhstan they decided to avoid radical personnel decisions on the part of Khrushchev, who, as you know, did not delay with this. But in 1965, half of this territory, by order of the already new, after Khrushchev, the leadership of the USSR, was returned to Kazakhstan.
In September 1960, Khrushchev invited the then Kazakhstani leaders to Moscow - the secretary of the republican Central Committee of the party, Dinmukhamed Kunayev, and the head of the Council of Ministers, Zhumabek Tashenev. He told them that along with the creation in the same year of the "Virgin Land" as part of all North Kazakhstan regions, it would be necessary to think about transferring a number of other territories to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
Say, such a large territory of Kazakhstan, although almost a third of it went under the "Virgin Land", significantly slows down its socio-economic development. The "virgin land", which existed from December 1960 to October 1965 inclusive, was only formally a part of Kazakhstan, but in fact it was subordinate to the leadership not even of the RSFSR, but of the USSR.
D. Kunaev together with Zh. Tashenev, as one might expect, strongly opposed. But Kunaev was removed from office only in 1962, and after Khrushchev's resignation, he again headed the Kazakhstani Communist Party. Kunaev, thus, received a kind of calculation from Brezhnev and his associates for unequivocal support of the conspiracy against Khrushchev. Dinmukhamed Kunayev remained the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan until 1986, when almost all those who once “filmed” Khrushchev had already gone into another world.
Zhumabek Tashenev was removed from the central governing bodies of the republic earlier, already in 1961, but he was not destined to return to high posts after Khrushchev's resignation. Historians from Kazakhstan are convinced that the Kremlin was very much afraid of the politically influential Kunaev-Tashenev tandem.
In this regard, the information of the national portal on the history of Kazakhstan "Altynord" dated July 14, 2014 is typical: "Khrushchev at that time was possessed by an obsession - to cut off the lands in the north, south and west from Kazakhstan and distribute them to neighbors. withdraw to Russia, the oil fields of Mangyshlak to Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan, cotton regions to Uzbekistan.
At a meeting of the Kazakh SSR partykhozaktiv in Akmolinsk, which later became Akmola, Khrushchev said: “There is one urgent question - about the area of land in the republic. With comrade Kunaev and the heads of the regions (which ones? - Author's note), we have already exchanged views on this matter: they support our proposal."
The latter was an outright falsification, very characteristic of the Khrushchev style of leadership. At the same time, Comrade Khrushchev warned: "For that matter, we can make a decision without your consent." But only a few delegates voted for Khrushchev's proposal at this event: the overwhelming majority chose to abstain.
And in the spring of 1961, in the barracks of a military camp in the Akmola region, "a large republican meeting was held, mainly on the same issues. Without giving anyone a word to say, Khrushchev attacked Kunaev. What did he not say about him! "But again to no avail.
Finally, in 1962, Moscow started talking about the transfer of the Mangyshlak Peninsula (this is almost 25% of the territory of Kazakhstan) now to Azerbaijan. The idea was submitted from Baku, and the rationale was that Mangyshlak has long been engaged in oil production. The leadership of Kazakhstan instructed the republican minister of geology Shakhmardan Yessenov to “fight back”.
At a joint meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Council and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Kazakh minister was able to prove that Kazakhstan can successfully solve not only agricultural, but also industrial tasks. And he made those present agree that the republic has qualified specialists, material resources, extensive experience in the industrial development of mineral deposits.
After a heated discussion, Aleksey Kosygin himself unexpectedly sided with the Kazakh minister. No one dared to go against the authoritative chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, and as a result, the project did not take place. Soon Khrushchev was dismissed (October 1964), and, as you know, it was not the leading workers of Kazakhstan who did it, but the closest associates of Nikita Sergeevich …
It is also quite characteristic that it was in those years that territorial claims against Kazakhstan began to be put forward in China, first outlined in some regional Chinese media in 1963. It is also good that the Chinese leadership managed to moderate their appetites in time, and did not remember these claims during a period of serious aggravation of relations with the USSR after only a few years.
As for the draft of the corresponding joint resolution of the Central Committee of the Party and the Union Council of Ministers on territorial innovations within the USSR, it was prepared with reference to all the same Khrushchev's "ideas." They primarily concerned the territories of Kazakhstan and a number of its neighbors. But since those plans failed, the Kremlin apparently decided to hold back the final version of that document.
We have already noted that the Kazakh project, along with the Crimea donated to Ukraine, was by no means the only global national-territorial project of Khrushchev. Its innovations took place in Kazakhstan, it would seem, only the first run-in, on the eve of much more significant ethno-territorial redistributions. Even if only a little of what was once proposed by Khrushchev was put into practice, this could directly threaten the entire Soviet Union with the growing aggravation of interethnic relations.
It is possible that the collapse of the Union could have happened much earlier. Judging by a number of signs, Khrushchev and his "team" still could not help but understand this, but this did not prevent them from continuing to implement their dubious projects. It seems that Brezhnev, together with his comrades, understood quite well from what "perspective" they were saving a great power.
