The recent resignation of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin “on health grounds” was heralded by the press as the most significant leadership change since Brezhnev and Kosygin came to power in October 1964 after Nikita Khrushchev was ousted as Soviet leader. On the contrary, neither event marked any “significant leadership change” because all support the same policies and come from the same faction of the same party.
Brezhnev and Kosygin were Khrushchev’s two highest-level co-conspirators in one of the world’s most daring p10ts — putting Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, close enough to destroy the United States. News accounts of the period reveal that Brezhnev and Kosygin, handpicked by Khrushchev (then the sole dictator of the Soviet Union), were the only men allowed in the most important meetings regarding sending missiles to Cuba.
When the all-powerful Khrushchev suddenly resigned in October 1964, the Western press called it “the world’s greatest mystery” but intuitively recognized it (in Newsweek’s words) as “a matter of life and death” for the West.
The 29 reasons listed by Brezhnev and Kosygin were mostly silly, such as “he tried to make wife Nina chairman of the Union of Soviet Women.” The U.S. State Department and CIA reasons were just as absurd; they said Khrushchev was deposed because he had advocated spending more capital on agriculture and consumer goods.
In fact, Khrushchev was not deposed in a palace coup by a rival faction, or because there was any difference between his policies and those of the men who replaced him. He simply turned over his power to his hand-picked successors who would provide Khrushchevism without Khrushchev — the same policies carried out by rulers who were less talkative, less abrasive, and more artful with words.
Khrushchev was the Soviet architect of the 20-year plan to build the Soviet Union into the world’s Number One nuclear power, a goal Russia has now reached. He set forth the plan in his landmark speech of January 6, 1961 to the 81 Communist Parties of the world then attending a conference in Moscow.
President John F. Kennedy assigned this speech as required reading by his officials on military and foreign policy. Dr. Stefan T. Possony’s brilliant 100-page analysis exposed it as a blueprint by which the Soviet Union intends “to destroy the United States by nuclear weapons” without itself being subjected to serious damage from U.S. retaliation.
Khrushchev’s speech launched the U.S.S.R.’s political commitment to pour an incredible percentage of its Gross National Product into a strategic nuclear weapons program, scientific, technological, productional, and operational. Khrushchev’s sending his offensive missiles into Cuba in 1962 was a daring attempt to accelerate the timing for the use of those weapons against the United States.
By 1964, Khrushchev had become obsessed with talking about nuclear weapons. He let slip that he believed that nuclear war is “inevitable.” He told visitors about a “monstrous new terrible weapon.” His typical greeting to Western diplomats was: “You know, they say that in order to destroy your country all one needs is six H-bombs, perhaps nine at the most. I have 12, all set aside just for you.”
The less flamboyant Kremlin leaders became concerned that Khrushchev’s slips of the tongue were jeopardizing their plans for world conquest, and their military investment of years of time and hundreds of billions of dollars wrung out of a poor economy. In other words, he was shooting off his big mouth.
A11 the evidence indicates that Khrushchev was forced or persuaded to resign because he had uselessly exposed secret Soviet plans. He was treated to just the right amount of “disgrace” to pretend that his ousting was an ordinary coup, but within a year it was apparent that he was actually treated like an honored ex-President. He had a Tuxurious apartment, a country home, a limousine and chauffeur, suits made in Italy, and he went in and out of the Kremlin and to the opera at will.
As the years went on, the American people were led to believe that “missile-crisis” Khrushchev had been replaced by a new breed of Russians who wear gray-flannel suits and believe in detente. Brezhnev, however, as Khrushchev’s protege, had been czar of the Soviet missile program and chairman of the Communist Party’s Military Affairs Committee.
It is now clear to all who have eyes to see that Brezhnev’s entire career as Soviet boss from 1964 through 1980 has carried out the strategy, tactics, and objectives laid down in Khrushchev’s 1961 speech. It took 10 to 20 years to build the strategic weapons forecast in that speech, and the Soviets now have nuclear superiority over us.
