How it was №4282 11/27/2002 (2002)

The first attempt to overthrow NS Khrushchev, 1957.

It is believed that the first serious (and successful) attempt to overthrow Nikita Khrushchev from the post of the country's leader was the conspiracy of the highest Soviet party leaders in the summer-autumn of 1964.

In fact, Nikita Sergeevich could retire 7 years earlier, in the summer of 1957. June 18 at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee with sharp criticism in his address Was made by the "old Stalinist guard" - Kaganovich, Molotov and Malenkov, who still retained their positions in the party and state.

It is not known how the events would turn out if not for the position of the USSR Minister of Defense, Marshal G. Zhukov.

In fact, Zhukov saved Khrushchev, ordering to deliver to Moscow all the members of the Central Committee on military aircraft.

The plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU was urgently convened, the Molotov-Malenkov-Kaganovich group was convicted, Khrushchev remained at his post.

Khrushchev did not accept extremely harsh measures towards his opponents: he appointed Molotov ambassador to Mongolia, Malenkov sent to lead the hydroelectric power station in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Shepilova made director of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of Kirghizia.

As a result of the defeat of the "anti-party group" in the country, not only the opposition was completely destroyed, but the one-man power of NS Khrushchev was established for the next 7 years.

Historian Vitaliy Afiani, professor Andrei Malenkov (son of GM Malenkov), Vladimir Tevosyan (son of IF Tevosyan) are immersed in the study of the failed coup d'état.

The interview is supplemented with fragments of interviews with the memoirs of journalists Ella Zhukova (daughter of Marshal G. Zhukov) and Rada Adzhubey (daughter of Khrushchev) and writer and historian Roy Medvedev.

Personnel chronicles: an excerpt of the newsreel "News of the Day", a fragment of the meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on June 18, 1957, articles in Soviet newspapers.