«Сердечные встречи»: ритуалы поездок Н.С. Хрущева по СССР (1957-1964 гг.)

Laboratorium. Журнал социальных исследований. 2025. Т. 17. № 2. С. 56–81.

Petrova T.

Nikita Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader, who practiced visits around the country as a scenario of power. During his seven years as the leader of the party and the government, he made several dozen tours of the regions and republics of the USSR, within which he checked the work of local authorities and communicated with the population. The frequency and careful planning of trips led to their ritualization and create an image of Khrushchev as a "people's" leader.

In this article, based on a large source material, the ritual side of the preparation and conduct of the visits of the head of the USSR to the places, as well as their role in the creation and representing of the leader’s image, is reconstructed.

Each visit of Khrushchev formally began with the approval of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, after which the center and the regions were preparing for the arrival of a delegation from Moscow. Tours included planned and spontaneous visits to industrial and agricultural facilities, meetings with local elites and the population, summing up. At the same time, if all the attention in the press focused only on the positive aspects of visits, then people's reaction to them was more differentiated. Such inconsistency in the formal and real aspects of visits minimized their propaganda effect and made it difficult to perceive Khrushchev as a truly "people's" leader.

Keywords: власть, СССР, общество, society, USSR, образ, power, image, political rituals, Thaw, политический ритуал, Н.С. Хрущев, N.S. Khrushchev, Оттепель