ABSTRACT
Iosif Stalin's death in 1953 saved Soviet society from serious problems and delayed the threat of a new war. The change of leadership in the Kremlin during the 1950s took place against a background of the Soviet Union's terrific successes in the arms race, especially in the realm of nuclear weapons production. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev enlarged the economic regions and initiated one of his most complicated experiments, the division of the ruling party and the state government bodies in accordance with the production principle. The idea was based on the assumption that with modern economic conditions, the territorial principle of party organization did not satisfy the requirements for economic management, since the party bodies were incapable of simultaneously paying equal attention to both industry and farming. Regardless of the final results of Khrushchev's regional politics, it opened the way for a renewal of regional studies in Russia.
