ABSTRACT
The final stage of the Nikita Khrushchev era was one of multiple frustrations and reactions. He was only doing what he had been doing since 1953: attempting to demonstrate that political transformation could be made consistent with political stability, and could be used as a substitute for radical budgetary reallocation. Even in 1964, when Khrushchev went furthest in finally facing up to the budgetary implications of consumer needs, he did not embrace Georgy Malenkov's program. Until the second half of 1960, Khrushchev displayed no sense of urgency about the ominous economic trends beginning to converge. He was able to rationalize the poor harvest of 1959 with reference to his theory that in Soviet agriculture "good years alternate with bad ones". In August 1960, however, after the mid-year results of the harvest had come in from the provinces, Khrushchev expressed doubts, and started to move in the direction of accepting the budgetary and political implications of the agricultural slowdown.
