ABSTRACT
Trepidation ensured a general consensus, running from Malenkov and Khrushchev to Brezhnev and his colleagues, that the reduction of coercion must be complemented by measures to consolidate and broaden support for the system. Both Khrushchev and his more cautious colleagues were conscious of the risk that destalinization and the return to socialist legality involved. Khrushchev initiated a fundamental reversal in the relationship of the agricultural sector to the rest of the economy. Even in the fiasco of Khrushchev's Cuban adventure, the Soviet role was successfully portrayed at home as that of injured peacemaker. Works in which the authorities detected criticism of the very bases of the Soviet system, which in the minds of Khrushchev's successors included frank analysis of Stalin's crimes, were systematically suppressed.
