, leader of the Soviet Union (1954–1964) Suslov recovered his authority in 1955 and was elected to a seat in the Presidium, bypassing the customary candidate membership. In the
20th Party Congress of 1956, Khrushchev delivered the famous
Secret Speech about Stalin's
cult of personality. In Suslov's ideological report on 16 February, he updated his criticism of Stalin and his personality cult: During the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Suslov, along with
Anastas Mikoyan, operated in close proximity to
Budapest in order to direct the activities of the Soviet troops and to lend assistance to the new Hungarian leadership. Suslov and Mikoyan attended the Politburo meeting of the
Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party which elected
János Kádár to the office of General Secretary. In a telegram to the Soviet leadership, Suslov and Mikoyan acknowledged that the situation had become more dire, but both were content with the dismissal of
Ernő Gerő as General Secretary and the choice of Kádár as his successor. The
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet criticised Suslov's and Mikoyan's concessions to the new government in the
People's Republic of Hungary. Despite his initial reservations, Suslov eventually supported the Presidium's decision to intervene in Hungary militarily and replace the government's leadership there. In June 1957, Suslov backed Khrushchev during his struggle with the
Anti-Party Group led by
Georgy Malenkov,
Vyacheslav Molotov,
Lazar Kaganovich, and
Dmitry Shepilov. Mikoyan later wrote in his memoirs that he convinced Suslov to support Khrushchev by telling him that Khrushchev would emerge the winner even if he did not have enough support in the Presidium. The following October Suslov accused
Georgy Zhukov, the
Minister of Defence, of "Bonapartism" at the Central Committee plenum that removed him from all party and government posts. The removal of Zhukov had the effect of firmly subordinating the armed forces to party control. In a speech on 22 January 1958, Khrushchev officially proposed to dissolve the
Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS), state organizations that owned and maintained the farm machinery used by
kolkhozy. This reform had a particular significance in Soviet ideology. In Marxist-Leninist doctrine, cooperative ownership of property was considered a "lower" form of public ownership than state ownership. Khrushchev's proposal to expand cooperative ownership ran contrary to the
Marxist theory as interpreted by Stalin. Suslov, who supported Stalin's economic policy, regarded Khrushchev's proposal as unacceptable on ideological grounds. In an election speech to the Supreme Soviet in March 1958, Suslov refused to recognise the ideological significance of Khrushchev's reform, preferring instead to focus on the reform's practical benefits in improving productivity. Unlike other Party leaders, Suslov avoided mentioning Khrushchev as the MTS reform's initiator. The
21st Party Congress convened in January 1959. Khrushchev wanted to consider the draft of a new Seven-Year plan. Suslov cautiously demonstrated against Khrushchev's statement that the country had developed from the
socialist state of development to the higher state of communist development. He saw Khrushchev's view as flawed, and countered that his view had not been approved by the Party. To discredit Khrushchev's assertion further, Suslov invoked
Karl Marx and
Vladimir Lenin: Suslov was becoming progressively more critical of Khrushchev's policies, his political intransigence, and his campaign to eliminate what was left of the
Stalinist old guard. There were also deep-seated divergences in foreign and domestic policy between Suslov and Khrushchev. Suslov opposed the idea of improving
Soviet Union–United States relations and was against Khrushchev's attempts at rapprochement with
Yugoslavia. Domestically, Suslov opposed Khrushchev's policy of
de-Stalinisation and his
economic decentralisation scheme. Suslov visited the United Kingdom in 1959 as a parliamentarian for the
Supreme Soviet. The visit was a success, and
Hugh Gaitskell, the
Leader of the Labour Party, travelled to the Soviet Union later that year as a guest.
Sino–Soviet relations had long been strained and, as Suslov told the Central Committee in one of his reports, "The crux of the matter is that the
Leadership of the CCP has recently developed tendencies to exaggerate the degree of maturity of socialist relations in China... There are elements of conceit and haughtiness. [These shortcomings] are largely explained by the atmosphere of the
cult of personality of comrade
Mao Zedong... who, by all accounts, himself has come to believe in his own infallibility." Suslov compared Mao's growing personality cult with that seen under Joseph Stalin. Suslov was highly critical of Maoist China, as he led the
Sino-Soviet Dispute and criticized
Maoism in various ways under the Khrushchev administration, particularly its split from the Soviet leadership in the
Socialist Camp, the rejection of the theory of
Peaceful Coexistence, and Mao's support of anti-Soviet rival communist militant groups globally. In a report made on
14 February 1964 at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Suslov compared Mao's China to
Trotskyism, and denounced the Chinese leadership as
petty-bourgeois nationalists and
left-deviationists: In the years following the failure of the Anti-Party Group, Suslov became the leader of the faction in the Central Committee opposed to Khrushchev's leadership, known as the "Moscow faction". Khrushchev was able to hold on to power by conceding to various opposition demands in times of crisis, such as during the
1960 U-2 incident and the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis. In the aftermath of the U-2 Crisis Suslov was able to remove, and replace, several of Khrushchev's appointees in the Politburo with new anti-Khrushchev members. Khrushchev's position was greatly weakened further after the failure of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Suslov's power greatly increased. A campaign to oust Khrushchev from office was initiated in 1964. Although leader of the opposition, Suslov had fallen seriously ill during his trip to the People's Republic of China the previous year; instead,
Leonid Brezhnev and
Alexei Kosygin led the opposition. ==Brezhnev era==