Chapter 18 Summary

The 1961 harvest looks to be excellent, industrial output appears to be exceeding targets, a second cosmonaut has orbited the earth, and the giant new Volga hydroelectric station gives hope for the future. Three years earlier, Khrushchev named a drafting committee under Boris Ponomarev to analyze where the USSR and U.S. stand vis-a-vis one another economically now and 10-15 years hence. This is part of his dream to revise the party program of 1919, still in effect. Efforts in 1936, 1948, 1952, and 1956 to measure how far the USSR has traveled toward socialism's ultimate goal - communism -- have fallen short of completion and point to a precise, realistic, broad-gauged redefinition now, and Khrushchev is enthusiastic. Khrushchev deletes excessive detail from Ponomarev's October 1958 draft, tells the Twenty-first Party Congress in 1959 that communism is imminent, and orders further projections.

Unfortunately, these are based on the boom years of...