Question To what extent was Destalinisation Responsible for Khrushchev's fall from power in 1964? Response In 1964, there was a growing faction of people opposing Khrushchev and his regime within the high Party of the Soviet Union. Without Party support, Khrushchev was almost powerless. In October 1964, Khrushchev was called back from holiday to attend a Presidium meeting where various members proceeded to list the many flaws and downfalls Khrushchev had in his leadership, and then completely shut him out, forcing him to resign. To the public, the ˜official' reason for his resignation was poor health, although this did not stop the Party newspaper ˜Pravda' from strongly criticising his ˜harebrained schemes'. Whilst there were many failures leading to his downfall, including some substantial foreign policy errors, in my opinion, Khrushchev was ultimately removed because of his policy of Destalinisation, and furthermore, Destalinisation underpins the majority of the USSR's failures under Khrushchev. Khrushchev's policy of Destalinisation was a clear failure. Almost every Stalinist idea or policy resonated through the USSR at least to some extent long after Khrushchev's time, there are even some clear Stalinist roots in Russia's society today. The truth is, Khrushchev was never going to completely dismantle a state that Stalin had not only been a supreme leader of for as long as people can remember, but a communist state which he helped create. But Khrushchev's failings came not in the failure of enacting the policy of Destalinisation, but the fact that he had even attempted to put in place such a policy. Many party members had only known Stalin and his strict regime and therefore a policy of Destalinisation caused great offence to them, and thus made Khrushchev greatly unpopular. The same could be said for high profile members of the warty who had been long standing Stalin supporters, (they must have been to survive Stalin's purges) to see a system which had been in place for over 20 years changed by an arrogant Khrushchev was not at all favourable. In my opinion, from the start there were too many die hard Stalinists within the party who were always going to oppose Khrushchev's ideas of Destalinisation and ultimately turn against him. On the flip side, the limitations on Destalinisation were not extreme eno