Bulganin's government | |
|---|---|
 16th Government of the Soviet Union | |
 | |
| Date formed | 8 February 1955 |
| Date dissolved | 27 March 1958 |
| People and organisations | |
| Head of state | Kliment Voroshilov |
| Head of government | Nikolai Bulganin |
| Deputy head of government | Vyacheslav Molotov |
| No. of ministers | 74 |
| History | |
| Election | 1954 legislative election |
| Predecessor | Malenkov II |
| Successor | Khrushchev I |
The former government of Georgy Malenkov was dissolved on February 8, 1955, and Bulganin succeeded Malenkov as premier of the Soviet Union that day. [1] [2] He was generally seen as a supporter of Khrushchev's reforms and de-Stalinisation. In July 1955, he attended the Geneva Summit, with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, French Prime Minister Edgar Faure, and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. He and Khrushchev travelled together to India, Yugoslavia and in April 1956 to Britain, where they were known in the press as "the B and K show" [3] or "Bulge and Crush". In his memoirs, however, Khrushchev recounted that he believed that he "couldn't rely on [Bulganin] fully." [4]
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During the Suez Crisis of October–November 1956, Bulganin sent letters to the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and Israel threatening rocket attacks on London, Paris, and Tel Aviv if they did not withdraw their forces from Egypt. In a letter to Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, Bulganin wrote, "Israel is playing with the fate of peace, with the fate of its own people, in a criminal and irresponsible manner; ... which will place a question [mark] upon the very existence of Israel as a State." [5] Khrushchev, in his memoirs, admitted the threat was designed simply to divide Western opinion, especially since at the time he did not have enough ICBMs to launch the rockets, and in any case he had no intention of going to war in 1956.
But by 1957 Bulganin had come to share the doubts held about Khrushchev's policies by the opposition group (which Khrushchev and his supporters labelled the "Anti-Party Group") led by Vyacheslav Molotov. In June, when the dissenters tried to remove Khrushchev from power at a meeting of the Politburo, Bulganin vacillated between the two camps. When the dissenters were defeated and removed from power, Bulganin held on to his position for a while, but in March 1958, at a session of the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev forced his resignation. [2] The government of Nikolai Bulganin was dissolved following the Soviet legislative election of 1958. Nikita Khrushchev was elected as the next Premier by the Politburo and the Central Committee following the election.
