v had been riding on a positive post-Stalin high. The ruling group had taken away it's need to depend on it's own population, which was very different than that during Stalin's rule. It reduced the powers of the secret police, and allowed for more agricultural productivity. Which in turn "allowed the Soviet population at large to enjoy many of the material benefits of industrial development... (because) the post-Stalin leadership had begun to unravel a highly autocratic system" (Christian, 373). However, the Cuban Missile Crisis tarnished all hopes of cutting back the defense budget, (an idea the Soviet government had about ten years ago when they were trying to find a cheap way of developing a nuclear defense strategy, however, much of this idea was dependent upon a bluff that the soviets had intermittent-nuclear-range missiles). The cutting o
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