meeting of the Presidium
in June of 1957 when the general was granted full membership in the Presidium,
Molotov mentioned to Khrushchev that Zhukov's fame as Minister of Defense was
likely to make him Premier, like Bulganin. Khrushchev became nervous
about losing his engineered popularity due to the fall of Stalinism to Zhukov
and began to orchestrate the general's removal, effectively making Khrushchev a
conspirator in the plot against himself. That October, while visiting
Albania, Zhukov was voted into forced retirement.

Khrushchev began pushing for
military reform, attempting to undo Zhukov's policy of the political agencies
of the military reporting to commanding officers before the Communist
Party. The move lost him a great deal of support politically as it became
evident he was consolidating power. By the beginning of spring the next
year, the Presidium voted to remove him as theyhad Zhukov. Khrushchev
was demoted to managing agricultural materials in the Ukraine, where he would
live out the rest of his life.

With the conservatives back in
control of the Soviet Union, they attempted to recast the nation away from
Khrushchev's policies. The Virgin Lands Campaign began to fail, leading
to a new campaign of improving production on existing land and increasing sophistication
in communal farms. The use of tanks in Hungary in 1956 was seen as widely
unpopular, and the USSR was saved from international scorn only by the timely
seizure of the Suez Canal. Molotov set to work rebuilding the Soviet
image, capitalizing on Russian advantages in the Space Race to encourage
communist action in other countries as Colonialism ended. Relations with
Mao's China improved, and gradually China, Mongolia, North Korea and later countries
in Southwest Asia were inducted