If upon occasion in the past Nikita Khrushchev took an indulgent view of the Stalinist process of natural selection in the Party apparatus, it would hardly have been surprising. He was, after all, a most prominent product and beneficiary of it. Yet, without in any way criticizing the process as such, Khrushchev constantly manifested a nagging concern over its end results. In part this concern may be attributed, as it often has been, to a readiness to regard personnel changes as a panacea for difficulties in reality stemming from deep structural flaws in the Soviet economy and administrative system. And it can hardly be denied that in 1962 and 1963 Khrushchev was confronted with serious difficulties in agriculture and industry. But there is also little reason to doubt that he was genuinely worried about the effectiveness— and hence the quality—of Party cadres, or, furthermore, that there were grounds for his uneasiness.