Khrushchev [antikvár]

In the years that have elapsed since Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev's enforced retirement much has been said and written about him outside the Soviet Union; hardly a word about him has been published in his own country. Yet he is remembered here, just as he is elsewhere - and that is natural, for he was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable and most ambivalent political figures of the twentieth century. Khrushchev is a provocative subject for a biography not simply because for eleven years he led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was head of the country's Government, at first de facto and later de jure, nor because in his hands was concentrated the almost unlimited authority of one of the two greatest world powers and he was often obliged to take decisions that affected, directly or indirectly, the fate of mankind. His life and personality also call for scrutiny and assessment because he was an outstanding statesman and politician whose stormy career carved a deep trench in the history of the Soviet Union and in that of the entire Communist movement. He met frequently nearly all the prominent political figures of his time - Tito, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Mao Tse-tung, de Gaulle, Castro, Churchill, Eden, Nehru, Ho Chi-minh, Sukarno, Nasser, Nkrumah, Adenauer, Togliatti. He was intimidated by none of them. When there was a conflict of interests or of views, he met the challenge unflinchingly - and if he did not always manage to emerge the victor in open political debate, at least he generally held his opponents to a draw. In his own country he manipulated his political colleagues iust as skilfully for a long time. He succeeded to the leadership after the death of Stalin, who had despised even his closest colleagues and, assuming apparently that he would live to a ripe old age, had not concerned himself with the question of a possible successor. The result was a bitter struggle for power when he died, from which Khrushchev emerged victorious, having revealed himself to be a match even for an opponent as formidable as Beria and quite capable of removing from