Nikita Khrushchet
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Nikita Khrushchet 11)91# Nikita Khrushchev thought of himself as a phorically, "we , will bury you," many Americans simple son of the Soviet people elevated by cir- took him at his word. In global policymaking, how- almstances to the leadership of a great nation. ever, as in everything else this shrewd try-it-your- He was right, of course. His rags-to-power ascent self peasant's son undertook, he learned. First he to, the Kremlin, over so many dead bodies--"it boasted and rattled the Soviet Union's new intercon- wasn't very easy for me," he wrote in his 'memoirs, tinental rockets. Then, in a series of power plays "but I did it and I tried to keep a pleasant expres- culminating in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, he sion on my face"—was itself an improbable and tried to transform missile strength into political remarkable achievement. He ruled for a decade and strategic advantage. Finally,, in Cuba, he per- after the , evil Stalin, ending the terror—this was t4ceived very real limitations ,placed on politi- his greatest contribution-.And replacing It with a cal-strategic maneuver by the imperatives of hu- more humane discipline, attempting to bring to his man survival. "In a nuclear war," he once said people some of the material rewards long promiseei with characteristic pungency, "the living would I them for their sacrifices, and all the time clinging envy", t.he dead." - to-the- narrovreonirounist -doctrine which -he-ac- Utider- the .slogan -of "peaceful --coexbtence,” ---- cepted as his Compass in an uncharted world. He • Khrushchev pursued a policy--dictated not only believed in Communism and thought of it in terms by his Conimunist ideology and Russian nationalism of service to people but as he showed in the crises but by his personal combativeness as well—of es- which studded his rule, he believed finally in pending Soviet power. Inevitably this brought col- power. lisions with the United States. For all the dead- For all the, fascination of his personaliti,. What lines of the Soviet challenge, however, he was in necessarily riveted American attention upon him many ways a model adversely. He was an authentic was that he led the Soviet Union in the period in person, not a tyrant, not a zealot, not an automa- •which it gained the power not only to check the ton, not a clerk. He had the courage to draw back United States in moves abroad but to destroy the from great peril, even at heavy later cost. He United States with nuclear arms. Nikita Khrush- recognized that certain rules on international corn- - cher_caine _personally to symbolize an unprece, petition had to -be accepted. -9Nobody's-perfect,? dented threat both to American preeminence and he said, "I'm no saint myself." But he was in a pe- American survival. When he said, surely meta- culiar sense a great man. .