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Khrushchev Remembered

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Khrushchev Remembered Pensioner Nikita Khrushchev, with his recorder and his country home, 15 miles from Moscow. He used the dug, while leisurely strolling on the grounds of his tape recorder to record his controversial memoirs. Khrushchev Remembered by Strobe Talbott EDITOR'S NOTE: Strobe Talbott, had an earthy sense of humor and a his embarrassment at his 1961 eyeball author of the accompanying article rambunctious personality which were to eyeball debate with Khrushchev in on Nikita Khrushchev, is the editor somehow undulled by years of skulking Vienna. and translator of Khrushchev Remem- around the back stairwells of the.Soviet Some world statesmen, including bers, the best-selling and controver- power structure. These qualities, his some of Khrushchev's ideological ad- sial memoirs of the former Soviet mischievous wit and unpredictable versaries, appreciated the saltier side of Premier which were first published ebullience, made him far more inter- last year. A graduate of Yale, Class of esting and likeable than most bureau- '68, and a Rhodes scholar, Mr. Talbott crats, politicians, and statesmen. is a writer whose special interest is the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's face felt as though I knew Nikita Khrush- Among the furrowed brows, pasted- chev personally, even though I on smiles, inscrutable masks, and sour- never met him. While working on puss expressions of most world leaders IKhrushchev Remembers, I spent past and present, Khrushchev's comic, many hours every day poring over his wart-dotted, but intelligent face was an story, told in his own words, about his original. Certainly among Soviet lead- rise from a coal miner's shack in the ers, he represented an inspired bit of south of Russia to the pinnacle of power casting. With his turnip nose, his easy in the Kremlin. I got to know him well, gap-toothed grin, his darting alert eyes, and I liked him. and his Alfred Hitchcock figure, he In his day Khrushchev had been never looked the part he was supposed highly successful as a bureaucrat, poli- to play in international showdowns or tician, and a statesman—three walks of summits—but he usually managed to life not known for their fun-loving play the part better than anyone ex- STROBE TALBOTT types. But Khrushchev was different. He pected, as John F. Kennedy learned to off-the-cuff and spiced his repartee with animated geitures, jokes of all, ItiA personality. One Western sorts, folksy proverbs, playfut-Thsuits,"` leader once remarked of Kniuslicilev, temper tantrums, provocative outbursts, "Even when he pounds his shoe on the and occasionally a Biblical phrase hark- table, you've got to admit—it's a very ing back to his strict Russian Orthodox human thing to do." upbringing as a child. There is a lot of verbal shoe-pound- ing in Khrushchev Remembers. On Worth quoting every page I found a reminder that I was in the presence of a very lively Reporters following him around this human being who could be as enter- country quickly learned that when the taining as he was enigmatic. irrepressible Russian leader departed from the prepared text of a speech and A hit with Americans started to extemporize, he was sure to Even though he perSOMfied the come out with something worth quot- "enemy" and the "Communist threat ing. To recall some examples of Khrush- to our way of life," Khrushchev was a chev at his best: great hit with many Americans during During his visit to the United Nations his two trips to the United States in 1959 in.the fall of 1960, he met the press at and 1960. He had made his coming-out the country retreat for the Soviet U.N. debut to the capitalist West only four mission in Glen Cove, Long Island. He years earlier at the age of 61 when he was asked by a newsman, "What can attended the Geneva Summit Confer- you say about your stay here, in the ence in 1955. Yet no sooner did he land heart of capitalism?" in Washington in 1959 than he proved Khrushchev replied, "This is the heart to be a masterful ringmaster of the of capitalism and I have the heart of a Soviet diplomatic roadshow. Communist." He went on to say that He loved meeting people, sightsee- Communists can coexist peacefully with ing, hamming it up for photographers, capitalists just as a young man some- but most of all he loved to talk. He times finds it worthwhile to settle down talked anytime, anywhere, to anyone with an old but rich widow even though who would listen. he's not madly in love with her. And he was rarely boring. He was Later he quipped that if Christians noticeably impatient with formal could accept the idea of the-Holy Trin- speeches. He much preferred to speak ity, the United States should be willing Khrushchev loved talk, proverbs, jokes of all sprts, and here the conversation flowed at the family dining table. Next to him is his:daughter Lena and his wife serving. A compassionate Khrushchev was sympathetic to Stalin's daughter, above, her husband, American architect Peters, and their daughter Olga. witb " 19 orful for his own good. While he was CONTINUED alternately delighting and bedeviling the West, he was driving his colleagues to accept the "troika," or three-man back home crazy-with his erratic public Secretariat which the Russians were bebavior. Finally, the Soviet bureaucrats then proposing in place of the. U.N. and politicians from whose ranks he Secretary-General. had risen were fed up with Comrade Asked if he was going to make a sec- Nikita Sergeyevich, and they brought ond address before the General As- him down. His memoirs are packed sembly, he answered that he had to in with examples of the recklessness and order to cover his travel expenses. impetuosity which were part of his While visiting the Hollywood set of undoing. Irma La Douce in 1959, the Soviet Pre- mier and his wife were watching Shir- - Lived in comfort ley Maclaine and a chorus line rehearse . It is a testimony to Nikita Khrush- the cancan. When the dancing girls chev's most important accomplishment flipped up the back of their skirts to the that despite his disgrace and uncere- audience, Khrushchev leapt indignantly monious departure from office in 1964, to his feet and shielded Mrs. Khrush- he was allowed to live in a comfortable chev's eyes from the scene. dacha just outside Moscow on a state "Humanity's face is more beautiful pension for seven years and to die a than her backside," he explained. natural death at the ripe old age of 77. The Russian original of Khrushchev According to Stalinist precedent, if Remembers reflected vividly this aspect a man lost in the Kremlin power game, of Khrushchev's personality: the charm- he lost his life—usually in a prison, ing, canning loudmouth, blienient with a bullet' in the back of the neck. Skillful talker Khrushchev broke that precedent Regardless of whether he was pro- when he came to power, replacing claiming self-righteously about the bad Stalinist terror with a still imperfect but old days of Stalin or boasting about his radically improved style of government own moments of glory in the interna- behavior. And he benefited personally tional spotlight, I found Khrushchev's from the improvement when his turn reminiscences a fascinating virtuoso came to fall from power. Hustled off performance by one of the most skillful into retirement, he joined the ranks of talkers of all times. his own ousted rivals Nikolai Bulganin, He was also a skillful liar. His recol- Lazar Kaganovich, Georgi Malenkov, lections are full of deceptions, distor- Vyachestav Molotov, acid Kiirnent Vora,: tions, evasions, hoked-up alibis, and shilov—a circle of men whose continu- lapses of memory; but they are con- ing existence symbolized a momentous sistently as colorful as was the man recovery from the homicidal mass himself. mania which had afflicted the USSR In the murky world of Russian poli- for almost a quarter of a century. tics, Khrushchev was probably too col- The question uppermost in my mind when I immersed myself in Khrush- had strong moral instincts, too. It was chev's reminiscences was: How was this incredible that a man who had gone man able to overcome his own past and through the brutalization_ ofA Stalinist force his country to break with itsvast? career could have any moral sense left. Paradoxically, the Russian leader Yet Khrushchev's basic humanity is Who at the age of 61 shook the world, apparent at many spots in his memoirs, particularly the Communist world, with particularly in the chapter where he ex- his de-Stalinization speech of 1956 had presses his compassion for Svetlana previously spent all his life as a func- Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter who de- tionary and beneficiary of Stalinism. fected to the West. While the official Khrushchev's metamorphosis from a line promoted by his successors holds loyal and often ruthless Stalinist into the that Svetlana is a traitor and "morally prosecutor who denounced Stalin's sick," Khrushchev undoubtedly took crimes at the Twentieth Party Congress pleasure in the news that Svetlana, now cannot be explained simply in terms of living happily in the United States as self-serving hypocrisy and political Mrs. William Wesley Peters, gave birth opportunism. this year to a baby daughter named His own complicity Olga. Khrushchev's fundamental decency Granted, he decided to deliver the is also evident in those sections of famous Secret Speech as part of a bold Khrushchev Remembers where his gamble to show who was boss as he memory turns, with sadness and sym- maneuvered for supreme power against pathy, to Svetlana's mother Nadezhda.
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