Khrushchev

✍ Scribed by William Taubman

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 1093
• Edition: First Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

The definitive biography of the mercurial Soviet leader who succeeded and denounced Stalin. Nikita Khrushchev was one of the most complex and important political figures of the twentieth century. Ruler of the Soviet Union during the first decade after Stalin's death, Khrushchev left a contradictory stamp on his country and on the world. His life and career mirror the Soviet experience: revolution, civil war, famine, collectivization, industrialization, terror, world war, cold war, Stalinism, post-Stalinism. Complicit in terrible Stalinist crimes, Khrushchev nevertheless retained his humanity: his daring attempt to reform communism prepared the ground for its eventual collapse; and his awkward efforts to ease the cold war triggered its most dangerous crises.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Khrushchev and the first of any Soviet leader to reflect the full range of sources that have become available since the USSR collapsed. Combining a page-turning historical narrative with penetrating political and psychological analysis, this book brims with the life and excitement of a man whose story personified his era.

✦ Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Note on Russian and Ukrainian Usage
Preface
Introduction
1. The Fall: October 1964
2. Kalinovka’s Own: 1894–1908
3. Making It as a Metalworker: 1908–1917
4. To Be or Not to Be an Apparatchik: 1918–1929
5. Stalin’s Pet: 1929–1937
6. Stalin’s Viceroy: 1938–1941
7. Khrushchev at War: 1941–1944
8. Ukrainian Viceroy Again: 1944–1949
9. The Heir Nonapparent: 1949–1953
10. Almost Triumphant: 1953–1955
11. From the Secret Speech to the Hungarian Revolution: 1956
12. The Jaws of Victory: 1956–1957
13. The Wider World: 1917–1957
14. Alone at the Top: 1957–1960
15. The Berlin Crisis and the American Trip: 1958–1959
16. From the U-2 to the UN Shoe: April–September 1960
17. Khrushchev and Kennedy: 1960–1961
18. “A Communist Society Will Be Just about Built by 1980”: 1961–1962
19. The Cuban Cure-all: 1962
20. The Unraveling: 1962–1964
21. After the Fall: 1964–1971
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Index
Illustrations

✦ Subjects

1. Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894–1971. 2. Heads of state—Soviet Union—Biography. 3. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1953–1985.