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.
William Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College. His biography, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Note on Russian and Ukrainian Usage
IX
Preface
XI
Introduction
XVII
1.
The Fall: October 1964
3
2.
Kalinovka's Own: 1894-1908
18
3.
Making It as a Metalworker: 1908-1917
30
4.
To Be or Not to Be an Apparatchik: 1918-1929
45
5.
Stalin's Pet: 1929-1937
72
6.
Stalin's Viceroy: 1938-1941
114
7.
Khrushchev at War: 1941-1944
147
8.
Ukrainian Viceroy Again: 1944-1949
179
9.
The Heir Nonapparent: 1949-1953
208
10.
Almost Triumphant: 1953-1955
236
11.
From the Secret Speech to the Hungarian Revolution: 1956
270
12.
The Jaws of Victory: 1956-1957
300
13.
The Wider World: 1917-1957
325
14.
Alone at the Top: 1957-1960
361
15.
The Berlin Crisis and the American Trip: 1958-1959
396
16.
From the U-2 to the UN Shoe: April-September 1960
442
17.
Khrushchev and Kennedy: 1960-1961
480
18.
"A Communist Society Will Be Just about Built by 1980": 1961-1962