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The Book of the Week is “”Khrushchev Remembers, The Last Testament” translated and edited by Strobe Talbott, published in 1974. In this second hodgepodge of a tome of Khrushchev’s memoirs, he bragged, spun tales, and spouted his opinions on history and his place in it.
In the 1940’s, Nikita Khrushchev served as Stalin’s gatekeeper and messenger. In early 1945, the Russians “liberated” Poland from the Hitlerites. Khrushchev took credit for restoring utilities and water services to Warsaw; the whole city’s infrastructure was destroyed in the war. He also bragged about:
- post-WWII, helping with constructing two concrete plants that rebuilt Kiev;
- sending more female wheat-farm laborers to Kazakhstan (territory formerly Siberia, called Virgin Lands, appropriately) so the male-dominant population wouldn’t be lonely;
- collectivizing a very successful farm that grew Sterling (an American variety of corn) to be siloed, to feed cattle;
- assisting his comrades with currency reform for the real purpose of raising the price of vodka so that there might be less drunkenness in the USSR (It didn’t work).
In 1946, former New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, head of UNRRA, visited the USSR to discuss the kinds of supplies the war-ravaged Soviets needed. Khrushchev complained that the Americans sent canned beef when the Soviets needed machinery; more specifically, equipment for gas pipelines. Even though the peasants were starving. He whined that the American war profiteers stuffed their faces and became monopolists with the goods they stole. He neglected to mention that Russian soldiers did their share of looting just like the Nazis.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, the USSR had to buy uranium ore from Romania to make nuclear weapons, and the two traded various resources.
In the early 1960’s, amid anti-Communist agitation of Soviet satellites, Moscow needed to make a few concessions. It allowed a little bit of capitalism in Poland by sending surplus grain to feed Poland’s hogs, so that bacon could be exported to the United States. At the book’s writing, peasant-owned stores in Russia sold products priced two to three times higher than State-owned stores.
Also in the early 1960’s, the USSR aided Indonesia by financing the construction of a stadium for public rallies, and sending it military vehicles for the sea and air, and weapons. In addition, it welcomed Indonesian students (and others from African countries, who sought to become liberated from colonialist oppression) to its newly built university.
According to Khrushchev, the “correct” way to lead was to serve people of all colors, males and females, and nationalities including Jews, who were perceived to be an ethnic group. “What matters is his class affiliation” in the class struggle.
Hypocrisy became apparent when Khrushchev got his name on a factory in his lifetime, and then supported a law banning the naming of buildings after people who were still alive.
Anyway, at the UN General Assembly in September 1960, Khrushchev’s speech lasted about two hours. Times have changed. He suggested that the position of UN General Secretary be replaced with a panel of three representatives of the ideologies of capitalism, socialism, and one of a transitional nature. He thought there would come a time when all nations would eliminate their (international) militaries and simply have domestic law enforcement (like Costa Rica).
Khrushchev admitted that in arms-control negotiations in summer 1963, the USSR wouldn’t agree to on-site inspections of nuclear weapons facilities because the United States would see how under-resourced the USSR really was. The USSR feared America would attack it.
Nowadays, the new Mutual Assured Destruction is: sophisticated spy satellites that can surveil every inch of the earth. There are no secrets anymore.
Khrushchev wrote, “When I say ‘transitional period’ I mean… from a capitalist society to socialism and then to Communism… The struggle will end only when Marxism-Leninism triumphs everywhere and when the class enemy vanishes from the face of the earth. Both history and the future are on the side of the proletariat’s ultimate victory.”
Could it be the United States is in this transition period, pursuant to that old French cliche, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” ?
Read the book to learn much, much, much more about Khrushchev’s times, including his take on the geopolitics of various lands of Eastern Europe, Asia, West Germany, and the U-2 Incident, besides.