Khrushchev's Complaint

...and the question of whether it was Stalin's evil genius or simply the Soviet system that accounted for his rise to power...

...But his definition of Leninist norms includes several new slants...

...Attempts by the regime to denigrate its value and dampen speculation about its origins have done little to reduce interest there or abroad...

...Though badly flawed, it is Khrushchev speaking, in all his earthy imagery and circumlocution...

...Nonetheless, it is a basic document for understanding the Soviet past and present...

...Visitors to the Soviet Union report great curiosity--and apprehension --among knowledgeable citizens about the revelations in the book...

...Is there a Mr...

...He obviously was concerned about reestablishing his good name in the Party, and the palpable errors in these disjointed, self-justifying memories, whose existence he did not deny, could scarcely do him credit...

...Furthermore, Khrushchev directly attacks his successors--who last year erected a bust on Stalin's grave behind Lenin's mausoleum--charging that "they're starting to cover up for the man guilty of all those murders...

...In the life of anyone who has committed a crime," Khrushchev says, "there comes a moment when confession will assure him leniency if not exculpation...

...Nixon is a son-of-a-bitch...

...To cite a few: Eisenhower was a mediocre military leader and a weak President...

...Moreover, it is difficult to see how Khrushchev, or any Russian leader, would conspire to publish in the West anything reflecting so adversely on the USSR...

...His solution is that tired old slogan: Return to Leninist norms and all will be well...

...One can perhaps sympathize with Crankshaw and Talbott, considering the hodgepodge of materials they had to work with...

...Thumbnail sketches of world leaders abound, with the notable exception of any current Politburo members...

...Yes, it is a valid historical document of great importance...

...He agrees that the Soviet Union should not lower its defenses, especially its missile forces and its chemical and bacteriological (!) weapons...

...Throughout the book Khrushchev tries to extricate himself from two dilemmas: the nearly insuperable problem of his own guilt by association and participation in Stalin's crimes...

...While the USSR may find it difficult, if not impossible, to conclude a disarmament treaty with the U.S., Khrushchev says, he believes Moscow should sharply reduce its military expenditures unilaterally...

...These and other omissions, plus the number of patently biased contentions and observations, will keep historians busy...

...Where previously he restricted himself to calling for the rehabilitation of honest Party workers, here he says: "We have no choice but to rehabilitate all of Stalin's victims...

...There is no mention of Khrushchev's rise to power, the defeat of the anti-Party group, or his own ouster...

...The question, therefore, is not whether the materials purchased for roughly S600.000 have been adulterated, but how much and where...

...He also maintains that "you can't regulate the development of literature, art and culture with a stick and barking orders...

...Mao is a petty bourgeois bursting with an impatient desire to rule the world...

...But it is Khrushchev's view as seen through several filters...

...The responsibility for rushing what should have been a careful yearlong project rests instead on Time Inc...

...The final chapter is not yet written, for Khrushchev Remembers cannot but sharpen the debate within the Soviet leadership, and some fallout may become evident at the 24th Party Congress in March...

...For the general reader, on the other hand, Khrushchev Remembers offers a unique insight into the Soviet decision-making process...

...Unknowingly supporting the defendants in the recent so-called hijacking trials, too, Khrushchev urges opening Soviet borders to all who wish to emigrate...

...If everything positive that has ever been said about Stalin were diminished by 80 per cent, enough would remain to praise a thousand great men...

...Reviewed by Sherman Pyo Specialist in Soviet and East European Affairs No matter how many censorial hands it passed through on its way to the coffers of Time Inc., Khrushchev Remembers is one of the most fascinating books on life at the top, Soviet style, since Trotsky's posthumous biography of Stalin...

...And more important for the future, were they made available by someone in the Politburo seeking a showdown with Party chief Leonid Brezhnev at the Party Congress next month, as Stewart Alsop suggests in his January 4 Newsweek column, "Who Is Mr...

...At the same time, he feels the size of the Army should be reduced to the absolute minimum...

...Khrushchev is at war with himself over the first issue...

...the last third deals with foreign affairs after Stalin's death...

...Stronger still is his assertion that "only if a leadership is under public control will it be protected from actions incompatible with our Socialist doctrine and harmful to our Socialist way of life...

...has maintained is worthy of MI-6, CIAa and the KGB combined...

...He is less forthright about the second dilemma, yet comes close to condemning the system when he states, "It's frightening to realize that in our time, in our Socialist era...

...In a surprising settling of accounts with his Soviet rivals, Khrushchev expresses admiration for Vyacheslav Molotov and criticizes his one-time crony Anastas Mikoyan...

...Communists devoted to the Party could be dictated to, not by conscience or by reason, but by animal fear for their own hides...

...In Khrushchev's view, the people who run the Soviet Armed Forces are honorable but greedy and self-seeking men...

...Compared to the writings of Stalin and Khrushchev's successors, reading it is like switching from a Prudential Life insurance policy to Portnoy's Complaint...

...Stalin," he contends, "should be shown to Soviet people naked, so that he can occupy his proper place in history...

...Echoing his 1956 speech, he pleads unconvincingly that he was ignorant of the terror when it occured, while simultaneously asking understanding for the precariousness of his position and stressing his role as a latter-day champion of the repressed...

...Thus he contrasts the relative openness of Party decision-making in the past (Politburo deliberations were circulated to Party organizations for discussion and study) to the current leadership's failure even to publish stenographic records of Central Committee plenums...

...Kennedy was a real statesman...

...In the end, he expresses a desire to purify not only the Party but himself...

...Crankshaw's introduction places the book in historical context, as do a number of his chapter notes, but his rather Gibbonesque annotations do not always reflect favorably on his scholarship: If Khrushchev cannot be blamed for the repressions of his henchman Ivan Serov when the Soviets took over the Western Ukraine because he was busy administering a nation of 40 million, how can Stalin be held accountable for the crimes of Lavrenti Beria...

...One wonders when, if ever, it will make the raw material available to serious scholars, even if the Kremlinologist will not find much beyond confirmatory insights...

...The first two-thirds of the book covers the author's domestic career up to the 20th Party Congress...

...In fact, the KGB clearly played a role in the operation, if only during the later stages, through Victor Louis--the Soviet Union's sole "free-lance" journalist--who negotiated the final deal...

...X? Perhaps...

...X?" Unfortunately, neither Time Inc.'s reticence nor Edward Crankshaw's hasty commentary are much help in attempting to answer these questions...

...Partly because of the highly mysterious circumstances surrounding its procurement, however, this book cannot be accepted uncritically as wholly representing Khrushchev's views...

...Similarly, how could Strobe Talbott's translation have made Svetlana's mother a hostess to Khrushchev when he was First Secretary of the Moscow Party Committee--by then she had been dead for two years—if the raw text is alleged to say only that he was a member of the Moscow Committee, moving the time frame back at least two years...

...The major thrust of the book is directed against the increasing conservatism of the present regime, characterized by its policy of restoring Stalin to the pedestal from which Khrushchev had worked so hard to topple him...

...He should find it exciting, and it will give him a new appreciation of both the similarities and differences between Soviet and American systems...

...Khrushchev Remembers is organized pretty much chronologically...

...Given Khrushchev's inferiority complex--betrayed, for example, by the description of his chagrin at arriving in a two- rather than four-engine aircraft at the 1955 Geneva Summit Conference--it is not surprising that a dispatch last November 16 had him saying that he had never passed on "materials of this nature...

...In his so-called Secret Speech to the 20th Party Congress in 1956 (included as an appendix), Khrushchev had declared that Stalin's defects became "especially evident" in "the last 15 years of his life"--that is, after the Great Purge Trials of 1938...

...He goes much further now: He asserts that the 1936-38 trials of Gregori Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Aleksei Rykov, Nikolai Bukharin, and others were wrong, and admits that their confessions were wrenched from them by physical and psychological torture...

...The secrecy Time Inc...

...Is Khrushchev Remembers history...

...Despite several ambiguous passages and curious reticences, most of the adulteration seems to involve deletion...

...But] if he were alive today and a vote were taken, I would vote that he should be brought to trial and punished for his crimes...

...Handed a mixture of transcribed tapes, documents and writing fragments dating from the early '60s into 1970, theirs was not an enviable task...

...Probably his most significant challenge concerns military expenditures and disarmament...