Khrushchev's Lives
Hollander, Paul
BOOKS Khrushchev's Lives Khrushchev: A Career, by Edward Crankshaw. Viking Press. 311 pp. $7.50. Reviewed by Paul Hollander A better understanding of Nikita Khrushchev's career and personality...
...or about the psychological processes entering into the decisions he made...
...Though violent in temper, his love of peace was genuine...
...From this book we will not find out a great deal about Khrushchev as a person, about what he was like as a father, husband, or friend...
...The researcher cannot count on access to sources which are available in other countries about the life of public figures...
...Crankshaw's conception of Khrushchev might be paraphrased as follows: He was in many ways a typical Russian peasant, though of course far more ambitious, talented, and cunning than most...
...His difficulties reflected the inherent conflict between a limited desire to liberalize and a basically illiberal personality...
...his subject's friends, relatives, or co-workers (if alive) will not reveal any information, if, indeed, their identity can be established...
...Writing a biography of a leading Soviet politician (unless many of his close associates had defected from the Soviet Union) is a formidable and frustrating task...
...or his personal likes and dislikes, interests and hobbies...
...His de-Stalinizing activities were motivated both by his desire to make his people prosper and to gain personal power and popularity...
...The Western, and particularly American, public heard a great deal about Khrushchev the enlightened, pragmatic, and jovial de-Stalinizer, the benevolent father of consumer goods and liberal policies...
...Many things in this book are highly speculative, many others unexplored— for example, Khrushchev's relationship to, and view of, Stalin, and how and when they changed...
...The changing fortunes of the Soviet political leader create further difficulties for his biographer...
...Crankshaw's vision of Khrushchev is a persuasive and informed one, though not necessarily true in all its details...
...Yet considering his background he went miraculously far...
...He was caught between wanting to change a great deal but also to retain much that he had seen take root under Stalin...
...Not even this knowledgeable and insightful book can fully explain the processes which led to his switching from the earlier role to the later one...
...Much of the book is based on Pis-trak's research, Crankshaw tells us...
...Much less has been known and said in the Western mass media about his earlier career, his unconditional involvement with Stalin's regime, and of his other image: the ruthless, servile, and dedicated functionary...
...The private lives, and also much of the political activity of Soviet political figures, are deliberately surrounded by secrecy...
...Soviet archives are not open to him...
...All this helps to understand better the person who presents such a contradictory facade to the world, and who played such contradictory historical roles...
...While this is not the definitive work on Khrushchev, it is an absorbing, well-written, and highly informative account of major Soviet historical events loosely organized around Khrushchev's career...
...Each of the two phenomena is puzzling in its own way...
...Nonetheless a portrait does emerge, a conception of his personality is in the end conveyed even though the author has little detail to offer and not much information that is new...
...He was a transitional figure between Stalinist totalitarianism and the more modern, bureaucratized, and milder totalitarianism of the present...
...Not that it would be fair to expect him to produce new, hitherto hidden stacks of information...
...Reviewed by Paul Hollander A better understanding of Nikita Khrushchev's career and personality could go a long way toward a clearer understanding of two extraordinary phenomena of this century: Stalinist totalitarianism and its unexpected decline...
...At best total silence may replace earlier adulation...
...The publicity they receive is limited to improbably favorable accounts of their public activities or to some fraudulent generalities about their personal virtues—such as the official accounts of Stalin's modesty, humor, personal warmth, and kindness...
...The results tend to be grotesque...
...The lack of information about the private lives of Soviet leaders is in part a consequence of their near-total absorption in their political roles and masks...
...Khrushchev had the unique historical distinction of being both a zealous and able architect of Stalinism and the man who presided over its demise...
...He did the best he could when he decided to write a concise history of Soviet society—with special reference to Khrushchev's career—rather than a biography in the conventional sense of the word...
...Showing with unmistakable clarity—as Edward Crankshaw does—that he fulfilled both of these roles is in itself a great public service, since Khrushchev's image in the West has been rather one-sided...
...Khrushchev, Crankshaw believes, was no more disposed to share power than his fellow competitors, yet he was an inconsistent dictator and a captive of his own de-Stalinizing policies...
...Crankshaw was compelled partly by the lack of data, partly by the inherent logic of Khrushchev's life, to focus on the setting he moved in, the people he worked with, for or against, and his times...
...A relative late-comer to the Bolshevik cause, he sold his soul to Stalin, yet mysteriously retained a flickering subterranean sense of humanity which was strengthened by the sufferings World War II inflicted on the Soviet people...
...Toughened in the ceaseless struggle for physical and political survival, he preserved his impulsiveness and impatience...
...Such changes are invariably accompanied by retrospective reappraisals in the Soviet writings...
...His erratic policies originated not only in his impulsiveness but also in this inner struggle between wanting to preserve the fundamental institutions of Soviet society and to make them work better...
...It is safe to assume that Crankshaw was aware of all these problems...
...Most of his activities showed the imperfect break with the past...
...Indeed, Khrushchev was one of the most unlikely candidates to usher in a more humane and liberal era in Soviet history...
...Few, if any, students of Soviet society are as yet in a position to offer us anything superior on this subject...
Vol. 30 • September 1966 • No. 9
