Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918-1945, Volume 1

Front Cover

Nikita Khrushchev&’s proclamation from the floor of the United Nations that &"we will bury you&" is one of the most chilling and memorable moments in the history of the Cold War, but from the Cuban Missile Crisis to his criticism of the Soviet ruling structure late in his career the motivation for Khrushchev&’s actions wasn&’t always clear. Many Americans regarded him as a monster, while in the USSR he was viewed at various times as either hero or traitor. But what was he really like, and what did he really think? Readers of Khrushchev&’s memoirs will now be able to answer these questions for themselves (and will discover that what Khrushchev really said at the UN was &"we will bury colonialism&").

This is the first volume of three in the only complete and fully reliable version of the memoirs available in English. In this volume, Khrushchev recounts how he became politically active as a young worker in Ukraine, how he climbed the ladder of power under Stalin to occupy leading positions in Ukraine and then Moscow, and how as a military commissar he experienced the war against the Nazi invaders. He vividly portrays life in Stalin's inner circle and among the generals who commanded the Soviet armies.

Khrushchev&’s sincere reflections upon his own thoughts and feelings add to the value of this unique personal and historical document. Included among the Appendixes is Sergei Khrushchev&’s account of how the memoirs were created and smuggled abroad during his father&’s retirement.

 

Contents

Prologue
1
A Little About Myself
7
A Few Words About the
14
The Move to Kharkov
24
At the Industrial Academy
30
Personal Acquaintance with Stalin
43
Moscow Workdays
58
The Kirov Assassination
78
By the Ruins of Stalingrad
405
Turn of the Tide at Stalingrad
442
The Road to Rostov
468
Before the Battle of Kursk and at Its Beginning
493
We Liberate Ukraine
584
Forward to Victory
614
Postwar Reflections
637
The Far East After the Great Patriotic
678

Some Consequences of the Kirov Assassination
102
In Ukraine Again
111
UkraineMoscow Crossroads of the 1930s
172
The Second World War Approaches
207
The Beginning of the Second World
228
Events on the Eve of
261
The Great Patriotic
297
People and Events of Summer and Fall 1941
324
From Winter to Summer
358
War Memoirs
697
A Short Biography of N S Khrushchev
707
The History of the Creation and Publication of the Khrushchev
713
Conversation with N S Khrushchev at the Party Control Committee
827
Biographies
844
11
920
297
926
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2004)

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (1894-1971) was First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.

Sergei Khrushchev is Senior Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (Penn State, 2000).

Bibliographic information