Word: khrushchev
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tanks to motorboats and formed a river fleet that harassed the Germans from Rostov-on-Don to Vienna on the Danube. The young admiral impressed some Red Army officers who were fighting in the area. One was a major general named Leonid Brezhnev, another a lieutenant general named Nikita Khrushchev...
Sitting Ducks. After the war, Stalin started building big warships again, but only 15 cruisers had been completed by the time he died in 1953. The new chief in the Kremlin had no sympathy for Stalin's plans. Nikita Khrushchev fired Stalin's navy chief, Admiral Kuznetsov, and brought in Gorshkov, who by then was naval chief of staff...
...assignment turned out to be a bitter one. Khrushchev believed that missiles had made surface ships "sitting ducks." He derided cruisers as "fit only for traveling on state visits," and scrapped four that were still under construction. He even passed the word to the admirals to stay away from the round of receptions and parties during the 1956 air force day celebrations. Spotting four soldiers rowing a boat on a Moscow pond, Khrushchev joked to one of his American guests: "There is our navy!" He went as far as to contemplate disbanding the navy and transferring its missile-firing submarines...
...party member since 1942, Gorshkov knew better than to openly oppose Khrushchev. But as a skilled politician himself, he knew well how to stall. He subtly resisted the missile enthusiasts in the Kremlin, kept alive the concept of surface ships. Then Khrushchev decided to put missiles in Castro's Cuba?and the whole game changed. The humiliation of their backdown under the guns of the U.S. Navy impressed on the Soviet leaders the value of naval power. Shortly after the crisis, Khrushchev sent an order to the admiral: Create a surface fleet...
...story of his ugly ordeal behind Soviet bars for 18 months is as harrowing as anything in Koestler's Darkness at Noon, despite the fact that it was not Stalin's grim regime but Khrushchev's that punished Wynne. Though he was sometimes beaten, the primary torture was calculated degradation aimed at reducing Wynne to a broken, pliable animal. He never had adequate clothes or blankets for the harsh Rus sian winters. He was forced to live amid the stench of his own excrement...