Word: khrushchevism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cowboy Movies. "Those last years with Stalin were hard times," says Khrushchev. "The government virtually ceased to function. Stalin selected a small group which he kept close to him at all times." Another group was purposely-and ominously-uninvited. Says Khrushchev: "Any one of us could find himself in one group one day and the other group the next...
...things escaped the dictator's attention. Khrushchev recounts that he was once told to telephone Stalin at home. "Comrade Khrushchev," Stalin said, "rumors have reached me that you've let a very unfavorable situation develop in Moscow as regards public toilets. Apparently people can't find anywhere to relieve themselves. This won't do." Khrushchev relates that he and Nikolai Bulganin, then head of the Moscow Soviet and later to become Premier, "worked feverishly" on the problem...
...Khrushchev recalls another telephone call, informing him of the 1934 murder of Leningrad Party Chief Sergei Kirov by a Trotskyite dissident. It was that event that set the stage for one of the most terrifying eras of modern history: the Great Purges of the 1930s, or, as Khrushchev calls them, "the meat mincer." The NKVD, Stalin's secret police and precursor of today's KGB, suddenly became all-powerful, and thousands of party officials and army officers began to vanish. Khrushchev survived the grim era in willing ignorance. "I don't know where these people were sent...
...during World War II, says Khrushchev, "that Stalin started to be not quite right in the head." Khrushchev, then party boss of the Ukraine, faced an appalling food shortage caused by war damage and a severe drought. Thousands died of starvation, and Khrushchev even began hearing of cannibalism, including one report that a human head and a pair of feet-apparently all that remained after a corpse had been eaten-had been found under a bridge. Yet Stalin refused to provide food-rationing cards or reduce quotas on farm produce that was shipped out of the Ukraine. "He would...
...street plan of Moscow and worked out a different route every time. He didn't even tell his bodyguard in advance." Stalin refused to eat anything until someone else first tried it. He would say: "Look, here are the giblets, Nikita. Have you tried them yet?" Khrushchev, knowing that his host wanted some for himself but was afraid to be first, would reply, "Oh, I forgot." The only member of his circle exempt from this tasting ritual was NKVD Chief Lavrenty Beria, who ate only food transported from his own dacha...