Word: khrushchevism
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...feud and the change. Its coup looked like Stalin's ruthlessness written on the fifth carbon, a smudgy, illegible piece of work. It was fitting that stupidity should be a prevailing theme. An oafish brainlessness has for decades hung over the Soviet communist venture like one of Nikita Khrushchev's suits. Its secret has never been intelligence but rather ruthlessness. The cardinal rule of coupmaking, says Edward Luttwak of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, is "to seize control of all the centers of power in one fell swoop, to paralyze the situation." Even banana republics know this...
...voters want Lenin excised, nonetheless, in the well-established Soviet tradition of exorcising demons of the past by rewriting place names. The city of Lugansk has flip-flopped titles four times: Stalin made it Voroshilovgrad, after Marshal Kliment Voroshilov; Khrushchev restored the original name in his anti-Stalin campaign; his successors -- deciding that purge had gone too far -- changed it back to Voroshilovgrad; and finally (well, at least for now), the city is called Lugansk again...
Disastrous economic conditions in East Germany were propelling thousands of refugees a day into West Berlin, so Khrushchev decided to let East German Communist Party chief Walter Ulbricht build the Wall. Beschloss provides convincing new evidence that Kennedy recognized that erecting a wall through the city was the only way to prevent a collapse of East Germany and never seriously considered armed intervention over that issue. Nonetheless, in Beschloss's judgment, the U.S. was never closer to war with the U.S.S.R. than throughout the Berlin crisis...
...following year, convinced that Kennedy would launch yet another invasion of Cuba, Khrushchev opted to deploy on Cuban soil medium- and intermediate- range Soviet missiles capable of reaching American targets. Although approving the way the White House dealt with the confrontation, Beschloss blames Kennedy for failing to make U.S. goals clear. If he had better articulated his country's interests, Beschloss insists, "it is doubtful that Khrushchev would have felt compelled to take his giant risk on Cuba." Kennedy had second thoughts as well. "Last month I should have said . . . that we don't care" about the missile deployment...
Beschloss's account, drawing heavily on previously unavailable secret messages between the two leaders, includes fascinating tidbits about the major actors: J.F.K. once boasted that he was "the first man to have sex with someone other than his spouse inside the Lincoln Bedroom"; Khrushchev, after having made life miserable for Kennedy, broke down and wept openly upon hearing of the President's assassination...