Word: khrushchevism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Then, as now, all of Eastern Europe was in a state of nationalist turmoil. Only three years after the death of Joseph Stalin, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was trying to reform the brutal dictatorship that Stalin created, but each attempt at change triggered new disturbances. Khrushchev stunned the Communist Party Congress that February by his secret speech acknowledging for the first time Stalin's myriad crimes. That speech strengthened anti-Soviet dissidents throughout Eastern Europe...
...Suez attack encourage or enable the Soviets to crush Hungary? In his memoirs, Khrushchev talks of defending Hungary from "counterrevolution," but he more candidly told an ally that he had to act, or the West "will say we are either stupid or soft." But would he actually have done it if the West had not been divided and distracted by the Suez events? Or to put it another way, what did Mikhail Gorbachev last week consider to be the lessons of 1956, and how do they apply to the Baltic states' demands for independence...
Rusk said, "We'll see this through to the end. Tell Khrushchev we wish we could prevent all this from occurring, but anything may happen." In a word, he exerted pressure on us -- although I wouldn't go so far as to call it a threat; he appealed to us to do something to head off a confrontation...
...romantic lines of my youth," sighs a middle-aged Moscow housewife. "We would line up at Sokolniki Park to see the first American exhibition, where Khrushchev debated Nixon. Or at the Pushkin Museum to see paintings by Fernand Leger. What wonderful times we had! Not like in these horrible lines today...
...EXCERPT: Khrushchev's long-hidden tapes tell of murder and near apocalypse...