Word: khrushchevism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...1970s that a Soviet decision to attack American missiles would be a "cosmic roll of the dice." Yet Soviets play chess; they do not shoot craps. Stalin advanced several black pawns and a knight against one of white's most vulnerable squares, West Berlin, in 1948. Nikita Khrushchev tried a similar gambit in 1961, and he was downright reckless over Cuba in 1962. The stupidity as well as the failure of that move contributed to his downfall...
This concept of "existential deterrence" (so named by McGeorge Bundy, who was at John F. Kennedy's side during his showdowns with Khrushchev) is rooted in common sense and experience alike. Yet until now it has never been deemed a prudent basis for keeping the peace. Why? Because worst-case assumptions about Soviet intentions have fed, and fed upon, worst-case assumptions about Soviet capabilities...
Gorbachev did not invent the idea of trying to reinvent communism, but during his formative years in obscurity he certainly learned a lesson about the connection between internal reform and international relations. He had seen Nikita Khrushchev's vigorous cultural thaw of the late 1950s freeze again in the intensified cold war that followed the Cuban missile crisis. Alexei Kosygin, who was Prime Minister until his death in 1980, attempted to reorient heavy industry toward consumer goods, decentralization and profitmaking in the mid-1960s. But, ironically, that program was aborted partly because the Soviet crackdown on "socialism with a human...
...late 1950s, Sakharov grew deeply concerned about the dangers of atomic fallout. Several times he attempted to use his prestige to halt Soviet nuclear testing. Recalling Sakharov's personal appeals against the atmospheric explosions, Nikita Khrushchev described the nuclear physicist in his memoirs as a "crystal of morality." When his behind-the-scenes lobbying turned to open criticism of the regime, Sakharov was fired from the nuclear program. "The atomic issue was a natural path into political issues," he explained...
...crimson with the blood of martyrs," says Father Gleb Yakunin, Russian Orthodoxy's bravest agitator for religious freedom. In the Bolsheviks' first five years in power, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were cut down by the red sickle. Stalin greatly accelerated the terror, and by the end of Khrushchev's rule, liquidations of clergy reached an estimated 50,000. After World War II, fierce but generally less bloody persecution spread into the Ukraine and the new Soviet bloc, affecting millions of Roman Catholics and Protestants as well as Orthodox...