Word: nikita
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Criticism of Stalin is not new in the Soviet Union. For the edification of the ruling class, Nikita Khrushchev denounced the late dictator's terror tactics in a secret speech to the 20th Party Congress in 1956. Intellectuals were allowed a whiff of free air in 1962 when the literary journal Novy Mir published Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novella of Stalin's prison camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. But Arbat is of a different order: it is not only indicative of Mikhail Gorbachev's leash-loosening policies but also an official seal of disapproval on the past...
...scale private enterprise is now legal, and state industries will soon have wide new freedoms. Even Gorbachev concedes that his regime's true test will be whether it can produce better food, clothing and shelter for its citizens. No leader has said that with such vigor and conviction since Nikita Khrushchev a quarter-century...
...year of Gorbachev's graduation, the Stalinist ice had broken in the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev had taken over and was winding down the terror. Ghostly figures began drifting back into Moscow from the labor camps. But at the start of this period of ferment and change, Gorbachev removed himself and Raisa from the relative sophistication of Moscow and returned to the Stavropol area, where he was to stay for the next 23 years. According to Neznansky, the young graduate tried for a position with the Moscow Komsomol apparatus but lost out to a classmate and had little choice...
Stylish and outspoken, Raisa Gorbachev is the antithesis of earlier Soviet First Ladies. The public rarely saw the wives of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, but Mrs. Gorbachev turns up by her husband's side at official functions. In the U.S.S.R., such high visibility is considered unseemly. Her taste for designer clothes strikes many of her comrades as ostentatious. Soviet wags have dubbed her the "Czarina...
...hard edge returned when Nixon compared Gorbachev with two other Soviet leaders he had dealt with: "Unlike ((Nikita)) Khrushchev, he has no inferiority complex. He is totally confident, in command, and secure . . . Gorbachev is as tough as ((Leonid)) Brezhnev but better educated, more skillful, more subtle . . . Brezhnev used a meat axe in his negotiations. Gorbachev uses a stiletto. But beneath the velvet glove he always wears there is a steel fist...