Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

Rating:
Summary: A truly great book.
Review: This is one of the best biographies I have ever read. It is beautifully researched and written. It really is more than just a biography of Kruschev but a history of Russia from the 1920's to the 1960's, as well as of the Cold War. The depiction of Kremlin infighting, as well as the portrait if provides of Stalin, are first-rate. You will not regret reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic...Fantastic
Review: This is one of the best written biographies I have read. With so much action going on in this book who needs Fiction. In terms of a historical biography it gives a clear insight into the workings of Khruschev. It looks at his strength and his weaknesses. It covers so much ground and so well that I think this book is an indispensible guide to Cold War, how it came about and how it was played out. It also offers a great insight into the workings of the USSR and the beginning of its end. But above all it offers a look into one of the most complicated man in history.

Rating:
Summary: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
Review: This is the first scholarly biography of Khrushchev. Generally, if Taubman (political science, Amherst College) errs, he errs on the side of kindness towards his subject. Although nothing is hidden, the sharp edges of this controversial and at times brutal man are smoothed off. Taubman shows that Khrushchev was as capable of knifing an opponent as was Stalin himself. Otherwise, he would not have ended up by the side of the dictator's deathbed in 1953. Stalin's brutal regime allowed Khrushchev to rise from humble beginnings, with limited education, to the top of world power. Yet, once he reached the pinnacle as ruler of Russia from 1956 to 1964, he more than anybody else was responsible for the collapse of the system that created him. Taubman sees Khrushchev as a gatekeeper of a historical epoch, with one foot in the bloody Soviet revolution and the other in the perestroika of Gorbachev. The study is an exemplar of scholarship, with an extensive bibliography and index. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. For all public and college libraries.

Rating:
Summary: Hands down, the best work on Khrushchev
Review: When I got done reading this wonderful book, I felt as if I had been at Khrushchev's side throughout his entire life. The book goes into great detail about this man. In addition, it uncovers and debunks some of the myths of Khrushchev. For example, Taubmam debunks the myth that when the decision was made to place missiles in Cuba, it was a decision that the entire Soviet leadership embraced 100%. However, Taubman points out (and proves) that it was Khrushchev that was really the only big driving force behind the idea. I could go into a plethora of other details like that, but that would ruin the fun of the book. In my college class, we were discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis, a student asked how the Soviets were reacting behind the scenes and what lead to their decision. The Prof (a Ph.D holder of over 25 years)really wasn't sure the details of the nuclear standoff on the Soviet side. However, after finishing Taubman's book a couple of days before, I was able to explain exactly what happened. After that, the Prof asked me to stay after class and asked me to Xerox the Cuban Missile Crisis part of the book so he could know what really happened! If a person is interested in the Soviet Union, Khrushchev himself, or the "behind the scenes" of the Soviet Iron Curtain during the Cuban Missile Crisis, pick up this book. It will be a great learning experience .

Rating:
Summary: A rare biography of Khrushchev
Review: Wm. Taubman's Khruschyev: The Man and His Era is one of the few Khruschyev biographies to be published in the English language. That's a shame, Khruschyev's denunciation of Stalin stands as the first volley in the forty year struggle to move Russia out of the grip of Stalin's legacy, his loosening of the soviet regime allowed artists to flourish and by making living standards a higher priority he sanctioned the building of housing of a higher quality [It was a revelation to me when living in St. Petersburg, Russia several of my friends and acquaintances considered the Khrushchev era `good years'] .

Taubman follow's Khruschyev's early years in Ukraine and his peasant and proletariat background. A background that would help to propel him forward in the communist party [proletariat backgrounds were given enhanced status within a party with a surprisingly large number of members who were descendent of non-proletariats]. After a very brief and potentially lethal fling with the Menshivek faction within the party he joined the Bolshevik faction run by Lenin.

Taubman shows how Khrushchev swiftly rose through the ranks through long hours of work, strict adherence to party dictates and in spite of his meager education. Indeed Khrushchev's real talent lay in hard work and in being able to speak with workers and peasants on their own terms instead of obtuse theoretical dialog.

Khrushchev 's rise through party was accompanied by blood. Ruthless in his application of party dictates in Ukraine he purged kulaks in the early `30s, sending thousands to exile, the gulag or to be killed, during the era of purges he ruthlessly hacked away at local elites. As was usual with the Stalinist regime, families were not exempt and the arrest of a close relative could signal the arrest of the whole family. In his later years Taubman hints at the guilt that Khrushchev seems to have carried within him over his role in the purges. Indeed he is even quoted as admitting at one point that he was up to his elbows in blood.

As his carrier moved along Khrushchev was able to rise into the Politburo itself where Stalin seems to have viewed him as somewhat of a country bumpkin, less of a threat than the lecherous Beria. Beria himself underestimated Khrushchev as the latter operated behind the scenes with other members to arrest and execute Beria in the months after Stalin's death finally gathering enough power to run the Soviet Union.

What emerges is a man of volatile temperament who allowed his rise to power to overcome his common sense. He stopped listening and began lecturing, removing all those who disagreed, although he stopped the Stalinist method of arrest and execution of the losers, being satisfied instead to force them into far lesser positions or retirement.

In the end Khrushchev 's instabilities and often hair brained schemes alienated his closest supporters who removed him from power forcing him into retirement and hailing in an era of retrenchment of a more suppressive regime under Breshnev. In his final years Khrushchev worked on his memoirs and amazingly they were smuggled out of the country by his son and published in the West.

Taubman has written a fine biography of this mercurial Soviet leader. Well written and with interesting insight it's the best single volume on Khrushchev published in English.