cover image Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring: The Era of Khrushchev Through the Eyes of His Advisor

Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring: The Era of Khrushchev Through the Eyes of His Advisor

Fedor Burlatsky. Scribner Book Company, $24 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19419-6

Burlatsky has a disadvantage in writing for Western readers, since he seems not to be knowledgeable about the vast amount of information long available here regarding communist governance. He has nothing new to say, for example, about Khrushchev's 20th Party Congress speech in 1956 exposing Stalin's crimes, Kremlin-Tito friction, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, etc. Then, in recounting Khrushchev's ouster from power in 1965, he quotes heavily from Sergey Khrushchev's reminiscences published in a Moscow magazine: the son's Khrushchev on Khrushchev covering the downfall appeared in the U.S. in 1990, while the memoir in hand has a 1988 copyright. Also, the title of Burlatsky's book is a touch misleading. Although he was a Central Committee functionary who wrote speeches and position papers for Khrushchev and joined his entourage on trips abroad, the author worked under Yuri Andropov, who has a more telling, far larger presence here than does Khrushchev. Still, this critical depiction of the Soviet authoritarian-patriarchal culture is worth reading for its backroom perspective on the apparatchiks, their individual political leanings and personalities. (Apr.)