Saturday, August 30, 2014

Wait, We Can't Find the Republican Party Office in Russia

Nina Khruscheva. The Last Khruschev. A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind. Mustang, Ok.: Tate Publishing and Enterprises, 2014.

The author realizes that many regard her grandfather Nikita Khruschev as a tyrant. The author writers he was a secret reformer who prevented a return of the Soviet Union to Stalinism. Nikita Kruschev denounced totalitarianism and the misuse of industrialization that included executions and famine that killed 30 million to 60 million people.

When the author was 16 years old, the Stalin’s former Foreign Minister Vyacleslav Molotov told her that there was evidence that her grandfather Leonid Khruschev was a Nazi traitor. Molotov then dismissed this as “rubbish”. She wondered why Molotov brought up this subject except as part of Stalinist slander. She learned that such slander  still lingered. After Leonid Khruschev died in 1943, her great-grandfather Nikita Khruschev adopted her mother, thus making Nitkia her adoptive grandfather.

Nitita Khruschev was voted out of office by Leonid Brezhnev. Khruschev was the first Soviet Union leader removed from office by not being murdered, imprisoned, or dying.

Brezhnev and his followers had Nititak Khruschev written out of Russian history books.

When Nitika Khruschev saw the Soviets repressing the Prague Spring and sending military force in Czechoslavakia, Khruschev recalled how he put down the Hungarian revolution. Khruschev commented “in 12 years, we still haven’t learnt of a better way.”

Gorbachev mentioned Nikia Khruschev and his wisdom in 1985. Russians began reconsidering Khruschev’s role in history.

The author notes that corruption was commonplace under Yeltsin. Benefits were taken away from over half of workers, doctors, scientists, and teachers under Yeltsin.

The author moved to the United States in 1991 for education purposes and received a Ph.D. in Literature from Princeton.

The author notes that Putin, a KGB Colonel, is “once an agent, always an agent”. Putin has taken away some democratic reforms. Putin has praised Stalin and his strong leadership style.

The author researched about Leonid Khruschev and found he was a dissenter who remained within thie Communist cause. Leonid rebelled against authority, including his own father’s Nikita authority.

Nikita Khruschev was a factory worker who joined the Bolsheviks. He was a junior political commissar at the revolution’s end. The new government followed Trotsky’s goal “to create a higher social biological type...a superman.” The Soviet superman was expected to support the collective good under communism which would lead to a “socially conscious industrial collective of self-realized proletarians.”

Nikita Khruschev rose to become the Soviet Union’s leader.

Leonid Khruschev was personally rebellious, running away from home and not liking school. His school evaluation called him an “individualist” at a time of Leninism-Stalinism where that was considered a sin.

The author’s grandmoter, Lyubov Sizykh, Leonid’s “thought-to-be-wife” had an affair with a foreigner. She was charged with what was then a common crime of “contact with a foreigner” and was sent to a gulag. His school evaluation also cited Leonid for having “disregard for the communist cause”, which was a crime.

The author sees Leonid as “being human”. Communist despotism demanded thinking collectively rather than on being an individual. Leonid probably had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Leonid joined the Red Army. He enrolled in the Zhukovsky Military Academy yet withdrew after becoming bored with being taught ideology.

Leonid was cited in the press for valor and bravery while serving as a bomber pilot. He attacke 13 German fighter planes and shot three of them down.

Leonid later died in battle. A Khruschev denouncer later wrote falsehoods about Leonid that were accepted as fact by later writers, according to the author. She notes that when war records were publicly released that there were no records of Leonid having been a traitor.



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