HRUSHCHEV SPEAKS

A elective collection of Khrushchev's speeches from 1949, when he retered what one might call the great Kremlin sweepstakes"", coming back to Moscow for increased power under Stalin, when he celebrated Stalin's seventieth birthday with a fulsome article in Pravda -- through to 1961, when as Premier during the de talinzation period, times had changed to the extent that Stalin was expelled from the mausoleum. Editor Whitney recounts in each year the main events, then leads into a speech of the period. As he points out, Khrushchev's encyclopedic knowledge, particularly in farming, is evident, leading to the opinion that ""he owes in considerable part his present position to his comprehension of peasant problems and psychology."" There are other themes aside from the recurrent agricultural one: he downgrading of Stalin, the space achievements, the U-2 incident, the destiny of the Party Khrushchev's encounter with America -- his exchanges with Skouras and Reuter -- are particularly zestful. The whole provides a revealing perspective of a culture still predominantly rural.