This detailed portrait of the Soviet leader lays bare the many contradictions of his political philosophy and career. Historically sandwiched between Stalin and Brezhnev, Khrushchev was nonetheless a pivotal figure in Soviet history. Born into a poor peasant family, he interpreted his personal history as proof of the validity of communism. Like most self-made men, he sincerely and strongly believed in the society that permitted his success, in contrast to some of his more cynical or bourgeois-born colleagues. As a witness to and a participant in the Soviet Union's extraordinary transformation from a backward regime to a space-age industrial and military giant, he never doubted the eventual triumph of communism. At the same time, as Tompson (Political Science/Univ. of Texas, San Antonio) makes clear, Khrushchev recognized the inherent problems faced by the Soviet Union in its attempt to fashion a truly communist society. Tompson has written a political biography that traces Khrushchev's career in a clear pattern of advances and occasional setbacks. In the story of how Khrushchev navigated the uncertain waters of Soviet politics, we see the intricate, labyrinthine workings of the Kremlin: the constant maneuvering for position, favors, and alliances; the secrecy, betrayal, and treachery. For Tompson, Khrushchev's most important act was his ``secret speech'' before the Twentieth Party Congress in February of 1956, in which he criticized the ``cult of personality'' that had enveloped Stalin, although the leader was not disinclined to allow a less demonic cult of his own. In foreign policy, Khrushchev was known more for his missteps, such as the 1956 invasion of Hungary, the Cuban missile crisis, the deterioration of relations with China, and banging his shoe at the UN. Yet in the wake of Gorbachev, readers must acknowledge the enormous burden Khrushchev placed on himself to reform the USSR after Stalin. A sympathetic biography that acknowledges Khrushchev's many flaws and ultimately renders a positive judgment of the peasant- ruler of the Soviet Union.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-12365-5
Page Count: 351
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
