THE FALL OF KHRUSHCHEV

The declining fortunes of Nikita Sergeyevich are dated here from the Cuban missile fiasco, but attributed to his high-handed, hare-brained style plus his domestic plans, with foreign policy viewed as merely a precipitating cause of his downfall. The authors suggest that the military feared budget cuts, the bureaucrats mistrusted his ebullient voluntarism, the heavy industry ""lobby"" disliked his consumer-goods emphasis, while his co-rulers coveted greater power. One of the book's flaws is its scanty discussion of the technocrats who favored Khrushchevian deStalinization but ended up supplanting Khrushchev. Another is the inadequate analysis of Soviet-Third World relations: consequently, the double-bind requirements of world communist leadership and domestic progress remain unclear. The October 1964 ouster and accusations of ""economism, demagoguery, conceit,"" etc., are hypothetically reconstructed in detail. As retrospective Kremlinology, it's nothing new. . . a cautious, suggestive source for studies in decision-making and power politics.