FACES AND PLACES: The rise and demise of Nikita (06/01/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

The rise and demise of Nikita

In "Khrushchev: The Man and His Times," William Taubman paints a fascinating portrait of a simple, poorly educated, blustering buffoon who rose to power through guile, treachery, peasant wit and charm.

Nikita Sergeievich Khrushchev wore many masks during his lifetime: a mercurial, intriguing opportunist who insinuated himself into the inner circle of the most savage of all the savages who once ruled Russia; a hail-comrade-well-met funny man, consistently underestimated by his colleagues; an intriguing metalworker who became Communist Party boss in Moscow and later in Ukraine; an insecure self-doubting, quixotic leader who postured as an expert in agriculture, the arts, literature, industry, foreign affairs and practically anything else his indefatigable energy allowed.

Removed from office in October 1964, he left little of lasting value, except, of course, his historic condemnation of Joseph Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. This single, undoubtedly heroic act transformed the USSR from a terror state - where one was punished for what one was, rather than for what one did - to a totalitarian state, where life became more bearable and survival more predictable. "The fact that during the years of his rule," writes Mr. Taubman, "about 20 million people were rehabilitated - granted, many of them posthumous ... alone outweighs all of Khrushchev's faults and mistakes."

My dad and I traveled to Soviet Ukraine in 1963 and family members there were optimistic about the future. They believed life would get better. When I returned with Lesia in 1974, the mood had changed dramatically.

In retirement, the former Soviet leader of lived a lonely, abandoned life on the outskirts of Moscow, secretly penning his memoirs. Published in the West, they were a sensation, despite Soviet claims of forgery. When Nikita died in 1971, he was denied a state funeral. No Soviet leader attended his burial. No headstone was permitted until 1975.

Nikita's wife, Nina Petrovna, née Kukharchuk, was an ethnic Ukrainian who spoke the language flawlessly. Although Nikita, an ethnic Russian, often wore an embroidered Ukrainian shirt, he was a lifelong foe of Ukrainian national aspirations.

Comrade Khrushchev's mentor was the notorious Lazar Kaganovich, a Ukrainian Jew who became Ukrainian party leader in 1925. Nikita's rise was meteoric. From Stalino (now Donetsk) to Kharkiv, to Kyiv, to Moscow - all in a year and a half. To get there, he was complicit in Stalin's elimination of old Bolsheviks. At the height of Stalin's 1930 terror campaign, writes Mr. Taubman, "Khrushchev gave violent, bloodcurdling speeches rousing the 'masses' to join in the witch hunt." By the end of the decade, Nikita was part of Stalin's inner circle. He survived by posturing as the "court jester," the butt of Stalin's jokes and cruel humor during late-night drunken orgies at Stalin's dacha.

Nikita Khrushchev served as secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) twice, from 1938 to 1941 and again from 1944 to 1946. "Khrushchev conducted Russification with a vengeance," writes Mr. Taubman. "In 1938 he lashed out at 'Polish-German agents and bourgeois nationalists' who," he said, 'did everything they could to exterminate the Russian language in Ukraine' and at 'bastards who did everything to toss out Russian from Ukrainian schools ... We must conduct the battle with enemies, provocateurs and slanderers decisively,' he announced at the 14th Ukrainian Party Congress in June 1938." The following year in Moscow, Nikita boasted about having extirpated " 'vermin' during his first year in Ukraine."

Ukraine experienced a blood bath under Khrushchev. "All members but one of the Ukrainian party Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat were arrested ... The entire Ukrainian government was replaced, as were party leaders and their deputies in all 12 Ukrainian provinces and virtually all Red Army corps and division commanders. Of 86 Central Committee members elected in June 1938, only three remained from a year before, while half of all party members in Kiev [sic], and up to 63 percent in one district, were denounced." After this, the pace slowed somewhat. "In 1939, 'only' 12,000 are reported to have been arrested, and in 1940 about 40,000."

When the Soviets invaded western Ukraine, it was Khrushchev who engineered the Soviet incorporation of western Ukraine. "Khrushchev's ostensible mission was to protect his fellow Slavs in western Ukraine. His actual task was to conquer and Sovietize, to expropriate and collectivize, to organize new party and state institutions and make sure they opted 'voluntarily' to join the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were arrested and deported.

When Nikita returned to Ukraine in 1944 his brutality was focused on the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which bravely fought the Soviets until 1950. Spetsgrupy (black operations) militia scoured the countryside for Ukrainian nationalists and their supporters, eliminating them mercilessly. Writes Mr. Taubman: "Between February 1944 and May 1946 the Soviet military and police reported killing 110,825 'bandits' and arresting 250,676 more. As many as 600,000 may have been arrested in western Ukraine between 1944 and 1952, with about a third of that number executed and the other two-thirds imprisoned or exiled."

Though he often mentioned "God," Nikita had no use for churches. As premier, he began a campaign that reduced the number of Orthodox parishes from more than 15,000 in 1951 to less than 8,000 in 1963.

As his days were ending, Nikita was asked what he regretted about his past. "Most of all the blood," he replied. "My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul."

My focus in this column has been on Mr. Taubman's relatively accurate and sympathetic treatment of Ukraine. His well-documented 870-page book, however, offers much more for the interested reader. Of particular interest are Khrushchev's confrontations with two American presidents and with Vice-President Richard Nixon over the Captive Nations Resolution, the Cuban missile crises, his trip to the United States and his total misreading of the United States.

Nikita once predicted that the grandchildren of Americans of his day would live in a Soviet America. Today, his son, Sergei Khrushchev, lives in Providence, R.I., where he is a fellow of the Thomas Watson Institute of Brown University. Nikita's granddaughter Nina received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in comparative literature and now lives and works in New York.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected].

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