KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH

born April 17 [April 5, Old Style], 1894, Kalinovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire died Sept. 11, 1971, Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union Khrushchev, 1960 first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (195364) and premier of the Soviet Union (195864) whose policy of de-Stalinization had widespread repercussions throughout the Communist world. In foreign policy he pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West. Additional reading The best biographies incorporating recent research are William J. Tompson, Khrushchev: A Political Life (1995); Fedor Burlatsky (Fedor Burlatskii), Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring, trans. from Russian (1991); Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev: An Inside Account of the Man and His Era, ed. and trans. by William Taubman (1990), written by his son; and Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev, trans. from Russian by Brian Pearce (1982). Edward Crankshaw, Khrushchev: A Career (1966, reissued 1971); and Mark Frankland, Khrushchev (1966, reissued 1979), remain useful. Khrushchev's memoirs, as dictated by him, are available in three volumes: Khrushchev Remembers and Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, ed. and trans. by Strobe Talbott (197074), and Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes, ed. and trans. by Jerrold L. Schecter and Vyacheslav V. Luchkov (1990). Martin McCaulay (ed.), Khrushchev and Khrushchevism (1987), is a good academic study of the man and his time; as are Robert Conquest, Power and Policy in the U.S.S.R.: The Study of Soviet Dynastics (1961); Michel Tatu, Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin (1967; originally published in French, 1967); and George W. Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders (1982). Bertram D. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (1957, reprinted 1983), remains a good contemporary view of the secret speech and de-Stalinization. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov (Konstantin Pleshakov), Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (1996), deals with Soviet foreign policy under Khrushchev; as do earlier works by Frank Gibney, The Khrushchev Pattern (1960); and by Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, rev. and enlarged ed. (1967).Aleksander Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 19581964 (1997); John C. Ausland, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Berlin-Cuba Crisis, 19611964 (1996); and Vladislav Zubok, Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (19581962) (1993), center on the Cuba and Berlin crises of the 1960s. A more general background on Khrushchev and his milieu is given in Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. from Serbo-Croatian (1962); Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged (1970); and Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 19171991 (1994).