How did it really happen?
Pieced together from reports in the non-Russian Communist press and triangulated by a few facts gleaned by Westerners in Moscow, the story of Nikita Khrushchev's fall is still far from complete. Contradictions abound, and the motivation of persons leaking details is obviously suspect. But the account, as it stands so far, of that hard day's night in which Nikita met his undoing rings true in terms of his familiar personality. He evidently went down as he came up-swinging.
Bare Majority. Two weeks ago, as Khrushchev relaxed in the fall sun at his Black Sea villa, a call went out from Moscow for a secret meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee. The roundup call no doubt originated in the party Presidium, which Nikita unwittingly believed was heavily in his favor (he had hand-picked seven of its eleven other members). In from semi-exile flew such opponents of Khrushchev as New Delhi-based Ambassador Ivan Benekditov. Central Committee members known to be strong for Nikita were not called, among them Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in Washington. Khrushchev was confidently preparing a speech, which would point to Khrushchevian successes: a good harvest in the "virgin lands" and the successful orbiting of the three-man Voshkod spaceship, even then whirling overhead.
As Voshkod orbited, the party Presidium was in nonstop session-though Nikita knew nothing about it. Ideologist Mikhail Suslov was the major participant, arguing that Khrushchev had outlived his usefulness. A vote was taken, and all were against Nikita. The question was then carried to the full Central Committee, where a majority-but a bare one, some reports indicating as little as one vote-decided against him. Thus the coup makers had precluded the fate of the 1957 "antiparty group," which had mustered a party Presidium majority against Khrushchev only to lose when the vote came in the Central Committee. Dmitry Ustinov, 56, fast-rising chairman of the Supreme National Economic Council, was detailed to fly down to the Black Sea and bring Khrushchev back.
Across the River. Ustinov arrived on the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 13, as Khrushchev was talking with French Atomic Science Minister Gaston Palewski. The emissary demanded that Khrushchev return immediately to Moscow for the special meeting of the Presidium. Deeply upset, Khrushchev left Palewski with the words: "I have to go to the cosmonauts immediately." That explanation was at least partly true. After only 16 orbits, the Voshkod had returned to earth, possibly because of a mechanical failure but perhaps on order from the Presidium, which presumably did not want the spacecraft, with all its publicity potential, circling overhead while Khrushchev was being dealt with.
At sunset, Khrushchev and Ustinov landed at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, where a ZIL limousine waited. The long black car whipped across the Lenin Hills, along Kremlevskaya Quai, where lights glittered on the Moskva River.
The Unkindest Cut. The car halted a few blocks from the Kremlin at Kuibyshev Street No. 4, a grey, six-story building with red marble columns and a sign in gold lettering that reads: "The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." A thermometer mounted above the massive door registered a temperature of 40° F., but it was even chillier inside.