(9 of 9)
But would all that look like much of a victory in Kremlin councils? Or, as usual, was Khrushchev about to lead the parade that was heading off in another direction? This was a gambit he had used often before and with conspicuous success. As a politician, one of Khrushchev's prime strengths is his ability to sniff out the sense of a meeting and dexterously leap in to head the new trend before it is fully formed. When Malenkov, in 1955, showed signs of winning popularity with the masses and with Russia's managerial class through his calls for more consumer goods, Khrushchev promptly toppled him, but at the same time elected himself the prime apostle of a better break for Soviet consumers. At the 1956 20th Congress of the Communist Party, the first gingerly complaints at Stalin's excesses came from other party leaders, but by quickly capping his colleagues with his famed "secret" speech, Nikita won himself a firm place in history as the repudiator of Stalinism. And when the Hungarian uprising broke and Kremlin opposition to his "liberalization" policies grew dangerously strong, Nikita Khrushchev promptly converted himself into the butcher of Budapest.
Risky Game. But, even for a politician as canny as Nikita Khrushchev, this was a risky game. And when the game gets risky for the leader inside the Kremlin walls, it gets risky for everybody. Among others who would have to watch carefully was Rodion Malinovsky. For, dutiful Khrushchev supporter though he has seemed, the man who shadowed Nikita last week did not survive and prosper through two generations of Soviet Russia's turbulent history without watching the wind.