Twenty years ago, Nikita Khrushchev, a nonperson living under virtual house arrest in a dacha outside Moscow, created an international sensation when the first volume of his memoirs was published by Little, Brown & Co. The Soviet authorities denounced Khrushchev Remembers as a CIA hoax. A number of Western experts suspected the KGB. In 1974, after Khrushchev's death, a second volume was published. By then the controversy had died down, but curiosity lingered about the author's motivation and method.
This month Little, Brown will publish Khrushchev on Khrushchev, by Nikita's son Sergei, 55, an engineer in Moscow. This intimate portrait shows the deposed leader in his last years watching with dismay as his reforms are overturned. Now his son offers the most detailed and authoritative account to date of how the "special pensioner" was able to conduct his own defiant experiment in glasnost -- and why he had decided to brave the anger of his former comrades.
Father was used to being needed by everyone, to being constantly involved. Suddenly, the Great Cause had disappeared, and everything came crashing down. A man in this situation is like an ant when some malicious hand suddenly puts an insurmountable twig in its path. Suddenly, this businesslike, industrious creature begins to rush aimlessly in all directions. It's hard enough to start a new life when you're young and the years stretch endlessly before you. It's a hundred times harder when the sun is setting on your old age. Just yesterday Father had been making decisions as to what proposals to put before the United Nations, whether to reduce the armed forces, whether to build hydroelectric stations. And today? Whether to go for a walk or watch television.
All the telephones fell silent. In the midst of a conversation, Father's energy subsided, and the light in his eyes went out. "No one needs me now. What am I going to do without work?" he said to no one in particular. "I've got to learn how to kill time," he would often say. He would mechanically leaf through books from his extensive library, lay them aside and set off on interminable walks.
As always, Mama saw to it that everyone was fed, made sure that Father wore a clean white shirt, put everything in its proper place -- all with a warm, ; ready smile on her round face. She acted as if no catastrophe had occurred: the Central Committee had simply made another decision, in this case involving the dismissal of her husband, and she accepted it as she had accepted so many others. After all, she wasn't just his wife but a party member, and democratic centralism's dictates about subordination from top to bottom had become second nature to her. Once decisions were made, they had to be carried out unconditionally. Even to discuss them was fractious activity, sedition, just a step away from a political "deviation."