Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar (1918-1945) PDF
Preview Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar (1918-1945)
01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page i memoirs of nikita khrushchev 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page ii Image not available 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page iii Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev volume 1 c o m m i s s a r [ ] 1918–1945 Edited by Sergei Khrushchev Memoirs translated byGeorge Shriver Supplementary material translated byStephen Shenfield The Thomas J.Watson Jr.Institute for International Studies brown university • providence • rhode island the pennsylvania state university press • university park • pennsylvania 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page iv Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. The translation and publication ofthe memoirs in this edition have been made possible through funding provided by the Martha and Artemis Joukowsky Family Foundation, David Rockefeller Sr.,David Rockefeller Jr.,Timothy Forbes and the Forbes Foundation, the Kairis family,the Donald R.Sohn Foundation,the Carnegie Corporation ofNew York, Harry Orbelian ofSan Francisco,Edward H.Ladd ofBoston,and the Thomas J.Watson Jr.Institute for International Studies ofBrown University. The donors do not take responsibility for any statements or views expressed in this work. Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Khrushchev,Nikita Sergeevich,1894–1971. [Vremia,liudi,vlast’.English] Memoirs ofNikita Khrushchev / editor,Sergei Khrushchev ;main translator,George Shriver. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents:v.1.Commissar,1918–1945 isbn0-271-02332-5(alk.paper) 1.Khrushchev,Nikita Sergeevich,1894–1971.2.Heads ofstate—Soviet Union— Biography.3.Soviet Union—Politics and government—1953–1985. I.Khrushchev,Sergei. II.Title. dk275.k5a32004 947.085’2’092—dc21 2003007060 The complete memoirs on which this translation is based were originally published in Russian in four volumes as N.S.Khrushchev: Vremia,liudi,vlast’,by Moskovskiye Novosti. Copyright 1999by Moskovskiye Novosti. Copyright © 2005The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States ofAmerica Published by the pennsylvania state university press, University Park,PA 16802-1003 It is the policy ofthe pennsylvania state university pressto use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements ofAmerican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence ofPaper for Printed Library Material,ansi z39.48–1992. 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page v Contents Translator’s Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Editor’s Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii The Baldest and the Boldest Andrei Bitov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi Abbreviations and Acronyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvi Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 the memoirs The Beginning ofthe Road A Little About Myself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Fourteenth Party Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 A Few Words About the NEP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Fourteenth Party Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Move to Kharkov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Move to Kiev. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 At the Industrial Academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Personal Acquaintance with Stalin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Moscow Workdays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Kirov Assassination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Some Consequences ofthe Kirov Assassination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 In Ukraine Again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Ukraine–Moscow (Crossroads ofthe 1930s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 The Second World War Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 The Beginning ofthe Second World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Events on the Eve ofWar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 The Great Patriotic War The Difficult Summer of1941. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 People and Events ofSummer and Fall 1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 1942:From Winter to Summer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 By the Ruins ofStalingrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Turn ofthe Tide at Stalingrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page vi The Road to Rostov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 Before the Battle ofKursk and at Its Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493 To the Dnieper! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534 Kiev Is Ours Again! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 We Liberate Ukraine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584 Forward to Victory! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614 Postwar Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637 The Far East After the Great Patriotic War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678 War Memoirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698 appendixes A Short Biography ofN.S.Khrushchev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707 The Khrushchev Family Line:A Historical Note L.Lasochko. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709 The History ofthe Creation and Publication ofthe Khrushchev Memoirs,1967–1999 Sergei Khrushchev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713 Conversation with N.S.Khrushchev at the Party Control Committee. . . . . . 827 Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 844 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 911 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page vii Translator’s Preface this is a translation of Volume 1 of the four-volume complete edition of the memoirs (Vospominaniia) ofNikita Khrushchev (Moscow:Moskovskiye Novosti [Moscow News] Publishing Company, 1999, 848 pp.). The title in Russian, Vremia, liudi, vlast’ (literally, “Time, people, power”), rendered more freely,suggests “The Times and People I Have Known,and My Years in Power.” Dr. Sergei Khrushchev of Brown University, son of Nikita Khrushchev, has been the editor of this English edition.I have translated the main text, and Stephen Shenfield has translated the supplementary material,as well as the notes from the Russian edition and the photo captions. For American readers—or more broadly, for readers in the English-speaking world— explanatory notes have been added that were not in the Russian edition.Some ofthese notes were written by Sergei Khrushchev (SK),and some by Stephen Shenfield (SS),or by me (GS)—in consultation with Dr.Khrushchev. Certain materials in this English edition did not appear in the Russian version,while some parts ofthe Russian edition were omitted.In the Editor’s Foreword,Dr.Khrushchev specifies what was added or left out. This first volume,I think,will be ofinterest to the general reader,not just the specialist. It tells far more about the author’s life during the 1920s and 1930s,and through World War II,than did Khrushchev Remembers, a selec- tion from these memoirs that was published in 1970.I make this point,not to derogate Khrushchev Remembers, but to stress the much fuller picture of the author’s life that is presented in this edition. Although times have changed, many readers in the English-speaking world will find this more complete version of the Soviet leader’s memoirs still of interest. After all, Nikita Khrushchev is remembered by many as America’s “main enemy” in the first post-Stalin decade of the Cold War (roughly 1954–1964),especially in a number of Cold War crises.Many recall the incident when he reportedly pounded his shoe at the United Nations. (An Appendix in a later volume explains this incident.) Also frequently remembered is the notorious quotation,“We will bury you” (Khrushchev discusses this unfortunate phrase in his account of his 1959 visit to the United States,which will appear in Volume 3ofthe present edition). More important, Nikita Khrushchev is remembered as the Soviet leader who denounced Stalin in 1956 and began a process of “de-Stalinization,” [ ] 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page viii ’ which ultimately led to Gorbachev and perestroika.The many readers curi- ous about what the Soviet Union was and what went on in its internal life, what Stalinism was,how it arose and operated,and what contributed to “de- Stalinization”will find much material to ponder in this first volume of the memoirs. Despite the truism about translation—“If it’s faithful, it isn’t beauti- ful”––our policy has been to stay very close to the Russian original.And we have sought to retain the informal, “storytelling” tone generally used by N. S. Khrushchev when he taped these memoirs, often in the presence of friends or family to whom he was recounting what he remembered (and what he did not),usually without references to published sources or archival documents, and with frequent digressions, as might occur with anyone retelling “the story ofmy life.” Nikita Khrushchev had a very good memory (as described in Sergei Khrushchev’s “The History ofthe Creation and Publication ofthe Khrushchev Memoirs [1967–1999]” elsewhere in this volume), and his account of events generally seems to be accurate.Here we are speaking not ofhis interpretations, but of the chronology of events,what happened and when.Notes have been added where his recollection or understanding offacts is clearly in error. Researchers consulting the four-volume Russian edition or the original tape recordings archived at several locations can easily see instances in which we may have departed a little from the original for the purpose of making the text more readable or clearer for English-language readers. Although the responsibility for the final wording of the translation is mine, I wish to acknowledge several individuals who helped in various aspects ofproducing the final translation.In addition to indispensable input by Sergei Khrushchev, I wish to thank Stephen Shenfield and Ann Farkas, the copy editor, for many helpful suggestions (although I did not always take them). Also I wish to thank Dara Noyes, Todd Miller, Alice Whitten- burg,and Alicja Mann. Spelling ofRussian Names In Volume 1 we have used, and propose to use in all volumes, the more familiar and readable forms of Russian names (rather than employing across the board the Library of Congress system of transliteration). This way ofspelling Russian names is more accessible to the general reader. For example,most newspapers,magazines,and books in English that are aimed at the general reader will speak of the notorious Beria (which the Library ofCongress system would spell as “Beriia”). [ ] 01.Khrushchev Front Matter 11/15/04 1:44 PM Page ix ’ Another example is a family name of some prominence in Soviet history, the Alliluyevs. Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva, and in these memoirs Nikita Khrushchev tells about her tragic death. Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Nadezhda and Stalin, attracted considerable attention in the late 1960s when she left the Soviet Union and eventually became an Ameri- can citizen. The name is generally recognized in English in the form given above—Alliluyev for male members of the family, Alliluyeva for female members.But the Library of Congress system would inadequately represent the name as “Alliluev.”This is like spelling “Hallelujah”without the j. We have generally used -y- rather than -ii,-yi,or other variants,and gen- erally have not used diacritical marks to indicate the “soft sound”or “hard sound”in Russian.The Russian letter called “ee kratkoye”has usually been transliterated as i. Thus, we have Vyshinsky, Tukhachevsky, Rokossovsky, and Malinovsky (not “Vyshinskii,”“Tukhachevskii,”“Rokossovskii,”or “Malinovskii”),Yagoda, Yezhov, and Mikoyan (not “Iagoda,”“Ezhov,”or “Mikoian”), Biryuzov and Blyukher (not “Biriuzov”or “Bliukher”),Penkovsky,Rozengolts,and Vasil- kovsky (not “Pen’kovskii,” “Rozengol’ts,” or “Vasil’kovskii”), Sergei (not “Sergey”),Demyan Bedny (not “Dem’ian Bednyi”),Yuzovka (not “Iuzovka”), and so on. On the other hand,in a few cases the title of a publication in Russian may be given according to the Library ofCongress system as an aid to readers seek- ing that publication in a library catalogue. Note, however, that the spelling Izvestia is used for the main Soviet government newspaper, rather than Izvestiyaor Izvestiia. Also,in some cases,we have used -yo- rather than -e- or -ë- to render a letter of the Russian alphabet that is spelled like an e but pronounced like “yoh.”For example,Budyonny (rather than “Budennyi”) and the river Psyol (rather than Psel). Also the spelling Oryol is used (rather than “Orel”) for the city whose name in Russian means “eagle” and which is pronounced “or-YOL”(with the stress on the second syllable). Of course, Khrushchev’s name itself contains this letter e that is pronounced “yoh”(or “oh”),but to render his name,as some do,with the spelling Khrushchov is not advisable. The familiar form ofthe spelling is the one used. As an exception to our general transliteration style,the names oftsars are Anglicized––for example, Tsar Alexander, Nicholas II, Peter the Great. (We use the spelling tsar rather than czar.) Similar exceptions to our translitera- tion style occur in the case of well-known individuals, the spellings of whose names have become established in English––for instance,Leo Tolstoy [ ]
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