Press Release, 17.12.2024

Photo: Nina Khrushcheva / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Yabloko hosted a second meeting with Nina Khrushcheva, political scientist and professor at the New School in New York, and great granddaughter of USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev. Nina Khrushcheva spoke about her new book “Nikita Khrushchev. A Leader Outside the System”, and answered questions from participants about the personality of the Soviet leader and the years of the Thaw, which he largely personified. The evening was moderated by Grigory Grishin, Adviser to the Yabloko Chairman.

Nina Khrushcheva’s book combines two views: on the one hand, it is an objective view of a researcher and historian, based on archival data and documents, and on the other hand,  paragraphs printed in italics contain the memories of a family member, a touching story woven from personal stories and memories of people who knew Nikita Khrushchev closely.

During the meeting, the great-granddaughter of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR debunked several popular myths about Khrushchev: he never banged his shoe on the table at a meeting of the UN General Assembly, did not give Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, none of the relevant documents had his signature, and he never quarreled with sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, who himself called their debates in the field of art “an exchange of opinions”. Readers can learn all this and more from her book.

A number of questions from the audience were devoted to Khrushchev’s life “in retirement”, after his forced resignation.

Nina Khrushchova said that the former Soviet leader regretted the shooting of a demonstration of workers in Novocherkassk most of all: “My mother always thought that he was very worried, so worried that he could not talk about it,” the researcher recalled.

Khrushchev also regretted that he was unable to improve relations with the intelligentsia, not giving them more freedom to create, and that he did not open the borders of the state. Khrushchev also regretted that he banned the publication of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, which seemed “boring” to him, and, therefore, not at all dangerous.

The participants of the meeting thanked Nina Khrushcheva for an interesting story about the post-Stalin USSR and an unbiased assessment of Nikita Khrushchev’s personality. The evening ended with a photo session.

This is a second meeting with Nina Khrushcheva in Yabloko. Earlier, the political scientist also presented her book about Nikita Khrushchev. The party hall could not accommodate everyone who wanted to attend.