Overview
A chronicle of the year that changed Soviet Russiaand molded the future path of one of America's pre-eminent diplomatic correspondents
1956 was an extraordinary year in modern Russian history. It was called the year of the thawa time when Stalinās dark legacy of dictatorship died in February only to be reborn later that December. This historic arc from rising hope to crushing despair opened with a speech by Nikita Khrushchev, then the unpredictable leader of the Soviet Union. He astounded everyone by denouncing the one figure who, up to that time, had been hailed as a genius, a wizard of communismJosef Stalin himself. Now, suddenly, this once unassailable god was being portrayed as a madman whose idiosyncratic rule had seriously undermined communism and endangered the Soviet state.
This amazing switch from hero to villain lifted a heavy overcoat of fear from the backs of ordinary Russians. It also quickly led to anti-communist uprisings in Eastern Europe, none more bloody and challenging than the one in Hungary, which Soviet troops crushed at yearās end.
Marvin Kalb, then a young diplomatic attachƩ at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, observed this tumultuous year that foretold the end of Soviet communism three decades later. Fluent in Russian, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, he went where few other foreigners would dare go, listening to Russian students secretly attack communism and threaten rebellion against the Soviet system, traveling from one end of a changing country to the other and, thanks to his diplomatic position, meeting and talking with Khrushchev, who playfully nicknamed him Peter the Great.
In this, his fifteenth book, Kalb writes a fascinating eyewitness account of a superpower in upheaval and of a people yearning for an end to dictatorship.
This book title, The Year I Was Peter the Great (1956-Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia), ISBN: 9780815731610, by Marvin Kalb, published by BIP (October 10, 2017) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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