Khrushchev’s Putsch

Sound Bite

In a compact book built on quotes from primary sources, Schnehen shows that Khrushchev essentially pulled off a coup, eliminating Stalin and then Beria. This opened the future to a radical shift away from the policies that had enabled the Soviet Union to make the hair-raising jump into the modern industrialized world and pulled it through the devastating war. Khrushchev brought havoc to the Soviet economy and society.

About the Book

An unbiased review of primary resources leads one to some rather shocking conclusions about how the history of the Soviet Union has been misrepresented. Slander and libel against Beria and Stalin have been repeated until they took on the sheen of accepted truth.Yet they had fought for the rights of the working poor. This kind of agenda tends to draw the wrath of the elites, who, after Stalin’s violent death in 1953, were quick to move things in a different direction.The West has always been sympathetic to Khrushchev. He was heralded for his “courage” in condemning his predecessor and for introducing capitalist elements into the Soviet economy. In fact, he was put in place to dismantle the socialist system, especially the socialist economic system, which had been created under Lenin and Stalin, and to substitute it with an essentially capitalist system ruled by the profit principle and a privileged nomenclature.The facts, the actual record, show that Stalin and Beria fought fight to build socialism, prioritizing the interests of the workingman. This has never been forgotten or forgiven; it is still a thorn in the side of the new Russian rulers, who are building a hybrid system with many capitalist features; they downplay the Communist past.