05.06.03 - 12:21 p.m.

Khruschev.

i'm reading a new biography of Khruschev, called the man and his era by william taubman. up to... mid-50s, thus far, after Stalin dies and as Khruschev is consolidating control. it's a fascinating portrait. it's so weird, how immediately i identify with khruschev as a half-hero. i want to be an apologist for those he sentenced to die, the execution warrants he signed, the purges he ignored even when he knew they were the product of a mad-man and the constant internal power struggle. i want to dismiss all that because i want him to be a heroic figure, but of course, what makes him interesting is that he is such a troubled figure: appalled by the terror, worshipper of stalin, the first to deconstruct his olegacy, now brave in facing up to stalin on behalf of the his units and/or the ukraine, where he was party secretary, now syncophant who only delivers good news and thus creates the crises from which he tries to rescue his people in the first place.

it's hard to understand, really, how the USSR could have survived with such people at the helm of state. in his later years, stalin used to make all his state decisions during the course of endless meals and drinking sessions, all of which his inner circle were expected to attend all night every night, after "movie night" at the kremlin. stalin apparently loved american cowboy movies, and would have his head of film and propaganda stand there and "translate" the westerns from whatever language they had been made in (none of which he spoke) while stalin would declaim against the ideological errors in the film.

and the feasts - the gluttinous feasts. first, Stalin wouldn't eat anything unless one of this aids had eaten it first. he was terrified of being poisoned. second, they would engage in all sorts of juvenile antic, pinning signs on the back of each other's suits, putting tomatoes in the chair of the hungarian party chairman, whatever.

...just, so weird.