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Krushchev's Russia
novel
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
175 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
3 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Edward Crankshaw
70 books13 followersEdward Crankshaw (3 January 1909 – 30 November 1984), was a British writer, translator and commentator on Soviet affairs.
Born in London, Crankshaw was educated in the Nonconformist public school, Bishop's Stortford College, Hertfordshire, England. He started working as a journalist for a few months at The Times. In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler's Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the Second World War while living there.
In 1940 Crankshaw was contacted by the Secret Intelligence Service because of his knowledge of German. During World War II Crankshaw served as a 'Y' (Signals Intelligence) officer in the British Army. From 1941 to 1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Moscow, where he served initially as an Army 'Y' specialist and later as the accredited representative of the British 'Y' services, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following a breakdown in 'Y' cooperation with the Soviet General Staff in December 1942, the British 'Y' Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to Bletchley Park, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to Russia.
From 1947 to 1968 he worked for the British newspaper The Observer. He died in 1984 in Hawkhurst, Kent.
Crankshaw wrote around 40 books on Austrian, (Vienna; Vienna, the Image of a Culture in Decline; Fall of the House of Habsburg; Gestapo. Instrument of Tyranny; Maria Theresa; Bismarck; The Habsburgs: a dynasty...) and Russian subjects, (Britain and Russia; Putting up with the Russians; Tolstoy: The making of a novelist; Russia without Stalin; The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917; Khrushchev; Khrushchev Remembers; The New Cold War, Moscow vs. Pekin; preface to Grigory Klimov's The Terror Machine).
(source: wikipedia)
Born in London, Crankshaw was educated in the Nonconformist public school, Bishop's Stortford College, Hertfordshire, England. He started working as a journalist for a few months at The Times. In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler's Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the Second World War while living there.
In 1940 Crankshaw was contacted by the Secret Intelligence Service because of his knowledge of German. During World War II Crankshaw served as a 'Y' (Signals Intelligence) officer in the British Army. From 1941 to 1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Moscow, where he served initially as an Army 'Y' specialist and later as the accredited representative of the British 'Y' services, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following a breakdown in 'Y' cooperation with the Soviet General Staff in December 1942, the British 'Y' Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to Bletchley Park, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to Russia.
From 1947 to 1968 he worked for the British newspaper The Observer. He died in 1984 in Hawkhurst, Kent.
Crankshaw wrote around 40 books on Austrian, (Vienna; Vienna, the Image of a Culture in Decline; Fall of the House of Habsburg; Gestapo. Instrument of Tyranny; Maria Theresa; Bismarck; The Habsburgs: a dynasty...) and Russian subjects, (Britain and Russia; Putting up with the Russians; Tolstoy: The making of a novelist; Russia without Stalin; The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917; Khrushchev; Khrushchev Remembers; The New Cold War, Moscow vs. Pekin; preface to Grigory Klimov's The Terror Machine).
(source: wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 25, 2025
A really good book. Talks about the end of Stalin's rule and the rise of Khrushchev in Russia. How Khrushchev wanted to clear out the poison of Stalin but also kept some of his rules alive like Bureaucracy. How Khrushchev was never sure of what was right and did whatever came to mind. How he wanted to be a great ruler but wasn't sure about his own decisions.
a good political pick.
a good political pick.
January 18, 2020
Crankshaw offers an insightful account into Khrushchev and his Russia, as is and as he wants it. The greatness of this book is only compounded given the contextual approach of Crankshaw, whereby he is not discussing Khrushchev and the USSR from a Western point of view (where all is foreing, weird, and evil) but from an indigenous point of view, with the hope that the reader can understand what is going on and why certain reactions are coming out from the point of view of the Soviets. Crankshaw never loses sight of the reality of dictatorship and authoritarianism that underlies his subject, keeps to educating the reader rather than mindlessly demonizing his subject. It is a great read that also allows the informed reader to draw parallels between Khrushchev's Russia and Xi Jinping's China. I would recommend it as a fantastic source.
July 18, 2023
A well written, intelligent view of the state of Russia, both socially and politically, under the first years of Khrushchev. Crankshaw's insights come from a wealth of experience and observation, producing an excellent primer for anyone interested in Soviet history.
The only paragraph which seemed a little naive (and which made me laugh out loud) was the following:
"It is worth noting in this connection [speaking of the disaster of collectivisation] that nobody, neither Khrushchev nor fellow travellers, has ever uttered a word of apology to those western critics, whom, in the past, they had bitterly and circumstantially denounced, for being right about the state of Soviet food production, about Stalin's crimes against the Party, about his blunders at the beginning of the war with Germany."
The only paragraph which seemed a little naive (and which made me laugh out loud) was the following:
"It is worth noting in this connection [speaking of the disaster of collectivisation] that nobody, neither Khrushchev nor fellow travellers, has ever uttered a word of apology to those western critics, whom, in the past, they had bitterly and circumstantially denounced, for being right about the state of Soviet food production, about Stalin's crimes against the Party, about his blunders at the beginning of the war with Germany."
June 15, 2017
An interesting book to read in historical perspective, especially since the author is an advocate of an armed attack against the Soviet Union which (in retrospect!) seems quite crazy.
July 24, 2019
Interesting book. It reminds one of how the Soviet Union operated. Worth a read by anyone interested in the Soviet Union during the 40s through the early 60s.
October 18, 2017
Khrushchev's Russia is a useful little primer on what is now a relatively forgotten time in the history of the USSR. The death of Stalin led to a significant time of change in the government of the Soviet Union. As Crankshaw makes clear, the leadership wanted to make a clean break with the tyranny of the past, and the initial period of collective government was effective in doing that. Crankshaw shows throughout this book that Khrushchev's subsequent rise to power, while having outward similarities to Stalin's rise, was in fact very different, with Khrushchev needing to find a consensus view to remain in power. The power struggle between Malenkov and Khrushchev is well described, with Malenkov seeking the backing of the technocrats, while Khrushchev increased his grip on the Party in an endeavour to have its backing. In the end he succeeded, and as Crankshaw writes, to have the Party behind you means victory, for two reasons: one, the party structure means that someone in control has a voice that penetrates to the smallest village, and all the apparatchiks will follow the voice from the centre.
After the description of the quest for power, Crankshaw spends some pages discussing "the size of the problem", laying out in clear terms how far the USSR lagged other powers, and how the focus on heavy machinery had limited the availability of consumer goods to citizens. The backwards and forwards politics in this area seems to have been the product of the power struggle going on at the highest levels of the Party at the time.
This book is most interesting when it discusses the "thaw", the name given to the relaxation of culture after Khrushchev's famous "secret speech" denouncing Stalin. This led to a brief flowering of literary output, with the likes of Yevtushenko and Pasternak coming to the fore. Crankshaw puts this flowering, and the subsequent crackdown, into context with the uprisings in Poland and Hungary - bringing them into a larger context of the people flexing their "muscles" and seeing how far they could go. Khrushchev is never idealised in this book, and his chilling speech to the Russian writers where he threatened them with being shot reminds the reader that for all the discussion of a new way the old realities of the Stalinist system were not too far from the surface. The appendix to the book, containing the rejection letter to Pasternak from Novy Mir is a fine example of what artists had to cope with in such a system.
Crankshaw ends his special on a note of hope, describing the upcoming generation of Russians as ones with intelligence and a lack of fear. With the benefit of hindsight (this book was written before the intensification of the Cold War in the '60s) we can see that generation did not fulfil its promise, and the dull formalism of Soviet life continued.
It's always worth reminding ourselves of the relatively short duration of the Russian experiment - when this book was written the Revolution was barely forty years old, and there was no indication of its eventual decline thirty years hence - and at the time of writing it was quite possible to imagine that Russia may indeed surpass the wealth of the USA in another generation. Only fifty years ago there was no consensus that the Capitalist system would come out on top. This book, while pulling no punches in describing the worst excesses of the Soviet system, is a reminder of that.
You might find this book floating somewhere on a library shelf - it's a more entertaining read on 50s Russia than the Wikipedia entry.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
After the description of the quest for power, Crankshaw spends some pages discussing "the size of the problem", laying out in clear terms how far the USSR lagged other powers, and how the focus on heavy machinery had limited the availability of consumer goods to citizens. The backwards and forwards politics in this area seems to have been the product of the power struggle going on at the highest levels of the Party at the time.
This book is most interesting when it discusses the "thaw", the name given to the relaxation of culture after Khrushchev's famous "secret speech" denouncing Stalin. This led to a brief flowering of literary output, with the likes of Yevtushenko and Pasternak coming to the fore. Crankshaw puts this flowering, and the subsequent crackdown, into context with the uprisings in Poland and Hungary - bringing them into a larger context of the people flexing their "muscles" and seeing how far they could go. Khrushchev is never idealised in this book, and his chilling speech to the Russian writers where he threatened them with being shot reminds the reader that for all the discussion of a new way the old realities of the Stalinist system were not too far from the surface. The appendix to the book, containing the rejection letter to Pasternak from Novy Mir is a fine example of what artists had to cope with in such a system.
Crankshaw ends his special on a note of hope, describing the upcoming generation of Russians as ones with intelligence and a lack of fear. With the benefit of hindsight (this book was written before the intensification of the Cold War in the '60s) we can see that generation did not fulfil its promise, and the dull formalism of Soviet life continued.
It's always worth reminding ourselves of the relatively short duration of the Russian experiment - when this book was written the Revolution was barely forty years old, and there was no indication of its eventual decline thirty years hence - and at the time of writing it was quite possible to imagine that Russia may indeed surpass the wealth of the USA in another generation. Only fifty years ago there was no consensus that the Capitalist system would come out on top. This book, while pulling no punches in describing the worst excesses of the Soviet system, is a reminder of that.
You might find this book floating somewhere on a library shelf - it's a more entertaining read on 50s Russia than the Wikipedia entry.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews