![]() ![]() ![]() For years afterward he was a minor player on the Soviet stage and a figure of fun to many senior Communists the perception that he posed no threat, indeed, became a major asset. The Soviet premier came from peasant stock and was working in a mine when revolution came to Russia in 1917. It is also possible that, had he been a better swimmer, the disastrous break between the Communist parties of Russia and China-the Sino-Soviet Split, which would help guarantee the west victory in the Cold War-might have been averted.Įxplaining why Khrushchev’s prowess in the pool mattered means explaining Khrushchev. ![]() It has been seriously suggested, for example, that the reason Khrushchev survived the murderous Soviet-era purges of the paranoid 1930s and early 1950s-when tens of thousands of other apparatchiks were rewarded for their loyalty with a bullet in the back of the neck-is that, standing just 5 feet 3 inches tall, he was the one member of the politburo who did not tower over the man he would replace, the 5-foot-6 Stalin. The list of things that Nikita Khrushchev would never be and could not do was long some of them would change history.
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