Family Weekly June u, iaee
WHAT YOU DON'T
ABOUT KHRUSHCHEV By GEOFFREY BOCCA
The LACK OF STYLE in Mrs. Khrush
chev's dress so appalled the distin
guished London fashion designer, John
Cavanagh, that he called the Soviet em
bassy recently and said he wanted to
design some clothes for her.
"Could you give me her measurements,
please?" he asked.
The embassy official promised to call him
back, and duly did so. "I have relayed your ques
tion to the ambassador," the stony voice on the
phone told Cavanagh. "He says he is not quite
sure, but he thinks that Mrs. Khrushchev's
measurements are probably the same as Mr.
Khrushchev's measurements."
The Soviet ambassador's little joke is signifi
cant, for a leader's personality can be assessed
by the jests his own people make about him.
When Stalin was in power, the Russians were
too frightened to see anything funny in him or
his regime. But under Nikita Khrushchev they
breathe and joke easier.
Why this should be so is an enigma. Khrush
chev rose to prominence during Stalin's regime,
and he apparently felt right at home in its at
mosphere of murder, treachery, and terror. In
the 1930s, Khrushchev had a leading role in the
purges that sent an untold number of Russians
to death before firing squads or to the living
death of the Siberian prison camps. Twenty
years later, he earned the bloody sobriquet,
Butcher of Budapest.
Yet, there is a difference between Stalin and
Khrushchev. In the cold marble slab of Stalin's
personality there seemed to be no veins of
human warmth or weakness. In Khrushchev,
streaks of humanity are readily apparent. It
may not be much of a difference, but to the long
suffering Russians even a slight change for the
better seems a great relief.
The Voice of a "Cooing Bull"
In appearance, Khrushchev is short, thickset,
and overweight, with a sallow complexion and
very small feet. Although he laughs freely, he
misses nothing that is going on around him, and
his small but usually merry eyes dart over a
crowded room even when he is speaking to some
one. His voice has been described as like that of a
"cooing bull."
Khrushchev's hands are his most unexpected
feature. They are small and artistic with slender,
tapering fingers extraordinary for a man who
has been a coal miner, metalworker, and shep
herd. He is very vain about them and has them
manicured regularly.
He wears made-to-measure shoes with false
shoelaces and elastic bands that permit him to
take them off and put them on without bending.
This is useful when he must sit through long
banquets or when he wants to get a shoe off in
a hurry to bang a desk at the U. N.
As leader of the Soviet state, Khrushchev has
two homes and a large domestic staff.
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Khrushchev and
Monster or jolly grandpa?
He's a little of both, besides being
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III! i 'y h?xa-rril--. .-M i LwJ
H a woman fancier,
Pyy aRd a quack
LSQnL medicine addict
Irina Furtseva one of K's favorites.
wife Nina pamper grandchildren Aliocha (i.) and Nikita.
He spends most of his time at his dacha (coun
try house) 30 miles from Moscow. The address,
in case you wish to write him, is 20 Vorobyvoskoe
Chaussee, Lenin Hill, in the village of Usova.
The house was built in 1956 and is a formidable,
tasteless place with 40 rooms, columned ter
races, and a great park. Khrushchev loves ani
mals, and several dogs romp around the house.
His favorite is a wolf dog called Arbat, which
was discovered as a stray pup by one of his
grandchildren.
On vacation, the Khrushchev family goes to
another dacha at Sochi on the Black Sea coast
(the Russian Riviera). They always take with
them a staff that includes two maids in white
Victorian uniform with starched bonnets.
Khrushchev has been married twice; the first
time in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolu
tion. He was 23, already a hard drinker, and the
aggressive center-forward on the Hughesoffka
soccer team, champions of the Don Basin. His
bride was Galina Boutzenco, about whose back
ground little is known.
Within three years, she gave him three chil
dren a son and two daughters. What happened
next is something of a mystery. One of the little
girls died, and it is said Galina was so heart
broken she had a nervous collapse and died in
the psychiatric ward of Kharkov Hospital.
In 1921, Nikita met Nina Petrovna. It was an
encounter that changed the course of history
because, without her, the uneducated muzhik
never would have risen to the heights he did.
Nina was an ardent Communist, but she also
was educated and a lady. Her father had been a
tsarist officer, and her tastes were cultivated.
Nina assumed the task of raising Nikita's two
surviving children from his first marriage; and
they had three more youngsters of their own.
The children of the first marriage were Leon
ide and Djoulia. If Leonide were alive today,
he would be 45. During World War II, he was
piloting a plane on a strafing sortie over Stalin
grad when he was shot down and killed. Even
today, Khrushchev cannot speak of him without
emotion. Djoulia, a year younger than her broth
er, is totally unglamorous with thick black hair
and glasses. She works as a scientist.
The Second Set of Children
Oldest of Nikita's and Nina's children is Rada,
who is married to Aleksei Adzhubei, one of Rus
sia's most influential journalists. The second
child is Serge, who tends to be his father's fa
vorite probably because he is tall, rather good
looking, and somewhat wayward. Serge's wife is
a Jewish girl, a fact Khrushchev makes political
capital of when accused of anti-Semitism. The
youngest child is Elena, who is 23, demurely
pretty, and a law student at Moscow University.
Khrushchev and his wife seem genuinely de
voted. He calls her Ninonka, an affectionate form
of Nina. She calls him Medvod, which means
"bear." But Nina has failed in one respect. De
spite her 41-year educational campaign, Nikita
remains lowbrow in his tastes. He listens pa
tiently when she puts classical records on the
hi-fi, but he prefers rowdy folk dances and the
rousing but uncomplicated songs of the Red
Army choirs.
Khrushchev's attitude toward drinking isn't
very sophisticated, either. While visiting Mar
shal Tito in Yugoslavia in 1955, he gave a per
formance which won't soon be forgotten in the
annals of diplomacy. Warmed by plum brandy,
he tried to kiss Tito's attractive wife Jovanka.
She laughingly dodged him. But Tito was un
amused and suggested it was getting late. Nikita
ignored the suggestion and went on drinking.
Soon he was after Madame Tito again. He
serenaded her with a melancholy Russian ballad
and suggested a walk in the moonlight. She po
litely declined. To break up the party, the jittery
guests rose to go to bed. Nikita refused ; he said
he was going to sleep on Tito's sofa. Eventually,
however, he was persuaded to retire.
When Khrushchev awoke, he must have real
ized what a fool he had made of himself. Since
that time, he has never drunk in public. But he
still tipples at home. His favorite drink is
Ukrainian cognac with a beer chaser. For his
hangovers, Nina has a somewhat savage cure
h breakfast of raw sauerkraut and dill pickles.
A Weakness for Women, Too
Nikita's weakness for drink is matched by his
weakness for women despite his genuine affec
tion for Nina.
He reportedly owed the first big advance in
his political career to Rosa Kaganovitch, a sister
of one of Stalin's top henchmen. This was in 1935
when Rosa was Stalin's mistress. Rosa, fasci
nated by Nikita's toughness, brought him to the
attention of Stalin. But this did not deter
Khrushchev from later purging her brother.
For years, Khrushchev's favorite woman
friend was Irina Furtseva, who is now Soviet
minister of culture. Once extremely fat, she
melted off 20 pounds and revealed herself to be
an attractive woman. She went with Khrushchev
on his state visit to India, and it is understood
she had her heart set on going along with him to
the United States, too. Instead, he took Nina.
Irina reportedly was furious. Since then, their
relationship has cooled.
As befits a woman fancier, Khrushchev also is
something of a dandy in his dress. He likes silk
shirts, seldom wears the same set of cuff links
twice, and drapes his roly-poly form in suits
custom-made by Angelo Litrico, a clever little
Sicilian tailor who works in Rome.
But Khrushchev, the fashion plate, is a rather
recent creation. During most of his public life,
he wore the absurdly padded shoulders and
bell-bottomed trousers which are standard dress
among Soviet officialdom. His conversion to
Western style came when he suddenly shot to
the top of the Communist hierarchy and began
rubbing shoulders with such debonair dressers
as Sir Anthony Eden and Marshal Tito. For
years, Molotov and Vishinsky had been traveling
the world in their shapeless Russian suits, in
different to the giggles of Western observers."
But as soon as Khrushchev realized how dowdy
his clothes were, he felt ashamed, asked what
could be done about them, and on the advice of
some of his more knowing diplomats sent his
measurements off to Litrico in Rome.
Khrushchev's reaction to being dressed dif
ferently from other world leaders is revealing.
It bares two of his basic traits a searching
curiosity and a quivering sensitivity.
What he has seen on his trips outside the Iron
Curtain has not been lost on him. He realizes the
West is ahead of Russia in many ways, and he is
determined first to narrow the gap, then push
his own country into the lead. Whatever effect
his actions may have on the world, they have
made life more bearable inside Russia.
One Kind of Curtain Pushed Back
Little incidents can reveal a lot. During a
visit to Moscow, I saw Khrushchev sweep out of
the Kremlin in his large car with a simple secur
ity cortege, no more and no less grandly than
any other chief of state. The veteran Moscow
correspondent who was standing beside me com
mented : "Before Khrushchev, Soviet leaders
traveled in cars with the curtains closed. It was
a continuation of the old tsarist principle that
leaders should not be seen by the masses. To me,
there is great symbolic meaning in Khrushchev's
simple act of opening the curtains."
To achieve his ambitious goals for his coun
try, Khrushchev has been pushing himself to al
most superhuman limits. One wonders how long
he can keep it up.
In 1959, there were whispers in Moscow that
Khrushchev was on the verge of a breakdown.
One diplomat, on leaving a conference with him,
said, "His complexion is ghastly. I never saw a
man heading so surely for a heart attack."
Khrushchev himself was not unaware of the
warning signs. That year, he went to Romania
for a thorough checkup from Professor Anna
Asland of Bucharest University. It was an odd
choice and one that suggests Khrushchev
shares with Stalin an enthusiasm for longevity
nostrums. Professor Asland is notorious for her
"rejuvenating process," which entails dosing
her patients with what she calls H-3, but which
is nothing more than novocain. Western medi
cal scientists consider her an out-and-out quack.
When patients feel benefit from Buch treat
ments, it is usually a psychological response
and Khrushchev returned to Moscow feeling
better. In 1960, he went on a strict diet to lose
weight and relieve arterial pressure. Since then,
his health has remained reasonably steady.
But, at 68, it would take a miracle to add many
more productive years to Khrushchev's life
and of course the world leader of atheistic com
munism doesn't believe in miracles.
Nikita Khrushchev is a man who has done
great evil; he is a man to be feared. Neverthe
less, I can't help but feel his death will be no
cause for rejoicing in the West. His replacement
could be infinitely worse.
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Family Weekly. June 24, 1962
Family Weekly. June 24. 1962
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