Actor, psychological manipulator, refusing public drinking of politicians: CIA dossier on secretary general released
Nikita Khrushchev was a “master of the word”, confident in his unconditional rightness. Such a description in 1961 was given to the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a report, an excerpt from which was published by Slate on February 21. The 155-page document itself, recently posted on the website of the John F. Kennedy Library, was prepared for the American president on the eve of his meeting with Khrushchev in June 1961 in Vienna, at which the heads of state were to discuss the German question.
In addition to the dossier on the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, the report included reference materials on the negotiations between Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as other materials on the history of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the United States.
“In his speeches, he often refers to his simple origins. He is proud of his personal achievements and is confident that his abilities, determination and initiative are commensurate with his position; he is jealous of his privilege and is proud of his resourcefulness, which allowed him to bypass opponents who underestimated him,”the drafters of the document described Khrushchev.
The dossier on him says that after Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev was not as prominent in the international arena, unlike Molotov, Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan. But over time, he began to come out of their shadow.
Initially, in the eyes of the West, Khrushchev created the impression of "an impulsive, limited, difficult person to communicate, to some extent even a jester and drunkard."
Nikita Khrushchev at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow, 1956. Reproduction of TASS photo chronicle
“As the“Khrushchev cult”rapidly increased its influence, the secretary general himself rose to an ever higher hierarchical level and acquired new powers. Over the past two years, under him there have been significant changes both within the Communist Party and in the government as a whole,”the document says. And after the first secretary settled in the top of the Soviet hierarchy, "Khrushchev and his propagandists began to inflate his image to an international figure."
In the late 1950s, the image of the secretary general was corrected: Khrushchev decides to abandon public manifestations of his addiction to alcohol; thanks to the professionalism of his headquarters, he appears before the world community as a person endowed with a sharp and lively mind, eloquence and deep knowledge in various fields.
Representatives of the West, it is noted in the dossier, when analyzing Khrushchev's personality, were divided in opinions regarding the motives of his actions. Some came to the conclusion that he is an absolute pragmatist and a practitioner who follows the Stalinist doctrine more out of habit than out of conviction. Others were struck by his dogmatism and noticed the limitations of his horizons by the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
“In fact, he could work with time-tested doctrines, even if they seem outdated or irrelevant to him, as, for example, in the case of Lenin's assertion about the inevitability of war. And at the same time, he repeatedly repeated to the world community about the upcoming triumph of communism,”wrote the US intelligence officers.
They described Khrushchev as a "master of the word", "an actor playing vivid roles" and a "psychological manipulator." At the same time, he is credited with such qualities as lack of discernment and confidence in his unconditional rightness, sometimes not supported by any arguments: “It is because of this trait of his character that he seems to be devoted to communist ideology, when in reality he rather follows the principles of communist progress, where the end justifies the means, and the very adherence to communist doctrines grows more from blind faith than from their understanding."
The meeting between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev took place in Vienna on June 4, 1961. At it, the heads of state were supposed to determine the prospect of further relations between the United States and the USSR and discuss the solution of issues related to, in particular, the civil war in Laos, the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests and the Berlin crisis, the beginning of which is considered the Khrushchev ultimatum of November 27, 1958 (known as "Berlin ultimatum"). The negotiations failed and resulted in the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which was demolished only at the end of 1989.
