…Khrushchev was hoping to
establish connection with Artem on several grounds. First and foremost, he was
trying to promote his connection to Comrade Artem, my grandfather. Khrushchev
was born in the village of Kalinovka, in the Province of Kursk, not too far
from the village of Glebovo, in the same Province where Comrade Artem had been
born eleven years earlier. Furthermore, Khrushchev claimed that his
professional roots had been in Donbass, the heart of Comrade Artem’s territory.
Khrushchev alleged that his own father had worked in Donbass as a coal miner,
and that he himself had started his professional career there, first as a
tinker, then as a mechanic.
Everybody knew of course
that Khrushchev had “cheated on his résumé,” like most other people had done,
as a matter of standard practice. Prior to the Civil War, which he had joined
in 1919 as a soldier in Stalin’s private army, his background had been entirely
peasant. This fact left undoctored, would have stigmatized his budding
political career. (Curiously, in Kalinin’s case, the fact that everybody knew
that the man was a bona fide blue collar worker allowed his legend to stress
his peasant roots, but Khrushchev would not have been able to get away with
promoting his peasant origin.) In a proletarian dictatorship, as Lenin
had called the Soviet political system, Khrushchev simply had to be a
proletarian. So, of course, he just had to invent all that proletarian
stuff about Donbass, etc.
It was not a big deal,
and, as I said before, it was common practice among Khrushchev’s peers.
Khrushchev did not expect my father to believe his lies, but only to appreciate
his profound respect for Comrade Artem, in choosing Donbass for his résumé. But
General Artem stubbornly refused to acknowledge Khrushchev as a “paisano.”
He told me a very popular joke circulated in Donbass during the so-called “glorious
decade” of Khrushchev’s stay at the helm:
“Why do the
coal miners of Donbass carry flashlights brighter than their brethren
elsewhere?” -- “Because they are searching for traces of Comrade Khrushchev’s
Donbass heritage.”
This rather square joke
represents the general level of disrespect Khrushchev used to be treated with,
from the start of his political career to its very end, in 1964. I personally
find this contemptuous attitude grossly unfair. At least Uncle Nikita had a
character; he was a colorful individual, a perennial newsmaker. I would take
him any time against the lifeless, humorless nobodies of the Brezhnev-Kosygin-Chernenko
ilk.
The Donbass connection
was not the only one where Khrushchev was expecting to find common ground with
Artem. In 1955, he called him for the proverbial walk in the countryside.
He started their conversation on a personal note, telling Artem about his
meeting in Peking the previous year, with my mother and me. Having completed
this conditioning stage of the conversation, Khrushchev then fired his
big gun, blaming Stalin for the Aerowagon wreck, which in 1921 had taken
the life of Comrade Artem.
From this point on, the
purpose of their conversation ought to be clear to the reader. In the next few
months Khrushchev would be making his bold political move denouncing Stalin in
the so-called “Secret Speech” at the upcoming Communist Party Congress.
In doing so, he wanted Artem explicitly on his side. In return, he would
personally guarantee Artem’s fast promotion to Marshal, and also help Artem
dissolve his grotesque Spanish marriage, and rejoin his Russian family.
Accusing Stalin of Comrade
Artem’s death, Khrushchev had naturally assumed that Comrade Artem’s son must
bear a deep personal grudge against his father’s murderer, whoever that may be.
After all, isn’t blood thicker than water? He obviously intended to
strike a welcome chord in General Artem’s heart, but instead, achieved the
opposite effect of alienating him even further.
Both Khrushchev and Artem
badly underestimated each other. Khrushchev failed to realize the strength of
Artem’s admiration for his late adoptive father Stalin. On his part, my father
uncompromisingly despised this extraordinary peasant, whose clever mask, worn
by him all his life, Artem had mistaken for the real face.
No comments:
Post a Comment