NIKITA KHURSHCHEV

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01446R000100060011-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 18, 1998
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: April 13, 1959
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 1999/09/08 : CIA _f'446R000100060011-9
Senior Research Staff on International Communism
13 April 1959
SUBJECT: Nikita Khrushchev
Executive Registry
Khrushchev as a man is the prlduct of a pure Slav milieu, the
borderland of Great Russia and the Ukraine. He proudly displays the
characteristics of his background, the shrewdness of the peasant, the
proletarian energy of the coal miner. The advancement of Soviet agri-
culture is perhaps his consuming passion. He seeks and cultivates
popularity with a high degree of success. He exploits his natural con-
viviality, turning the vodka toast into an instrument of highly effective
statesmanship and propaganda. He loves to visit industrial plants and
collective farms, encouraging and admonishing with a degree of earthy
specificness that seems spontaneous and unbriefed.
Khrushchev has always gambled as he fought his way to the top,
and now that he has arrived he utilizes his courage and his ability to run
risks in the cause of a dynamic drive for world domination. How far he
will push his aggressive policies in the face of determined opposition is
not clear, but we do not believe that, like Hitler, he would seek to des-
troy the world as well as himself in a moment of ultimate frustration.
He does not want war, being convinced that Communism will triumph in
"peaceful competition. "
For Khrushchev firmly believes in the historical forces which
Leninism teaches will carry Communism to victory. No perceptive
observer who has dealt with him face to face doubts the sincerity of this
belief and his dedication to the ideological and practical mission of world
communization. For that reason he is a "proletarian internationalist"
who sees first in the Soviet Union and then in the world a "socialist system"
in which nationalities will be merged in a sort of "commonwealth. "
His power is perhaps unique in the world. He has achieved it by
classic Bolshevik tactics, building his personal following through the party
secretariat and eliminating all rivals. Having achieved total power, he
has allowed the "cult of personality" which he denounced in Stalin to develop
around himself. But he shows no signs of the brutal, inhuman "style" of
Stalin. He purges even his trusted followers, bloodlessly although there
has been blood on his hands in the past - in the cause of efficiency rather
than as an arbitrary exercise of power. He appears sincerely to believe
th
t
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resort to coercion and terror is no longer necessary, though he
obviously keeps the instrumentalities thereof at hand.
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 Approved For Release 1999/09/08 : CIA-RDP80-01446R000100060011-9
Here is a formidable man, intelligent, ruthless, dedicated.
He has learned the art of self-discipline, utilizing even his personal
weaknesses as instruments of popularity and dominance. It would be
a grave mistake to see in him the pig-like, hysterical drunkard which
he has sometimes been painted. Rather he is a complex human being
who draws his strength from his background and from the forces of
"life's and "historical necessity" which he finds himself called to lead.
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Approved For Release 1999/09/08 : CIA-RDP80-01446R000100060011-9