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Khrushchev's Collected Works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Abstract

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Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1963

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References

1 This does not include the volume of speeches from the Bulganin-Khrushchev visit of 1955 to India, Burma, and Afghanistan 1956, 328 pp.) or Khrushchev's pamphlets (approximately one hundred separate titles, eight of which at the end of August, 1963, contained over one hundred pages). Those twenty-three volumes, which are the main concern of this article, are listed below (I have arranged them topically; all were published by Gospolitizdat— with one exception noted—in Moscow):

1. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: (1958), 367 pp., under this heading each title covers the calendar year preceding the year of publication. (1960), Vol. I, 512 pp.; Vol. II, 440 pp. (1961), Vol. I, 656 pp.; Vol. II, 631 pp. (1962), Vol. I, 407 pp.; Vol. II, 368 pp. (1963),

MAJOR INTERNATIONAL VISITS: (1960), 336 pp.

AGRICULTURE: (1962-63), Vol. I, 495 pp.; Vol. II, 534 pp.; Vol. Ill, 544 pp.; Vol. IV, 479 pp.; Vol. V, 463 pp.; Vol. VI, 479 pp.; Vol. VII, 495 pp. 4.

LITERATURE AND ART: (izd. “Pravda, “ 1963), 248 pp.

2 This includes all the published Khrushchev material relating to his major international visits, which is also collected in separate anthologies on particular trips. These special anthologies are therefore of subordinate interest to anyone having access to the general series and to the purposes of this review. In almost all cases the more or less ceremonial letters from Khrushchev to foreign dignitaries (greetings each January 1, for example) are omitted from the anthology, having been published in Pravda.

3 In earlier volumes in the series on international affairs lengthy addresses ranging over various topics were represented only by excerpts relating to the theme of the series. But in the 1961 volumes all three speeches by the First Secretary to the 22nd Party Congress were reproduced in their wide-ranging entirety, apparently reflecting a growing feeling that there should be a complete, collected record.

4 It appears that until some time in 1962 the plan was to produce a lesser series of volumes, each with a separate title (as in the series on international affairs). Thus in 1961 and 1962 the first two titles listed in note 1 under section 3 were published, giving selective coverage to material appearing in 1959-62. Then some authority, possibly Khrushchev, decided that this was inadequate, and the series entitled … was initiated, replacing and duplicating the earlier effort. It will be interesting to see how the future increment to Khrushchev's works on agriculture is published—in the existing series or under a new title?

5 Each volume in the series on agriculture did, however, receive a front-page promotional article in Pravda (see the issues of Sept. 19, Nov. 2, Dec. 18, 1962, and Jan. 23, Mar. 16, Apr. 9, Apr. 16, 1963).

6 Khrushchev's public report to the 20th Congress had an initial Russian edition of eight million, while the supposedly epochal speech on the new party program in 1961 had a first run of only five million, an indication that even the party membership is displaying some consumer resistance to this kind of literature.

7 There are indications that Khrushchev is making a shift toward a stronger emphasis on doctrinal statements, although it is too early to evaluate the importance of this change. In addition to his doctrinally significant speech on the new party program, Khrushchev in 1961-62 published two theoretical articles in Kommunist, to which he had contributed nothing comparable—and very little of any sort—in earlier post-Stalin years. The motive for this is suggested by the relevance of both articles to the stresses in international communism. See No. 12, 1962.

8 The volume on literature and the arts also includes a speech of 1939—the only pre-1953 work republished in the volumes noted—which includes a number of ellipses, marking passages that assumedly are best forgotten. The impromptu diatribe against modern art, delivered at the exhibition of December, 1962, is completely passed over, even though it falls within the chronological scope of the anthology on the arts.

9 Unfortunately, the explicit designation of the previously unpublished material was not continued in the Pravda articles announcing subsequent volumes in the series.

10 March 27, 1962, see . VII, 5-19.

11 Ibid., 'pp. 315-21.

12 Ibid., pp. 249-60.