In 1936, as the trials proceeded, Khrushchev expressed his vehement support: Everyone who rejoices in the successes achieved in our country, the victories of our party led by the great Stalin, will find only one word suitable for the mercenary, fascist dogs of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite gang.

[79] The partisans, many of whom fought as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), were gradually defeated, as Soviet police and military reported killing 110,825 "bandits" and capturing a quarter million more between 1944 and 1946.

Instead, much of the high-level work of government took place at dinners hosted by Stalin for his inner circle of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Nikolai Bulganin.

[97] These structures were completed at triple the construction rate of Moscow housing from 1946 to 1950, lacked elevators or balconies, and were nicknamed khrushchyovka by the public, but because of their shoddy workmanship sometimes disparagingly called Khrushchoba, combining Khrushchev's name with the Russian word trushchoba, meaning "slum".

Khrushchev's policy was still restrained by the need to retain the support of the Presidium and to placate the inarticulate but restive Soviet masses who were thrilled by Sputnik but demanded a higher standard of living on the ground as well.

"[131] Khrushchev told the delegates: It is here that Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power ... he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the party or the Soviet Government.

The speech was a factor in unrest in Poland and revolution in Hungary later in 1956, and Stalin defenders led four days of rioting in his native Georgia in June, calling for Khrushchev to resign and Molotov to take over.

Mikhail Gorbachev, then a Komsomol official, recalled that though young and well-educated Soviets in his district were excited by the speech, many others decried it, either defending Stalin or seeing little point in digging up the past.

As word leaked of the power struggle, members of the Central Committee, which Khrushchev controlled, streamed to Moscow, many flown there aboard military planes, and demanded to be admitted to the meeting.

As there were limited numbers of Central Committee seats from each oblast, the division set up the possibility of rivalry for office between factions, and, according to Medvedev, had the potential for beginning a two-party system.

He looked especially at collectivism, state farms, liquidation of machine-tractor stations, planning decentralization, economic incentives, increased labor and capital investment, new crops, and new production programs.

[162] Khrushchev sought to abolish the Machine-Tractor Stations (MTS) which not only owned most large agricultural machines but also provided services such as plowing, and transfer their equipment and functions to the kolkhozes and sovkhozes (state farms).

These goals were met by farmers who slaughtered their breeding herds and by purchasing meat at state stores, then reselling it back to the government, artificially increasing recorded production.

[190] British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan wondered, "How can this fat, vulgar man with his pig eyes and ceaseless flow of talk be the head—the aspirant Tsar for all those millions of people?

[195] In January 1960, he took advantage of improved relations with the U.S. to order a reduction of one-third in the size of Soviet armed forces, alleging that advanced weapons would make up for the lost troops.

[206] During luncheon at the Twentieth Century-Fox Studio in Los Angeles Khrushchev engaged in an improvised yet jovial debate with his host Spyros Skouras over the merits of capitalism and communism.

[213] He pushed for an immediate summit but was frustrated by French President Charles de Gaulle, who postponed it until 1960, a year in which Eisenhower was scheduled to pay a return visit to the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev was infuriated by a statement of the Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong charging the Soviets with employing a double standard by decrying colonialism while dominating Eastern Europe.

He considered the victor, John F. Kennedy, as a far more likely partner for détente, but was taken aback by the newly inaugurated U.S. President's tough talk and actions in the early days of his administration.

Construction preparations were made in great secrecy, and the border was sealed off in the early hours of Sunday, 13 August 1961, when most East German workers who earned hard currency by working in West Berlin would be at their homes.

"[230] On 16 October, Kennedy was informed that U-2 flights over Cuba had discovered what were most likely medium-range missile sites, and though he and his advisors considered approaching Khrushchev through diplomatic channels, they could come up with no way of doing this that would not appear weak.

[232] As the crisis unfolded, tensions were high in the U.S.; less so in the Soviet Union, where Khrushchev made several public appearances and went to the Bolshoi Theatre to hear American opera singer Jerome Hines.

[237] After the crisis, superpower relations improved, as Kennedy gave a conciliatory speech on 10 June 1963, recognizing the Soviet people's suffering during World War II, and paying tribute to their achievements.

Khrushchev's government was reluctant to endorse Mao's desires for an assertive worldwide revolutionary movement, preferring to conquer capitalism through raising the standard of living in communist-bloc countries.

These were seen as ideal places to test the "socialist model of development" because of their critical dependence on economic cooperation with the Soviet Union, in contrast to larger Third World nations like Egypt and Indonesia.

[265] The conspirators, led by Brezhnev, First Deputy Premier Alexander Shelepin, and KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny, struck in October 1964, while Khrushchev was on vacation at Pitsunda with his friend and Presidium colleague Anastas Mikoyan.

[266] Even though Khrushchev suspected the real reason for the meeting,[267] he flew to Moscow, accompanied by the head of the Georgian KGB, General Aleksi Inauri, but otherwise taking no precautions.

[288] Historian Robert Service summarizes Khrushchev's contradictory personality traits: [he was] at once a Stalinist and an anti-Stalinist, a communist believer and a cynic, a self-publicizing poltroon and a crusty philanthropist, a trouble-maker and a peacemaker, a stimulating colleague and a domineering boor, a statesman and a politicker who was out of his intellectual depth.

The refusal of the western world to acknowledge East Germany was gradually eroded, and, in 1975, the US and other NATO members signed the Helsinki Agreement with the USSR and Warsaw Pact nations.

[294] Khrushchev biographer William Tompson related the former premier's reforms to those which occurred later: Throughout the Brezhnev years and the lengthy interregnum that followed, the generation which had come of age during the "first Russian spring" of the 1950s awaited its turn in power.