I. Scan the text. Fill in the gaps with the phrases given below:

1. deposed and then succeeded him;

2. the artists in the Novodevichy cemeter;

3. removing the most unbearable parts of the Stalinist inheritance;

4. far better than most of Russia’s leaders;

5. failure and success;

6. the negative and positive aspects of Khrushchev’s career;

7. to create his tombstone;

8. to improve communications during any future crisis;

9. to be relieved from his duties because of ill health;

10. confusion and further eroded his base of support.

The resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis gave Castro the security he needed. In 1963 two important agreements provided both the United States and the Soviet Union with small measures of additional security: a direct “hot line” teletype between the White House and the Kremlin (1) ____, and a partial nuclear test-ban treaty (signed by Great Britain as well) that banned all atmospheric nuclear tests.

But Khrushchev himself was vulnerable. Dissatisfaction with his leadership within top Communist Party circles, already widespread, mounted. A second round of de-Stalinization that had followed the 22nd Party Congress included the wholesale renaming of places and things named after Stalin – most notably, the city of Stalingrad was now to be Volgograd – but little else. Khrushchev’s efforts at further reforms, including a program to divide the Communist Party in half – one branch responsible for industry and the other for agriculture – produced nothing but (2) ____. By the fall of 1964 even some of his closest aides and former protégés were plotting against him. They prepared carefully, both in the Presidium and in the Central Committee, and in October 1964 Khrushchev was removed from power. A terse announcement informed the Soviet people of his “request” (3) ____. He was allowed a comfortable retirement, albeit in obscurity – all public mention of him stopped – and under constant surveillance by his successors.

The Khrushchev era was an amalgam of (4) ____. His reforms did not make the centralized Soviet economy an efficient competitor of the economies of the Western democracies. As a staunch Leninist Khrushchev made no effort to modify the one-party dictatorship that ruled over the Soviet Union. Yet he played a pivotal role in (5) ____. The secret police terror was ended, the Gulag was dissolved, the country’s standard of living improved considerably, and the range of permissible cultural expression was broadened significantly. By 1964 life in the Soviet Union was both quantitatively and, more important, qualitatively better than it had been in 1953. Whatever his faults and failures, Nikita Khrushchev had served his country (6) ____, whatever their titles or claims to fame.

Khrushchev’s career probably was best summed up by Neizvestny, who was informed nine years after the famous confrontation at the Manezh art exhibit that Khrushchev’s will had designated him (7) ____. Neizvestny responded brilliantly with a bronze bust surrounded by two interlocking marble columns, one black and one white, respectively, symbolizing (8) ____.

This small episode in Soviet history contains another touch of irony. Because he was so disliked by those who (9) ____, Khrushchev was denied the honor of internment in the Kremlin wall with other deceased Communist Party dignitaries. The bust over his grave therefore stands several miles distant in the cemetery of the beautiful Novodevichy Monastery, coincidentally the final resting place of many of Russia’s greatest writers, musicians, and painters, among them Gogol, Chekhov, Scriabin, and Serov. When one considers each group’s respective contributions to Russian life, it seems fair to conclude that Khrushchev, on balance, more appropriately belongs among (10) ____than with the Communist functionaries whose ashes are stuffed in and alongside the Kremlin Wall.

II. Explain the words in bold. Make up 10 sentences with these words.

III. Sum up Khrushchev’s achievement and failures. What can be referred to as Khrushchev’s heritage?

IV. Compare Khrushchev’s era with Stalin’s one taking into consideration the historical background and the personalities of the two leaders.