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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1958.
I'VE BEEN PROBING DEEP INTO WHAT MAKES THIS MAN'S MIND THE BIGGEST ENIGMA OF OUR TIMES
The Unknown Giant
THE biggest political factor of our era is perhaps not the H-bomb but another piece of highly complicated mechanism that the West knows considerably less about: the mind of Nikita.
Krushchev. Today the China Mail begins a closely documented study of the forces and events that have shaped that mind - which, in its turn, is shaping the destinies of millions
CHAPTER ONE
£3,000,000 concern and
its resentiment of the Westernera
British-mude factory football and their "colonialist" preten- team.
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ston of superiority. It has never left him. And it is this which Even today Krushchev likes understandably makes him to show off the scar on his anxious to crow over us hand. "Look at that," he tells with his Sputniks and all,
"I got that
AM wondering about John Hughes, the son of the great visiting Britons.
playing football against those British-built Yuzovka, Welsh pioneer industrialist John Hughes who in the Czar's miners from your country when ever, time opened the first modern coal mines and iron foundries I was to the team at Yuzovkn." landmark in Krushchev's in Southern Russia.
The teacher
now
how-
ad-
provides yet a third
vancement. Here in 1914, un the eve of the. Kaiser's War, Nikita Rushchev for the first time accepts a post as a po- Hiten organiser.
he is elected
Did John Hughes, the son who succeeded to the management, belong_to the "football is the best cure for Communism” school of employers? You know, the fellows who say: "Give the workers plenty of football and they will B well as athletic significance to the secretary of lite so-called have no time for politics or agitators."
If John Hughes the second did belong to, this school all I can say is that
it is just as well he is not alive today.
For let me present to you the man who 45 years ago was the star centre forward of the Hughesoffka Football Team, champions of the Don Basin and runners-up for the factory championship of all Russia.
Ladies and gentlemen, he is: KRUSHCHEV.
Nikita
here
Sergeyevitch
by SEFTON DELMER
4
born, 1913 was
is a typical Stay more being than to his
village with thatched roof, line- opponents.
washed cottages, a muddy main They call him "Krushchev the street, waddling geese, rooting impetuous" and "Krushchev the plgs, a pond, and cherry trees. unpredictable."
Yes, Krushchev himself, the bold-pated, pink-faced, wise-
miner's cracking
BOW who, for all the preventive football Inoculation by Hughes and his British managers and foremen. has 40 years of zealous Com- munist Party membership worked. murdered, double crossed, and charmed his way to the top of the Kremlin's marble staircase of power.
To the point where today at the age of 63 he has flung of the fetters of collective leader- ship and is stepping out Into 1058 relaxed and confident as the unchallenged ruler and told "Compared policy-giver to the Soviet Union,
Where he is-thanks to the immense forces and resources he now has under his absolute command-the dominant figure of this new space age, successor in himself to Roosevelt, Stolln, and Churchill ni put together.
Artful Ginger
CHIEF opponents of
Krushchev'a team
Yuzovka were miners
In the past weeks while. I myself have been making study of Krushclicy's fe un your behalf for the same pur- pore, I have been in touch with quite a number of these experts in Germany, in Britain, France and America,
in
with Krus}}=
Again and again I have been chey, Stalln was an open brok."
S
His sheep
IS father was a miner, who with the help of his family farmed a bit of land in ble spare time--much in the same way as the peasants on the Soviet "col- order loclive farms do today to eke out their precarious Ilv-
and
In his earliest youth Krush- I am not as pessimistic as all chey looked after the villagn sheep. Unlike his predecessor, that, I find that the general Stalu, he got little schooling.
Krushchev which picture of
Despite the night school his "worker universilles" he attendi emerges from a survey of life story--much of it fogged in ed later, he has never become secrecy is of a hard, much of a desi man. Soviet
But he practical,
shows himself well briefed at sant.
his conferences with foreign statesmen.
I
down-to-earth
pen-
In fact, it is as an uninhibited
To me the most Interesting pensant that Krushchev enjoys and significant features of this showing himself to the world. earliest part of his life are that: When staying at Chequers EVEN as a boy Krushchev, Nikita during his vint to England. 1 though smaller than most
a for instance, his idea of freshen- from ing up after a tough day of 100-mile-distant Krivol Rog. conferences and sightseeing was
These were Welsh coalinen and to put his head under a cold engineers brought out to teach water tap. modern methods to the Rus- alans.
an
HILS mind is firmly
He expediency.
of his friends, quickly estab
and lished himself as a leader. when an apprentice in his teens, his seniors liked and feared him for his wit,
fixed 2
refuses
AT the early age of 16 ho was already drinking a called spoly- Ukrainian spirit
To the Welsh, the stocky, to be hampered by conventions. agile centre-forward Krushchev And least of all by consistency, katch-Ukrainian, literally, for was known-on account of his dodges, unorthodoxy and auburn hair-es "Artful Ginger."
and
a "staggerer.”
3 he made his first political speech.
This was in Kharkov-when the young apprentice Atter illegal Krushchev, attended an
of a demonstration in honour "martyr" who had assassinated the Czarist Prime Minister.
He dislikes and mocks ut » JUST before he turned 18 Vegghend" doctrinaires ideologists. But that does not To Western political Intelli- stop him having a simple, peas gence men who are now fever- sant faith In the Marxist ishly working over the new Leninist system. For he hoftis dictator's past, trying to analyse this system responsible for the out of it some guiding clues to progress Russia has mude in his his thinking and political own lifetime. philosophy Artful Ginger is even.
His speech was of course re- ported at once to the Czarist police. The future dictator of the Soviet Union had to go on the run.
Even Krushchev's name is a peasant name. It is Ukrainian The factory town built by the for "son of a stink becile." And Hughes company was named after Kalinovka, the little village on the family. The Russian spelling the Ukrainian border where on Xuxarks. In Stalin's time it was re- April 17, 1894, Nikita Krushchev with
pamed Stalino.
He landed up in Yuzavka. John Hughes'a big
Yuzovica has political as
in Krushchev's development. "alck fund” ostensibly a kind For Yuzovka was at that time of mutual Insurance scheme for already the hunting ground of the workers, in reality an under- that adroit Bolahoviat agitator cover Socialist-Communist
who later gaulzation.
Larar Kaganovich
or-
bosom friend, and mentor of It was the first full step for- became the protector, the boss. Krushchev. Until disciple Nicita ward in his march to the post- Inally turned an Kaganovich on he holds today.
and ruthlessly threw last year out the
En 85 ageing an "enemy of the Party,"
It was in Yuzovka too where the comparatively elegant homes of the British managers, engineers, and foremen were at one end of the company-built town and the huts and teno- workers ments of the. Russlan
at the other, that there was sparked in Krushchev that first
What a blow to John Hughes his model boy would have been had he known. But he never did. Hughes died soon after the beginning of the 1914 war.
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