Chapter 4 Summary

Yuzovka leans towards the Mensheviks, who emphasize economic improvement, in the struggle against the ineffectual Provisional Government in 1917. Lazar Kaganovich leads the local Bolsheviks. Opponents will later recall Khrushchev joined the party only in 1918, when many peasants were doing so, but he counters ineptly there were so many factions it was hard to keep them all straight, and insists he intuitively sided with the more doctrinaire Bolsheviks.

Khrushchev helps lead a battalion of Red Guards fighting the White Army in Yuzovka, flees southward with it to escape famine, and in the winter of 1918/19 is mobilized into a construction unit posted in an area of barbaric fighting. Khrushchev rises to instructor in the Ninth Army's political department, promoting combat readiness, troop morale, and relations with civilians. Many of Khrushchev's fellow political commissars will later be purged for suspect politics. The Reds prevail in 1921, and...