Point of View

Khrushchev is an exhaustive academic biography, written as a third person, past tense narrative. Lengthy quotations are rare, but brief, rapid-fire quotes to establish color and character are common. Endnotes are fairly extensive and need not be consulted each time in order to understand the narrative.

Setting

Khrushchev is set in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), primarily from the 1930s through the 1971. As material on Khrushchev's early years, from his birth in 1894 until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, is sparse, little attention is given to the early period, although the author attempts to give a feel for the tsarist society against which Khrushchev and his colleagues revolted. Kiev and Moscow are the key loci of action before World War II, then we follow Khrushchev around Ukraine. Attention turns to the Kremlin after Stalin's death in 1953, but once Khrushchev gains sole control of the USSR...