Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1959-03-31

as a man who liked a SURF
thing.
How did a one-itme illit.
crate blacksmith climb Sc
high?
The success story is pecu-
liarly communist. Nikita found
a set of coattails, climbed
aboard for the ride.
The coattails belonged to
Lazar Moisevich Kaganovich
who pacified the Ukraine fol
Stain in the bloody days OF
farm collectivization.
Had Ruthless Zeal
KhruShchev had talent. Ka-
ganovich recognized it. With
ruthless zeal Khrushchev had
thrown himself into the war
on Stains political foes. an
earnestly brutal man assisting
In the ,awesome purgeS which
sent untold thousands before
firing squads.
Over the corpses of In
Vulnerable fallen Bolsheviks,
Khrushchev vaulted into alter
nate membership on the Polit-
buro, the council of yeS-men
surrounding Stain. That was
in 1888. The purge was not
yet complete. Khrushchev had
another assignment.
Dressed for the part in SLOW
emily cap and sloppy peasant
clothing. Khrushchev went to
the Ukraine to direct another
mopup of Stains real and
imagined enemies There is no
way of estimating how many
were executed in that opera
ton. A conservative guess puts
the number at 5000.
A thorough man, Khru-
shchev not only directed the
purge, but meanwhile reorgan-
lied Ukrainian farming. AS a
result, under Stain and Ka-
ganovich, Khrushchev became
general party secretary in the
Ukraine, boss Of an area big as
France, with about 40 million
population.
New Rewards Come
Applying himself to the role,
Khrushchev even emphasized
the Ukrainian accent which re-
mains with him today. 1t was
easy. His native heath in
Kursk Province borders on the
Ukraine.
New rewards were coming.
With the purge nearly over, the
18th party congress in 1889
whisked Khrushchev into the
raref1ed atmosphere of the
Kremlin, a full member of Sta
Inns Politburo. He lost no OPP
portunity to show his graft
tude. From the Congress ros-
trum he paid glowing tribute
to Kaganovich as boss of Mos
COW Province: The Moscow
organization is ideologically
rallied around the central
committee, around our genius
leader Comrade Stain. The
theological. principled unity Of
the Moscow organization, was
achieved thanks to the skilled
daily leadership we had in the
person of Lazar MoiSevich
Kaganovich."
Seventeen years later Khru-
shchev would label Stain an
egomaniac murderer, political
and military blunderer and
unparalleled barbarian. A
year after that he would
maneuver Kaganovich out OF
office, denouncing him as a
man who "fawned and did
everything to initiate the cult
of the personality of Stain"
Such is Soviet politics.
Fawning Paid Of
But while Stain lived, Khru-
Shchev spared no adjectives,
hailing him as genius leader
and teacher of all mankind"
and "inSpirer of the working
class of the whole world, our
beloved leader Comrade Stain"
That was the way to get ahead
the only way-in those days.
For KhruShchev it paid off.
In World War II Khrushchev
got on several inner councils:
The Kiev military district, the
southwestern, Stalingrad d,
southern and first Ukrainian
fronts. Years before in the civil
war he had proved far from
a military genius. Now he was
a political lieutenant general,
concerned with obedience of
regular officers to Generals
simo Stains will.
One KhruShchev job was CO.
ordination of guerrilla activity
against the Nazi occupation. In
many areas of the Ukraine,
where nationaliSm is strong,
the Germans had been well
coined as liberatorS. Later the
Nazis turned on the Ukrainians
in a horrifying series of atroci-
ties. There is suspicion that
Khrushchev. as guerrilla CO.
ordinator, deliberately provoked
some atrocities. to turn popular
sentiment against the Germans.
Aided by Kaganovich
Khrushchev's bands retreated
before the German drive. He
was assigned to the political de-
partment of the army at Stall
ingrad, where Marshal Georgi
Zhukov had been called to
avert disaster. When the tide
fu,ned Khr1ishchev returned IN