“Nikita Khrushchev was one of the most important political leaders of the twentieth century. Without his memoirs, neither the rise and fall of the Soviet Union nor the history of the Cold War can be fully understood. . . . The fact that the full text of Khrushchev’s memoirs will now be available in English is cause for rejoicing.” —William Taubman, author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

This is the third and last volume of the only complete and fully reliable English-language version of the memoirs of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In the first two volumes, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2005 and 2006, respectively, Khrushchev tells the story of his rise to power and his part in the fight against Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. He also discusses agriculture, the housing problem, and other issues of domestic policy, as well as defense and disarmament. This volume is devoted to international affairs. Khrushchev describes his dealings with foreign statesmen and his state visits to Britain, the United States, France, Scandinavia, India, Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, and Indonesia.

In the first part, Khrushchev talks about relations between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Of particular interest is his perspective on the Berlin, U-2, and Cuban missile crises. The second part focuses on the Communist world—above all, the deterioration of relations with China and the tensions in Eastern Europe, including relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia, Gomulka’s Poland, and the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary. In the third part, Khrushchev discusses the search for allies in the Third World.

The Appendixes contain biographies, a bibliography and a chronology, and also the reminiscences of Khrushchev’s chief bodyguard about the visit to the United Nations in 1960 at which the famous “shoe-banging” incident occurred—or, perhaps, did not occur.