{"product_id":"year-i-was-peter-the-great-1956-khrushchev-stalins-ghost-and-a-young-american-in-russia","title":"Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956--Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia","description":"\u003cbody\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eTitle: \u003c\/b\u003eYear I Was Peter the Great: 1956--Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor: \u003c\/b\u003eMarvin Kalb\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN: \u003c\/b\u003e9780815731610\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher: \u003c\/b\u003eBrookings Institution Press\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished: \u003c\/b\u003e2017\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding: \u003c\/b\u003ePaperback\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage: \u003c\/b\u003eEnglish\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEdition: \u003c\/b\u003eFirst Edition\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Note: \u003c\/b\u003e Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher Description: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA chronicle of the year that changed Soviet Russia--and molded the future path of one of America's pre-eminent diplomatic correspondents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1956 was an extraordinary year in modern Russian history. It was called \"the year of the thaw\"--a time when Stalin's dark legacy of dictatorship died in February only to be reborn later that December. This historic arc from rising hope to crushing despair opened with a speech by Nikita Khrushchev, then the unpredictable leader of the Soviet Union. He astounded everyone by denouncing the one figure who, up to that time, had been hailed as a \"genius,\" a wizard of communism--Josef Stalin himself. Now, suddenly, this once unassailable god was being portrayed as a \"madman\" whose idiosyncratic rule had seriously undermined communism and endangered the Soviet state.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis amazing switch from hero to villain lifted a heavy overcoat of fear from the backs of ordinary Russians. It also quickly led to anti-communist uprisings in Eastern Europe, none more bloody and challenging than the one in Hungary, which Soviet troops crushed at year's end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMarvin Kalb, then a young diplomatic attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, observed this tumultuous year that foretold the end of Soviet communism three decades later. Fluent in Russian, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, he went where few other foreigners would dare go, listening to Russian students secretly attack communism and threaten rebellion against the Soviet system, traveling from one end of a changing country to the other and, thanks to his diplomatic position, meeting and talking with Khrushchev, who playfully nicknamed him Peter the Great.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this, his fifteenth book, Kalb writes a fascinating eyewitness account of a superpower in upheaval and of a people yearning for an end to dictatorship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/body\u003e","brand":"Brookings Institution Press","offers":[{"title":"Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956--Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia | Marvin Kalb | Regular hardback | 9780815731610 | Used: Very Good | Russian History 1373651","offer_id":48864236142744,"sku":"1373651","price":6.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0492\/1609\/4360\/files\/51_MOkTBeoL.jpg?v=1775848280","url":"https:\/\/roundaboutbookstore.com\/products\/year-i-was-peter-the-great-1956-khrushchev-stalins-ghost-and-a-young-american-in-russia","provider":"Roundabout Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}