Thank you everyone for tuning into Written In Blood History, now part of the Evergreen podcast network. Thank you especially to those of you who leave me reviews and donate on Patreon. I am forever in your debt. I think Nikita Khrushchev is an odd choice for a biographical subject. And I have to take a moment to thank Kara and Adam from the Time Travel Talks discord group for recommending the biography by William Taubman that I used as the principle source. For a book that clocks in at about 1000 pages, I was admittedly skeptical as to how much I would actually enjoy reading about Khrushchev. But I was enthralled. I say an odd choice because his life story in immediately interesting on face value. He wasn’t a war-time hero, his legacy as soviet premier in largely defined by the Cuban Missile Crisis – and, in turn is greatly overshadowed by his adversary John F. Kennedy. He wasn’t exactly charismatic, and his quotes aren’t profound or weighty. In fact, and this is an official language warning, he was not afraid to use crude, course, and by today’s standards especially, derogatory language. So again, language warning. If this sort of thing offends you, now is the time to tune out. But despite all the reasons to not give Nikita Khrushchev a second look, it’s important to remember that as the unexpected successor to Stalin’s Soviet Union, he found himself wielding that extraordinary power in an equally unexpected way. And so now, I present to you the life of Nikita Khrushchev: The Brinksman (Part 1).