Authors

Ismene Brown¹;  ¹ Independent Researcher, UK

Discussion

This paper re-examines Nikita Khrushchev's survival in the attempted Kremlin coup of June 1957, which had seismic consequences for the reform of the Soviet Union. Anglophone accounts that frame Khrushchev's defeat of his Stalinist opponents in the 'Anti-Party Group' as his personal triumph have long sustained Cold War narratives in Western scholarship, and also serve as a pretext for demonization of the Khrushchev era in Russia, with ongoing implications for Russian-Western understanding. The paper aims to challenge the mythography by showing that the 'hero narrative' relies on the deliberate non-disclosure of details in the event - in particular, the pivotal role played by CC Secretary Ekaterina Furtseva. As the only woman in the Kremlin leadership, Furtseva's 20-year government career under Khrushchev and Brezhnev continues to be shrouded in rumour, fabulation and primitive error. Examination of the records of the Central Committee Plenum, witness accounts and reports in the press, shows that historians collectively adopted a narrative that obscured her primary agency in the 1957 coup rout. As a result, her career has become radically distorted in the record, masking the contribution of her unusual agency as Khrushchev's close ally, and generating wider misinterpretations of Khrushchev-Brezhnev leadership manoeuvrings. The conclusion drawn is that a fresh focus on original evidence raises critical questions about the conditioning of much extant historiography.