A unique view of the Khrushchev period as seen by two prominent Soviet dissidents.

This portrait by two noted Soviet authors and dissidents of Nikita Khrushchev's years in power reveals the former leader of the Soviet Union as a decisive, even impetuous, innovator, a side of him little known before in the West. Khrushchev emerges as a man impatient to destroy Stalinism, to remedy defects in the Soviet system, and to solve the problems of Soviet agriculture. As no other book before it, Khrushchev brings into focus the manu sides of the shrewd and complex Soviet leader and the interrelation between Soviet politics nd agricultural policy that brought about his removal from power.

"The Medvedev brothers . . . give us a deliberately sober and balanced picture of Khrushchev. As might be expected they are particularly good in dealing with his policies on science and agriculture." —Foreign Affairs

The story of Medvedev s own hospitalization and the efforts of his twin brother to secure his release are sensitively chronicled in this dramatic hour-by-hour account of the nineteen days that began with an ominous knock on the door, and ended or did it? with Zhores s conditional release. The format of the book is brilliantly conceived, taking the form of a dual autobiographical account, with alternate chapters by each of the brothers Medvedev. Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Times Book Review"

The story of the explosion and contamination was and still is suppressed in the Soviet Union and, the author contends, by the CIA and other Western intelligence organizations fearful of public resistance to nuclear power plants. Now, after an intensive study of Soviet scientific articles (written to disguise the fact that they were about the Ural explosion) and after many interviews and reports from friends in the scientific community as well as from witnesses, the author has pieced together the story of what actually happened. He analyzes the extent and consequences of the contamination and draws forbidding conclusions about the possibility of similar disasters in the rest of the world.

The first comprehensive analysis of Soviet agriculture from its historic origins to the present, explaining why collectivization failed and why contemporary methods are inefficient. Medvedev, a noted biochemist, shows why agriculture holds the Soviet future. Illustrated with maps.