This portrait by two noted Soviet authors and dissidents of Nikita S. 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 many sides of the shrewd and complex Soviet leader and the interrelation between Soviet politics and agricultural policy that brought about his removal from power.