Latest news with #Khrushchev
Scoop
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Using Cuba 1962 To Explain Trump's Brinkmanship
People of a certain age will be aware that the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis was, for the world as a whole, the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. The 1962 'Battle of Cuba' was a 'cold battle' in the same sense that the Cold War was a 'cold war'. (Only one actual shot was fired, by Cuba.) Nevertheless, it is appropriate to ask, "who won"? In military events hot or cold – it is surprisingly difficult to answer such a question. But it's actually quite easy in this case. The cold Battle of Cuba was about three countries, and three charismatic leaders: Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union), John F Kennedy (United States), and Fidel Castro (Cuba). Following the disastrous American invasion of Cuba in 1961, Cuba had taken on the role of a Soviet Union 'client state' – hence a military proxy – of the Soviet Union. (Prior to the Bay of Pigs assault, Cuba, while a revolutionary country, was not a communist country; though at least one prominent revolutionary, the Argentinian doctor Che Guevara, was certainly of the communist faith and took every opportunity to convert Cuba into a polity that followed the Book of Marx. The actions of the United States facilitated Castro's eventual conversion.) The situation that Khrushchev faced in late 1961 was that NATO had an installation of American nuclear-armed missiles in Turkey (now Türkiye). While Turkey had a common border with the Soviet Union – Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia – the missiles were essentially facing north across the Black Sea, into Ukraine and Russia. This was a clear and open – though not widely publicised in 'the west' – security threat to the Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the political fallout between Cuba and the United States, Khrushchev – in an act of bravado, indeed brinkmanship – negotiated with Castro to install nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, one of the few genuine security threats that the United States has ever faced. The world trembled at the prospect of imminent (and possibly all-out) nuclear war. Castro looked forward to a hot battle which he was sure Khrushchev and Castro would together win. But Castro was doomed to disappointment. Khrushchev dismantled his missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy dismantled his missiles in Turkey. So, compare, say, October 1963 with October 1961. The only real difference was that in 1961 there were American missiles in Turkey pointing in the direction of Moscow, and in 1963 there were not. Game, set, and match to Khrushchev. (And of course, the whole world was the winner, in that not a nuclear missile was fired in anger. Though the Cubans did shoot down an American reconnaissance aircraft.) That's not the narrative which the western world has taken on board though. In the West, it's interpreted as a Soviet Union backdown, in the face of relentless diplomatic pressure from the Kennedy brothers (with Robert Kennedy playing a key negotiating role). Certainly, the world was on tenterhooks; brinkmanship can go disastrously wrong. There are some analogies with the current Ukraine crisis. Though the Ukraine War is certainly a hot war. Brinkmanship failed in 2021 and 2022. Nevertheless, Volodymyr Zelenskyy does pose as a good analogue to Fidel Castro (though not as an incipient communist!). Donald Trump's brinkmanship re China and the European Union Trump's war is a 'trade war', Winston Peters' rejection of the 'war analogy' notwithstanding. This is a war that uses the language of war. Two longstanding mercantilist economic nations (China, European Union) and one mercantilist leader are slugging it out to see who can export more goods and services to the world; the prize being a mix of gold and virtual-gold, the proceeds of unbalanced trade. (Historically the United States has also been a mercantilist nation, going right back to its origins as a 'victim' of British mercantilism in the eighteenth century. The United States has always been uneasy about its post World-War-Two role as global consumer-of-last-resort and its historical instincts towards mercantilism; an instinct that contributed substantially to the global Great Depression of 1930 to 1935. 'Mercantilism' is often confused by economists with 'protectionism', and indeed the American Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 were a mix of both.) My reading of Donald Trump is that he is a mercantilist, but not a protectionist; that he's not really a tariff-lover, just as Khrushchev was not really a missile lover. Instinctively, China and especially the European Union are protectionist as a way of supporting their ingrained mercantilism. But a country that is 'great again' – in this 'making money' context – can prevail in a trade war without tariffs. Indeed, that's exactly why the United Kingdom moved sharply towards tree trade in the 1840s and 1850s. England had not lost its mercantilist spots. But at the heart of an English Empire within a British Empire, London had the power to win a 'free trade' trade war. It was the other would-be powers – the new kids on the global block; the USA, Germany's Second Reich, and later Japan and Russia – which turned to tariff protection in order to stymie the United Kingdom. Trump's super-tariffs against China and the European Union – trade weapons, economic 'missiles' – are designed to get those two economic nations to remove their various trade barriers that existed in 2024. Once they do that, then Trump may remove his tariff threats. Trump is playing brinkmanship in the way of Khrushchev. Xi Jinping is Kennedy; so, in a way, is Ursula von der Leyen. Canada, in a sense, is Cuba. (Though Mark Carney may not like to think of himself as Castro!) If Trump gets his way, the United States' economy in 2026 will be as free as it was in 2024. The Chinese and European Union economies will have significantly fewer tariff and non-tariff import barriers than in 2024. Significantly fewer 'trade weapons' poised to 'rip off' the United States! Canada will be much the same in 2026 as in 2024, albeit with a newfound sense of national identity. Implications for the Wider World, and the Global Monetary System The wider world will probably not be better off with a mercantilist war, albeit a free-trade war. When hippopotamuses start dancing …! We already see how free trade in 'big guns' is creating military instability in Africa and South Asia. And we must expect to see the United States' special role as the fulcrum of the world's monetary system dissipate if the United States significantly reduces its trade deficits; requiring some other deficit countries to take up that challenge. Canada? Australia? India? United Kingdom? A new anti-mercantilist British Empire? I don't think so. Türkiye? Saudi Arabia? Brazil? Maybe not. Japan? Maybe. Russia? If the Ukraine war ends, Russia will struggle to import more than it exports; though I am sure that Donald Trump would like to see the United States exporting lots of stuff to Russia. The International Monetary Fund? Maybe, but only if it changes some of its narratives. The challenge here will be for it to reform itself in line with John Maynard Keynes' proposals at and after Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference which set itself the task of establishing the post-war global monetary order. Keynes envisaged a World Reserve Bank; though he didn't envisage monetary policy – with New Zealand in 1989 acknowledged as the world's lead 'reformer' – falling into the hands of the 'monetarists' and their false narratives about inflation. ------------- Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: Selling Watermelons by Andrei Voznesensky, translated by Edwin Morgan
Selling Watermelons Moscow is milling with watermelons. Everything breathes a boundless freedom. And it blows with unbridled fierceness from the breathless melonvendors. Stalls. Din. Girls' headscarves. They laugh. Change bangs down. Knives — and a choice sample slice. — Take one, chief, for a long life! Who's for a melon? Freshly split! — And just as tasty and just as juicy are the capbands of policemen and the ranks of motor-scooters. The September air is fresh and keen and resonant as a watermelon. And just as joyfully on its own tack as the city-limit melon-multitudes, the earth swings in its great string-bag of meridians and latitudes! The Moscow-born poet Andrei Voznesensky (1933-2010), was one of the 'Thaw Poets', the experimental and politically argumentative young writers who emerged in the USSR during the de-Stalinisation era of Nikita Khrushchev. Their regular informal readings in Mayakovsky Square attracted enthusiastic audiences between the late 1950s and 1961, when they were temporarily banned. As a young teen, Voznesensky had sent some verses to Boris Pasternak and been thrilled by the warm response. Perhaps this was an important source of his literary self-confidence. But the boldness seems to have been tempered by a certain personal tact. His early collection, Mozaika, was withdrawn and the publisher, apparently, fired. In 1963, at a Kremlin meeting between writers and artists and the Soviet government, Khrushchev, whose liberalising instinct didn't extend to questioning socialist realism, rounded on him and demanded he leave the country. Somehow, Voznesensky evaded the worst outcome: he wrote what has been described as an 'ironic recantation' for Pravda, and continued to publish and recite his work. He went on to achieve a rock-star level of fame, giving sell-out readings in both the USSR and abroad. He was awarded the Soviet state prize in 1978. Selling Watermelons is the kind of poem that would please and amuse the home crowd. It's a gutsy celebration of the suddenly overwhelming seasonal glut of a very desirable product. There's no moaning about scarcity, although the string-bag mentioned in the last verse is a clue. It was stowed in every shopper's pocket, just in case a previously unavailable item had suddenly appeared. Now, in the glory of the 'melon-multitudes' the bag would be stretched as wide as possible to contain the delicious import – which had probably travelled from Kherson. Edwin Morgan's translation is alive to the breathless excitement, the counter-sensation of suddenly being able to breathe freely, and the deliciously demonstrative aspect of the whole event. Vendors with busy knives prepare sample slices: customers' knuckles tap the surface of the uncut fruit to check for that inimitable 'resonance' of ripeness. The exhilaration that fills the sharp September air has, of course, a political dimension but this is understated, subsumed in an expression of joy that unites the people and those in power over them. Commended as a Russian translator particularly for his rendering of Mayakovsky into Scots, Morgan (1920-2010), gets the muscles of the English language working with similar vigour in his treatment of Voznesensky. He was a faithful linguistic traveller, not a version-maker, but there are small, important innovations in Selling Watermelons. For instance, assuming the online version of the poem is correctly laid out, the original stanza structure is altered: Voznesensky has three two-lined stanzas, Morgan, only one. This greater compression may reflect Morgan's concern with emphasising the zingy alliterative contrasts that make all of Voznesensky's original lines so exciting. Morgan's lineation jostles the milder English sounds closer together for added impact. There are bold decisions concerning particular words, especially in the first stanza. In the opening line ('Moscow is milling with watermelons') the original verb, 'авалена' ('overloaded'), emphasises quantity rather than movement. Besides avoiding the passive case, Morgan's present participle, 'milling' introduces a verb that evokes weight and, above all, movement. Crowds are 'milling' as in the conventional metaphor, and watermelons are constantly changing hands: so, 'Moscow is milling with watermelons'. It's simple and right. 'Melonvendors' is another stroke of brilliance. It avoids the Voznesensky's gender-specific rhyme-word, 'продавщиц', ('saleswomen') and adds a kind of sound effect. Abundance for Voznesensky creates a mood of freedom, a sense of boundlessness, but his portrait of the city as an image of the prevailing politics is realistic. Perhaps the 'chief' invited to 'take one' is a party boss recognised by the vendor? Satisfyingly, briefly, power has passed to the latter. It's in the first lines of the fourth stanza that a more noticeable bit of political mischief appears: 'And just as tasty, and just as juicy are / the capbands of policemen'. It's clearly a joke, but it's still 'edgy': a military policeman in a good mood could laugh, but, on another day, treat it as an insult. The last quatrain opens out into an image in which the watermelon, ferried home in its plumped-out bag, becomes the world: 'the earth swings in its great string-bag / of meridians and latitudes'. It's as if the markings on the melon's skin had suggested a vision of the Earth, and all the joyful possibilities of 'latitude' and adventure it might hold. These were possibilities ultimately realised by Voznesensky. How grieved he would be that the young poets of present-day Russia, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba, cannot share such exhilaration. Selling Watermelons is published in Edwin Morgan's Collected Translations. The Russian original, Торгуют арбузами, is printed here and memorably performed here.
The Hill
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Krushchev was rescuing Crimea when he made it Ukrainian — it must remain so
Even Ukraine's staunchest allies sometimes waver, tempted to suggest that Kyiv concede Crimea to Russia as the long-running war there wages on. They often fall prey to a persistent myth: that Crimea had been eternally Russian until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily 'gifted' the peninsula to Ukraine in 1954. Such proposals dangerously misread history. In truth, the Kremlin handed Crimea to Ukraine not out of benevolence but because a decade of disastrous Soviet policies had left the territory an economic and humanitarian disaster. As University of Cambridge professor Rory Finnin notes, 'The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was no mistake. It was a rescue.' During a visit to Crimea in October 1953, Khrushchev witnessed the devastation firsthand. Driving through the peninsula with his son-in-law, Aleksey Adzhubey — editor-in-chief of Izvestia and one of the Soviet Union's most influential journalists — Khrushchev encountered not only the ruins of the Crimean Tatar Bakhchysaray Palace but also vast stretches of barren land strewn with abandoned military hardware. Most telling were the desperate Russian settlers blocking the roads, pleading for water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Soviet archives show that the entire region, roughly the size of Massachusetts, had only 24 bread stores, 18 meat stores, and eight milk stores. According to Adzhubey, the settlers complained bitterly: 'Potatoes don't grow here, the cabbage is withering, and the bedbugs are eating us alive.' When Khrushchev asked why they had come, they answered simply: They had been 'tricked.' This grim tableau was the result of a centuries-long pattern. Since Russia's annexation of Crimea from the Crimean Tatar Khanate in 1783, successive Russian regimes systematically eradicated indigenous populations they deemed 'unreliable.' Tsar Alexander II ordered mass expulsions of Crimean Tatars in the 1850s. Stalin deported nearly 188,000 Crimean Tatars in 1944, along with approximately 90,000 Armenians, Bulgarians and Greeks. Tens of thousands died in exile. With the native agriculturalists gone, Russian settlers struggled to survive in Crimea's harsh, unfamiliar climate. Khrushchev understood that Crimea's salvation depended on reconnecting it to Ukraine's southern steppes and the life-giving Dnipro River, ties that had sustained the peninsula for millennia. Crimea had always relied on Ukrainian resources and trade, long before Russian conquest. Even during the major wars fought over Crimea — the Crimean War and World War II — ethnic Ukrainians formed the backbone of the Russian army and Black Sea Fleet. To justify the economic necessity politically, Khrushchev and the Communist Party leadership invoked the upcoming 300th anniversary of Ukraine's so-called 'reunification' with Russia. First, the Presidium of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a resolution proposing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. Then the USSR's central government — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — ratified the transfer on Feb.19, 1954, citing 'the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity, and the close economic and cultural ties between Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR.' Two months later, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet Constitution, officially transferring the Crimean Oblast from Russia to Ukraine. Ukraine's Communist leadership, under pressure from Moscow, agreed to the transfer — along with the immense burden of reviving the devastated region. Over the next decades, Ukraine poured resources into developing Crimea. In 1957, it launched the construction of the North Crimean Canal, completed in 1971, to bring water from the Dnipro River to the arid peninsula. Ukraine invested heavily in infrastructure, agriculture and tourism, building reservoirs, irrigating fields, establishing resorts and creating economic opportunities. Between 1954 and 1990, Ukraine invested close to five times more per capita in Crimea than in comparable regions elsewhere in the republic. These efforts bore fruit. By the time of Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum, 54 percent of Crimean voters — including 57 percent in Sevastopol — chose to remain part of an independent Ukraine. A subsequent poll by Baltic Surveys/Gallup showed 65 percent of respondents favoring Crimea's autonomy within Ukraine, with only 23 percent preferring union with Russia. Russia itself formally recognized Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea multiple times: through the 1991 Belovezhskaya Pushcha Accords that dissolved the USSR, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for nuclear disarmament, and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship between Ukraine and Russia. Any proposal to force Ukraine to cede Crimea ignores overwhelming geographical, historical, legal and moral realities. Crimea's reintegration into Ukraine is not only vital for justice but essential for long-term stability, economic prosperity and peace across the broader European region. Moreover, allowing Russia to retain Crimea would be a death knell for the Crimean Tatars — the peninsula's indigenous people — who have already faced systemic repression, imprisonment, forced disappearances and cultural erasure under Russian occupation. Their survival as a distinct community depends on Crimea's reintegration into a democratic Ukraine. Ultimately, the question of Crimea is not even a matter of history but of international law. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are the cornerstones of the postwar global order. To accept Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea is to accept a world in which powerful states can erase borders by force — where might makes right, and justice becomes irrelevant. That is a world none of us can afford. The path to sustainable peace runs through a Ukrainian Crimea — not a Russia-occupied one. Kateryna Yushchenko was the First Lady of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Krushchev was rescuing Crimea when he made it Ukrainian — it must remain so
Even Ukraine's staunchest allies sometimes waver, tempted to suggest that Kyiv concede Crimea to Russia as the long-running war there wages on. They often fall prey to a persistent myth: that Crimea had been eternally Russian until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily 'gifted' the peninsula to Ukraine in 1954. Such proposals dangerously misread history. In truth, the Kremlin handed Crimea to Ukraine not out of benevolence but because a decade of disastrous Soviet policies had left the territory an economic and humanitarian disaster. As University of Cambridge professor Rory Finnin notes, 'The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was no mistake. It was a rescue.' During a visit to Crimea in October 1953, Khrushchev witnessed the devastation firsthand. Driving through the peninsula with his son-in-law, Aleksey Adzhubey — editor-in-chief of Izvestia and one of the Soviet Union's most influential journalists — Khrushchev encountered not only the ruins of the Crimean Tatar Bakhchysaray Palace but also vast stretches of barren land strewn with abandoned military hardware. Most telling were the desperate Russian settlers blocking the roads, pleading for water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Soviet archives show that the entire region, roughly the size of Massachusetts, had only 24 bread stores, 18 meat stores, and eight milk stores. According to Adzhubey, the settlers complained bitterly: 'Potatoes don't grow here, the cabbage is withering, and the bedbugs are eating us alive.' When Khrushchev asked why they had come, they answered simply: They had been 'tricked.' This grim tableau was the result of a centuries-long pattern. Since Russia's annexation of Crimea from the Crimean Tatar Khanate in 1783, successive Russian regimes systematically eradicated indigenous populations they deemed 'unreliable.' Tsar Alexander II ordered mass expulsions of Crimean Tatars in the 1850s. Stalin deported nearly 188,000 Crimean Tatars in 1944, along with approximately 90,000 Armenians, Bulgarians and Greeks. Tens of thousands died in exile. With the native agriculturalists gone, Russian settlers struggled to survive in Crimea's harsh, unfamiliar climate. Khrushchev understood that Crimea's salvation depended on reconnecting it to Ukraine's southern steppes and the life-giving Dnipro River, ties that had sustained the peninsula for millennia. Crimea had always relied on Ukrainian resources and trade, long before Russian conquest. Even during the major wars fought over Crimea — the Crimean War and World War II — ethnic Ukrainians formed the backbone of the Russian army and Black Sea Fleet. To justify the economic necessity politically, Khrushchev and the Communist Party leadership invoked the upcoming 300th anniversary of Ukraine's so-called 'reunification' with Russia. First, the Presidium of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a resolution proposing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. Then the USSR's central government — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — ratified the transfer on Feb.19, 1954, citing 'the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity, and the close economic and cultural ties between Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR.' Two months later, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet Constitution, officially transferring the Crimean Oblast from Russia to Ukraine. Ukraine's Communist leadership, under pressure from Moscow, agreed to the transfer — along with the immense burden of reviving the devastated region. Over the next decades, Ukraine poured resources into developing Crimea. In 1957, it launched the construction of the North Crimean Canal, completed in 1971, to bring water from the Dnipro River to the arid peninsula. Ukraine invested heavily in infrastructure, agriculture and tourism, building reservoirs, irrigating fields, establishing resorts and creating economic opportunities. Between 1954 and 1990, Ukraine invested close to five times more per capita in Crimea than in comparable regions elsewhere in the republic. These efforts bore fruit. By the time of Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum, 54 percent of Crimean voters — including 57 percent in Sevastopol — chose to remain part of an independent Ukraine. A subsequent poll by Baltic Surveys/Gallup showed 65 percent of respondents favoring Crimea's autonomy within Ukraine, with only 23 percent preferring union with Russia. Russia itself formally recognized Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea multiple times: through the 1991 Belovezhskaya Pushcha Accords that dissolved the USSR, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for nuclear disarmament, and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship between Ukraine and Russia. Any proposal to force Ukraine to cede Crimea ignores overwhelming geographical, historical, legal and moral realities. Crimea's reintegration into Ukraine is not only vital for justice but essential for long-term stability, economic prosperity and peace across the broader European region. Moreover, allowing Russia to retain Crimea would be a death knell for the Crimean Tatars — the peninsula's indigenous people — who have already faced systemic repression, imprisonment, forced disappearances and cultural erasure under Russian occupation. Their survival as a distinct community depends on Crimea's reintegration into a democratic Ukraine. Ultimately, the question of Crimea is not even a matter of history but of international law. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are the cornerstones of the postwar global order. To accept Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea is to accept a world in which powerful states can erase borders by force — where might makes right, and justice becomes irrelevant. That is a world none of us can afford. The path to sustainable peace runs through a Ukrainian Crimea — not a Russia-occupied one. Kateryna Yushchenko was the First Lady of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Japan Times
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Fear and loathing in the Oval Office
NEW YORK – U.S. President Donald Trump has swiped another page from the authoritarian playbook. His verbal assault on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before camera-wielding media in the Oval Office last month amounted to precisely the kind of ritual humiliation autocrats have long used to elevate and amuse themselves — and intimidate everyone else. One of history's most notorious dictators, Josef Stalin, regularly demeaned my great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev, and his politburo colleagues. As Khrushchev recounted much later, Stalin once made him dance the gopak , a Ukrainian folk dance, before some top party officials. 'I had to squat down on my haunches and kick out my heels, which frankly wasn't very easy for me,' he recalled. 'But when Stalin says dance, a wise man dances.' In orchestrating such spectacles, Stalin was surely motivated by the desire to keep his subordinates subordinated. But it was not all politically motivated: as Khrushchev noted, Stalin found others' humiliation 'amusing.' How could a megalomaniacal dictator not relish the sight of his empire's most powerful men voluntarily debasing themselves to please him — the one figure who towered above them all?
