His recipe? Western countries should write off half a trillion dollars worth of debt owed to them by the Russian state corporations run by his pals from the Dresden KGB and the Ozero dacha cooperative.

Khrushchev s motives as he took the podium on the morning of February 25, 1956, were, in his mind, moral ones. After his ouster from power, in the seclusion of his dacha, he wrote My hands are covered with blood.

Putin s own game of prime ministerial musical chairs does not reflect a desire to secure for himself a quiet position behind the scenes while someone else rules, for he knows all too well that the path from the Kremlin leads only to inner exile and the grave. Stalin replaced the dying Lenin, Khrushchev denounced Stalin, Brezhnev banished Khrushchev to his dacha, and Gorbachev buried Chernenko.