drawnout succession of violence and terror, the people of Kiev
battled the invasions of bloodthirsty tribes from the surrounding
steppes, until they were defeated and subdued by the Tartars
in the twelfth century. Their ruler, the Prince of Kiev, was crushed
to death under a wooden platform on which the Tartars cele-
brated their victory.

North of Kiev there was the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which
kept growing in size and power. In the fifteenth century its rulers
vanquished the Tartars and rounded out their domain until
it stretched from the Arctic Ocean almost to the Dnieper river.
Its ruler, Ivan III, in 1500 or thereabouts, called Greek and
Italian architects into his country to help him build some of
the walls and towers of the Kremlin. Ivan III's grandson was the
first man to be officially crowned czar--Russian for Caesar--in
1547. This first czar is known as Ivan the Terrible.

The czars outdid themselves in extravagance and cruelty. When
they built their radiant capital, St. Petersburg, in the eighteenth
century, they proceeded with such disregard for human life that,
according to the Russian historian Kliuchevsky, "it is doubtful
whether in all military history more soldiers were killed in a battle
than men in the construction of St. Petersburg. . . ." Year after
year, thousands of peasants were driven under military guard into
the northern marshes of the river Neva. Most of them died from
lack of food or strain or were flogged to death. "The Czar," said
Kliuchevsky, "called the new capital his 'paradise,' but it became
a great cemetery for the people." In the three hundred and fifty
years after the first czar ascended his throne, perfidy, cruelty,
glitter, pomp, and mysticism characterized. Russia's ruling class,
and hunger, work, and the knout were the lot of the ruled. The
last czar was crowned in 1894.

Nikita Khrushchev was born. on April 17 of that year in Kali-
novka, a village in the province of Kursk, in south-central Russia.
Kalinovka lies 300 miles due south of Moscow, close to the region
where the Russian and Ukrainian populations are heavily mixed.
The Ukraine, second largest of the Soviet republics, has its own
language and its own customs. After Khrushchev came into
national prominence, it was for a long time unclear whether he

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