Stalin had been a completely foreboding figure, the paranoiac as ultimate dictator, inflicting his dark vision on all those unlucky enough to fall under the rule of the Soviet empire. Khrushchev was quite different—ferocious, volatile, shrewd, vengeful, very much the angry peasant. If Stalin had represented the worst of Soviet Communism, then Khrushchev to many Americans was even more threatening, for he seemed to reflect the peasant vigor of this new state.
