Nikita Khrushchev - How could this history making man have any relevance to Whats on my mind?, the question that continually prods me to reveal what I should openly write on face book, and, what I hold back for reasons of sensitivity and respect for the people I actually have in my private social circle. How could I know anything about this man that dominated the height of the Cold War period when many Americans realized the real possibility of massive annihilation from a nuclear exchange? Of course, I never met the man and never, as a child during his period of power, was I allowed to hear of the threat that existed to the entire civilized world. In my youngest days as a child the subject matter that my parents spoke about in private was distinctively separate from the topics, actually very few in nature, that young children might over hear. I must bring Nikita Khrushchev back now. I am so very old inside as a man of fifty eight. That is because both my parents were alive during, and sacrificed much, as contributing members of the now labeled Greatest Generation. Please try to stay with me as I explain how my life and a connection to Nikita Khrushchev are linked now.. Linked by both my personal, totally random experience of chance, and by an ideology that I was able to form at an even younger age, of the.larger, even more dangerous world in play today. Once again excuse me. I can be profoundly moved by my continued interest in both the immediate past, the behavior of the human race over the past six centuries, and the misconception that humankinds history seems to lull so many to see only what is before their eyes each morning. Should you be near my age, or maybe a decade or so older, or should you have a person history with parents that lived through the Great Depression and World War II, my little story will likely resonate in a deeper emotional tone. I doubt a single person that reads this post will have watched Cold War Road Show a documentary of the visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the United States in 1959. As with several of the entries I make on face book, this entry is concerned with everyday people making a sincere effort to reach out to those among you that would be by my definition strangers. I need to expand my definition, however, to distinctly support reaching out to those men and women that have profound differences of opinions. There are few dinner time discussions in America today. The morning newspaper and the six oclock news no longer provide guidance for either agreement or disagreement that unify our society. That is not to say we lack information as a culture. We have so much new information, daily information, hourly information, minute by minute information, and to go further still, information that travels in less than a second. Big Stories are very commonplace today. So common that finding a national narrative as a common bond for a nation has largely evaporated. Nikita Khrushchev was a leader that was a common bond to both the American public, and by all means, the center of the soul of the Communist movement inside the boundaries of the Soviet Union. He was also a man that had been instrumental to the era of the the Soviet Unions Greatest Generation A small bit of his life story is revealed to us today through the old black and white video footage shown during the documentary I have mentioned. He was born a Peasant, worked as a child on farms, worked in coal mines, and somehow managed to become the leader of the second most powerful nation ever to exist on our planet. Yet, he apparently only attended two or three years of schooling. Very likely Nikita Khrushchevs visit to the United States, at the invitation of then President Dwight D. Eisenhower, played a critical role in the later American - Cuban (Soviet backed) nuclear missile crisis. For those of you that are younger in age this moment in time exists only as written words that may be part of a history lesson in the forth or fifth grade. I understand. Once again, trying to stay focused, Nikita Khrushchev came to America for a twelve day visit, a visit that allowed him to see the vastness of the people in our country and to be impressed by the average man, woman, and child. He insisted on meeting, have access too, the huge gatherings of Americans desiring to look at the man who represented the pinnacle personality of our nations only real threat to national security. The video footage i watched displayed the very human complexity of a great individual that shaped world history. He was a man that witnessed the insane carnage of the second World War. I believe that experience was vital to the last minute stand down of a nuclear exchange between our countries. What a different world we would have today if that nuclear exchange had taken place. Unimaginable. This brings me to a very personal part of my life story. I was fortunate to spend four years of my time in West Germany. The Wall separating the two halves of Germany, and symbolically separating the Free World from the Communist World was in place and defined an unknown future. It was in 1983 that I met my first, and to this day, only man that had grown up inside the boundaries of the Russian Empire that controlled the group of nations, the thirteen members of the Soviet Block This man I refer to, a physician named Boris Zavadoski, practiced emergency medicine in the U.S. Army Hospital located in Nuremberg. I worked with him for around three and one half years and became one of his friends. He was slightly taller than I was, deeply pigmented black hair, a hefty mustache, dark olive skin complexion, and a strikingly strong nose characteristic of his particular genetic history. You see, he was of Hebrew decent. One day while we were talking, it happened to be a very typical day of conversation, and he mentioned it was his birthday. Thirty Three he said, Jesus Christs age. As we only had a moment, that ended that short exchange. There was no need to add other words at the moment, even if time had permitted. As it was, saying nothing more made the moment more vivid for me right now. I loved the stories Boris told about the life style, the personality of the Russian people, the routine economic hardships of the food distribution system, the social and economic standing of the Soviet Empire, all these stories told with a warmth or sorrow that was evidence of a transparent soul. At another moment of conversation during a busy evening shift he told me The Russians and the Americans are very much alike , he continued, both countries think big. That conversation lasted a few minutes as he explained the prevalent psychological posture that helped frame and maintain the competitive spirit between nations, the view individual Russians held in common with his ever growing exposure to many Americans, and how that similarity was a strong contributing factor to the ongoing Cold War. I need to end this post, but as I watched the documentary Cold War Road Show , I saw a warmth in Nikita Khrushchev that exceeded a small minded politician. I felt the treasure of my near four year time period of getting to know Boris, to become his friend and colleague, and to understand his influence upon me to this day. For those of you that had the patience to read this post, thank you. And as always, have a good day. Bert
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 06:12:42 +0000
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