Stalin was succeeded as general secretary of the Communist Party, the de facto head of state, by Nikita S. Khrushchev. The son of a pipe fitter, Khrushchev had once worked as a shepherd and a coal miner. His crude personality belied a sharp mind that got to the bottom of things in a hurry.

Under Stalin, Khrushchev had been head of the Communist Party in the Ukraine, and he was as familiar as anyone with the atrocities committed under Stalin's orders. Throughout his regime, Khrushchev worked to dismantle the "cult of personality" surrounding Comrade Stalin. He also ordered the release of many of the political prisoners in the gulag, and the restoration of their rights and those of their relatives. He reined in the secret police, renounced repression and secrecy as instruments of state policy, and relaxed censorship. He retained, however, the centralized features of Soviet...