Chapter 3 Summary

In 1908, Khrushchev joins father Sergei in Yuzovka, a growing industrial town of 40,000. Life in teeming barracks, mining coal under brutal conditions is transforming peasant workers into first-generation proletarians. Epidemics are regular and lethal. Alcoholism and crime are epidemic. Education offers hope of advancing to the factories, where working conditions and wages are better. Revolutionary groups make little headway in Yuzovka. The Revolution of 1905 goes largely overlooked. By 1913, Bolsheviks number only 400. Yuzovka is prospering and patriotic as World War I starts in 1914, but enthusiasm wanes by 1916, and when the Tsar abdicates in 1917, bloody conflicts erupt between workers and bosses.

Khrushchev begins cleaning slag from mine boilers. At age 15, he apprentices to a fitter and works 12-hour days repairing mining equipment and simpler devices. His self-image improves as skills grow and he distances himself from his peasant roots. He loves to make people laugh and...