"Even if Khrushchev's recollections are accurate, they still constitute retrospective mythmaking. For although he was a budding political activist, he was equally, if not more, devoted to making it as a metalworker, to courting and marrying an educated and attractive woman from a fairly prosperous family, to fathering children, and to earning enough money to live in an apartment that was large and luxurious by the standards of the day." Chapter 3, pg. 38.

"From Stalino to Kharkov to Kiev to Moscow, all in a year and a half. However, Khrushchev's motives and machinations are still not clear. Where there was smoke (the ouster of Moiseyenko, strained relations with Stroganov, his Kiev colleagues' assumption that he was at odds with Demchenko and Kossior, the Kaganovich connection), there was probably fire. Despite his seeming modesty and straightforwardness, Khrushchev was already scheming with the best (or worst) of them. But if his...