The World: The Man Between Two Eras

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In the final seven years of his life, Khrushchev remained mostly out of public view. Last year Khrushchev Remembers appeared in the West. LIFE, which contracted for its publication, described the book as a volume of "reminiscences" gathered from "various sources at various times and in various circumstances." Though Khrushchev was obliged to dismiss the book as a "fabrication," most Western Sovietologists believed that it was authentic.

One day last June, accompanied by Nina, Khrushchev appeared at the polling station in central Moscow. A correspondent asked him what he was doing in retirement. "I am a pensioner," he said. "What do pensioners do?" It was an almost pathetic question from a man who had ruled one of the world's two great powers for most of a decade.