World: Becoming an Unperson

Eight million Russians received a new April 17 in the mails last week, with a succinct instruction to insert it in their official Communist Party calendars for 1965. The new date was nothing like the old. Gone was the photo of the bald head, the round face unsmiling above the five medals, the six-line biography describing his rise to Chairman of the Council of Ministers and First Party Secretary. Even the fellow's inspirational quote on the back gave way to an anonymous poem praising party modesty. Thus, by having his birthday wiped from the state calendar, did Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev become an "unperson."

Decalendarizing was not the only demeaning treatment given the departed Khrushchev last week in Moscow. Word spread among book lovers that the first volume of the planned six-volume History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be withdrawn for a little updating. In case anyone wondered why Volume One (which deals with the period from 1883 to 1905) needed to be updated, they had only to recall that its preface made grand and glowing references to Khrushchev, one of which described him as the "true Leninist."

In his dacha outside Moscow, Nikita could take some comfort in the fact that he was not yet being subjected to the treatment given to that other fallen leader—Josef Stalin. In the current Novy Mir, wartime Soviet Ambassador to London Ivan Maisky cuttingly elaborates on the tale that Stalin locked himself in his Kremlin study the day the Nazis invaded Russia and didn't bother to come out until four days later, by which time Hitler's hordes had the Red Army reeling all along the Russian front. But someone high in the Kremlin must recall old Joe with respect. Stalin's birthday (Dec. 21) is observed in the same Soviet calendar that has made Nikita an unperson.