Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
(1924-1992), Nikita Khrushchev’s son-in-law, and a leading Soviet journalist.
Alexei Adzhubei met Rada Khrushcheva at Moscow State University in 1947 and married her in August 1949, when Khrushchev was party boss of Ukraine. Adzhubei became chief editor of Kom-somolskaya pravda in 1957 and then, in 1959, of the Soviet government newspaper, Izvestiya. In 1961 he was named a member of the party Central Committee. In addition, Adzhubei was a member of Khrushchev’s “Press Group,” which edited the leader’s speeches. He served as an informal adviser to his father-in-law on matters ranging from culture to foreign policy, and he accompanied Khrushchev on trips abroad including the United States (1959), Southeast Asia (1960), Paris (1960), and Austria (1961).
Under Adzhubei, Komsomolskaya pravda sharply increased its circulation by adding feature articles and photographs, while Izvestiya reduced the amount of predictable political boiler plate, printed more letters from readers, and published boldly anti-Stalinist works such as Alexander Tvar-dovsky’s poem, “Tyorkin in the Other World.” In time, Adzhubei began acting as an unofficial emissary for Khrushchev, meeting with foreign leaders such as U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII, sounding out their views, reporting back to his father-in- law, and writing up his interviews in Izvestiya.
Thanks to his special position, Adzhubei was cultivated by other Soviet leaders, including some who eventually conspired to oust Khrushchev. When Khrushchev fell from power in October 1964, Adzhubei was denied the right to write under his own name and forced to live in obscurity until he was rehabilitated during the era of pere-stroika and glasnost in the late 1980s.
AEROFLOT
Aeroflot, literally “air fleet,” is the common name for the state airline of the Soviet Union. It was operated under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The airline was founded in 1928 as Do-broflot and was reorganized into Aeroflot in 1932. During Soviet times, Aeroflot was the world’s largest airline, with about 15 percent of all civil air traffic. The first ever nonstop transpolar flight (from Moscow to the United States in 1933) on the ANT-25 aircraft operated by Valery Chkalov, Georgy Baidukov, and Alexander Belyakov was a landmark in the history of the aviation. Aeroflot introduced commercial jet plane service on September 15, 1956, on a flight from Moscow to Irkutsk. Aeroflot developed the world’s first supersonic airliner, the TU-144. Its maiden flight took place on December 31, 1968, two months ahead of the Concorde. Regular supersonic cargo flights began in late 1975 and passenger flights in 1977. Supersonic service was suspended in 1978, after 102 flights.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot was reorganized by the June 1992 resolution of the government of Russian Federation, becoming Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines. Another government resolution appointed Valery Okulov as its first general director in May 1997. Aeroflot-Russ-ian International Airlines is a joint-stock company, with 51 percent of the stock owned by the government as of 2002 and the remaining 49 percent belonging to the employees. With over fourteen thousand employees, as of 2002 Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines was the world’s fourth largest commercial airline; with flights to 140 destinations in 94 countries, it provided 70 percent of all the international air transport performed by Russian airlines, and had 151 representatives abroad, as well as branches in the Russian Federation in Novosibirsk,
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Khabarovsk, and St. Petersburg. The company’s fleet consisted in 2002 of 111 airplanes, including two Boeing-767-300s, eight Airbuses A-310-300, six long-range Iluyshin-96-300s, eighteen Iluyshin-76TD cargo planes and one cargo DC-10/30F, and other jets, illustrating the diversification of aircraft in the post-Soviet period. See also: AVIATION
Aeroflot: Russian International Airlines. (2003). Available at «http://www.aeroflot.org».
Afghanistan has played a key role in the foreign policy history of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. During the nineteenth century, Russian and British intelligence and government officials vied for influence in the region, with the final delineation of spheres of influence being the Amu Darya river-north of that was considered Russian and south of that was British. During the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war, opposition forces in Central Asia used Afghanistan as a base of operation against Red Army units. Indeed, Afghanistan was a haven, and then a transit route, for those wanting to escape the Soviet Union at this time.
After a series of treaties, Afghanistan became a neutral neighbor for the Soviet Union and relations focused largely on trade and economic development. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet involvement in Afghanistan increased. Soviet assistance was almost equally divided between economic and military forms. Between 1956 and 1978, the Soviet Union gave $2.51 billion in aid to Afghanistan, compared to U.S. assistance of only $533 million. This was part of a larger Soviet strategy to increase their presence in South Asia, as the United States was seen as being more influential in Iran and Pakistan. Equally important, although commercial ties always remained modest, the Soviet Union used this relationship as a “positive example” for the rest of the developing world.
The Sawr Revolution in April 1978 radically changed the Soviet presence in the region, as the new leaders- first Nur Muhammed Taraki and then Hafizulla Amin-debated the extent to which they wanted outside powers involved in the country. The leadership in Moscow feared that the Afghan government under Amin was going to drift out of the Soviet Union’s orbit, and began to put pressure on it to remain a loyal ally. Finally, as a measure to ensure full subordination, the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Amin was killed in the ensuing conflict, to be replaced by Babrak Karmal in 1980.
The Brezhnev administration claimed that it sent troops into Afghanistan to help the current leadership stabilize the country. Within months, Soviet bases were established in a number of cities in the country and Afghanistan was effectively under Soviet occupation. Many states in the international community condemned the invasion and a majority of Western states boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow as a sign of protest.
Within two years, opposition groups-often based on tribal or clan affiliations-began to increase their resistance efforts against the Soviet occupiers. Known collectively as the Mujahedeen, the opposition fought both Soviet units and those of the People’s Democratic Republic of Afghanistan army. Although the Mujahedeen fared poorly in the opening campaigns, increased training and support from outside powers, especially the United States, helped turn things around. By the mid-1980s, it was apparent that the Soviet Union was bogged down in a guerrilla war that wore down both troop numbers and morale.
By 1984, Soviet citizens were beginning to get frustrated with this “endless war.” The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in the following year signaled a new phase in the conduct of the war, as he acknowledged that the Soviet Union ought to look at a way to end their participation in the conflict. Over the next two years, United Nations-mediated negotiations took place, which resulted in a peace settlement and the Soviet withdrawal from the country. The government was finally admitting casualty figures, which became difficult as fighting intensified in 1985 and 1986. By this time, there were between 90,000 and 104,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan at any one time.
It was not until early 1989 that the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan. In all, the ten-year Afghan War cost the Soviet Union more than 15,000 killed and more than 460,000 wounded or incapacitated due to illnesses contracted while serving in the country (this was an amazing 73 percent of all forces
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that served in the country). Such casualties severely damaged the country’s international reputation and internal morale. During this period of glasnost by the Gorbachev administration, it was commonplace for Soviet citizens to criticize the government’s war effort and the effect it had on returning veterans, the “Afghantsy.” Indeed, many observers compared the Soviet experience in Afghanistan with that of the United States in Vietnam.
For the first several years after the Soviet withdrawal, the government of Najibullah, the Soviet-sponsored leader of Afghanistan who succeeded Babrak Karmal, was able to maintain power. However, by 1992, the
