“…Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, learned the lesson up close and personal. In 1953 he travelled to Crimea with his son-in-law, the prominent Soviet journalist Aleksei Adzhubei. The trip was no vacation. According to Adzhubei, Khrushchev had a series of awkward encounters with crowds of post-war Soviet settlers, who made desperate pleas for more material assistance. … Continue reading Crimea was a desert in 1953 when Khrushchev visited it. For Ukraine, it became a heavy burden to make it livable, not a gift