Abstract
In August 1956, Nikita Khrushchev took part in a meeting with a delegation of Canadian communists. Discussing the wave of repression against Jewish intellectuals during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Soviet leader mentioned that he had supported Stalin's decision not to give the Crimea to Jews because it would have created a springboard for attacks on the Soviet Union. Apart from being paranoid about the Soviet Jews' loyalty to the young state of Israel and its imperialist backers, Khrushchev had, as his remark revealed, another paranoia that was characteristic of the Kremlin decision-makers: distrust of the peripheries. Khrushchev and his advisors knew that their totalitarian regime was not such a monolith as it might appear in the eyes of foreign observers, especially because visitors were seldom allowed to travel to the outskirts of the Soviet empire and did not know that some areas had features of fiefdoms. The post-Soviet disintegration of the communist empire confirmed the Kremlin denizens' misgivings.
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