Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Nikita Khrushchev

  • The death of Joseph Stalin

    On March 1, 1953, the most feared man in the world lay on the floor dying in the Kuntsevo Dacha, outside Moscow, in a pool of his own urine. He had been there for hours. Guards had discovered him sometime after midnight—crumpled beside his bed, a half-empty glass of mineral water nearby—but no one dared…

  • Saving the starving Soviets with Spam

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army. We had lost our most fertile lands.”1– Nikita Khrushchev In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. The “breadbasket” agricultural regions of Southern Russia and the Ukraine were quickly occupied, causing a food crisis for the USSR. Russian soldiers’ food rations consisted…