Khrushchev's son-in-law and the editor who turned Izvestia into the most-read Soviet newspaper of the thaw
“Don't have a hundred roubles, marry like Adzhubei” — the Moscow joke of the 1950s that captured how thoroughly his rise was entwined with being Khrushchev's son-in-law.
Alexei Adzhubey was the face of Soviet journalism during the Khrushchev thaw. As editor-in-chief of Izvestia from 1959 to 1964, he transformed the staid government organ into a lively, widely read daily, quadrupling its circulation from 1.6 million to over 6 million. He spearheaded the creation of the Union of Journalists of the USSR in 1959, co-authored the Lenin Prize-winning Face to Face with America (1960) about Khrushchev's US visit, and secured an exclusive interview with President John F. Kennedy in 1961. His bold decision to publish Aleksandr Tvardovsky's banned satirical poem Tyorkin in the Other World in Izvestia in 1963 showed he was more than just Khrushchev's son-in-law: he was a genuine editorial innovator who pushed the boundaries of permissible speech.
Career Timeline
- 1943–1945Red Army, Moscow Military District Song and Dance Ensemble
- 1947–1952Journalism faculty, Moscow State University
- 1951–1957Komsomolskaya Pravda, editorial board
- 1957–1959Editor-in-chief, Komsomolskaya Pravda
- 1959–1964Editor-in-chief, Izvestia
- 1959Initiated founding of the Union of Journalists of the USSR
- 1960Co-author, Face to Face with America; Lenin Prize
- 1961–1964Member, CC CPSU; Deputy, Supreme Soviet of the USSR
- 1963Published Tvardovsky's banned Tyorkin in the Other World in Izvestia
- 1964Stripped of all posts after Khrushchev's ouster; demoted to department head at Soviet Union magazine
- 1992–1993Editor-in-chief, Third Estate newspaper
Related historical events
Fall from Power and the Pseudonymous Years
When Khrushchev was ousted in October 1964, Adzhubey was immediately stripped of all his posts. At the November CC Plenum he was removed from the Central Committee and demoted to the nominal position of head of the publicity department at the magazine Soviet Union (at first without any subordinates, later with just one assistant). For more than two decades he could only publish under the pseudonyms 'Radin' or 'Rodionov'; he was not permitted to use his own name until 1985. Through these years of official oblivion, Adzhubey tenaciously preserved the record of the Khrushchev era. In 1989, as glasnost opened space for long-suppressed voices, he published his memoir Those Ten Years, offering an intimate, inside account of the thaw. He followed it in 1991 with The Collapse of Illusions, a final reckoning with the Khrushchev period. In 1992 he returned to journalism as editor-in-chief of the small newspaper Third Estate. But he died in Moscow on 19 March 1993.