The “big family” against the “little” one: rumors about Khrushchev's son as a device and a symptom

Abstract

The article considers the narrative that destalinization resulted from Khrushchev's revenge for his son, who was executed during Stalin's rule. This rumor appeared in the mid1960s and today remains current among Stalin's followers. This plot is analyzed within the framework of Katerina Clark's conception of the Stalin period “big family myth”, according to which the Soviet people as a whole was imagined like a “big family”. We put forward the hypothesis that the persistence of the plot involving Khrushchev's son is related to the opposition between the “big family” and a “little family”, an opposition that underpins the ideas about the proper organization of society.