Item Detail
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31784
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1
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8
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English
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Ezra Taft Benson Meets Nikita Krushchev, 1959 : Memory Embellished
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Thunder From the Right : Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics
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Urbana, IL
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University of Illinois Press
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"When in 1959 Ezra Taft Benson, U.S. secretary of agriculture, met briefly with Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the encounter passed as a relatively minor Cold War public relations ripple, intended to highlight, on the one side, the superiority of American agriculture and, on the other, the disarming geniality of the most famous communist alive. However, seven years later, Benson, who had returned to his post as a member of the elite Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered a devotional address at LDS-owned Brigham Young University and recast the meeting as a near-mythic confrontation between good and evil. By this time, Benson was beset by critics, including high-ranking LDS officials, who viewed his public anti-communism as a distraction to his church work. Benson responded to the criticisms with a new narrative of his confrontation with Khrushchev that portrayed the apostle as a crusading American patriot bravely defying nay-sayers who sought to condemn his defense of individual freedom. Benson’s remembered story of his meeting with Khrushchev highlights the mutability of memory, especially when placed in the service of a larger personal agenda." [Author]
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A Light in the Darkness : Apostle Ezra Taft Benson's 1959 Sermon at Moscow's Central Baptist Church
Ezra Taft Benson : A Biography
Ezra Taft Benson : Statesman, Patriot, Prophet of God
"Rising above Principle" : Ezra Taft Benson as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1953-61 Part 1
The Mormon Hierarchy : Extensions of Power
The Worldwide Church : Mormonism as a Global Religion
"This Great Thing Which Has Come to Me a Humble, Weak, Farmer Boy" : Ezra Taft Benson's 1943 Call to the Apostleship
"Weak-Kneed Republicans and Socialist Democrats" : Ezra Taft Benson as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1953-61, Part 2