Who was Nikita Khrushchev?

Nikita Khrushchev was the premier of the Soviet Union (1958–1964) and the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953–1964). After Stalin 's death, Khrushchev engaged in a power struggle and gained control of the party. Khrushchev is known for his policy of de-Stalinization, which had widespread effects throughout the communist world. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress in Moscow, Khrushchev delivered his secret speech about Stalin's excesses, which led to the release of political prisoners and the rehabilitation of many who had perished. In foreign affairs, Khrushchev pursued a policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the West, but he was also known for his bluntness and eccentric behavior. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962, where he secretly attempted to base Soviet missiles in Cuba, brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to nuclear war.

What was Khrushchev’s role in the Soviet Union?

Nikita Khrushchev held significant roles in the Soviet Union, serving as both the first secretary of the Communist Party (1953–1964) and Premier (1958–1964). After Stalin 's death, Khrushchev gained power through his control of the party machinery. Khrushchev initiated a policy of de-Stalinization that had widespread effects, such as the release of political prisoners and the rehabilitation of those who had perished under Stalin. In foreign affairs, he pursued a policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the West, but he was also known for his brash and extroverted personal diplomacy. The Cuban missile crisis was a major event during his premiership.

When did Khrushchev lead the Soviet Union?

Nikita Khrushchev was the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and premier of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964. After Stalin 's death in 1953, Khrushchev engaged in a power struggle and gained control of the party machinery. In March 1958, he assumed the role of premier of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev pursued a policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the West. His rule involved de-Stalinization, releasing political prisoners and inspiring hopes for greater freedom, but also included an intensified persecution of religion. The Cuban missile crisis and failures in agriculture were major factors in Khrushchev's downfall. In October 1964, he was forced to retire due to "advanced age and poor health".

What major changes did Khrushchev make in the Soviet Union?

Nikita Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union after Stalin, initiated significant changes that marked a new direction for the country. Khrushchev launched de-Stalinization , denouncing Stalin's cult of personality and crimes in a secret speech in 1956, which led to the release of political prisoners and rehabilitation of victims. He also reorganized the Stalinist security apparatus, separating it into criminal police and the KGB, which was subordinated to the Council of Ministers. In agriculture, Khrushchev introduced a bold plan to rapidly expand grain production on virgin lands in the north Caucasus, west Siberia, Russia, and northern Kazakhstan. He also attempted to shift the focus from heavy industry to consumer goods. In foreign policy, he improved relations with the West and established a policy of peaceful coexistence, which eventually led to the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963.

How did Khrushchev’s actions affect relations with the United States?

Nikita Khrushchev's actions significantly impacted Soviet-U.S. relations, marked by alternating periods of tension and attempts at de-escalation. Initially, Khrushchev sought peaceful coexistence, evident in his 1959 visit to the U.S. and talks with President Eisenhower. However, the U-2 Incident in 1960, where an American spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory, caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris. Tensions escalated further with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev's decision to place Soviet missiles in Cuba was a challenge to the U.S., but he ultimately agreed to remove them. This event, along with other foreign policy missteps and domestic issues, contributed to his fall from power in 1964.

What was the Cuban Missile Crisis and what was Khrushchev’s role in it?

The Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 was a major standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union caused by the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. As premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev sought to defend Cuba with Soviet arms and assumed the United States would not interfere with the installation of Soviet missiles there. Khrushchev hoped the missiles would serve as a bargaining chip for a neutralized Germany and to dissuade China from developing its own nuclear program. To end the crisis, Khrushchev agreed to halt work on the missile sites and return the missiles to the Soviet Union.

Nikita Khrushchev

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Wreckage of the U-2 spy plane shot down inside the Soviet Union in 1960. U-2 spy plane incident, U-2 affair, Cold War.

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Nikita Khrushchev summary

Quick Facts

In full:: Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

Born:: April 17 [April 5, Old Style], 1894, Kalinovka, Russia

Died:: September 11, 1971, Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union (aged 77)

Title / Office:: prime minister (1958-1964), Soviet Union

Political Affiliation:: Bolshevik; Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nikita Khrushchev

premier of Soviet Union

Also known as: Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

Written by

Frank B. Gibney

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History

Early life

Unlike Lenin and most other Soviet leaders, who generally had middle-class backgrounds, Khrushchev was the son of a coal miner; his grandfather had been a serf who served in the tsarist army. After a village education, Khrushchev went with his family to Yuzovka (later named Stalino, now Donetsk, Ukraine), a mining and industrial centre in the Donets Basin, where he began work as a pipe fitter at age 15. Because of his factory employment, he was not conscripted in the tsarist army during World War I. Even before the Russian Revolution of 1917, he had become active in workers’ organizations, and in 1918—during the struggle between Reds, Whites, and Ukrainian nationalists for possession of Ukraine—he became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik).

In January 1919 Khrushchev joined the Red Army and served as a junior political commissar, ultimately in the campaigns against the Whites and invading Polish armies in 1920. Soon after he was demobilized, his wife, Galina, died during a famine. In 1922 Khrushchev secured admission to a new Soviet workers’ school in Yuzovka, where he received a secondary education along with additional party instruction. He became a student political leader and was appointed secretary of the Communist Party Committee at the school. There he married his second wife, Nina Petrovna, a schoolteacher, in 1924.

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Political career under Stalin

In 1925 Khrushchev went into full-time party work as party secretary of the Petrovsko-Mariinsk district of Yuzovka. He distinguished himself by his hard work and knowledge of mine and factory conditions. He soon came to the notice of Joseph Stalin’s close associate, Lazar M. Kaganovich, secretary general of the Ukrainian Party’s Central Committee, who asked Khrushchev to accompany him as a nonvoting delegate to the 14th Party Congress in Moscow. For the next four years—in Yuzovka, then in Kharkov (now Kharkiv) and Kiev—Khrushchev was active as a party organizer. In 1929 he received permission to go to Moscow to study metallurgy at the Stalin Industrial Academy. There he was appointed secretary of the academy’s Party Committee. In 1931 he went back to full-time party work in Moscow. By 1933 he had become second secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee.

During the early 1930s Khrushchev consolidated his hold on the Moscow party cadres. He supervised the completion of the Moscow subway, for which he received the Order of Lenin in 1935. That year he became first secretary of the Moscow city and regional party organization—in effect, the governor of Moscow. In the preceding year, at the 17th Party Congress, he had been elected a full member of the 70-man Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

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Khrushchev was a zealous supporter of Stalin in those years and participated in the purges of party leadership. He was one of only three provincial secretaries who survived the mass executions of the Great Purge of the 1930s. He became a member of the Constitutional Committee in 1936, an alternate member of the Central Committee’s ruling Politburo in 1937, and in the same year a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Supreme Soviet. A year later Khrushchev was made a candidate member of the Politburo and sent to Kiev as first secretary of the Ukrainian party organization. In 1939 he was made a full member of the Politburo.

In 1940, after Soviet forces had occupied eastern Poland, Khrushchev presided over the “integration” of this area into the Soviet Union. His principal objective was to liquidate both the Polish and Ukrainian nationalist movements, as well as to restore the Communist Party organization in Ukraine, which had been shattered in the Great Purge. This work was disrupted by the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Khrushchev’s first wartime assignment was to evacuate as much of Ukraine’s industry as possible to the east. Thereafter he was attached to the Soviet army with the rank of lieutenant general; his principal task was to stimulate the resistance of the civilian population and maintain liaison with Stalin and other members of the Politburo. He was political adviser to Marshal Andrey I. Yeremenko during the defense of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and to Lieutenant General Nikolay F. Vatutin during the huge tank battle at Kursk.

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After the liberation of Ukraine in 1944, Khrushchev reassumed control of Ukraine as first secretary of the Ukrainian party organization. He worked to restore the civil administration and to bring that devastated country back to a subsistence level. A famine in 1946 was one of the worst in Ukraine’s history; Khrushchev fought to restore grain production and to distribute food supplies, against Stalin’s insistence on greater production from Ukraine for use in other areas. During this period Khrushchev gained a firsthand acquaintance with the problems of Soviet agricultural scarcity and planning. In 1949 Stalin called him back to Moscow, where he took over his old job as head of the Moscow City Party and concurrently was appointed secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

The period 1949–53 was far from pleasant for Khrushchev and other members of the Soviet leadership, who found themselves pawns in Stalin’s palace politics. Khrushchev moved more and more into agriculture, where he began his schemes for the agrogorod (“farming town”) and larger state farms at the expense of the conventional collectives. His innovations were rejected in 1951, however, when responsibility for agriculture was transferred to Georgy M. Malenkov.

Nikita Khrushchev

Early life

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Political career under Stalin