Nikita Khrushchev

April 15, 1894 – September 11, 1971

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. As leader of the Soviet Union, he denounced his predecessor Joseph Stalin and embarked on a campaign of de-Stalinization, and he presided over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. A political commissar in the Russian Civil War, he governed the Ukrainian SSR from 1938 and served as a commissar during World War II, including at the Battle of Stalingrad.

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Biography

Nikita Khrushchev was born in a Russian village and worked as a miner and metalworker in the Donbas before joining the Bolsheviks. He rose under Stalin as party chief of Moscow and of Ukraine and was involved in the purges of the 1930s.

After Stalin's death in 1953 he became First Secretary of the Communist Party and defeated his rivals. In his "secret speech" of 1956 he denounced Stalin's crimes, which started a period of limited liberalisation. The same year he sent troops to crush the Hungarian Revolution.

He also served as premier from 1958. His years in power saw the launch of Sputnik, the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Failed farm policies and the climbdown over Cuba weakened him, and colleagues removed him in October 1964. He lived in retirement until his death in 1971.