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|+Nikita Khrushchev |- | style="background:#efefef;" align="center" colspan="2" | |- |Name of office | First Secretary Of The Soviet Communist Party |- |Term of office | 1953 - 1964 as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1958 - 1964 as Prime Minister |- |Predecessor | Nikolai Bulganin as Prime Minister, Joseph Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union |- |Successor | Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union |- |Date of birth | April 17 , 1894 |- |Place of birth | Kalinovka , Russian Empire |- |Date of death | September 11 , 1971 |- |Place of death | Moscow , USSR |- |Nationality | Russia n |- |Profession |Political Officer, Politician |- |Political party |'' Communist Party Of The USSR '' |} (; surname commonly anglicized as '''Khrushchev''', , 1894 – September 11 , 1971 ) was the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin . He was First Secretary of the Communist Party Of The Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Chairman Of The Council Of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. He was removed from power by his party colleagues in 1964 and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev . He spent the last seven years of his life under house arrest. Early days Nikita Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka , Dmitriyev Uyezd , Kursk Guberniya , Russian Empire , now occupied by the present-day Kursk Oblast of the Russian Federation . In 1908 , his family moved to what is now Donetsk , Ukraine . Although he was apparently highly intelligent, he only received approximately two years of Education as a child and probably only became fully literate in his late twenties or early thirties. He was trained for and worked as a joiner in various factories and mines. During World War I , Khrushchev became involved in Trade Union activities, and after the Bolshevik Revolution In 1917 he fought in the Red Army . He became a Party member in 1918 and worked at various management and Party positions in Donbass and Kiev . In 1931 Khrushchev was transferred to Moscow and in 1935 he became 1st Secretary of the Moscow City Committee (Moscow Gorkom) of VKP(b). In 1938 he became the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party . Beginning in 1934 Khrushchev was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and he was a member of Politburo from 1939. World War II .]] During World War II , (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War) Khrushchev served as a ''zampolit'' with the equivalent Rank of Lieutenant General . In the months following the German Invasion in 1941 , Khrushchev, as a local party leader, was coordinating the defense of Ukraine, but was dismissed and recalled to Moscow after surrendering Kiev. Later, he was a Political Commissar at the Battle Of Stalingrad and was the senior political officer in the south of the Soviet Union throughout the war time period - at Kursk , entering Kiev on liberation, and in the suppression of the Bandera nationalists of the Ukrainian Nationalist Organisation , who had earlier allied with the Nazis before fighting them in the Western Ukraine . Rise to power After Stalin's death in March 1953 , there was a power struggle between different factions within the party. Khrushchev prevailed, becoming party leader on September 7 of that year, and his main rival, NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria , was executed in December. Khrushchev's leadership marked a crucial transition for the Soviet Union. He pursued a course of reform and shocked delegates to the 20th Party Congress on February 23 , 1956 by making his famous Secret Speech denouncing the " Cult Of Personality " that surrounded Stalin, although he himself had no small part in cultivating it, and accusing Stalin of the crimes committed during the Great Purges . This effectively alienated Khrushchev from the more conservative elements of the Party, but he managed to defeat what he termed the Anti-Party Group after they failed in a bid to oust him from the party leadership in 1957 . In 1958 , Khrushchev replaced Georgy Malenkov as prime minister and established himself as the undisputed leader of both state and party. He became Premier Of The Soviet Union on March 27 , 1958. Khruschev promoted reform of the Soviet system and began to place an emphasis on the production of consumer goods rather than on heavy industry. In 1959 during Richard Nixon 's journey to the Soviet Union, he took part in what was later known as the Kitchen Debate . Khrushchev's new attitude towards the West as a rival instead of as an evil entity alienated Mao Zedong 's China. The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, too, would later be involved in a similar "cold war" triggered by the Sino-Soviet Split in 1960 . In 1961 Khrushchev approved plans proposed by Walter Ulbricht to build the Berlin Wall . Khrushchev's personality Khrushchev was regarded by his political enemies in the Soviet Union as a boorish, uncivilized peasant, with a reputation for interrupting speakers to insult them. The Politburo accused him once of 'hare-brained scheming' - referring to his erratic policy. This was partially the result of his limited formal education. Although intelligent, as his political enemies also admitted after he had defeated them, and certainly cunning, he lacked knowledge and understanding of the world outside of his direct experience and so would often prove easy to manipulate for scientific hucksters that knew how to appeal to his vanity and prejudices. For example, he was a supporter of Trofim Lysenko even after the Stalin years and became convinced that the Soviet Union's agricultural crises could be solved through the planting of Maize (corn) on the same scale as the United States, failing to realize that the differences in climate and soil made this inadvisable. Space Control Center]] He repeatedly disrupted the proceedings in the United Nations General Assembly in September-October 1960 by pounding his fists on the desk and shouting in Russian . On September 29 , 1960, Khrushchev twice interrupted a speech by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan by shouting out and pounding his desk. The unflappable Macmillan famously commented over his shoulder to Frederick Boland , the Assembly President (Ireland), that if Mr. Khrushchev wished to continue, he would like a translation. At the United Nations two weeks later, in one of the most surreal moments in Cold War history, the premier waved his shoe and banged it on his desk, adding to the lengthening list of antics with which he had been nettling the General Assembly. During a debate over a Russian resolution decrying colonialism, he was infuriated by a statement, expressed from the rostrum by Lorenzo Sumulong . The Filipino delegate had charged the Soviets with employing a double standard, pointing to their domination of Eastern Europe as an example of the very type of colonialism their resolution was critical of. Mr. Khrushchev thereupon pulled off his right shoe, stood up, brandishing it at the Philippine delegate on the other side of the hall. He then began to furiously bang the shoe on his desk. The enraged Khrushchev accused Mr. Sumulong of being "kholuj i stavlennik imperializma", which was translated as "a jerk, a stooge and a lackey of imperialism". The Premier alternately shouted, waved a brawny right arm, shook his finger and removed his shoe a second time. The second shoe incident occurred during a speech by Francis O. Wilcox, an Assistant U.S. Secretary of State. The chaotic scene finally ended when General Assembly President Frederick Boland broke his gavel calling the meeting to order, but not before the image of Khrushchev as a hotheaded buffoon was indelibly etched into America’s collective memory. At another occasion, Khrushchev said in reference to capitalism, "Мы вас похороним!", translated to " We Will Bury You ". This phrase, ambiguous both in the English Language and in the Russian Language , was interpreted in several ways. Forced retirement Khrushchev's rivals in the party deposed him at a Central Committee meeting on October 14 1964 . The removal was largely due to his capricious behaviour and personal mannerisms, which were regarded by the Party as tremendous embarrassments on the international stage. The Communist Party subsequently accused Khrushschev of making political mistakes, such as backing down during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and disorganizing the Soviet economy, especially in the agricultural sector. Following his removal from power, Khrushchev spent seven years under House Arrest . He died at his home in Moscow on September 11 , 1971 and is interred in the Novodevichy Cemetery , Moscow, Russia . Key political actions President Fidel Castro ]]
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Legacy On the positive side, he was admired for his efficiency and for maintaining an economy which, during the 1950s and '60s, had growth rates higher than most Western countries, contrasted with the stagnation beginning with his successors. He is also renowned for his liberal policies, whose results began with the widespread Exoneration Of Political Sentences . With Khrushchev's amnesty program, the former political prisoners and their surviving relatives could now live a normal life without the infamous " Wolf Ticket ". His policies also increased the importance of the consumer, since Khrushchev himself placed more resources in the production of consumer goods and housing instead of heavy industry, precipitating a rapid rise in living standards. The arts also benefited from this environment of liberalisation, where works like Solzhenitsyn's '' One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich '' created an attitude of dissent that would escalate during the subsequent Brezhnev-Kosygin era. He also allowed Eastern Europe to have a greater freedom of action in their domestic and external affairs, without the intervention of the Soviet Union. His De-Stalinisation caused a huge impact on young Communists of the day. Khrushchev encouraged more liberal communist leaders to replace hard-line Stalinists throughout the Eastern bloc. Alexander Dubček , who became the leader of Czechoslovakia in January 1968, accelerated the process of liberalisation in his own country with his Prague Spring programme. Mikhail Gorbachev , who became the Soviet Union's leader in 1985, was inspired by it and it became evident with his policies of Glasnost and Perestroika . Khrushchev is sometimes cited as "the last great reformer" among Soviet leaders before Gorbachev. On the negative side, he was criticized for his ruthless crackdown of the 1956 Revolution In Hungary , and also for encouraging the East German authorities to set up the notorious Berlin Wall in August 1961. He also had very poor diplomatic skills, giving him the reputation of being a rude, uncivilised peasant in the West and as an irresponsible clown in his own country. His methods of administration, although efficient, were also known to be erratic since they threatened to disband a large number of Stalinist-era agencies. He made a dangerous gamble in 1962 over Cuba, which almost made a Third World War inevitable. Agriculture barely kept up with population growth, as bad harvests mixed with good ones, culminating with a disastrous one in 1963 that was triggered by bad weather. All this damaged his prestige after 1962 and was enough for the Central Committee, Khrushchev's critical base for support, to take action against him. They used his right-hand man Leonid Brezhnev to lead the bloodless coup. Due to the results of his policies, as well as the increasingly regressive attitude of his successors, he became more popular after he gave up power, which led many dissidents to view his era with nostalgia as his successors began discrediting or slowing down his reforms. Other information Since he spent much time working in Ukraine, Khrushchev gave off the impression of being Ukrainian. He supported this image, e.g., by wearing Ukrainian national shirts. Due to various Reforms Of Russian Orthography , the ''ё'' letter is often replaced by ''е'' in writing. Hence ''Krushchev'' is the standard English transliteration, even though it is more closely rendered as ''Krushchyov''. Khrushchev's eldest son Leonid died in 1943 during the Great Patriotic War . His younger son Sergei emigrated to the United States and is now an American citizen and a Professor at Brown University 's Watson Institute For International Studies . He often speaks to American audiences to share his memories of the "other" side of the Cold War . Books
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