Who was Nikita Khrushchev?
Nikita Khrushchev was born on April 15, 1894. Nikita Khrushchev died on September 11, 1971. He was a Soviet politician from 1953 to 1964 and served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his reign, Khrushchev shocked the communist world by condemning Stalin's crimes and began de-Stalinization. He sponsored the early Soviet space program and implemented relatively liberal reforms in domestic politics. After several false starts and barely avoiding nuclear war in Cuba, he successfully negotiated with the United States to ease the tensions of the Cold War. His reckless tendencies led the Kremlin leadership to deprive him of power and replaced him with Brezhnev as first secretary and Alexei Kosygin as prime minister. We will learn more about who was Nikita Khrushchev and the full form of Nikita in the biography below.
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Nikita Khrushchev Definition
Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a small town in western Russia. He was a metal worker when he was young and served as a political commissioner during the Russian Civil War. Under the patronage of Lazar Kaganovich, he climbed up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported the purge of Joseph Stalin and approved the arrest of thousands of his followers. In 1938, Stalin sent him to rule the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he continued to purge. During the well-known Patriotic War in the Soviet Union, Khrushchev once again served as a commissioner, acting as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev participated in the bloody defense of Stalingrad, which is a fact that he was proud of all his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine and was called to Moscow to become one of Stalin's closest advisers. On March 5, 1953, the death of Stalin triggered a power struggle. Khrushchev consolidated his power as the first secretary of the Party Central Committee and won the power struggle. On February 25, 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered a "secret speech" condemning Stalin's purge and ushering in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union. Its internal policies aimed at improving the lives of ordinary citizens, especially in agriculture. Hopefully relying on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered a substantial reduction in conventional troops. Despite the layoffs, Khrushchev experienced the tensest period of the Cold War during his tenure, which eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Early Life
Khrushchev was born on April 15, 1894, in Kalinovka. Now it is a village in the Kursk region of Russia, close to today’s border of Ukraine. His parents Sergei Khrushchev and Xeniya Khrushcheva were poor farmers of Russian descent and had a two-year-old daughter. Sergei Khrushchev held various positions in the Donbas region of the Far East of Ukraine, as a railroad worker, a miner, and a brick factory worker. Salaries in Donbas were much higher than in the Kursk region. Nikita has been a pastor since he was a child. He received a total of four years of education, partly in rural schools and partly at the Kalinovka state school under Shevchenko's instruction. According to Khrushchev's description in his memoirs, Shevchenko was a free thinker. Not going to church made the villagers uncomfortable. When his brother visited him, he gave Khrushchev books that were banned by the imperial government. She urged Nikita to continue her studies, but family finances did not allow her.
Education
In 1908, Sergey Khrushchev moved to Yuzovka, Donbas, later that year 14-year-old Nikita followed him. After that, Khrushcheva and his daughter followed him. Yuzovka was renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961. It is located in the center of one of the most industrialized regions of the Russian Empire. After working briefly in other fields, Khrushchev's parents found Nikita where he was an apprentice blacksmith. After completing his apprenticeship, the teenage Khrushchev was hired by a factory. He lost that job after raising funds for the families of the victims of the Lena Goldfields massacre and was employed by a nearby mine in Ruchenkovo to repair underground equipment. His father was a trade union organizer and helped distribute its papers.
Nikita in the Politics
In March 1918, following the conclusion of a separate peace agreement between the Bolshevik government and the Allies, the Germans occupied the Donbas and Khrushchev fled to Kalinovka. In late 1918 or early 1919, he was mobilized into the Red Army as a political commissioner. The post of the political commissioner was recently introduced because the Bolsheviks began to reduce their dependence on labor activists and to rely more on conscripts, their duties include instilling the creeds of Bolshevism in recruits and improving the morale and combat readiness of troops. Khrushchev was originally a political commissioner of a construction platoon, and later became a political commissioner of a construction camp, and was sent from the front line to participate in a two-month political course. The young political commissioner has been criticized many times, although many of the war stories he told in his later years involved his cultural shame more than fights. In 1921, when the civil war ended, Khrushchev was demobilized and assigned to a labor brigade in Donbas as a political commissioner, where he and his men lived in poor conditions. The war caused widespread destruction and famine. One of the victims of hunger and disease was Yevrosinya, Khrushchev's wife, who was in Khrushchev while in the army in Kalino Fuka and died of typhus. The political commissar again attended the funeral, true to his Bolshevik principles, and refused to allow his wife's coffin to enter the local church. After passing through the church and entering the cemetery, he carried the coffin and flipped the wall to enter the cemetery, shocking the audience.
Nikita Khrushch Facts
Khrushchev achieved great success at the Ruchenkovo mine and, in mid-1922, he was appointed director of the nearby Pastukhov mine. However, he turned down the offer and tried to be assigned to the newly established Technical College in Yuzovka, even though his superiors were unwilling to let him go. Since he only had four years of formal school education, he applied for the training program attached to the technikum, which aims to bring uneducated students to the secondary level, which is a prerequisite for entering the technikum. While participating in rabfak, Khrushchev continued to work at the Rutchenkovo mine. One of his professors later described him as a poor student. His progress in the Communist Party was more successful, shortly after joining the rabfak in August 1922, where he was appointed party secretary for the entire technikum and became the party committee head for the city of Yuzovka On the subject of party democracy, he briefly joined Trotsky's supporters against Joseph Stalin's supporters. All of these activities gave him almost no time to do his homework, although he later said that he had completed his study of rabfak, but it is unclear if this is true.
Kaganovich's Protégé
Khrushchev met Lazar Kaganovich as early as 1917. In 1925, Kaganovich became the leader of the Ukrainian Party and Khrushchev was quickly promoted with his support. At the end of 1926, he was appointed the second in command of the Stalin Party organization. Within nine months, his superior, Konstantin Moiseyenko, was overthrown. According to Taubman, this was due to Khrushchev’s instigation. Kaganovich transferred Khrushchev to Kharkiv, the capital of Ukraine at that time, as the head of the Organization Department of the Ukrainian Party. In 1928, Khrushchev was transferred to Kyiv and served as the second commander of the party organization there.
Participation in the Purge
Khrushchev assisted many friends and colleagues in the purge of Moscow Province. Among the 38 senior party officials in Moscow and the province, 35 died. Three survivors were transferred to other parts of the Soviet Union. Of the 146 party secretaries in cities and regions outside Moscow in the province, only 10 survived the purge. Khrushchev pointed out to his members that almost everyone who worked with him was arrested. According to the party’s agreement, Khrushchev must approve these arrests, and he did little or nothing to save his friends and colleagues. Party leaders received a quota for the number of "enemies" to be transferred and arrested. In June 1937, the Politburo set a quota for the arrest of 35,000 enemies in Moscow Province, 5,000 of which were executed. In response, Khrushchev called for the killing of 2,000 kulaks or kulaks living in Moscow in order to partially complete the quota. In any case, Khrushchev notified Stalin only two weeks after receiving the order from the Politburo and arrested 41,305 "criminals and kulaks." According to Khrushchev, of those arrested, 8,500 were executed.
War Against Germany
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Khrushchev was still serving in Kyiv in June 1941. Stalin appointed him a political commissioner, and Khrushchev acted as an intermediary between the local military commander and the ruler Moscow politician on multiple fronts. Stalin used Khrushchev to restrain the commander, and the commanders tried to get him to influence Stalin. As the Germans advanced, Khrushchev cooperated with the military to defend and rescue Kyiv. As Stalin ordered that the city not be abandoned under any circumstances, the Red Army was soon surrounded by the Germans. Although the Germans claimed they captured 655,000 prisoners, according to the Soviet Union, 150,541 out of 677,085 escaped the trap. The main source of information differed from Khrushchev's involvement on this point. According to Marshal Georgy Zhukov, a few years after Khrushchev was fired in 1957 and humiliated him, Khrushchev persuaded Stalin not to withdraw his troops from Kyiv. However, Khrushchev pointed out in his memoirs that he and Marshal Semyon Budjoni proposed to redistribute the Soviet army to avoid being surrounded until Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko arrived from Moscow and ordered the troops to hold their positions.
The Last Years of Working with Stalin
Khrushchev returned to Moscow and the province as party secretary. His biographer Taubman suggested that Stalin might summon Khrushchev to Moscow to balance the influence of Georgy Malenkov and Security Minister Lavrenti Beria, who are widely regarded as Stalin's heirs. The older leader rarely convened Politburo meetings. On the contrary, most of the high-level work of the government was in Stalin’s inner circle of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich. Khrushchev went to bed very early so as not to fall asleep in front of Stalin; he wrote in his memoirs: "Those who fall asleep at Stalin's table are in a terrible condition." Later, Stalin died from heart failure.
This biography helps us to know who was Nikita Khrushchev.
FAQs on Nikita Khrushchev Biography
1. When was Khrushchev Removed from His Post?
Answer: Starting in March 1964, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the nominal head of state Brezhnev began to discuss the removal of Khrushchev with their colleagues. Brezhnev considered arresting Khrushchev when he returned from a trip to Scandinavia in June but took the time to persuade members of the Central Committee to support Khrushchev's removal and remind the Central Committee. Brezhnev had enough time to plan his conspiracy. Between January and September 1964, Khrushchev was absent from Moscow for a total of five months. This was the time the conspiracy took place and then he was immediately removed from office.
2. What Did Khrushchev Do in His Retirement?
Answer: Khrushchev received a pension of 500 rubles a month and is convinced that his house and villa were his life. After his dismissal, he fell into a deep depression. He received very few visitors, especially since its security guards tracked down all the guests and reported their movements. In the fall of 1965, he and his wife were ordered to leave their house and villa and move to an apartment and a smaller villa in Petrovo Dalnee. His pension was reduced to 400 rubles per month, but by Soviet standards, his retirement life was still very comfortable. The depression continued, and his doctor prescribed sleeping pills and tranquilizers. One of his grandchildren was asked what his predecessor was doing after he retired, and the boy replied, "Grandpa cried." Khrushchev was so degraded that in the 30-volume "Encyclopedia of the Soviet Union", his name was removed from the list of famous people.