Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev[b][c] (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program and the enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin circle stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
"Khrushchev" redirects here. For the surname and other people with the surname, see Khrushchev (surname).
Nikita Khrushchev
Joseph Stalin (as General Secretary)
Lazar Kaganovich
11 September 1971 (aged 77)
Central Clinical Hospital, Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
CPSU (1918–1964)
- Yulia Khrushcheva (1915–1981)
- Leonid Khrushchev (1917–1943)
- Rada Khrushcheva (1929–2016)
- Sergei Khrushchev (1935–2020)
- Elena Khrushcheva (1937–1972)
Soviet Union
1941–45
Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, Khrushchev worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He originally supported Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers.
On 5 March 1953, Stalin's death triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev emerged victorious upon consolidating his authority as First Secretary of the party's Central Committee. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the "Secret Speech", which denounced Stalin's purges and ushered in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union. His domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchev's time in office saw the tensest years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Khrushchev enjoyed strong support during the 1950s, due to major victories such as those during the Suez Crisis, the launching of Sputnik, the Syrian Crisis of 1957, and the 1960 U-2 incident. By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This emboldened his political opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the deadly fate of the losers of previous Soviet power struggles and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside. His lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970. Khrushchev died in 1971 of a heart attack.
Life in retirement[edit]
Khrushchev was granted a pension of 500 rubles per month and was given a house, a dacha and a car.[271] Following his removal, he fell into deep depression. He received few visitors, especially since his security guards kept track of all guests and reported their comings and goings.[272] His pension was reduced to 400 rubles per month, though his retirement remained comfortable by Soviet standards.[273][274] One of his grandsons was asked what the ex-premier was doing in retirement, and the boy replied, "Grandfather cries."[275] Khrushchev was made a non-person to such an extent that the thirty-volume Great Soviet Encyclopedia omitted his name from the list of prominent political commissars during the Great Patriotic War.[31]
As the new rulers made known their conservatism in artistic matters, Khrushchev came to be more favorably viewed by artists and writers, some of whom visited him. One visitor whom Khrushchev regretted not seeing was former U.S. Vice President Nixon, then in his "wilderness years" before his election to the presidency, who went to Khrushchev's Moscow apartment while the former premier was at his dacha.[276]
Beginning in 1966, Khrushchev began his memoirs. He initially tried to dictate them into a tape recorder while outdoors, in an attempt to avoid eavesdropping by the KGB. These attempts failed due to background noise, so he switched to recording indoors. The KGB made no attempt to interfere until 1968, when Khrushchev was ordered to hand over his tapes, which he refused to do.[277] While Khrushchev was hospitalized with heart ailments, his son Sergei was approached by the KGB in July 1970 and told that there was a plot afoot by foreign agents to steal the memoirs.[278] Sergei Khrushchev handed over the materials to the KGB since the KGB could steal the originals anyway, but copies had been made, some of which had been transmitted to a Western publisher. Sergei instructed that the smuggled memoirs should be published, which they were in 1970 under the title Khrushchev Remembers. Under some pressure, Nikita Khrushchev signed a statement that he had not given the materials to any publisher, and his son was transferred to a less desirable job.[279] Upon publication of the memoirs in the West, Izvestia denounced them as a fraud.[280] Soviet state radio carried the announcement of Khrushchev's statement, and it was the first time in six years that he had been mentioned in that medium.[31] In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Khrushchev was given a short characterization: "As a leader, Khrushchev showed signs of subjectivism and voluntarism".[281]
In his final days, Khrushchev visited his son-in-law and former aide Alexei Adzhubei (1924–1993)[282] and told him, "Never regret that you lived in stormy times and worked with me in the Central Committee. We will yet be remembered!"[283]
Death[edit]
Khrushchev died of a heart attack around noon in the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital on 11 September 1971, at the age of 77. He was denied a state funeral with interment in the Kremlin Wall and was instead buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Fearing demonstrations, the authorities did not announce Khrushchev's death until the hour of his wake, which would be held in a morgue in the southern suburbs of Moscow,[284] and surrounded the cemetery with troops. Even so, some artists and writers joined the family at the graveside for the interment.[285]
Pravda ran a one-sentence announcement of the former premier's death; Western newspapers contained considerable coverage.[286] Veteran New York Times Moscow correspondent Harry Schwartz wrote of Khrushchev, "Mr. Khrushchev opened the doors and windows of a petrified structure. He let in fresh air and fresh ideas, producing changes which time already has shown are irreversible and fundamental."[287]