Nikita Khrushchev

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Nikita Khrushchev

HEADLINE: Biographies

Rising to the position of leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1953 after the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev instituted various reforms and led the Soviet Union through some of the most tense years of the cold war before being ousted in 1964.

Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka, near Kursk, on Apr 5, 1894. He was drafted in the czarist army during World War I, but joined the Communist Party after the Bolshevik Revolution. After fighting in the Russian Civil War, Khrushchev was assigned by the party to take courses at the Industrial Academy of Moscow in 1929 and he rose quickly through the party ranks afterwards. He was chosen as a member of the Central Committee of the national Communist Party in 1934 and became a member of the Supreme Soviet in 1937. As first secretary of the party in the Ukraine during Wold War II, he played an important part in the defense of the republic from the Nazi invasion. After 1949, he helped reorganize the nation's agriculture system. Months after Stalin's death in March 1953, Khrushchev took the position of first secretary of the party, making him the most powerful person in the country.

Khrushchev instituted many reforms of the Stalinist system and rehabilitated the image of many victims of the ruthless regime. At the same time, he suppressed a revolt in the Soviet satellite state of Hungary in 1956 and his agricultural reforms were much criticized. His various reforms caused dissension in the party, and he thwarted an attempt to oust him in 1957. The next year he took over as head of the Soviet government, in addition to his position atop the party.

In the area of foreign policy, Khrushchev broke with Soviet tradition by visiting foreign nations and showed contradictory tendencies toward the United States. Though he seemed willing to improve relations, he ruined a 1960 summit meeting with his protests of U.S. reconnaisance flights over his country and in 1962 amassed missiles in Cuba 90 miles from Florida leading to an international crisis when U.S. President John F. Kennedy threatened reprisals. Yet the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis led to improved relations between the superpowers, who signed a nuclear test ban treaty in August 1963.

While Khrushchev's rise to power was calculated, he was less shrewd in holding power. He alienated various sectors of the party and government and was ousted in 1964. He died on Sep 11, 1971.

[Sources: A Biographical Dictionary of the Former Soviet Union; Current Biography Yearbook; The Soviet Union: A Biographical Dictionary]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998

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