NIKITA KRUSCHEV: BIOGRAPHY, PROMOTION, GOVERNMENT, DATING, DEATH - ARTE - 2025

Nikita Kruschev (1894 - 1971) was a Russian military and politician who assumed the leadership of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. He was in charge of creating more open international relations and promoting freedoms domestically.

He began his political career from scratch and, although he came from a humble family, he managed to grow within the Communist Party until reaching the positions of first secretary in that organization, in parallel with that of the nation's prime minister.

Nikita Kruschev, by Danilo Škofič, via Wikimedia Commons

When he succeeded in taking over the leadership within the Soviet Union, Khrushchev imposed his vision, which included peaceful coexistence with the West and a relative openness both cultural and tourist.

In addition, it was in charge of promoting advances in space exploration. It was during his tenure that they managed to put the first Soviet satellite into orbit, as well as send the first man into space.

Not only did he denounce the terror that Stalin had implemented during his rule, but he did everything possible to reverse those policies of harassment of the Soviets who were loyal to the communist system.

He had to face some diplomatic crises, among which the missiles in Cuba stand out, which arose as a response to the failure of the Bay of Pigs Operation carried out by the United States.

He was forced out of public life in 1964, when Leonid Brezhnev replaced him as first party secretary, while Alekséi Kosygin obtained the post of prime minister of the Soviet Union.

Biography

Early years

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born on April 15, 1894 in Kalinovka, very close to the border with Ukraine. Her father was Sergei Kruschev and her mother Ksenia Kruscheva. She also had a younger sister named Irina.

They did not have wealth or a wealthy life and their father worked in different trades. Sergei was employed as a train crew for a time and later became a miner and brick maker. Normally he traveled only to Donbas in Ukraine where the payment was better.

During these periods, Nikita's mother and the children stayed at home and waited for the income generated by their father's work. However, from a very young Khrushchev saw the need to collaborate with the family economy.

Nikita worked mainly as a cattle herder in the areas around her home.

Youth

Inside the poor little village in which he lived his early years, Nikita Khrushchev received little instruction. This lasted only four years, of which two were in the local school.

Then he entered the Kalinovka State School, where he was instructed by a teacher named Lydia Shevchenko, who was a very inspiring character for him because of her novel ideas. She tried to entice young Khrushchev to continue his education, but the family did not have the resources.

In 1908 Sergei, Nikita's father moved permanently to Yuzovka in Donbas. Months later Nikita followed and then Ksenia and Irina moved to the same city.

Young Nikita began to work as an apprentice to a blacksmith and later received the official position. He was there for a while, but later moved to the same mine where his father worked.

From that time, Khrushchev's leanings for communism began to manifest. He had no lack of reasons, he came from a working class family, he did not have great prospects for his future and his own father was a trade unionist.

Bolshevik

He did not serve in the Great War since his skills for blacksmithing were highly valued by the Russian Empire. At that time, Nikita Khrushchev met Yefrosinia Písareva, his first wife.

In 1914 the union of the young couple was celebrated and after a year the first daughter arrived, Julia, who was followed two years later by a man named Leonid.

Nikita had shown his support for the communist cause before the October Revolution broke out in the country. She had been an active member of trade unions and even distributed party propaganda among her colleagues. This is how Khrushchev managed to become president of the Rutchenkovo ​​Soviet.

Before the Russian civil war began, Nikita joined the Bolshevik side and the Communist Party. Probably her delay occurred because she could not decide which faction best suited her own ideals.

Reds against Whites

In 1919 he joined the Red Army as a political commissar. Khrushchev's main function then was the indoctrination of recruits, as well as keeping the morale and readiness of the troops high.

That same year his wife Yefrosinia died of typhus and Nikita had to take care of their two young children. During the war he rose rapidly within the army, but later returned to poverty in Donbas as commissar of a workers' brigade.

Years of training

In 1922 Khrushchev was offered a transfer with the same position, but in a Pastukhov mine, something he refused. Instead he applied to enter the Donetsk Technical University in Yuzovka, but his request was denied.

To get a place in the Technique it was necessary to have completed high school, something that Khrushchev had not achieved due to his early entry into working life.

However, Nikita did enter the College of Workers as a student, where he continued his middle school studies. While studying, he kept his post as a curator at Rutchenkovo.

His luck changed quickly since the party considered him a trustworthy element. In this way he obtained the position of secretary of this organization in the Technique, in addition to also joining the local Politburo.

It is not known if he actually completed his secondary studies, but in his student years he met Nina Petrovna Kujarchuk, who was a member of the Communist Party and helped him with his school assignments.

She later became his wife, although there are no legal records of the union. Together they had three children, the first being Rada, born in 1929; then came Khrushchev's second son, Sergei in 1935, and finally Elena was born in 1937.

Political rise

In 1925 Nikita Khrushchev was appointed party secretary in the Petrovo-Marinsky district and participated as a non-voting delegate at the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

That year Lazar Kaganovich began to act as the leader of the organization in Ukraine and Kruschev became its protégé. Thanks to that, Nikita got the position of second leader of the party in Stálino in 1926.

Months later he was transferred to the capital, Kharkov as head of the Organizational Department of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. In 1928 Khrushchev obtained the appointment of second party leader in Kiev.

In 1929 he enrolled in the Stalin Industrial Academy in Moscow, the same institution of which he was later appointed secretary by the party.

Moscow

He was appointed first secretary of the political organization in the Baumansky district and then that of Kranopresnensky, which was the main one in Moscow.

There the rise of Khrushchev did not stop, who in 1932 managed to secure the post of second leader of the Communist Party in Moscow.

Two years later, Nikita Khrushchev obtained the first party secretariat in his district, which also gave him access to serve on the central committee of the party.

During his years in charge of the city, the Moscow Metro was built, which became operational on May 1, 1935. Thanks to this, Khrushchev obtained the Order of Lenin.

His relationship with Stalin is believed to have started around 1932, at which time Khrushchev's sporadic visits to the Soviet ruler's office began to register.

The Great Purge

In 1934 a process began in which Iósif Stalin tried to cleanse the ranks of the party of traitors and ideological dissidents.

The famous Moscow Trials were also held, targeting party leaders and members of the Red Army. Khrushchev supported him at this time and even approved of arrests of people who were close to him.

The designated quota of "enemies of the people" to be handed over by Moscow was 35,000 people, of which 5,000 were to be executed. Khrushchev decided to start handing over to landowners or kulaks to inflate the amounts.

In 1937 he was transferred to Ukraine as leader of the Communist Party. There almost all the local important figures were handed over to the purges and later assassinated.

Khrushchev began running for the Politburo in 1938 and became an official member in 1939.

Second World War

Nikita Khrushchev entered eastern Poland in September 1939 together with his troops, on the premise that the area was inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians.

They managed to annex this territory to Ukraine, which belonged to the Soviet Union. Despite this, the population did not agree with being controlled by officials whom they considered foreigners.

In mid-1941 after the German invasion of Soviet territories, Khrushchev was appointed political commissar. Then he was in charge of maintaining fluid communication between Moscow and the men at the front.

Strategic failures

His superiors gave him the order to remain in Kiev until the end, where they were defeated after being surrounded by the Nazis.

A similar event occurred in Kharkov in 1942. After these events, Khrushchev was sent to Stalingrad, where he participated in the defense of that square.

Although Nikita Khrushchev was not very important in the battle at Stalingrad in August 1942, he was always very proud to have been there.

During March 1943 Leonid, Khrushchev's eldest son passed away. The boy was a pilot and, according to official sources, he died in action, although that has been questioned by different historians.

Return to Ukraine

The Soviets prevailed at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943, which allowed them to enter Kiev in November of the same year. Khrushchev rose to the post of Ukrainian prime minister, while serving as the leader of the national Communist Party.

The area was practically destroyed, many of its inhabitants were prisoners in Germany and those who remained in the country did not have the minimum living conditions.

Not only did he incentivize the application of communism, Khrushchev also implemented compulsory military service.

At the time, the crops that were being produced were poor and the government confiscated more than half from the farmers. However, Khrushchev got the Soviet Union to send them aid and, among other measures, they created soup kitchens.

Kaganovich, Nikita Khrushchev's former protector, was appointed as the leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party in February 1947.

Stalin's final years

Khrushchev was called to the capital in 1949 and was appointed party leader in that district. At this time he was one of the men closest to Stalin, although the apparent heirs were Georgy Malenkov and Lavrenti Beria.

In March 1953 Stalin died and unleashed a string of problems related to the new leadership of the party, whose hierarchy had not been formally established. Malenkov assumed control of the Council of Ministers and Beria that of the security agencies.

In March Malenkov resigned and although Khrushchev was elected as the party's first secretary in September, he had been in power since the departure of his comrade.

Beria had dangerous control over the armed forces, so Malenkov and Khrushchev joined forces to remove him from power. Finally, they managed to arrest him and later execute him in December 1953.

Leading the Soviet Union

Although Khrushchev and Molotov, another of the great Soviet leaders, agreed on some issues at first, as time passed their differences became apparent.

Then Nikolai Bulganin was commissioned to serve as Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev decided to denounce his crimes during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party on February 14, 1956. His intervention was known as "Secret Speech" and had the purpose of detaching the party from the negative perception that the figure of Stalin had.

Khrushchev's words soon spread both within the borders of the Soviet Union and in the rest of the world. In them, the new communist leader denounced Stalin's crimes against loyal party members.

That unleashed a series of protests, such as Poland, where they achieved greater internal freedoms, or Hungary, where the revolt was ended by force.

It was in 1958 that Nikita Khrushchev ascended to the post of prime minister in the Soviet Union and from there put forward his idea of ​​a "reformed communism."

He applied this during his tenure, in which he intended to offer more freedoms and peaceful relations with the West.

Last years

Leonid Brezhnev began to weave his plan against Khrushchev in 1964. When he convinced the Central Committee, the prime minister was summoned to a meeting in which he was openly questioned about his failures.

The fact that the other party members decided to tell him this was confirmation for Khrushchev that his reforms had taken effect. That is why in October 1964 he voluntarily resigned his post.

Khrushchev was originally granted a modest monthly pension of 500 rubles and the usufruct of his home and country house for life.

However, shortly thereafter his monthly payment was reduced to 400 rubles and he was moved to an apartment and a smaller country house.

He was ordered to virtually vanish: his name did not appear in the media, and was even omitted from relevant academic texts. Also the visits he received were considerably reduced, which led him to present a picture of severe depression.

Death

Nikita Kruschev died on September 11, 1971 in Moscow as a result of a heart attack. He was buried in a common cemetery and was not awarded state honors.

Although they tried to hide his death until the last moment, many artists attended the funeral.

The media did not announce the death of the former president until the time of his burial. This was done because the information could cause disturbances in public order, according to the leaders of the Soviet government.

government

Khrushchev wanted his rule to be remembered as the transition to a freer Soviet world.

He was a little more tolerant of artistic expressions and also partially opened up tourism, which he used to test the clichés of communist ideology about the West.

In domestic politics he also made big changes: he abolished the courts run by military agencies, reduced the number of political trials and opened the sessions of the Central Committee to large groups of people in 1958.

His bad policies concerning agriculture negatively marked his government management. As a consequence, Khrushchev had to resort to buying food in the West.

He highlighted the persecution of those who professed their creeds within the Soviet borders. Furthermore, the nation took the lead in the space race, at least in the media, with the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

Foreign policy

While he was Soviet leader, Khrushchev tried to resolve the matter concerning the division of Berlin.

Failing to reach a favorable resolution, the dispute concluded with the construction of a wall that divided the city with which it reinforced the policies of entering and leaving the territory.

Two factors came together for him to decide to reduce a third of the Soviet army during his tenure:

The first was the fact that it considered that missiles supplied part of what was achieved with a traditional army without the associated losses. The second was the improvement in its relations with the United States of America.

Following the launch of Sputnik, the world came to believe that Russia was far more technologically advanced than it actually was.

Relationship with the United States

On a visit by American Vice President Richard Nixon to Russia in 1959 an event took place that was later dubbed the "kitchen debate." There Khrushchev and Nixon defended the economic systems of their countries in a public discussion.

That same year, Khrushchev visited the United States touring different places. He also reached a preliminary agreement with President Dwight Eisenhower on Berlin and on nuclear weapons tests.

All negotiations were frustrated the following year when he captured an American U2 spy plane in Russia, with its pilot. Later, Eisenhower admitted that he had approved that operation, although he had promised Khrushchev that they would stop them.

His last visit to the United States was in 1960. It was then that the incident occurred at the UN in which Khrushchev took off a shoe and shook it against the podium in protest after being called a hypocrite by the Philippine delegate.

A year later, the Soviets had a new international success: putting the first man in space. That contrasted with the failure of the Americans in their Operation Bay of Pigs.

Thus they headed for the conflict known as the "Cuban Missile Crisis." At this time, the Soviets installed nuclear weapons aimed at the United States on the Caribbean island and that was followed by the United States' blockade of Cuba.

The whole affair reached a diplomatic resolution between the Soviet Union and the United States.

China

Khrushchev initially assisted the Mao Zedong regime with both soldiers and technology. Later, the Chinese leader denounced Khrushchev's rapprochement with the West as well as the freedoms he gave within the borders.

When Khrushchev delivered the Secret Speech, Mao Zedong harshly criticized it. In 1958 the Chinese leader did not want to make military treaties with the Soviets and they stopped the plan to deliver an atomic bomb.

In 1960, public denunciations were made on both sides and the Sino-Soviet split took place.

Quotes

- “Like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury them! ”.

- “Politicians are always the same. They promise to build a bridge, even where there is no river.

- "We cannot wait for Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can help their elected leaders to provide them with small doses of socialism until one day they wake up and realize that they are living in communism."

- “My arms are up to the elbows of blood. That is the most terrible thing that my soul harbors ”.

- “Berlin is like the testicles of the West. If I want the West to scream, I squeeze Berlin ”.

References

1. En.wikipedia.org. (2020). Nikita Khrushchev. Available at: en.wikipedia.org.
2. Gibney, F. (2020). Nikita Khrushchev - Biography, Pictures, Cold War, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: britannica.com.
3. Pbs.org. (2020). Biography: Nikita Khrushchev. Available at: pbs.org.
4. Krushchev, N. (1970). Khrushchev remembers. Boston: Little, Brown.
5. Bbc.co.uk. (2020). BBC - History - Historic Figures: Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). Available at: bbc.co.uk.