Nikita Khrushchev

I

Introduction

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1953 to 1964, who concurrently held the post of Soviet prime minister from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev is best known for his criticism of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, and for his efforts to promote peaceful coexistence with non-Communist states. He was ousted as the result of what his critics in the leadership called “harebrained schemes” to reorganize the party and state structure, radically increase agricultural production, and raise the standard of living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Khrushchev was born to a poor family in Kalinovka, near the village of Kursk in southwestern Russia. His grandfather had been a serf, or indentured farm laborer, and his father was a peasant who sometimes worked in the mines. Khrushchev received very little formal education. After leaving school to herd cows, he worked as a pipe fitter in a coal mine in the Donets Basin (in present-day Ukraine). He joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) in 1918 and served in the Red Army as a junior political officer during the Russian Civil War (1918-1921). He returned to Ukraine, which had become a union republic of the USSR, and worked as the assistant manager of a Donets coal mine.

II

Early Career

In 1929 Khrushchev moved to Moscow to attend the Stalin Industrial Academy, where he soon became leader of the academy’s Communist Party organization. In 1931 he began full-time work as secretary of two distinct party organizations in Moscow. He continued to move up the party ranks under the patronage of Lazar Kaganovich, who held the position of first secretary in the Moscow City Party Committee. In 1935 Khrushchev succeeded Kaganovich in that post. Khrushchev went on to become party first secretary in Ukraine in 1938. The following year he became a full member of the Politburo, the party’s highest decision-making body. From 1939 to 1945, during World War II, he worked as a political commissar (a party official supervising army officers), earning the rank of lieutenant general. After the war, he was in charge of the recovery effort in Ukraine.

III

Soviet Leader

A firm supporter of Stalin during his early career, Khrushchev became a secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1949. Soon after Stalin died in March 1953, Khrushchev became leader of the party, which suffered from a loss of power and prestige because of Stalin’s violent, massive purges of the party and civilian population. It took several years for Khrushchev to consolidate his power and become the dominant leader. Immediately after Stalin’s death, other leaders—including Georgy Malenkov (who became prime minister), Lavrenty Beria (head of the Soviet secret police and a deputy prime minister), and Vyacheslav Molotov, (also a deputy prime minister)—were more powerful than Khrushchev. Beria was soon arrested, tried, and executed for his involvement in the Stalinist purges, and the power of the secret police, or KGB, was reduced.

---

---

In an effort to deal with the massive problems the Soviet Union faced as the result of Stalin’s policies, the new leadership initiated a policy called the New Course. As part of this policy, they promised to increase the standard of living, give more emphasis to light industry and agriculture, and ease the burden of quotas on farmers. The leadership also allowed somewhat greater freedom in cultural and intellectual life.

IV

De-Stalinization

Khrushchev succeeded in removing Malenkov from the position of prime minister in February 1955, replacing him with Nikolay Bulganin. Many of his opponents and rivals in the party, however, were still on the Politburo. In February 1956, Khrushchev gave his “secret speech” at the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party. In this speech, which was not released in full to the Soviet press, Khrushchev sharply criticized Stalin for his purge of the party, the large-scale executions of Soviet citizens, the deportation of a number of national minorities from their homelands, his cult of personality, and widespread violations of the law. This speech started a campaign of de-Stalinization to eliminate the worst of the excesses of Stalinism.

Political leaders succeeded in keeping the process of de-Stalinization under elite control in the Soviet Union. Important changes were made. The widespread use of terror against the population stopped, and the secret police came to play a less significant role in political life. The leadership promised to pay more attention to socialist legality. Nevertheless, the basic elements of the Soviet system, including the dominance of the Communist Party, remained intact. In Central and Eastern Europe, where Communist regimes had been in power for a shorter time than in the Soviet Union, de-Stalinization was more destabilizing and eventually threatened the dominance of the Soviet Union over its satellite states. In Hungary and Poland, citizens used the division de-Stalinization created among political leaders to try to change the system. Khrushchev ordered troops of the Warsaw Pact, an alliance of Communist states, to invade Hungary in 1956 to put down the country’s widespread uprising and to install a Communist regime loyal to the Soviet Union.

	More from Encarta
	•  Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be discontinued. Learn more. •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain