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.