Who is Nikita Khrushchev?
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) is best remembered as the leader of the Soviet Union from 1956-1964. His leadership was at times highly successfully, and at other moments significantly cruel. Most Soviet historians look back at Khrushchev as a precursor to leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev who would ultimately end the Cold War through his actions. A balanced view of Khrushchev shows he made some important strides for the Soviet Union and some near disastrous mistakes. Khrushchev was Ukrainian by birth and joined the Communist party in 1918. Though he had little formal education, he soon became one of Stalin’s friends, and he certainly did carry out Stalin’s wishes when he was First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist party in 1938. He fully participated in Stalin’s purging of Communist party members who were not completely dedicated to the cause of Communism. His ruthless execution of many people during the purges exercised by Stalin earned Khrushchev the name, “The Butcher of the Ukraine.
A Russian peasant like Grishka Rasputin who won his right to fame by appearing as the Hangman of Ukraine. He gained his right to be a leader in the Communist Party of the USSR by administering successfully the great famine ordered by Stalin to carry through compulsory collectivization in Ukraine. The bloody Khrushchev can justly be held responsible for the deaths of several million Ukrainian peasants who had done no wrong except that they wanted to till their own soil. He was responsible for the mass graves in Vynnytsia; for the suppression of the rights of the Ukrainians in their homeland after the ending of World War II and he was promoted for it to a post in Moscow. He used his time well and when the aged Stalin (of course voluntarily) yielded to death as a natural solution, he was in a position to become the first of equals and then the first by his denunciation of Stalin. That led to the developments in Poland and then to the open effort of the Hungarians to recover their freedom,
