Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a Soviet politician and revolutionary. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1961. He served as head of state from 1953 until his ouster in 1964. Born into a poor peasant family in Kalinovka, Kursk Province, Khrushchev was educated at a local school, then worked in a factory
Read more
Moving to Moscow for military service during World War I, he became involved in political movements, was arrested in 1919 and deported to Siberia, then returned to Moscow after the Russian Civil War. He was first elected to the Supreme Soviet in 1934, and subsequently served as its chairman from 1949 to 1957. In 1953 he succeeded Stalin as first secretary of the Communist Party, but only held that position for less than a year before being ousted by another Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev's younger brother Sergei Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and oversaw the return of Crimea to Ukraine after being transferred during Stalin's rule. He lost support following his support of deploying Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. After years of internal exile and repression under Brezhnev and Andropov, he led an unsuccessful coup d'état against Mikhail Gorbachev which ended with his being sentenced for treason along with his colleagues on 24 November 1982.