Nikita Khrushchev

Khrushchev was born April 15, 1894, in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russia’s Kursk Oblast, near the present Ukrainian border. His parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Ksenia Khrushcheva, were poor peasants of Russian origin and had a daughter two years Nikita’s junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, and laboring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, and Sergei Khrushchev generally left his family in Kalinovka, returning there when he had enough money.
In 1956, at a meeting of delegates of the Communist Party, Khrushchev delivered his “Secret Speech”, a report that openly criticized and condemned the actions of Stalin and the Communist Party under his rule. Khrushchev, a firm believer in Leninism and communist Ideology, accused Stalin of deplorable acts of violence, subjugation, and political abuse. However, Khrushchev argued that many of Stalin’s actions were the inevitable results of his “cult of personality”, which forced the former leader to suffer paranoia and mental deterioration. Khrushchev ‘s “Secret Speech” was an attempt to restore the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to its original Marxist-Lenin beliefs and brought about the reversal of oppression that was fundamental to the Khrushchev Thaw and the resulting Union or Soviet Socialist Republics, or, USSR. Despite his attempts to reform, many of his policies failed and in 1968, Khrushchev was forced from power and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.
Khrushchev remains a controversial figure in Russian history with many of his policies and actions being contested and criticized. Even now, when discussing his leadership, public opinion is divided between admiration for his liberalization and condemnation of Stalin and disappointment at his inability to adequately enforce those policies and reforms he proposed. Nevertheless, Khrushchev is undoubtedly a significant figure in the evolution of Russian politics from the period of the Russian Civil War to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.