Nikita Sergeïevitch Khrouchtchev , (April 17th 1894 - September 11th 1971), (in Cyrillic НикитаСергеевичХрущёв, marked sʲɪˈrgʲejɪvʲɪtʃʲ xruˈʃʲ: off ) of Ukrainian origin is a Soviet statesman, which was affirmed gradually like the principal leader of the the USSR between the death of Stalin (March 5th, 1953) and his ousting of the capacity the 14 October 1964.

It owes its political ascendance starting from the Années 1930 with the personal protection of Joseph Stalin, of which it integrates the circle of the close friends. He is first secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union of March 1953 to October 1964 and, starting from 1958, president of the Council of Ministers (Government) of the Union of the Soviet socialist republics (the USSR).

Principal inspirer of the policy of Destalinization inside and of the Peaceful coexistence outside, it marks also the limits of this new course while reconsidering certain measurements of liberalization of the mode, by crushing the Hungarian revolution of 1956, or by facing the the United States at the time of the Crise of Cuba in 1962. Its hesitations and its failures make it draw aside from the capacity by the Nomenklatura, anxious of the questioning of its privileges. It left important Mémoires which makes a key witness of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist era of it.

Political course under the Stalinist era

Youths

Nikita Khrouchtchev was born from a country family in the village of Kalinovka, Ouyezd of Dimitriev, government (Goubernia) of Koursk, in the Empire of Russia, which is located today in Oblast de Koursk in Russia.

In 1908, its family settles with Iouzovka, today Donetsk in Ukraine. It receives only approximately two years of education during its childhood. Its true instruction started only with the score, even with the approach of its thirty years. These popular origins and this neglected education explain certain demonstrations of vulgarity which will strike its contemporaries (thus in 1960, when it strikes its shoe its desk with UNO), or its receptivity with certain prejudices spread in the population, like the Antisémitisme.

Khrouchtchev is mobilized in 1914. It takes part later in the revolution Bolshevik of 1917. There is member of the Russian Communist party and will remain marked by the era léninienne.

The close relation of Stalin

At the University in Moscow, it becomes acquainted with Nadejda Allilouieva, the woman of Joseph Stalin, which introduces it near her husband. It quickly integrates the circle of the close friends of the Almighty general secretary of PCUS.

He becomes member of the central committee of the party in 1934. From 1935 with 1937, he is first secretary of the area of Moscow. He for this reason plays a big role in the completion of the Métro of Moscow and in the policy of monumental constructions which reorganizes the face of the Soviet capital.

The terror of mass (1937-1940)

The following year (1938), it is promoted first secretary in Ukraine. As at Moscow and in the remainder of the USSR, it implements at it bloody purifications of the Grandes Purgings.

Thus, whereas the Political office had fixed at 50.000 the number of people to condemn in dead in Moscow, Khrouchtchev makes carry out 55.741 executions, and on July 10th, 1937, requires of Stalin the " droit" to shoot 2.000 ex- Kulaks moreover to fill the prefixed quota.

In spring 1938, it is with his friend close Nikolaï Iejov the principal craftsman to the Great Terror in Ukraine, where it makes stop 35 of the 38 secretaries of the committees of the Party of the province and the cities. It often will bring the collective lists to Moscow of condemned directly to Stalin and Molotov. Kiev, the terror led by Khrouchtchev and Iejov are shown by 30.000 arrests. On the whole, the terror which he orchestrates in Ukraine would have made 106.119 victims over the year 1938. It in addition supports the behavior of the Procès of Moscow.

In parallel, like all the Stalinist persons in charge, Khrouchtchev must found its clean Culte of the personality in its stronghold: thus Ukraniens owes entonner a “song for Khrouchtchev” or to cover their walls of his portrait.

When the USSR annexes a good part of the Poland thanks to the Pacte germano-Soviet, Khrouchtchev plays a role-key with the forced sovietization of the areas attached to the Ukraine. One counts in one year 1.117.000 inhabitants off-set with the Gulag, that is to say 10% of the population. 30% of the deportees will have died one year later. One counts also 60.000 arrests and 50.000 shot.

The patriotic Great War and post-war period

During the Second world war, he is political police chief with the face, in particular during the Bataille of Stalingrad where he plays a big role to supervise and galvanize the military command. Itself must return account at Stalin who makes him several times feel the possibility of a disgrace, especially during the German offensive of spring 1942 in Ukraine.

His/her son Léonid Khrouchtchev, engaged in the military aviation, commits suicide in flight the March 11th 1943. Its body not being found, it is shown of passage to the enemy. Its Lioubov widow then is stopped and condemned to 5 years of camp of work followed by 5 years of exile. She will return to Moscow only in 1954. Nikita Khrouchtchev, which raised its Julia grand-daughter meanwhile will then refuse to re-examine it - Julia itself will see it in 1956, but the two women will be nothing any more but foreign one with the other.

After the war, Khrouchtchev pilot is privileged fights of clan which are delivered around a growing old Stalin, which itself terrorizes and humiliates regularly its own entourage. Khrouchtchev develops in particular a solid enmity with the chief of the police machinery, Beria. Recalled to Moscow, it is in load of the agricultural questions. It is regularly victim of sarcastic remarks and humiliations on behalf of Stalin, towards which his doubts and its repulsion increase, even if it affirms in its Mémoires to have cried its death sincerely, occurred the March 5th 1953.

With the head of the the USSR (1953-1964)

After the death of Stalin, three of the most influential political personalities in the USSR dispute the capacity: Gueorgui Malenkov, Lavrenti Beria (chief of the KGB), and Khrouchtchev.

The situation will turn in favor of Khrouchtchev. As of at the end of June 1953, he exploits a role-key in the fall of Beria, relieved and stopped order of his colleagues, then shot. Malenkov having yielded the head of the PCUS to him as of on March 14th to devote itself to the direction of the government, Khrouchtchev will be confirmed in September 1953 like first secretary of the Communist party, which it will remain until his ousting in 1964. In 1955, it makes put at the variation Malenkov, and its préémience starts to appear clearly with the eyes of the outside world. In 1957, the elimination of Molotov and fraction of the most hostile Politburo to the Déstalinisation complete to leave Khrouchtchev alone to the foreground.

The Report/ratio Khrouchtchev (February 1956) and destalinization

With its come to power, Khrouchtchev starts a criticism of the called Stalinist period Déstalinisation particularly condemning the dictatorial and repressive character Stalinist capacity. The most serious attack takes place at a meeting of night of the XX {{E}} congress of the Communist party of Soviet Union between the 24 and on February 25th, 1956, during which it reads a devastator report/ratio on the variations of Stalin to the " legality socialiste".

Although the revelation takes place in the absence of the international press and of the foreign delegations, the report/ratio is quickly distributed all over the world, and as of on March 16th, the NewYork Times publishes extracts of them. The Soviet capacity will not deny the authenticity of the report/ratio, even if Maurice Thorez, chief of the PCF, never uses but the expression " report/ratio allotted to the Khrouchtchev" comrade; to abstain from implementing the destalinization within the French Party.

While launching itself the Destalinization, which he considered inevitable, the chief of the PCUS hoped to control itself the movement, and to fix clear limits to him: the monopoly of the Party-State is not called into question, nor the development model imposed by Stalin. Indeed, Khrouchtchev goes back to 1934 oneself-saying it degeneration of Stalin, which it allots without historical probability to the only psychology of the character and its " Paranoia " personal. What makes it possible not to call into question the Dékoulakisation and the fatal famines of the beginning of the Années 1930, nor the exaggerated industrialization initiated by the Five-year plan , and to present the Party like innocent in oneself.

In the same way, Khrouchtchev makes its sorting among the victims of the Grandes Purgings. He insists above all on the victims who were members of the Party, leaving in the shade the million ordinary persons shot or off-set with the Gulag, and he does not rehabilitate any of those which were the adversaries of Stalin in the Années 1920 (Boukharine, Zinoviev, Kamenev, even less Trotski). The destalinization has finally a political goal: it makes it possible Khrouchtchev to draw aside its rivals by showing them to remain " staliniens".

This report/ratio marks the kickoff of the official policy of destalinization. Very quickly, of the articles are published on the Culte of the personality of the dictator and who qualify it venom . Little by little, one attends the rehabilitation of the victims of purgings and repressions. Those of them which were sent in prison or deportees start to return massively from the Gulag.

Then take place a turning in the interior policy making pass the country of a permanent Civil war to a civil Paix. This political reversal has as an aiming the first economic rebuilding of the country. The privileges of socialism are regarded as which can assets alone, to ensure the development and the prosperity of the country.

However, surprised by the width of the vagueness of Déstalinisation in the countries of the Soviet block, Khrouchtchev gets busy to limit the effects of them, especially if it calls into question the membership of the country to the Soviet camp.

The 15 October 1956, it unloads in person with Warsaw with Politburo, and negotiates the maintenance with the capacity of Gomulka, claimed by the population in revolt, in exchange of the confirmation of the allegiance of Poland to the Warsaw Pact.

On the other hand, when the new Hungarian government of Imre Nagy proclaims the neutrality of the country and its withdrawal of the Warsaw Pact, Khrouchtchev decides the military intervention. November 4th, insurgent Budapest is attacked by the tanks of the Red Army and reduced after long and bloody street fighting. Repression falls down on the chiefs of the movement, removed then carried out, and on thousands of insurrectionists. Many Hungarians must flee the country, where Khrouchtchev installs a new government led by Janos Kadar. This last will appear more liberal moreover than that of Gomulka in Poland.

Anxious of these sudden starts, Molotov, Kaganovitch and the fraction most accurately Stalinist of Politburo évincer Khrouchtchev try, which are found put in minority at a meeting of the Political office (June 1957). Khrouchtchev requires to call upon the Central committee. The role of the marshal Joukov, Minister for Defense, is decisive: it provides the military apparatuses which quickly transport to Moscow the members of the DC, which decide in favor of the maintenance of Khrouchtchev.

Its évincés rivals, this last confirms its capacity by replacing Nicolas Boulganine with the head of the Soviet government (March 1958). Previously, as of October 1957, it disgrâcié its saver Joukov, deprived of any military and political responsibility.

In 1961, in XXIIe Congress of the PCUS, the criticism of the crimes of Stalin becomes public. Khrouchtchev orders to withdraw its embaumé body of the Mausolée of Lénine. In addition, it personally authorizes the resounding publication of the news of Soljenitsyne, One day of Ivan Denissovitch .

On the other hand, he persecutes Boris Pasternak, which he obliges to refuse the Nobel Prize literature (1957). He does not call into question the socialist Réalisme in art, posting his contempt for the esthetic innovations. He refuses any introduction of the music rock'n'roll in the USSR. In sciences, the destalinization does not take place, since Khrouchtchev continues to cover honors the biologist charlatan Trofim Lyssenko, who is not repudiated by the capacity that after his fall.

Tests of reform

Khrouchtchev loosens the pressure put by the Stalinisme on the peasants and the workmen. At the beginning of 1958, it removes the MTS (stations of machines and tractors), the eyes and the ears of the capacity in the campaigns since the Dékoulakisation, and which had the monopoly of the modern tools there. It abolishes also the obligatory agricultural deliveries and the payments in kind. Bound for the workmen, it removes the Draconian decrees of 1938-1940 which prevented very free change of employment and punished sending in Gulag any delay repeated of more than 20 minutes.

To ensure the prosperity of the country, Khrouchtchev undertakes two major achievements:

• the accelerated development of the Agriculture;
• the construction of dwellings.

The period khrouchtchévienne is marked by a rebalancing of the production in favor of the industries of consumption, sacrificed to the time of Stalin: for Khrouchtchev, " buttered well, the Marxism-Leninism will have better goût" . So the population knows in these years a real rise of its standard of living.

Voluntarist, it speaks in public to exceed the standard of living of the United States, at least on the agricultural level (July 15th, 1957). At the end of the Years 1950, it affirms that the Soviet company will have built the Socialisme from here with 1980. It makes adopt at the end of 1958 an ambitious plan over six years which envisages to increase the industrial production of 80% and to acquire in 1965 the same production per capita of inhabitant as in the United States.

But the great reforms which it lance often fall to water for lack of organization. For example, after its visit with the the United States, impressed by the American corn fields, it exhorts Soviet to cultivate this plant. But this cereal can adapt only on one any small portion of the territory, and this large crop year is a bitter failure. It will be worth to him the nickname of “Mr Maïs” ( Koukourousnik ).

Its ambition to clear and cultivate the " grounds vierges" in Central Asia leads only to results hardly more conclusive.

Working dissatisfaction does not disappear either completely: in June 1962, of the working riots without precedent for 30 years have been repressed in blood with Novotcherkassk.

Foreign policy

Although Khrouchtchev started the Déstalinisation and preached the Peaceful coexistence , this period will be marked by events violent one or moments of tension like the Hungarian insurrection (1956), “the Ultimatum of Khrouchtchev” (1958), the construction of the Berlin Wall (1961) and the arm wrestling which will oppose it to Kennedy at the time of the Crise of the missiles of Cuba in 1962. It is also unable to prevent the Rupture sino-Soviet between the USSR and the Popular republic of China of Mao Zedong, consumed between 1960 and 1963.

Contrary to Stalin which had almost never left the USSR, Khrouchtchev travels enormously, and multiplies the international rounds, of which it is useful like instrument of diplomacy and propaganda. He likes to play of his character seemingly catch and his unforeseeable sudden changes of mood to allure or intimidate the international opinion in turn.

Thus, when it meets the president Dwight Eisenhower at the time of a voyage to the the United States in 1959, it intimidates the Americans on television in their explaining why their grandchildren will live under the Communisme. In the same way, at the beginning of 1960, it abruptly leaves the conference of the Four Large ones in Paris following the business of the U-2 spy plane, shot down above the USSR with its pilot Gary Powers.

The voluntarism of Khrouchtchev and its activism with the international plan are been useful by Soviet successes in the space Conquête, which accumulate under its mandate: taking to speed the Americans, the Soviets send the first satellite orbits about it (the Sputnik , October 4th, 1957), the first living being in space (the Laïka bitch, November 3rd, 1957), the first rocket on the Moon (1959), or finally the first man in space in the person of Youri Gagarine (1961).

In 1955, Khrouchtchev operates the reconciliation soviéto-Yugoslavian, but without bringing back for as much Tito in the Soviet bosom.

Anxious to spare Allies in the USSR in the Third world into full Decolonization, Khrouchtchev supports modes anticolonialists and antiaméricains, even when those repress their communist own parties inside.

In 1956, thus, combined of the colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, it threatens France and Great Britain to intervene militarily, to even employ the Atomic bomb if they immediately do not stop their intervention in Suez. It finances the stopping of Aswan. In 1959, the cuban revolution carried out by Fidel Castro gets to him an ally with the doors of the United States. In Africa, Khrouchtchev is opposed violently and publicly to the general secretary of UNO, Dag Hammarjsköld, in connection with the civil war in Belgian ex-Congo (1960-1961).

Hostile with the " Chinese way towards the socialisme" preached by Mao Zedong, Khrouchtchev attracts itself also the enmity of the Chinese by his policy of destalinization and East-West dialog, and while refusing to share with them the nuclear secrecies and to help with the construction of their own atomic bomb. In 1960, it withdraws the Soviet experts of China. In 1963, the final rupture is consumed. Under the Cultural revolution (1966-1969), the rivals of Mao will be stigmatized by the red Gardes like the " Khrouchtchev chinois".

Since 1958, Khrouchtchev violently blames the statute quadripartie of Berlin. In April 1961, with the summit conference of Vienna, it deliberately shows very brutal vis-a-vis the young person new US president, Kennedy, surprised and disconcerted its virulence. Thinking of having measured the weakness of the American leader, Khrouchtchev authorizes Walter Ulbricht then to build the Berlin Wall to stop the massive escape of the East-German citizens towards the West. Its election begins the August 13rd 1961, without much reaction of the Westerners.

In October 1962, at the time of the crisis of Cuba, Khrouchtchev makes withdraw the Soviet missiles in the island in front of the threats of John Kennedy. This episode will allow its sucesseurs of which Léonid Brejnev to denounce durably the period khrouchtéchevienne like the time of " the adventurism ".

The fall and the retirement

The fall of Khrouchtchev was undoubtedly the result of an joint action of its opponents within the Communist party, irritated by the fluctuating policy of Khrouchtchev and its behavior governed by its sudden changes of mood. The Communist party showed Khrouchtchev to make political errors, like the bad management of the cuban crisis of the missiles in 1962, and to have disorganized the Soviet economy, especially in the agricultural sector.

The opponents of Khrouchtchev taken along by Léonid Brejnev, Alexandre Chelepine and the chief of the KGB Vladimir Semichastny, acted in October 1964 abruptly, whereas Khrouchtchev was on vacation with Pitsounda in Abkhazie. They convened a special meeting of the Presidium of the Central committee and, when Khrouchtchev arrived on October 13rd, the présidum voted the withdrawal of its functions in the Party and the Soviet government. A special meeting of the Central committee was hastily convened the following day and approved without discussion the decisions of the Presidium. October 15th, 1964, the Présidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR accepted the resignation of Khrouchtchev like Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.

Sign times, Khrouchtchev could lose the capacity without losing neither the life nor freedom, which marked a relative success of the rupture with the Stalinist era.

Following its ousting, Khrouchtchev passed the remainder of its life like a pensioner, leading a quiet existence to Moscow. There remained member of the Central committee until 1966. During the remainder of its life, it was supervised closely by the KGB, but succeeds in writing its Mémoires and making them pass clandestinely to the West.

He died at his place in Moscow on September 11th, 1971 and was buried with the prestigious Cimetière of Novodevitchi of Moscow, after one had refused to him official funeral and a burial close to the wall of the Kremlin.