Nikita Khrushchev was born on April 15, 1894 in the village of Kalinovka, Kursk region. The boy's father worked as a miner, his mother, Ksenia Ivanovna. The family did not live well and in many ways experienced constant need. In winter, the guy attended school and learned to read and write, in the summer he worked as a shepherd. In 1908, when Nikita was fourteen years old, the family moved to the Uspensky mine. Khrushchev became an apprentice locksmith at the Machine-Building and Iron Foundry Eduard Arturovich Bosse. Since 1912 he worked as a mechanic at the mine. In 1914, during the mobilization to the front of the First World War as a miner, he received an indulgence from military service.

In 1918 Khrushchev joined the Bolshevik Party. Participated in the Civil War. In the same year, he headed the Red Guard detachment in Rutchenkovo, then became the political commissar of the second battalion of the 74th regiment of the 9th rifle division of the Red Army on the Tsaritsyno front. Later he worked as an instructor in the political department of the Kuban army. After the end of the war, he was engaged in economic and party work. In 1920 he became a political leader, deputy manager of the Rutchenkovskoye mine in the Donbass.

Two years later, Khrushchev returned to Yuzovka and studied at the working faculty of the Don Technical School, where he became the party secretary of the technical school. In July 1925 he was appointed party leader of the Petrov-Maryinsky district of the Stalin district. Then, in 1929, he entered the Industrial Academy in Moscow, where he was elected secretary of the party committee.

From January 1931, Khrushchev was appointed first secretary of the Baumansky, and from July 1931 of the Krasnopresnensky district committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Since January 1932, he was the second secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Two years later, for four years, he worked as the first secretary of the MGK of the CPSU (b). On January 21, 1934, he became the second secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. From March 7, 1935 to February 1938, he took the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In the same year, Nikita Khrushchev was appointed First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine and a candidate member of the Political Bureau, and in 1939 became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In these positions, he proved himself as a merciless fighter against the "enemies of the people." In the late 1930s alone, more than one hundred and fifty thousand people were arrested in Ukraine under him.

During the years of the Great Patriotic War Khrushchev was a member of the military councils of the South-Western Direction, the South-Western, Stalingrad, Southern, Voronezh and the First Ukrainian Fronts. He acted as one of the culprits of the catastrophic encirclement of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army near Kiev and Kharkov, fully supporting the Stalinist point of view. In May 1942, Khrushchev, together with Filipp Ivanovich Golikov, made an important decision of the Headquarters on the offensive of the Southwestern Front.

In October 1942, an order signed by Stalin was issued abolishing the dual command system and transferring commissars from command staff to advisers. Khrushchev was in the front command echelon behind Mamaev Kurgan.

Nikita Sergeevich ended the war with the rank of lieutenant general. In the period from 1944 to 1947 he worked as chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, then he was again elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Ukraine. From December 1949 he was again elected first secretary of the Moscow regional and city committees and secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

On the last day of Stalin's life on March 5, 1953, at a joint meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, it was recognized as necessary for Khrushchev to concentrate on work in the Central Committee of the party.

It was Nikita Sergeevich who acted as the leading initiator and organizer of the removal from all posts and the arrest of Lavrenty Beria in June 1953.

In early September 1953, at the plenum of the Central Committee, Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to transfer the Crimean region and the city of union subordination of Sevastopol to the Ukrainian SSR.

In June 1957, during a four-day meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a decision was made to release Nikita Khrushchev from the duties of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. However, a group of Khrushchev's supporters from among the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU, headed by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, managed to interfere in the work of the Presidium and achieve the transfer of this issue to the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU convened for this purpose. At the June plenum of the Central Committee in 1957, Khrushchev's supporters defeated opponents from among the members of the Presidium.

Four months later, in October 1957, on the initiative of Khrushchev, Marshal Zhukov, who supported him, was removed from the Presidium of the Central Committee and relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense of the USSR.

Since 1958, Khrushchev has simultaneously occupied the chair of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The apogee of the politician's reign is called the XXII Congress of the Communist Party Soviet Union and the new party program adopted there.

The October Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1964, organized in the absence of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, who was on vacation, relieved him of party and government posts "for health reasons." While in retirement, Nikita Khrushchev recorded multi-volume memoirs on a tape recorder. He denounced their publication abroad.

Soviet statesman Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev died on September 11, 1971 heart attack. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery of the capital.

The period of Khrushchev's rule is often called the "thaw": many political prisoners were released, compared to the period of Stalin's rule, the activity of repressions has significantly decreased. Decreased influence of ideological censorship. The Soviet Union has made great strides in space exploration. Deployed Active housing construction. During his reign, the highest tension of the Cold War with the United States falls.

Awards and Recognition of Nikita Khrushchev

Soviet

Hero of the Soviet Union (1964)
three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1954, 1957, 1961) - the third time awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for leading the creation of the rocket industry and preparing the first manned flight into space (Yu. A. Gagarin, April 12, 1961) (the decree was not published)

Orders

Seven Orders of Lenin (1935, 1944, 1948, 1954, 1957, 1961, 1964)
Order of Suvorov, 1st class (1945)
Order of Kutuzov, 1st class (1943)
Order of Suvorov II degree (1943)
Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1945)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1939)
Order of Merit (Ingushetia) (April 29, 2006, posthumously) - for outstanding services in restoring historical justice in relation to the repressed peoples, the rights and freedoms of the Ingush people

Medals

Medal "In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1970)
Medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" I degree,
Medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad"
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" (1945)
Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War" (1945)
Medal "For the restoration of ferrous metallurgy enterprises of the south"
Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" (1965)
Medal "For the development of virgin lands"
Medal "40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1958)
Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1968)
Medal "In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow" (1947)
Medal "In memory of the 250th anniversary of Leningrad" (1957)

Prizes

International Lenin Prize "For strengthening peace between peoples" (1959)
State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR named after T. G. Shevchenko - for a great contribution to the development of the Ukrainian Soviet socialist culture

Foreign

Golden Star of the Hero of the NRB (NRB, 1964)
Order "Georgy Dimitrov" (NRB, 1964)
Order of the White Lion 1st class (Czechoslovakia) (1964)
Order of the Star of Romania (SRR), 1st class
Order of Karl Marx (GDR, 1964)
Order of Sukhbaatar (MPR, 1964)
Order of the Nile Necklace (OAR, 1964)
Medal "20 Years of the Slovak National Uprising" (Czechoslovakia, 1964)
commemorative medal of the World Peace Council (1960)
Gold medal "Laying the first stone of the Aswan Dam" (OAR, 1960)
Medal "Sadd al-Aali. Blocking of the Nile River. 1964 "I class (OAR, 1964)

The image of Nikita Khrushchev in cinematography

"Playhouse 90" "Playhouse 90" (USA, 1958) episode "The Plot to Kill Stalin" - Oskar Homolka

Zotz Zotz! (USA, 1962) - Albert Glasser

"Rockets of October" The Missiles of October (USA, 1974) - Howard DaSilva

"Francis Gary Powers" Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident (USA, 1976) - David Thayer

"Suez, 1956" Suez 1956 (England, 1979) - Aubrey Morris

"Red Monarch" Red Monarch (England, 1983) - Brian Glover

"Far from Home" Miles from Home (USA, 1988) - Larry Pauling

"Stalingrad" (1989) - Vadim Lobanov

"Law" (1989), Ten years without the right to correspond (1990), "General" (1992) - Vladimir Romanovsky

"Stalin" (1992) - Murray Evan

"Cooperative "Politburo", or It will be a long farewell" (1992) - Igor Kashintsev

"Gray Wolves" (1993) - Rolan Bykov

"Children of the Revolution" (1996) - Dennis Watkins

"Enemy at the Gates" (2000) - Bob Hoskins

"Passion" "Passions" (USA, 2002) - Alex Rodney

"Time Watch" "Timewatch" (England, 2005) - Miroslav Neinert

"Battle for Space" (2005) - Constantine Gregory

"Star of the era" (2005), "Furtseva. The Legend of Catherine "(2011) - Viktor Sukhorukov

"Georg" (Estonia, 2006) - Andrius Vaari

"The Company" "The Company" (USA, 2007) - Zoltan Bersenyi

"Stalin. Live" (2006); "House of Exemplary Content" (2009); "Wolf Messing: who saw through time" (2009); "Hockey Games" (2012) - Vladimir Chuprikov

Brezhnev (2005), And Shepilov who joined them (2009), Once Upon a Time in Rostov, Mosgaz (2012), Son of the Father of Nations (2013) - Sergey Losev

"Bomb for Khrushchev" (2009)

"Miracle" (2009), "Zhukov" (2012) - Alexander Potapov

"Comrade Stalin" (2011) - Viktor Balabanov

"Stalin and Enemies" (2013) - Alexander Tolmachev

"K" blows the roof "(2013) - Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti

Documentaries

"Coup" (1989). Production by Tsentrnauchfilm studio

Historical chronicles (a series of documentaries about the history of Russia, aired on the Rossiya TV channel since October 9, 2003):

57th series. 1955 - "Nikita Khrushchev, the beginning ..."

61st series. 1959 - Metropolitan Nicholas

63rd series. 1961 - Khrushchev. Beginning of the End

"Khrushchev. The first after Stalin "(2014)

Family of Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeevich was married three times. He had 5 children: two sons and three daughters.

First wife - Efrosinya Ivanovna Pisareva (1914-1920), died of typhus.
Daughter - Yulia Nikitichna (1916-1981) - was married to Viktor Petrovich Gontar, director of the Kiev Opera.
Son - Leonid Nikitovich (1917-1943) - a military pilot, died in an air battle. His first wife is Rosa Treivas, the marriage was short-lived and annulled by the personal order of N. S. Khrushchev. In the civil marriage of Leonid with Esfir Naumovna Etinger, the son Yuri (1935-2003), a test pilot, died from the consequences of a traffic accident.
The second wife is Lyubov Illarionovna Sizykh (1912-2014).
Daughter - Julia (born 1940). In 1943, after the death of Leonid, L. I. Sizykh was arrested on charges of "espionage", sent to camps for five years, since 1948 - in exile in Kazakhstan, released in 1956.
Granddaughter - Yulia Leonidovna Khrushcheva (1940-2017) - the granddaughter of N. S. Khrushchev from his son Leonid, adopted by N. S. Khrushchev at the age of two after the death of his father and the arrest of his mother. She worked as a journalist at the Novosti Press Agency, then as the head of the literary department at the Yermolova Moscow Drama Theater. In 2008, she spoke in court against the falsification of the history of the Khrushchev family, filed a libel suit against Channel One. She died in June 2017, according to the investigation, as a result of an accident on the railway.

With his second wife, Marusya (her last name is unknown), N. S. Khrushchev has been married since 1922. Marusya was a single mother. They divorced, and Khrushchev continued to help her.

The third wife - Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk, was born on April 14, 1900 in the village of Vasilev, Kholm province (now the territory of Poland). The wedding took place in 1924, but the marriage was officially registered in the registry office only in 1965. The first of the wives of Soviet leaders, who officially accompanied her husband at receptions, including abroad. She died on August 13, 1984, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Daughter - died in infancy.
Daughter - Rada Nikitichna (by her husband - Adzhubei; 1929-2016) - worked in the journal "Science and Life" for 50 years. Her husband was Alexey Ivanovich Adzhubey (1924-1993), Chief Editor newspaper "Izvestia".
Son - Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev was born in 1935 in Moscow, graduated from school No. 110 with a gold medal, rocket systems engineer, professor, worked at OKB-52. Since 1991 he lived and taught in the USA, became a citizen of this country.
Sergei Nikitich had two sons: the elder Nikita - (1959-2007), the younger Sergei - lives in Moscow.
Daughter Elena (1937-1972), researcher.

The first ruler of the young Land of Soviets, which arose as a result of the October Revolution of 1917, was the head of the RCP (b) - the Bolshevik Party - Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), who led the "revolution of workers and peasants." All subsequent rulers of the USSR held the post of general secretary of the central committee of this organization, which, starting in 1922, became known as the CPSU - the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

It should be noted that the ideology of the system ruling in the country denied the possibility of holding any nationwide elections or voting. The change of the top leaders of the state was carried out by the ruling elite itself, either after the death of its predecessor, or as a result of coups accompanied by serious inner-party struggle. The article will list the rulers of the USSR in chronological order and marked the main stages of the life path of some of the most prominent historical figures.

Ulyanov (Lenin) Vladimir Ilyich (1870-1924)

One of the most famous figures in the history of Soviet Russia. Vladimir Ulyanov stood at the origins of its creation, was the organizer and one of the leaders of the event that gave rise to the world's first communist state. Having led a coup in October 1917 aimed at overthrowing the provisional government, he took the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars - the post of head new country formed on the ruins of the Russian Empire.

His merit is the 1918 peace treaty with Germany, which marked the end of the NEP - a new economic policy government, which was supposed to lead the country out of the abyss of widespread poverty and hunger. All the rulers of the USSR considered themselves "faithful Leninists" and praised Vladimir Ulyanov in every possible way as a great statesman.

It should be noted that immediately after “reconciliation with the Germans”, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, unleashed internal terror against dissent and the legacy of tsarism, which claimed millions of lives. The NEP policy also did not last long and was abolished shortly after his death on January 21, 1924.

Dzhugashvili (Stalin) Joseph Vissarionovich (1879-1953)

Joseph Stalin became the first general secretary in 1922. However, until the death of V. I. Lenin, he remained on the sidelines of the leadership of the state, inferior in popularity to his other associates, who also aimed at the rulers of the USSR. Nevertheless, after the death of the leader of the world proletariat, Stalin quickly eliminated his main opponents, accusing them of betraying the ideals of the revolution.

By the beginning of the 1930s, he became the sole leader of the peoples, capable of deciding the fate of millions of citizens with a stroke of the pen. The policy of forced collectivization and dispossession pursued by him, which came to replace the NEP, as well as mass repression in relation to persons dissatisfied with the current government, they claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the USSR. However, the period of Stalin's rule is noticeable not only by the bloody trail, it is worth noting the positive aspects of his leadership. In a short time, the Union has gone from being a third-rate economy to a powerful industrial power that has won the battle against fascism.

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, many cities in the western part of the USSR, destroyed almost to the ground, were quickly restored, and their industry began to work even more efficiently. The rulers of the USSR, who held the highest post after Joseph Stalin, denied his leading role in the development of the state and characterized the time of his reign as a period of the leader's personality cult.

Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich (1894-1971)

Coming from a simple peasant family, N. S. Khrushchev became at the helm of the party shortly after the death of Stalin, which occurred in the first years of his reign, he waged an undercover struggle with G. M. Malenkov, who held the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers and was the de facto leader of the state.

In 1956, Khrushchev read out a report on Stalin's repressions at the Twentieth Party Congress, condemning the actions of his predecessor. The reign of Nikita Sergeevich was marked by the development of the space program - the launch of an artificial satellite and the first manned flight into space. His new one allowed many citizens of the country to move from cramped communal apartments to more comfortable separate housing. Houses that were massively built at that time are still popularly called "Khrushchevs".

Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich (1907-1982)

On October 14, 1964, N. S. Khrushchev was dismissed from his post by a group of members of the Central Committee under the leadership of L. I. Brezhnev. For the first time in the history of the state, the rulers of the USSR were replaced in order not after the death of the leader, but as a result of an internal party conspiracy. The Brezhnev era in Russian history is known as stagnation. The country stopped in development and began to lose to the leading world powers, lagging behind them in all sectors, excluding the military-industrial.

Brezhnev made some attempts to improve relations with the United States, spoiled in 1962, when N. S. Khrushchev ordered the deployment of missiles with a nuclear warhead in Cuba. Treaties were signed with the American leadership that limited the arms race. However, all the efforts of Leonid Brezhnev to defuse the situation were crossed out by the introduction of troops into Afghanistan.

Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich (1914-1984)

After the death of Brezhnev, which occurred on November 10, 1982, Yu. Andropov, who had previously headed the KGB, the USSR State Security Committee, took his place. He set a course for reforms and transformations in the social and economic spheres. The time of his reign was marked by the initiation of criminal cases exposing corruption in power circles. However, Yuri Vladimirovich did not have time to make any changes in the life of the state, as he had serious health problems and died on February 9, 1984.

Chernenko Konstantin Ustinovich (1911-1985)

From February 13, 1984, he served as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He continued his predecessor's policy of exposing corruption in the echelons of power. He was very ill and died in 1985, having spent a little more than a year in the highest state post. All the past rulers of the USSR, according to the order established in the state, were buried at and K. U. Chernenko was the last on this list.

Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeevich (1931)

MS Gorbachev is the most famous Russian politician of the late twentieth century. He won love and popularity in the West, but his rule causes twofold feelings among the citizens of his country. If Europeans and Americans call him a great reformer, then many Russians consider him a destroyer of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev proclaimed internal economic and political reforms under the slogan "Perestroika, Glasnost, Acceleration!", which led to a massive shortage of food and industrial goods, unemployment and a drop in the standard of living of the population.

It would be wrong to assert that the era of M. S. Gorbachev's rule had only negative consequences for the life of our country. In Russia, the concepts of a multi-party system, freedom of religion and the press appeared. Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign policy. The rulers of the USSR and Russia, neither before nor after Mikhail Sergeevich, were awarded such an honor.

All rulers of Russia Vostryshev Mikhail Ivanovich

FIRST SECRETARY OF THE CPSU CC NIKITA SERGEEVICH KHRUSHCHEV (1894–1971)

FIRST SECRETARY OF THE CPSU CC

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev

The son of poor peasants Sergei Nikanorovich and Xenia Ivanovna Khrushchev. Born on April 3/15, 1894 in the village of Kalinovka, Dmitrievsky district, Kursk province.

Nikita received his primary education at a parochial school in the village of Yuzovka, where the family moved. From 1908 he worked as a mechanic, a boiler cleaner, and a shepherd. During the Civil War he fought on the side of the Bolsheviks. In 1918 he joined the RSDLP(b).

In the early 1920s, he worked in the mines, studied at the working faculty of the Donetsk Industrial Institute. Since 1924, he was engaged in economic and party work in the Donbass and Kiev.

In the 1920s, the leader of the Communist Party in Ukraine was L.M. Kaganovich, and, apparently, Khrushchev made a favorable impression on him. Shortly after Kaganovich's departure for Moscow, Khrushchev was sent to study at the Industrial Academy named after I.V. Stalin, where he completed two courses in 1929-1931.

From January 1931 he was at party work in Moscow, in 1932–1934 he was the second secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in 1934-1938 he was the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in 1935-1938 he was the first secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

In January 1938, Nikita Sergeevich was appointed First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine. In the same year he became a candidate, and in 1939 - a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He was the first person in Ukraine until 1949.

Long live the socialist revolution! Artist Vladimir Serov. 1951

In the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was a member of the Military Councils of a number of fronts, in 1943 he received the rank of lieutenant general; led the partisan movement behind the front line.

In 1949-1953, Nikita Sergeevich was the first secretary of the Moscow city committee and the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

After Stalin's death, when the new Chairman of the Council of Ministers G.M. Malenkov left the post of secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Khrushchev became the head of the highest party apparatus of the country, although until September 1953 he did not have the title of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Between March and June 1953, L.P. Beria made an attempt to seize power. In order to eliminate him, Khrushchev entered into an alliance with Malenkov. In September 1953, he took the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

In the first years after Stalin's death, there was talk of "collective leadership," but shortly after Beria's arrest in June 1953, a power struggle began between Malenkov and Khrushchev, in which Khrushchev won.

At the beginning of 1954, Nikita Sergeevich announced the start of a grandiose program for the development of virgin lands in order to increase grain production.

The reason for Malenkov's resignation from the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in February 1955 was that Khrushchev managed to convince the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU to support the course towards the predominant development of heavy industry, and, consequently, the production of weapons, and abandon Malenkov's idea to give priority to the production of consumer goods.

Khrushchev appointed N.A. to the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Bulganin, securing the position of the first person in the state.

The most striking event in Khrushchev's career was the 20th Congress of the CPSU, held in 1956. In his report at the congress, he put forward the thesis that the war between capitalism and communism is not "fatally inevitable." At a closed meeting, Khrushchev condemned Stalin, accusing him of mass extermination of people and an erroneous policy that almost ended in the liquidation of the USSR in the war with Nazi Germany. The result of this report was unrest in the countries of the Eastern bloc - Poland (October 1956) and Hungary (October and November 1956).

N.S. Khrushchev in Stavropol. Artist G.I. Kuznetsov

In June 1957, the Presidium (formerly the Politburo) of the CPSU Central Committee organized a conspiracy to remove Khrushchev from the post of First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. After his return from a trip to Finland, he was invited to a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which demanded his resignation by seven votes to four. Khrushchev called a Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which canceled this, and dismissed the "anti-Party group" of Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich.

At the end of 1957, Khrushchev dismissed Marshal G.K. Zhukov. Nikita Sergeevich strengthened the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU with his supporters, and in March 1958 he took the second post - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, uniting in himself the highest party and executive power.

Soon an anecdote appeared:

“- Why did Khrushchev take the positions of First Secretary and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR?

“I realized that you can’t live on one salary.”

Khrushchev initiated the consolidation of collective farms (collective farms). This campaign led to a decrease in the number of collective farms over the course of several years. He wanted to turn peasant villages into agrarian towns, so that the collective farmers would live in the same houses as the workers and would not have personal plots. Knowing little about agriculture, Nikita Sergeevich carried out radical reforms in the countryside, which eventually led to a food crisis.

Historian S.S. Dmitriev writes in his diary on April 10, 1957: “The next speech of the leader is full of nonsense and vulgarity, contains an apology for Lysenko and rude, unconvincing attacks against those who dare to doubt the usefulness of the organo-mineral fertilizer mixtures proposed by Lysenko. Thus, once again the direct intervention of the party in science with the help of administrative shouts.

In 1957, after successfully testing an intercontinental ballistic missile and placing the first Earth satellites into orbit, Khrushchev issued a statement demanding that the Western countries "end the Cold War." His demands for a separate peace treaty with East Germany in November 1958, which would include the renewal of the blockade of West Berlin, led to an international crisis.

On the initiative of Nikita Sergeevich, on April 23, 1959, a resolution was adopted by the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the elimination of excesses in decoration, equipment and interior decoration public buildings". Across the country began to build inexpensive block houses, which led to a sharp deterioration in their appearance, but provided housing for millions of Soviet people, many of whom had previously lived in wooden barracks or overcrowded communal apartments.

September 15-27, 1959 Khrushchev made his first trip to the United States. He was accompanied by more than a hundred people, including his wife, son Sergei, daughters Yulia and Rada. During all these days, the front pages of the central Soviet newspapers were entirely devoted to this visit, photos of Khrushchev were published daily, which had previously been avoided.

The international situation became noticeably warmer after Khrushchev agreed to postpone the resolution of the Berlin question, and Eisenhower agreed to convene a conference for highest level which would consider this issue. The summit meeting was scheduled for May 16, 1960 in Moscow. However, on May 1, 1960, a US U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down in the airspace over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), and the meeting was disrupted.

In September-October 1960, Khrushchev visited the United States as head of the Soviet delegation to the UN General Assembly. During the Assembly, he managed to negotiate with the heads of governments of a number of countries. His report to the Assembly contained calls for general disarmament, the immediate elimination of colonialism, and the admission of China to the UN.

In June 1961, Khrushchev met with US President John F. Kennedy and again expressed his demands regarding Berlin. During the summer of 1961, Soviet foreign policy became increasingly harsh, and in September the USSR broke a three-year moratorium on testing nuclear weapons by conducting a series of explosions.

At the end of 1959, Khrushchev came up with a crazy proposal in the next twenty years, by 1980, to build a communist society in the USSR and become the first economic power in the world. On October 30, 1961, at the XXII Party Congress, the Program of the CPSU was adopted, in which 20 years were allotted for building a communist society. What came out of this dream, the Soviet people experienced for themselves.

On March 5–9, 1962, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU was held in the Grand Kremlin Palace. The next proposals of Khrushchev, set out in his report, on the tasks of the party to improve leadership were discussed. agriculture. Khrushchev assured that instead of herbs that restored the fertility of the soil, corn should be sown. Which they started doing.

There was a joke:

“The son of the chairman of the collective farm asks his father:

- Dad, what is corn? You only talk about her...

- Oh, son, corn is a terrible thing. If you don't take it away, you will be taken away."

During the "Khrushchev thaw", when censorship was relaxed for literary and artistic figures, many talented writers, artists, composers, theater and film workers successfully worked in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev looked closely at many of them: he helped some, he poisoned others.

On October 14, 1964, Khrushchev was relieved of his duties as First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee by the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He was replaced by L.I. Brezhnev, who became the First Secretary of the Communist Party, and A.N. Kosygin, who became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

Nikita Sergeevich died after a heart attack in the Kremlin hospital on September 11, 1971 and was buried on September 13 at the Novodevichy cemetery.

N.S. Khrushchev and F. Castro in a birch grove. Artist Marat Samsonov. 1960s