Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April1894 – 11 September 1971) was a Soviet politician. He was the leader of the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War as the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, as well as the chairman of the Council of Ministers (or premier) from 1958 to 1964.
Khrushchev was known for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, as well as several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Nikita Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka, in western Russia in 1894. When he was young, he was employed as a metal worker, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. During his earlier years, he supported Joseph Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there.
During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War (Eastern Front of World War II), Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Nikita Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers.