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Nikita Kruschev

Post 1

Mu Beta

When you're ready then. smiley - whistle

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Nikita Kruschev

Post 2

Mu Beta

This week would be a _really_ good time to finish the project, being half-term as it is. smiley - whistle

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Nikita Kruschev

Post 3

GreyDesk

This weekend would have been a really good time not to have gone down with chronic tooth-ache, again smiley - injuredsmiley - sadface


Nikita Kruschev

Post 4

GreyDesk

No, seriously, the plan for Wednesday evening is to clear the ivy that is threatening to cover my lounge and bedroom windows; and to write a couple of hundred words about everyone's favourite Ukrainian.


Nikita Kruschev

Post 5

Mu Beta

Well, I don't know about you, but my favourite Ukranian is Andrey Shevchenko. smiley - winkeye

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Nikita Kruschev

Post 6

GreyDesk

Nikita Khrushchev was born in the Ukraine in 1894 and was a young miner when the Bolshevik revolution took power in 1917. He joined the Communist Party soon after the revolution, in part, to take advantage of the educational opportunities that Communist government offered. It was through this that he became a firm believer that the communist system was superior to capitalism and that it would eventually win out.

Khrushchev was recognised as an intelligent and motivated individual, and rose quickly through the ranks of the Party, becoming a member of the Central Committee in 1934 and the Politburo in 1939. He also had the good fortune to be the Chief Political Commissar in Stalingrad during the 1942 battle for the city, and so his standing in the Party was raised when the victory was won.

When Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev became the Party's First Secretary in a collective leadership. This didn?t last for long as he soon grabbed power for himself when the tensions in the collective approach to leadership threatened to pull the top ranks of the Party apart.

As leader he changed much of the focus of Soviet foreign policy. He dropped the aggressive posture towards Western Europe; withdrawing Russian troops stationed in Vienna, and putting out peace feelers towards the break away Yugoslavian communist government. In its place he stepped up the political involvement in the rapidly decolonising Third World, particularly India and Egypt. The latter which he armed and henceforth had a say in Middle Eastern geo-politics.

At home the key event of his leadership was the 'secret session' of the 20th Party Congress of 1956 in which he outlined the crimes of the Stalin regime, and the damage that it had caused to the Party. He also signalled that there would in future be a liberalization of Party's control. Unfortunately, the Hungarians took this a bit too much to heart and tried to break away from the sphere of Soviet influence. This was unacceptable to the Russian government and was forcibly repressed by Soviet armed forces in 1957.

Khrushchev had a deep-seated belief that the communist system was superior to capitalism, and one of the ways that he wanted to demonstrate this was through improved agricultural production. There was an attempt to convert vast tracts of Siberia and Kazakhstan to corn production, and even plans to redirect the flow of some of the great Siberian rivers to help irrigate these southern plains. This all ended in disaster and the desertification of much of the new land that had been farmed.

Probably Khrushchev's is best known for the event that signalled his eventual downfall - the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. In a direct response to the US's deployment of nuclear missiles in Turkey close to the Russian birder, the Soviets made preparations to place missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by US spy planes a blockade of Cuba was ordered by President Kennedy to stop the ships carrying the missiles from getting through. In the stand-off it was Khrushchev who blinked first and the ships were turned around, averting what at the time had seemed like a certain nuclear war between the USA and Russia.

This loss of face on the international scene, coupled with a particularly bad harvest in 1963 led to growing dissent within the Politburo, and Khrushchev was sacked from his job of First Secretary in 1964 to be replaced by the more 'Stalinist' Leonid Brezhnev. Khrushchev lived out the rest of his days in quiet retirement - the first ever Soviet leader to do so - and eventually died in 1971.


Nikita Kruschev

Post 7

Mu Beta

Nice one. Cheers, mate. smiley - ok

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