Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was first secretary of the Soviet Communist party from 1953 to 1964 and effective leader of the USSR from 1956 (premier from 1958) to 1964.  He was born on Apr. 17 (N.S.), 1894, in a mud hut in the village of Kalinovka, Kursk province.  As a young boy, Khrushchev worked long hours in the coal mines.  According to his memoirs, he had a strict religious upbringing, becoming a revolutionary under the influence of one of his teachers.  In 1918 he joined the Bolshevik party and fought in the Civil War.  Afterward, he was sent by the party to a technical institute.

Khrushchev rose steadily up the party ladder, always combining his talents as an administrator with his technical training. After assignments in the Ukraine, he became head of the Moscow regional party committee, and in 1934 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party.  In these positions he directed the construction of the Moscow subway.

Although increasingly influential, Khrushchev was never an intimate associate of Joseph STALIN;  he concentrated on technical rather than political accomplishment.  Perhaps for that reason he escaped the Great Purge of the 1930s.  In 1938 he returned to the Ukraine as first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist party and focused his attention primarily on agriculture, in which he gained a reputation as an expert. After World War II he was brought again to Moscow, where he served in the Secretariat and the Politburo and was again head of the Moscow regional committee.  It was those positions, and his reputation as an agricultural expert, that soon propelled him to power.

 Khrushchev in the Post-Stalin Era

Stalin died on Mar. 5, 1953, and the resulting power vacuum was filled by a "collective leadership," consisting primarily of Khrushchev, Lavrenti BERIA, Nikoli BULGANIN, Georg MALENKOV, Vyacheslav MOLOTOV, and Lazar Kaganovich.  Malenkov was named premier and Khrushchev first secretary of the Communist party. The collective leadership was not long in existence.  Beria was forced out of the party in July 1953 (and later executed).  In 1955, Malenkov was replaced as premier by Bulganin, who was nominated to the post by Khrushchev.  By 1956, Khrushchev was paramount in the party.  At the 20th party congress that year, he gave his famous six-hour "secret speech" denouncing the "crimes of the Stalin era." Many old-time party leaders felt that Khrushchev had gone too far;  but, despite two attempts on his life later that year, he continued to consolidate his power.  In 1957, Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich were purged from the party after an abortive attempt to oust Khrushchev from leadership.  In 1958, Bulganin resigned, and Khrushchev became premier as well as party secretary.

 Khrushchev's Domestic Policies

Khrushchev set bold new economic goals for "overtaking the West" and the United States in particular.  In 1954, under his supervision, vast new virgin lands were opened to cultivation, and the result was a dramatic increase in food production.  Two outstanding harvests (1956, 1958) enabled him to push ahead with rapid industrial development, especially in the production of consumer goods.  He also introduced a series of important administrative reforms.  In 1957 he set up a new system of regional economic councils (Sovnarkhozy) and invited debate and discussion on various economic, educational, and legal reforms. He also relaxed censorship somewhat, allowing some dissident intellectuals, like Aleksandr SOLZHENITSYN, to publish previously suppressed works.  In 1962 he attempted to reorganize the entire party apparatus on the basis of the "production principle," dividing local committees into separate agricultural and industrial sections.  Problems soon developed, however.  The good harvest years were followed by bad ones, his administrative changes led to much confusion, and his policy of more open discussion provoked new opposition.  Dissidence grew along with popular frustration, as expectations outstripped accomplishments.

 Foreign Affairs

Energy, ebullience, and lofty goals also characterized Khrushchev's foreign policy.  After a dramatic reconciliation with President TITO of Yugoslavia in 1955, he met with Western leaders at a Geneva summit conference in 1955.  He also traveled to the United States (in 1959 and 1960), the first Soviet leader to do so.  These activities did much to thaw the COLD WAR and to build commercial and cultural ties between East and West.

Despite Khrushchev's more relaxed relations with the West, he maintained strong Soviet control over the Communist nations of Eastern Europe.  This fact was emphasized by his brutal suppression in 1956 of the HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION.  The WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION, which binds the Eastern bloc militarily to Moscow, was a creation of the Khrushchev era.  Meanwhile, his insistence on "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist West and his generally unorthodox interpretation of classic Marxist doctrine contributed to a rupture with the Communist government of China.  Cuba represented both a triumph and a failure of Khrushchev's foreign policy.  The triumph lay in Cuba's alignment, under Fidel CASTRO, with the USSR, giving the latter its first ally in the Western Hemisphere.  The failure resulted from the CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (1962), when Khrushchev, with a great loss of face, was forced to remove Soviet missiles from the island.

 Khrushchev's Decline

Khrushchev's unorthodox policies and his colorful behavior had created opposition from the beginning, especially among the old guard party members.  His early successes tended to neutralize that faction, but as his failures began to mount, both domestically and internationally, his opponents in the Politburo gained strength.  Finally, in October 1964, he was forced out of office.  His remaining years were spent in quiet retirement in the outskirts of Moscow.  The vast changes he had unleashed in the USSR could not be undone, however, and his years in power had a lasting effect on his homeland.  He died on Sept. 11, 1971.