Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. As leader of the Soviet Union, he shocked the world by denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin, embarking on a campaign of de-Stalinization, and presiding over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Born in a village near Kursk, Khrushchev was employed as a metal worker during his youth and was a political commissar in the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, he rose through the ranks of the Soviet hierarchy.