Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [Old Style 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971; Russian: Никита Сергеевич Хрущёв) was the real life First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.

Real life biography[]

During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinisation with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. 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 (WW2), Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. 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.

On 5 March 1953, Stalin's death triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev emerged victorious upon consolidating his authority as First Secretary of the party's Central Committee. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the "Secret Speech", which denounced Stalin's purges and ushered in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union. His domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchev's time in office saw the tensest years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov that briefly led the country in Stalin's place. A coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with help from Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov, removed Lavrentiy Beria from power in June 1953. After being arrested, he was tried for treason and other offenses, sentenced to death, and executed on 23 December 1953. During his trial, and after his death, numerous allegations arose that Beria had been a serial rapist and serial killer.

Khrushchev enjoyed strong support during the 1950s thanks to major victories like the Suez Crisis, the launching of Sputnik, the Syrian Crisis of 1957, and the 1960 U-2 incident. By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This emboldened his potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the deadly fate suffered by the losers of previous Soviet power struggles and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside. His lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970. Khrushchev died in 1971 of a heart attack.

Within Bond literature[]

From Russia with Love[]

Nikita Khrushchev has inherited SMERSH, and has kept it running for several years after the death of Stalin.

Thunderball[]

Ian Fleming notes that SMERSH is ultimately disbanded on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev in 1958 and is replaced by the Special Executive Department of the MWD (formerly NKVD).^[1]

Trigger Mortis[]

Colonel Gaspanov appears to have been the last head of SMERSH before Khrushchev disbands it.

Films[]

GoldenEye[]

Alec Trevelyan whose life and loyalties were affected by the actions of Stalin and Khrushchev.

During the Second World War, Alec Trevelyan's Cossack parents had fled to Britain to escape the conflict. Following the war, in 1945, the British delivered them and many like them to the Red Army for repatriation to the USSR. Most Cossacks were sent to the gulags in far northern Russia and to Siberia under orders from Joseph Stalin and many died; some, however, escaped and others lived until Nikita Khrushchev's amnesty in 1953. The Trevelyans survived the ordeal and Alec Trevelyan was born. Several years later, however, his father murdered his mother and then committed suicide; "unable to let himself or [Alec's] mother live with the shame of it". As with Bond, Alec was now an orphan.