Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khruschev became dictator over the Soviet Union when Stalin died in 1953. Khruschev denounced Stalin as soon as he died and tried to purge all memory of Stalin (“destalinization”). Khruschev repressed a freedom movement in Hungary in October 1956 and executed the Hungarian leader Imre Nagy. Khruschev replaced him with a pro-Soviet puppet. he also ordered the building of the Berlin Wall and the placement of missiles in Cuba, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1960 Khruschev stopped sharing atomic bomb secrets with China, and later there was a little violence along their long border. In 1964 a group led by Leonid Brezhnev arranged to strip him of power. The group persuaded the Politburo, which governed the Communist Party, to replace Khruschev with Brezhnev. Khruschev then lived out the remainder of his life under the watch of the Soviet KGB. He managed to smuggle out his memoirs for publication in the West.