Short biography on premier nikita khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev, at the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 1963. ©Khrushchev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1955 until 1964, succeeding Joseph Stalin. He presided over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born in 1894 into a poor family near Kursk in south-western Russia.

He received very little formal education.

Short biography on premier nikita khrushchev

He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918 and served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

In 1929, Khrushchev moved to Moscow to attend the Stalin Industrial Academy. In 1931, he began to work full-time for the Communist Party, rising through its ranks to become first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee in 1938.

The following year he became a member of the Politburo, the highest decision-making body of the Communist Party. During World War Two, Khrushchev worked as a political commissar in the army.

Stalin died in March 1953.

Khrushchev became leader of the party shortly afterwards,