Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union from Stalin's death in 1953 until his ouster by the Politburo in 1964, initiating a partial de-Stalinisation with his 1956 Secret Speech while simultaneously proving willing to use force in Hungary and to gamble on nuclear brinkmanship in Cuba. His volatile, improvisational style produced both the genuine thaw of the late 1950s — the Vienna Summit, early arms control proposals — and the dangerous confrontations that defined his tenure: the Berlin ultimatums, the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, after which he was judged by his colleagues to have both created a dangerous crisis and backed down from it.
- Lived: 1894 CE – 1971 CE
- Nationality: Soviet
- Roles: head_of_state, party_leader
