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[[File:Nikita_Khrushchev_in_WW2.jpg|thumbnail|250px|left|Nikita Khrushchev during World War II]]
Nikita Khrushchev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Khrushchev served as a General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as a Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. Remarkably in 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was forced to leave his post. The Party leadership comprised of a special “troika” representatives, (Alexey Kosygin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Anastas Mikoyan) deposed Khrushchev. Eventually, Brezhnev assumed the central role among the three and under his rule the Soviet Union expanded its sphere of influence to include much of Southeast Asia, Africa, parts of Central America and the Caribbean.
Why was Khrushchev deposed? How did Khrushchev fall from power? How had he alienated the Communist Party leadership? Khrushchev was seen as enough of a concern that until his death, in 1971, the Soviet government closely monitored him. This article will explore how Khrushchev lost the confidence of the Soviet Communist Party and was removed from office.
====Khruschev Rejection of Stalin====
Khrushchev became famous and most best recognized for his rejection of the “personality cult” that Stalin had fostered during his own thirty-year rule. Khrushchev also attempted the revival of the Communist campaign to suppress all remnant religious institutions in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Khrushchev supported the invasion and crackdown on Hungary in 1956, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the deployment of Soviet weapons in Cuba in 1962.
In this regard, Khrushchev is something of an enigma. His foreign policy, position on religion and Marxist-Leninist doctrine were hardline, but he was a reformer because he allowed criticism of Stalin and even permitted some anti-Stalinist literature to be published and disseminated in USSR’s society. He allowed criticism of Stalin, despite suppressing criticism of the Soviet Republic. Khrushchev also hoped to raise Soviet citizens’ standard of living so they could benefit from the transference of the ownership of “the means of production” to the State.
====Khrushchev foreign and defense policies: on the brink of nuclear war====
[[File:Nikita_Khrusjtsjov.jpg|thumbnail|250px|left|Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961]]<div class="portal" style='float:right; width:35%'>====Related Articles===={{#dpl:category=Russian History|ordermethod=firstedit|order=descending|count=8}}</div>
When Khrushchev took control, the outside world still knew little of him, and he was initially not highly recognized. Short, heavyset, and wearing ill-fit suits, he was commonly seen as very energetic but not intellectual, and was dismissed by many as a buffoon who would not last long. Although his attacks on world capitalism were virulent and primitive, his outgoing personality and peasant humor were in sharp contrast to the image introduced by all earlier Soviet public figures. He also had abysmal diplomatic skills, giving him the reputation of being a rude, uncivilized peasant in the West and an irresponsible clown in his own country. His methods of administration, although efficient, were also acknowledged as erratic since they threatened to abolish a large number of Stalinist-era agencies.
Nevertheless, Chinese communists unfavorably and harshly criticized the Soviet Union for mishandling this settlement. The Sino-Soviet split, which began in 1959, reached the stage of public accusations in 1960. China’s ideological insist on all-out “war against the imperialists,” and Mao Zedong’s annoyance with Khrushchev’s co-existence policies was exacerbated by Soviet refusal to assist the Chinese nuclear weapon buildup and to rectify the Russo-Chinese border. The Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty reached between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1963, although generally welcomed throughout the world, intensified even further Chinese denunciations of Soviet “revisionism”.<ref>Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev: Premier of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics & Leadership of the Soviet Union: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikita-Sergeyevich-Khrushchev</ref>
====Khrushchev’s forced removal from office====
[[File:RIAN_archive_159271_Nikita_Khrushchev,_Valentina_Tereshkova,_Pavel_Popovich_and_Yury_Gagarin_at_Lenin_Mausoleum.jpg|thumbnail|left|350px|Khrushchev, Valentina Tereshkova, Pavel Popovichm and Yury Gagarin in 1963]]
Khrushchev’s rivals in the Communist party deposed him largely due to his erratic and cantankerous behavior, regarded by the party as a tremendous embarrassment on the international stage. The failures in agriculture, the quarrel with China, and the humiliating resolution of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis added to the growing resentment of Khrushchev’s own arbitrary administrative methods, were the major factors in his downfall.
Despite his repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, his acceptance of “different roads to socialism” led to growing independence among European communist parties, but his Russian nationalism and his suspicion of Mao Zedong’s communism helped create an unexpectedly deep gap between China and the Soviet Union. By the time he was removed from office, he had set up guidelines for and limitations to Soviet policy that his successors were hard put to alter.
====References====
