Nikita Khrushchev – The Man Behind the Missile Crisis

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down the bloody edifice of stalinism under khrushchev's watch prisoners were freed communism was liberalized and life was improved for millions of people yet he threw all of this away with international theatrics that ultimately led to a soviet coup so was he the bad guy of the 20th century or was he just a misunderstood reformer well today we are diving into the life of the ussr's most controversial premiere although he would publicly identify with the ukraine for most of his life nikita khrushchev was actually born in kalinovka in russia on april 17 1894. khrushchev's family were the exact sort of people the communists idealized his father was a coal miner and his grandfather had been a serf who served in the tsar's army the only discordant note in this otherwise perfect proletarian upbringing was the heavy presence of religion not that khrushchev would have any problems ditching christianity later in life when he was just a lad khrushchev's parents moved across the border to yazovka in ukraine which is now donetst it was in yesovka's grim industrial wasteland that khrushchev finally found his calling he got a job as a pipefitter aged 15 before becoming a skilled metal worker in his teenage heart a dream began to bloom a dream of becoming an engineer and a man of standing in russian imperial society he even married an educated woman who encouraged his ambition but this modest dream was about to be swept away by a tsunami on june 28 1914 a serbian terrorist assassinated austrian archduke franz ferdinand in sarajevo barely a month later the whole of the russian empire was marching to war to protect serbia from austrian retaliation and that as you might know marked the beginning of world war one but while khrushchev's vital factory work kept him from enlisting in the tsar's army he wouldn't be able to avoid what came next on march the 8th 1917 frustration at nearly three years of badly run warfare it exploded across russia the february revolution so called because the russian empire still used the old julian calendar toppled the tsar and placed the empire in the hands of the provisional government in ukraine people they went nuts the tsar's hated regime was gone and ordinary people they were in charge riding this heavy wave of optimism khrushchev signed up with a new bolshevik party he was just in time on november 7th 1917 vladimir lenin engineered the october revolution the bolsheviks stormed the winter palace in petrograd overthrew the provisional government and declared a socialist republic this was one of the biggest single events of the 20th century and it had immediate consequences in ukraine civil war erupted pitting the red forces of bolshevism against the white forces of the tsar it was complicated further by uprisings of ukrainian nationalists and later an invasion by the polish army determined to protect his adopted republic khrushchev enlisted in the red army in 1919 and he was sent to the polish border for the next three years he fought the polls and the pro-royalist whites until on october 25 1922 the red army finally declared victory that december the ussr it was officially created back in what was now the ukrainian soviet socialist republic khrushchev he demobilized but there was no time for celebration just as the war ended khrushchev's first wife she died some sources say it was from famine brought about by the conflict others say that she contracted typhus left with two children to raise the now adult khrushchev he returned to yazovka and enrolled in the soviet workers school determined to complete his education much later it would be said that this more than the army is where khrushchev discovered his loyalty to the new regime under the tsar a poor peasant from the ukraine-russian border would have no chance of getting even a high school education now the communists were in power khrushchev was suddenly able to access a world of knowledge once reserved for russia's elite perhaps that's why not long after he enrolled khrushchev he took a major step one which would affect both his life and the lives of everyone in the ussr he became the leader of the yazovka's student communist party [Music] khrushchev's rise up the soviet system it wasn't dramatic rather than shoot to the top the former peasant he rose slowly but surely it started with a promotion to the leader of the yazovka region communist party then it was reassignment to the bigger city of kharkiv and from there it was to a position at the top of the kiev party for a man who'd been a pipe cleaner just a decade before lording it over metropolitan kiev should have been enough but khrushchev he wanted more than ukraine was able to give him in 1929 he went to moscow provisionally to study metallurgy in reality it was to build a power base in no time at all khrushchev was put in charge of constructing the moscow subway an incredibly important assignment he carried out his duty so well that the party made him the communist equivalent of the governor of moscow by 1936 khrushchev he was an influential rising star with a strong power base in both moscow and the ukraine it's a description that should have seen him as one of the first to die in the great purge lasting from 1936 to 1938 the great purge was stalin's unhinged killing spree against anyone with a power base to rival his own if you've seen our video on nkvd head leventry barrier you'll know that even ultra loyalists like beria nearly died in stalin's witch hunt by right christian's story it should sort of end here with him being shot in the back in some anonymous moscow courtyard on a chilly night but khrushchev had a quality that no one else in the party had during the great purge a quality that would save his life and that quality he was ridiculous yeah far from being respected khrushchev he was regarded as a total joke he was barely five foot two inches tall and he looked like some ukrainian village idiot he drank like a fish and stalin would sometimes make him do funny dances to entertain other party leaders it was this amazing combination while the vast majority of powerful communists were out being murdered khrushchev was loudly supporting stalin in public and acting as the tyrant's jester in private as a result khrushchev not only survived the great purge but he benefited from it in 1938 he was made a member of the political bureau and elevated to the position of leader of ukraine back in his old stomping ground khrushchev kept cultivating his image of a stalin loyalist on the old man's orders he oversaw the bloody soviet invasion of eastern poland before organizing resistance to hitler's 1941 invasion of the ussr to call the next few years bloody would do a massive disservice to blood from 1941 to 1944 the nazis occupied ukraine killing around seven million people when khrushchev regained control he conducted his own purge of german-aligned ukrainians this was then followed in 1946 by a famine that killed another million people it is this last catastrophe that started khrushchev's slow drift from stalinism the famine was exacerbated by soviet collective farming and grain quotas something which appalled khrushchev who you have to remember he loved ukraine like it was his homeland not that his disillusionment would come into the open just quite yet in 1949 khrushchev was recalled to moscow by stalin as part of the old man's plan to balance power in his inner circle alongside leventry barrier deputy prime minister nikolai bolganin and second party secretary gorge malankov khrushchev became a fixture at stalin's dacha where once again the tyrant made the little ukrainian dance's funny little dance for christchurch the next few years they were miserable away from his power base in ukraine playing the part of court gestures stalin he lived a life of low-grade humiliation but something was about to happen that would shake up not just the lives of khrushchev beria morganin and malnkov but the lives of the entire communist world that's because now it's time to discuss the death of stalin [Music] on march the 1st 1953 a servant entered stalin's bedroom to find the dictator lying unconscious in a pool of his own urine the man of steel had suffered a stroke although he would cling on for a few more days it was the beginning of the end for stalinism it was also the beginning of the beginning for khrushchev's rise to power at the moment of stalin's death the path to succession well it was muddier than actual mud in terms of position georgie malenkov had the best claim to the throne but the wily beria had the power base to propel himself to clear frontrunner khrushchev he was a second or maybe even a third tier choice even molotov who'd recently been on stalin's kill list was seen as more influential power broker bruce chev he was also a man who was often underestimated and that allowed him to move against the others before they realized what was happening within nine days of stalin's death malankov had been sidelined beria assumed this meant he'd won and started enacting his own liberalizing reforms but in the shadows khrushchev watched just biding his time when berries reforms triggered a workers revolt in east germany he pounced on june 26 1953 khrushchev denounced barrier in a closed meeting malankov by now on khrushchev's side called in the red army soldiers and beria was shot dead in the aftermath khrushchev secured the post of first secretary of the communist party with malankov having the position of premiere but it was clear who was really in charge khrushchev's rule it started slowly he spent his first years sidelining malenkov patching things up with stalin's old enemy tito and yugoslavia and transferring crimea to the ukraine something that would later cause problems as you're probably aware then on february 25th 1956 khrushchev abruptly changed gear the change it was a speech delivered before the 20th party congress it's known today as the secret speech because it was only ever meant to be heard by party officials but the reality was that someone had leaked it to the new york times clocking in at six hours the speech demolished stalin's personality cult it criticized the dead leader for killing innocent communists during the great purge and quoted a long-suppressed letter written by lenin advising that stalin never be given power to modernise khrushchev's speech it actually seems pretty weak the only aspect of stalin's rule that are attacked are the bits that directly affected loyal party members like khrushchev not the campaigns of terror and the starvation that killed millions at the time though it was as shocking as if khrushchev had thrown a live grenade from the podium for two decades the party had been brainwashed into thinking that stalin was the greatest world leader ever and now the big man's successor was telling them that starring was a tyrant the speech it triggered something called the khrushchev thor over the next few years millions of political prisoners they were released and censorship was relaxed this was the start of a new era for the ussr although this brave new world would still be repressive it would be a utopia compared to how things were under stalin there were some exceptions the news of the speech triggered a revolution in communist hungary which crews should have crushed as brutally as stalin would have on the other hand when the speech also triggered an uprising in poland khrushchev flew to warsaw and signed a deal giving the independent communist republics of eastern europe previously unheard of autonomy whether the party liked it or not things they were changing for melanchov and molotov though the feeling was very much not in june of 1957 they organized a coup to topple khrushchev and return a stalinist system and it nearly worked a vote in the political bureau actually passed to depose khrushchev and it was only getting the hero of the red army marshal on side that saved khrushchev but survive he did expelling malenkov and molotov and even having his ally zhukov removed from power by march of 1958 there was no energy left in the stalinists khrushchev became the undisputed leader of the ussr now it was the only game in town now just before we get into the ussr under khrushchev i do want to thank today's sponsor war thunder sponsors like war thunder help us make these super long videos which with a topic like this which is often demonetized is you know it's helpful so if you want all the fun of battle without you know the real death and horror that you're hearing about in today's video you should absolutely check out war thunder it's a realistic free to play military vehicle combat game war thunder is available on pc ps4 xbox one so if you've got any of those devices you're covered but you only need one all you need to do is just download and play the game it's free no need to purchase and in this game there are over 1 200 historically accurate vehicles all the way from the 1920s 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few years were a dizzying time for your average soviet citizen if you imagine the ussr as a battered old car that's been puttering along under stalin khrushchev's rule was like watching a drunken madman grab the wheel and go veering off on a demented and possibly dangerous new course for the first time honest-to-god consumer products they appeared on shelves in bookstores subversive literature it was suddenly available the shocking gulag chronicle one day in the life of ivan denisovich was published with khrushchev's personal blessing in the cities a wave of new apartment blocks gave people something resembling their own personal space for the first time in years for on travel it was suddenly opened within the party dozens were held accountable for their role in the purges although khrushchev conveniently forgot about his own involvement in 1961 khrushchev even had stalin's body removed from lenin's mausoleum on red square that same year stalingrad it was renamed volgograd it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows of course there was still a secret police there were still gulags there was still repression this was the ussr after all the difference was that repression under khrushchev was harassment and intimidation and paying endless bribes whereas in stalin's time it simply meant that the secret police were shooting millions of people not that all of khrushchev's reforms went well though in 1956 khrushchev authorized the opening of millions of acres of virgin land in siberia and kazakhstan to farming in an attempt to end the sort of famines that had witnessed in ukraine this went about as well as you'd expect when you send untrained people to go and farm in siberia it's pretty cold for most of the world though khrushchev he was a breath of fresh air he talked about living in peaceful coexistence with the west and aside from that time he told american reporters we will bury you he actually seemed to mean it in 1959 the ussr and the united states even hosted joint expos in their countries showing off soviet living to the americans and vice versa on july the 24th khrushchev went to tour the american expo in moscow where he bumped into none other than richard nixon he stood before a model of an american kitchen and the two engaged in something known as the kitchen debate it was a semi-light-hearted wang measuring contest between the two nations and the debates saw khrushchev and nixon both argue why their system of government was better all that i can say from the way you talk and the way you dominate the conversation you would have made a good lawyer yourself while krischev's notorious tempo could have turned it into a diplomatic incident it instead became a symbol for how the us and the soviet union might be able to agree to disagree that same year with relation seemingly warming khrushchev left the ussr and embarked on a tour of the usa for those who grew up associating krischev's name with the words missile crisis the image of the russian bear in iowa munching on hot dogs and chatting with thanks sinatra can seem almost comically strange yet history is sometimes pretty strange khrushchev's tour of america the first by a soviet leader it was a media sensation although anti-nuclear talks with eisenhower went nowhere the trip was mostly deemed a pr success as 1960 dawned it even began to seem as if the two superpowers they weren't destined to annihilate one another it seemed that there might be room in the world for communism and capitalism to co-exist if anyone really did think that though they were about to get a fairly rude awakening on october the 4th 1957 the ussr sputnik one blasted off from the plains of kazakhstan becoming the first man-made satellite in orbit not four years later on april 12 1961 a soviet rocket carried another first into orbit this time it was a man named yuri gagarin on that day he became the first ever human to experience space flight for soviet citizens these two phenomenal achievements were just yet more good news from the khrushchev thor over in the pentagon though the american position it was one of worry it wasn't just because the soviets were making nasa look like hicks but also because those rockets were capable of delivering something much more serious than cosmonauts that was of course nuclear weapons these fears crystallized on october 14 1962. that day an american spy plane passing over cuba snapped a rather strange picture the previous couple of years had been rather strained between the united states and its island neighbor in 1959 fidel castro had come to power on the back of a communist revolution not two years later the new jfk administration had tried to invade the island and topple castro resulting in an enormous scrub that you've probably heard of called the bay of pigs on top of that relations had gone rather south with the ussr khrushchev had reacted angrily to the bay of pigs and there was this image of him banging his shoe on a table at the un in 1960 that convinced the americans that he was a bit unstable as the spy plane pilot snapped his pictures and flew away from that warm caribbean day he had no way of knowing that his images would soon lead the planet to the brink of nuclear war the pictures showed a soviet nuclear launch pad being constructed in cuba apocalyptic missiles were now stationed just 90 miles from the u.s mainland when the news reached washington the world it entered crisis mode khrushchev's whole rationale was that the u.s had installed its own missiles in turkey even closer to the ussr than the cuban missiles were to america surely the americans would just have to learn to deal with it but the thought of an atomic bomb exploding over miami or houston it forced americans to hit back on the 22nd of october jfk gave a televised address informing the world about the missiles he pledged to set up a naval blockade to stop more missiles reaching cuba and gave the ussr an ultimatum remove the missiles in cuba or its war in the kremlin khrushchev he tried to hold his nerve the ussr was already failing at the nuclear arms race if it lost its new outpost in cuba who knew what would happen and thus began the highest stakes game of chicken in history on october 24 soviet ships carrying additional missiles reached the u.s naval blockade the two sides were one mistake from nuclear war three days later a u.s pilot was shot down over cuba with tensions now at breaking point people across the planet began to prepare for the end at any moment the human race could be snuffed out in a flash of atomic light the fact that it wasn't is simply due to two pieces of paper on october 28 1962 khrushchev cracked he sent jfk two urgent notes the first said the cuban nuclear facilities would be dismantled if the u.s swore to never launch another invasion of cuba the second demanded that the u.s nuclear missiles also be removed from turkey although the kennedy administration only publicly agreed to the first note they secretly let moscow know that they'd abide by the second as well and just like that the world stepped back from the abyss so what was going through khrushchev's mind as he sent those notes the american version has it that the crisis was simply a high-stakes poker game and the ussr blinked first but maybe there was something more here for all of his faults khrushchev wasn't a psychopath he didn't want to destroy the world it was certainly his fault that the missiles were in cuba in the first place but maybe he also deserves credit for not seeing his dangerous bluff through regardless the crisis ended without the planet burning the soviets retreated and the americans they kept their promises the next year a hotline was installed between the white house and the kremlin to prevent future apocalypses in his later memoirs chris jeff would later call the resolution to the crisis a personal triumph but there were very few in moscow who saw it that way from the moment that a u.s biplane first took that photo over cuba krischev's days in the kremlin they were numbered the ripple effects of the cuban missile crisis were felt across the globe in asia they became the final nail in the coffin for the relationship between the ussr and china the sino-soviet split had begun way back with khrushchev's secret speech but it was the bungled missile crisis that convinced mao to break with moscow for good he actually even called khrushchev a buffoon in the structures of the communist party the perceived humiliation of khrushchev's climb down made people question the leader in ways that they hadn't since malenkov's failed coup perhaps all these reforms had gone to khrushchev's head perhaps what the ussr needed was less liberalism and more orthodoxy i mean they didn't want to go all the way back to stalinism but you know maybe something just slightly less open and less tolerant enter leonid brezhnev a protege of khrushchev and a fellow ukrainian although in regina's case had actually been born there brejnev was also a deeply ambitious man although khrushchev was clearly grooming him to be his successor reginev he didn't want to wait and now with the tide of opinion finally turning against khrushchev the pupil he could turn on his master on october 14 1964 khrushchev was on vacation in georgia when reginev launched his coup while every previous soviet handover of power had been accompanied by bloodshed this time things were almost orderly brezhnev took control of the party ordered khrushchev back to moscow and made him resign as a leader wisely khrushchev he accepted this early retirement and that was it for khrushchev the man who destalinized an empire he was allowed to live but he was shunted off into anonymity khrushchev he was forbidden from speaking out the press were encouraged not to report on him and his name was quietly scrubbed from soviet life although brezhnev didn't kill his old mentor how he felt about him is evident from what happened when khrushchev finally died on september the 11th 1971. while his passing made headlines in the west the soviet press they didn't mention it for 48 hours before finally putting out a small notice there was no state funeral there was no burial in the kremlin wall less than a decade after he'd left office it seemed khrushchev had already been forgotten the khrushchev he wasn't done yet over a decade after his death a group of younger communists they came to power known as the children of the 20th party congress they were the generation of party members who'd watched enraptured as khrushchev made his secret speech one of them well that was mikhail gorbachev in the late 1980s gorbachev would implement his own version of khrushchev's reforms known as glasnost and perestroika that eventually lead to the ussr's dissolution nor was gorbachev the only communist leader that khrushchev influenced the khrushchev thor had been credited with inspiring everything from the prague spring in 1968 to deng xiaoping's opening of the chinese markets in the 1980s almost every liberalizing strain of communism it can be traced back to the secret speech so at the end of all of that what's the historical verdict on khrushchev as we said at the start for many in the west it's the missile crisis certainly that was a huge part of his premiership there was more than that khrushchev was the first soviet premier to stop the mass killings to end the daily terror of life under stalin sure the society he led was still awfully repressive but it was an improvement by orders of magnitude from the one that had come before him in another timeline without khrushchev you'd have one of the stalinists seizing control in 1953 and you'd have many more decades of unbridled mass murder you'd never have the thor you'd never have destalinization krishev he may have had his faults but in many ways he was also the right man at the right time history may judge him harshly for his mistakes but it shouldn't forget his successes so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do give us a thumbs up below also don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell we put out new videos several times a week so doing that will notify you about those also why not check out my other channel called top tens you'll find a link to that below and as always thank you for watching you

Channel: Biographics

Views: 651,315

Rating: 4.888978 out of 5

Keywords: Nikita Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev life, Nikita Khrushchev Biography, Nikita Khrushchev bio, Nikita Khrushchev cold war, Nikita Khrushchev death, biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: gjGLD8bx7Qo

Length: 26min 44sec (1604 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019