Nikita Khrushchev

Khrushchev’s first marriage was with Yefrosinia Pisareva in 1914. The couple had a daughter, Yulia and a son, Leonid. Pisareva passed away due to a famine.

In 1922, he married Marusia, but the marriage did not last long. After separating from Marusia, he met Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk registering their marriage only in 1965. They had three children: two daughters, Rada and Elena and a son, Sergei.

Khrushchev died of a heart attack on September 11, 1971, in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery, after the Russian government refused to offer him a state funeral.

Khrushchev was born on April 15, 1894, in Kalinovka, Ukraine, to Sergei and Ksenia Khrushcheva who were peasants. He also had a sister, Irina.

Working as a herder from a very young age, he received school education for just four years at the village parochial school and then at the Kalinovka’s state school.

In 1908, he moved to Yuzovka, following his father. The city was one of the most industrially developed regions of the Russian empire and Khrushchev found a job as a metal fitter’s apprentice.

Soon, his apprenticeship ended and he was now working as a machine repairman in the coal mines of the Yuzovka region. He worked here for almost a decade.

He joined the Communist party in 1918, when he was 24 years old. Being a communist, he fought in the civil war by enrolling in the Red Army, which was going on at that time.

The Russian revolution was storming the country and Red Army or the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czarist rule of Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. The civil war broke out and Khrushchev was in service for three years during the war.

Then, he returned to Tuzovka and took up a job as an assistant manager of a mine. Very soon, he joined the Donets Industrial Institute run by the Soviet (Communist ruling party) and received more training in communist ruling.

At the institute, he was appointed as the secretary of Communist Party Committee. After graduating in 1925, he started serving as a secretary of the Petrovsko-Mariinsk district of Yuzovka. It was here, he grew close to Lazar M. Kaganovich, a trusted associate of Joseph Stalin.

He attended the Industrial Academy in Moscow in 1929 for two years. He was trained in industrial administration. Soon, became a district party secretary in Moscow.

During his term in the Red Army of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev won several honours like Hero of Socialist Labour, Order of Lenin (twice) and Order of the Patriotic War.