Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. Around 1954-55 in the power struggle triggered by Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev emerged as number one. In 1956, Khrushchev gives a “secret speech” where he discussed Stalin’s crimes for the first time, starting a process called “de-Stalinization.” Khrushchev believes that the Soviet system has become too bureaucratic. He wanted decentralization. He abolished the tractor station, which were the centralizing mechanisms that gave the party/state control over the collected farms because the collected farms did not own their own machinery. It was a control mechanism. Ultimately, most of Khrushchev’s reforms had very bad, unintended consequences.