141-772: Temlag (Темла́г), Temnikovsky Corrective Labor Camp (Темниковский исправи́тельно-трудово́й ла́герь), or Temnikovsky ITL (Темниковский ИТЛ) was a camp of the Gulag labor camp system of the Soviet Union . It was in the Mordovian ASSR . Its name derives from the town of Temnikov because it was in Temnikov District, although its administration was in Yavas . It existed during 1931-1948. Major industries were logging , wood processing industries, and railroad construction. In addition it had
282-473: A 70th birthday present. In his memoirs, Khrushchev spoke highly of Ukraine: I'll say that the Ukrainian people treated me well. I recall warmly the years I spent there. This was a period full of responsibilities, but pleasant because it brought satisfaction ... But far be it from me to inflate my significance. The entire Ukrainian people was exerting great efforts ... I attribute Ukraine's successes to
423-478: A camp commander and an important Gulag official. His proposals soon saw widespread adoption in the Gulag system. After having appeared as an instrument and place for isolating counter-revolutionary and criminal elements, the Gulag, because of its principle of "correction by forced labor", quickly became, in fact, an independent branch of the national economy secured on the cheap labor force presented by prisoners. Hence it
564-588: A department of NKVD (later MVD) in charge of handling of foreign civilian internees and POWs (prisoners of war) in the Soviet Union during and in the aftermath of World War II (1939–1953). In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG. Its major function was the organization of foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union . The top management of GUPVI came from the GULAG system. The major memoir noted distinction from GULAG
705-463: A distinctly political purpose. These early camps of the GULAG system were introduced in order to isolate and eliminate class-alien, socially dangerous, disruptive, suspicious, and other disloyal elements, whose deeds and thoughts were not contributing to the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat . Forced labor as a "method of reeducation" was applied in the Solovki prison camp as early as
846-611: A labor camp, and her son (by another relationship), Tolya, was placed in orphanages. Leonid's daughter, Yulia, was raised by Nikita Khrushchev and his wife. After Uranus forced the Germans into retreat, Khrushchev served on other fronts of the war. He was attached to Soviet troops at the Battle of Kursk , in July 1943, which turned back the last major German offensive on Soviet soil. Khrushchev related that he interrogated an SS defector, learning that
987-521: A large-scale housing program for Moscow. Five- or six-story apartment buildings became ubiquitous throughout the Soviet Union. Khrushchev had prefabricated reinforced concrete used, greatly speeding up construction. These structures were completed at triple the construction rate of Moscow housing from 1946 to 1950, lacked elevators or balconies, and were nicknamed khrushchyovka by the public, but because of their shoddy workmanship sometimes disparagingly called Khrushchoba , combining Khrushchev's name with
1128-401: A meeting: "There are cases when a prisoner is given only four or five hours out of twenty-four for rest, which significantly lowers his productivity." In the words of a former Gulag prisoner: "By the spring of 1942, the camp ceased to function. It was difficult to find people who were even able to gather firewood or bury the dead." The scarcity of food stemmed in part from the general strain on
1269-532: A minimum sentence of seven years and a maximum of twenty five. In 1958, the maximum sentence for any crime was reduced from twenty five to fifteen years. In 1960, the Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (MVD) ceased to function as the Soviet-wide administration of the camps in favour of individual republic MVD branches. The centralised detention administrations temporarily ceased functioning. Although
1410-645: A non-voting delegate to the 14th Congress of the USSR Communist Party in Moscow. Khrushchev met Lazar Kaganovich as early as 1917. In 1925, Kaganovich became Party head in Ukraine and Khrushchev, falling under his patronage, was rapidly promoted. He was appointed second in command of Stalin's party apparatus in late 1926. Within nine months his superior, Konstantin Moiseyenko, was ousted, which, according to Taubman,
1551-638: A part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on 1 November 1939. Clumsy actions by the Soviets, such as staffing Western Ukrainian organizations with Eastern Ukrainians , and giving confiscated land to collective farms ( kolkhozes ) rather than to peasants, soon alienated Western Ukrainians, damaging Khrushchev's efforts to achieve unity. When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR , in June 1941, Khrushchev
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#17328764926651692-578: A policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan . He sponsored the early Soviet space program and enacted reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba , he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin circle stripped him of power , replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev
1833-567: A policy that lasted until 1948. Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [ O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin and embarked on
1974-463: A population of 100,000 in the 1920s. By the end of 1940, the population of the Gulag camps amounted to 1.5 million. The emergent consensus among scholars is that, of the 14 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag camps and the 4 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag colonies from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million prisoners perished there or died soon after they were released. Some journalists and writers who question
2115-567: A power struggle in which Khrushchev emerged victorious upon consolidating his authority as First Secretary of the party's Central Committee. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress , he delivered the " Secret Speech ", which denounced Stalin's purges and ushered in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union. His domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite
2256-442: A province with a population of 11 million. Stalin's office records show meetings at which Khrushchev was present as early as 1932. The two increasingly built a good relationship. Khrushchev greatly admired the dictator and treasured informal meetings with him and invitations to Stalin's dacha , while Stalin felt warm affection for his young subordinate. Beginning in 1934, Stalin began a campaign of political repression known as
2397-409: A quarter million more between 1944 and 1946. About 600,000 Western Ukrainians were arrested between 1944 and 1952, with one-third executed and the remainder imprisoned or exiled to the east. The war years of 1944 and 1945 had seen poor harvests, and 1946 saw intense drought strike Ukraine and Western Russia. Despite this, collective and state farms were required to turn over 52% of the harvest to
2538-512: A reputation which was further enhanced by the Soviet GULAG system. The Bolsheviks' own experiences with exile and forced labor provided them with a model which they could base their own system on, including the importance of strict enforcement. From 1920 to 1950, the leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet state considered repression a tool that they should use to secure the normal functioning of
2679-467: A significant amount of prisoners, which confined prisoners serving short sentence terms. In the early 1930s, a tightening of the Soviet penal policy caused a significant growth of the prison camp population. During the Great Purge of 1937–38, mass arrests caused another increase in inmate numbers. Hundreds of thousands of persons were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms on the grounds of one of
2820-546: A single honest Bolshevik to be harmed." When Soviet troops, pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , invaded the eastern portion of Poland on 17 September 1939, Khrushchev accompanied the troops at Stalin's direction. A large number of ethnic Ukrainians lived in the invaded area, much of which today forms the western portion of Ukraine . Many inhabitants initially welcomed the invasion, though they hoped that they would eventually become independent. Khrushchev's role
2961-545: A tax on private livestock holdings led to peasants slaughtering their stock. With the idea of eliminating differences in attitude between town and countryside and transforming the peasantry into a "rural proletariat", Khrushchev conceived the idea of the "agro-town". Rather than agricultural workers living close to farms, they would live further away in larger towns which would offer municipal services such as utilities and libraries. He completed only one such town before his December 1949 return to Moscow; he dedicated it to Stalin as
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#17328764926653102-535: A wide variety of other small-scale industries: construction, metalworking, railroad servicing, clothing and footwear production, etc. Upon liquidation its assets were split. The camp system was transferred to Dubravlag while the industries were reorganized into the Temnikovsky Industrial Combine of Gulag (Темниковский Промкомбинат ГУЛАГа), which itself did not manage any camps, and later it was also merged into Dubravlag. Gulag The Gulag
3243-453: A year before returning to Kalinovka. Kalinovka was a peasant village; Khrushchev's teacher, Lydia Shevchenko, later stated that she had never seen a village as poor. Nikita worked as a herdsboy from an early age. He was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village school and part under Shevchenko's tutelage in Kalinovka's state school. According to Khrushchev's memoirs, Shevchenko
3384-685: A year in which the Russian Civil War , between the Bolsheviks and a coalition of opponents known as the White Army , began in earnest. His biographer, William Taubman , suggests that Khrushchev's delay in affiliating himself with the Bolsheviks was because he felt closer to the Mensheviks who prioritized economic progress, whereas the Bolsheviks sought political power. In his memoirs, Khrushchev indicated that he waited because there were many groups, and it
3525-479: Is followed by one more important reason for the constancy of the repressive policy, namely, the state's interest in unremitting rates of receiving a cheap labor force that was forcibly used, mainly in the extreme conditions of the east and north. The Gulag possessed both punitive and economic functions. The Gulag was an administration body that watched over the camps; eventually its name would be used for these camps retrospectively. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin
3666-440: Is unclear whether this was true. According to William Taubman, Khrushchev's studies were aided by Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk , a well-educated Party organizer and daughter of well-to-do Ukrainian peasants. The family was poor, according to Nina's own recollections. The two lived together as husband and wife for the rest of Khrushchev's life, though they never registered their marriage. They had three children together: daughter Rada
3807-430: Is worthy of respect. Work as such cannot be dirty, it is only conscience that can be. When World War I broke out in 1914, Khrushchev was exempt from conscription because he was a skilled metal worker. He was employed by a workshop that serviced ten mines, and he was involved in several strikes that demanded higher pay, better working conditions, and an end to the war. In 1914, he married Yefrosinia Pisareva, daughter of
3948-676: The Cheka , followed by the GPU (1922–1923), the OGPU (1923–1934), later known as the NKVD (1934–1946), and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the final years. The Solovki prison camp , the first correctional labour camp which was constructed after the revolution, was opened in 1918 and legalized by a decree, "On the creation of the forced-labor camps", on April 15, 1919. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching
4089-551: The Great Patriotic War , Gulag populations declined sharply due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. In the winter of 1941, a quarter of the Gulag's population died of starvation . 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941–43, from a combination of their harsh working conditions and the famine caused by the German invasion. This period accounts for about half of all gulag deaths, according to Russian statistics. In 1943,
4230-495: The Great Purge , during which many were executed or sent to the Gulag . Central to this campaign were the Moscow Trials , a series of show trials of the purged top leaders of the party and the military. In 1936, as the trials proceeded, Khrushchev expressed his vehement support: Everyone who rejoices in the successes achieved in our country, the victories of our party led by the great Stalin, will find only one word suitable for
4371-542: The Khrushchev Thaw , triggering a mass release and rehabilitation of political prisoners. Six years later, on 25 January 1960, the Gulag system was officially abolished when the remains of its administration were dissolved by Khrushchev. The legal practice of sentencing convicts to penal labor continues to exist in the Russian Federation , but its capacity is greatly reduced. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , winner of
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4512-631: The Kremlin as a close associate of Stalin) to Moscow and enrolling in the Stalin Industrial Academy . Khrushchev never completed his studies there, but his career in the Party flourished. When the school's Party cell elected a number of rightists to an upcoming district Party conference, the cell was attacked in Pravda . Khrushchev emerged victorious in the ensuing power struggle, becoming Party secretary of
4653-485: The Lena Goldfields massacre , and was hired to mend underground equipment by a mine in nearby Ruchenkovo, where his father was the union organizer, and he helped distribute copies and organize public readings of Pravda . He later stated that he considered emigrating to the United States for better wages, but did not do so. He later recalled his working days: I started working as soon as I learned how to walk. Until
4794-523: The Moscow city Party organization , and in 1934, he became Party leader for the city and a member of the Party's Central Committee . Khrushchev attributed his rapid rise to his acquaintance with fellow Academy student Nadezhda Alliluyeva , Stalin's wife. In his memoirs, Khrushchev stated that Alliluyeva spoke well of him to her husband. His biographer, William Tompson, downplays the possibility, stating that Khrushchev
4935-555: The Nobel Prize in Literature , who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to " a chain of islands ", and as an eyewitness, he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates (simply referred to as "camps") and 423 labor colonies in
5076-552: The Russian Civil War , officials accused of corruption, sabotage and embezzlement, political enemies, dissidents and other people deemed dangerous for the state. In the first decade of Soviet rule, the judicial and penal systems were neither unified nor coordinated, and there was a distinction between criminal prisoners and political or "special" prisoners. The "traditional" judicial and prison system, which dealt with criminal prisoners, were first overseen by The People's Commissariat of Justice until 1922, after which they were overseen by
5217-558: The Russian Empire both used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga , a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment: confinement, simplified facilities (as opposed to the facilities which existed in prisons), and forced labor, usually involving hard, unskilled or semi-skilled work. According to historian Anne Applebaum , katorga
5358-519: The Sovnarkom order 22 p. 248 dated April 7, 1930. It was renamed as the GULAG in November of that year. The hypothesis that economic considerations were responsible for mass arrests during the period of Stalinism has been refuted on the grounds of former Soviet archives that have become accessible since the 1990s, although some archival sources also tend to support an economic hypothesis. In any case,
5499-427: The death of Stalin , the Soviet establishment started to dismantle the Gulag system. A mass general amnesty was granted in the immediate aftermath of Stalin's death, but it was only offered to non-political prisoners and political prisoners who had been sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison. Shortly thereafter, Nikita Khrushchev was elected First Secretary , initiating the processes of de-Stalinization and
5640-567: The tekhnikum that was designed to bring undereducated students to high-school level, a prerequisite for entry into the tekhnikum . While enrolled in the rabfak , Khrushchev continued his work at the Rutchenkovo mine. One of his teachers later described him as a poor student. He was more successful in advancing in the Communist Party ; soon after his admission to the rabfak in August 1922, he
5781-565: The 1920s, based on Trotsky 's experiments with forced labor camps for Czech war prisoners from 1918 and his proposals to introduce "compulsory labor service" voiced in Terrorism and Communism . These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist or Hitler camps, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1 . Various categories of prisoners were defined: petty criminals, POWs of
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5922-487: The 37th Army. Later, the Fifth Army also perished ... All of this was senseless, and from the military point of view, a display of ignorance, incompetence, and illiteracy. ... There you have the result of not taking a step backward. We were unable to save these troops because we didn't withdraw them, and as a result, we simply lost them. ... And yet it was possible to allow this not to happen. In 1942, Khrushchev
6063-683: The Chief Administration of Camps for Highway Construction destroyed ninety-four trucks in just three years. But the greatest problem was simple – forced labor was less efficient than free labor. In fact, prisoners in the Gulag were, on average, half as productive as free laborers in the USSR at the time, which may be partially explained by malnutrition. To make up for this disparity, the NKVD worked prisoners harder than ever. To meet rising demand, prisoners worked longer and longer hours, and on lower food-rations than ever before. A camp administrator said in
6204-495: The GULAG. According to the estimates, in total, during the whole period of the existence of the GUPVI, there were over 500 POW camps (within the Soviet Union and abroad), which imprisoned over 4,000,000 POW. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of political prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time. Petty crimes and jokes about the Soviet government and officials were punishable by imprisonment. About half of political prisoners in
6345-476: The Germans had driven deep into the Soviet flanks, and the Red Army troops were in danger of being cut off. Stalin refused to halt the offensive, and the Red Army divisions were soon encircled by the Germans. The USSR lost about 267,000 soldiers, including more than 200,000 captured, and Stalin demoted Timoshenko and recalled Khrushchev to Moscow. While Stalin hinted at arresting and executing Khrushchev, he allowed
6486-467: The Germans intended an attack—a claim dismissed by his biographer Taubman as "almost certainly exaggerated". He accompanied Soviet troops as they took Kiev in November 1943, entering the shattered city as Soviet forces drove out German troops. As Soviet forces met with greater success, driving the Nazis westwards towards Germany, Nikita Khrushchev became increasingly involved in reconstruction work in Ukraine. He
6627-466: The Gulag camps were imprisoned " by administrative means ", i.e., without trial at courts; official data suggest that there were over 2.6 million sentences to imprisonment on cases investigated by the secret police throughout 1921–53. Maximum sentences varied depending on the type of crime and changed over time. From 1953, the maximum sentence for petty theft was six months, having previously been one year and seven years. Theft of state property however, had
6768-453: The Gulag in 1928–1953. A further 6–7 million were deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR , and 4–5 million passed through labor colonies , plus 3.5 million who were already in, or had been sent to, labor settlements . According to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953. According to other estimates, at the beginning of 1953
6909-422: The Gulag into 380 special colonies which produced tanks, aircraft, armaments, and ammunition. Despite its low capital costs, the camp economy suffered from serious flaws. For one, actual productivity almost never matched estimates: the estimates proved far too optimistic. In addition, scarcity of machinery and tools plagued the camps and the tools that the camps did have quickly broke. The Eastern Siberian Trust of
7050-431: The Gulag system expanded dramatically to create a Soviet "camp economy". Right before the war, forced labor provided 46.5% of the nation's nickel , 76% of its tin , 40% of its cobalt , 40.5% of its chrome-iron ore, 60% of its gold, and 25.3% of its timber. And in preparation for war, the NKVD put up many more factories and built highways and railroads. The Gulag quickly switched to the production of arms and supplies for
7191-428: The Gulag system founders was Naftaly Frenkel . In 1923, he was arrested for illegally crossing borders and smuggling. He was sentenced to 10 years' hard labor at Solovki , which later came to be known as the "first camp of the Gulag". While serving his sentence he wrote a letter to the camp administration detailing a number of "productivity improvement" proposals including the infamous system of labor exploitation whereby
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#17328764926657332-458: The OGPU started to recruit people within the colony to help stop people who attempted to leave, and set up ambushes around known popular escape routes. The OGPU also attempted to raise the living conditions in these camps that would not encourage people to actively try and escape, and Kulaks were promised that they would regain their rights after five years. Even these revisions ultimately failed to resolve
7473-511: The OGPU. In 1928, there were 30,000 individuals interned; the authorities were opposed to compelled labor. In 1927, the official in charge of prison administration wrote: The exploitation of prison labour, the system of squeezing "golden sweat" from them, the organisation of production in places of confinement, which while profitable from a commercial point of view is fundamentally lacking in corrective significance – these are entirely inadmissible in Soviet places of confinement. The legal base and
7614-571: The Party were not immune; the Central Committee of Ukraine was so devastated that it could not convene a quorum. After Khrushchev's arrival, the pace of arrests accelerated. All but one member of the Ukrainian Politburo Organizational Bureau and Secretariat were arrested. Almost all government officials and Red Army commanders were replaced. During the first few months after Khrushchev's arrival, almost everyone arrested
7755-508: The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, also known as the NKVD . The Cheka and its successor organizations, the GPU or State Political Directorate and the OGPU , oversaw political prisoners and the "special" camps to which they were sent. In April 1929, the judicial distinctions between criminal and political prisoners were eliminated, and control of the entire Soviet penal system turned over to
7896-472: The Red Army. Other Ukrainians joined partisan forces, seeking an independent Ukraine. Khrushchev rushed from district to district through Ukraine, urging the depleted labor force to greater efforts. He made a short visit to his birthplace of Kalinovka, finding a starving population, with only a third of the men who had joined the Red Army having returned. Khrushchev did what he could to assist his hometown. Despite Khrushchev's efforts, in 1945, Ukrainian industry
8037-590: The Russian word trushchoba , meaning "slum". In 1995, almost 60,000,000 residents of the former Soviet Union still lived in these buildings. In his new positions, Khrushchev continued his kolkhoz consolidation scheme, which decreased the number of collective farms in Moscow Oblast by about 70%. This resulted in farms that were too large for one chairman to manage effectively. Khrushchev also sought to implement his agro-town proposal, but when his lengthy speech on
8178-463: The Soviet Union. Many mining and industrial towns and cities in northern Russia, eastern Russia and Kazakhstan such as Karaganda , Norilsk , Vorkuta and Magadan , were blocks of camps which were originally built by prisoners and subsequently run by ex-prisoners. GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное управле́ние испави́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps ). It
8319-430: The Soviet state system and preserve and strengthen their positions within their social base, the working class (when the Bolsheviks took power, peasants represented 80% of the population). In the midst of the Russian Civil War , Lenin and the Bolsheviks established a "special" prison camp system, separate from its traditional prison system and under the control of the Cheka . These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had
8460-518: The Ukrainian Central Committee removed Khrushchev as party leader in favor of Kaganovich, while retaining him as premier. Soon after Kaganovich arrived in Kiev, Khrushchev fell ill and was barely seen until September 1947. In his memoirs, Khrushchev indicates he had pneumonia; some biographers have theorized that Khrushchev's illness was entirely political, out of fear that his loss of position
8601-608: The Ukrainian people as a whole. I won't elaborate further on this theme, but in principle, it's very easy to demonstrate. I'm Russian myself, and I don't want to offend the Russians. From mid-December 1949, Khrushchev served as head of the Party in Moscow city and province. His biographer Taubman suggests that Stalin most likely recalled Khrushchev to Moscow to balance the influence of Georgy Malenkov and security chief Lavrentiy Beria , who were widely seen as Stalin's heirs. The aging leader rarely called Politburo meetings. Instead, much of
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#17328764926658742-513: The West and published in part in 1970. Khrushchev died from a heart attack in 1971. Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894, in Kalinovka , a village in what is now Russia's Kursk Oblast (then Kursk Governorate ), near the present Ukrainian border. His parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Kseniya Khrushcheva, were poor Russian peasants, and had a daughter two years Nikita's junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev
8883-521: The age of fifteen, I worked as a shepherd. I tended, as the foreigners say when they use the Russian language, "the little cows," I was a sheepherder, I herded cows for a capitalist, and that was before I was fifteen. After that, I worked at a factory for a German, and I worked in a French-owned mine, I worked at a Belgian-owned chemical factory, and [now] I'm the Prime Minister of the great Soviet state. And I am in no way ashamed of my past because all work
9024-428: The area. At that time, the movement was split by Lenin 's New Economic Policy . While Khrushchev's responsibility lay in political affairs, he involved himself in the practicalities of resuming full production at the mine after the chaos of the war years. He helped restart the machines (key parts and papers had been removed by the pre-Soviet mine-owners) and he wore his old mine outfit for inspection tours. Khrushchev
9165-410: The army after fighting began. At first, transportation remained a priority. In 1940, the NKVD focused most of its energy on railroad construction. This would prove extremely important when the German advance into the Soviet Union started in 1941. In addition, factories converted to produce ammunition, uniforms, and other supplies. Moreover, the NKVD gathered skilled workers and specialists from throughout
9306-488: The camps and another 154,000 exiled. This was only the beginning of the dekulakisation process, however. In 1931 alone, 1,803,392 people were exiled. Although these massive relocation processes were successful in getting a large potential free forced labor work force where they needed to be, that is about all it was successful at doing. The " special settlers ", as the Soviet government referred to them, all lived on starvation level rations, and many people starved to death in
9447-412: The camps, and anyone who was healthy enough to escape tried to do just that. This resulted in the government having to give rations to a group of people they were getting hardly any use out of, and was just costing the Soviet government money. The Unified State Political Administration (OGPU) quickly realised the problem, and began to reform the dekulakisation process. To help prevent the mass escapes
9588-618: The captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers were then murdered (see Katyn massacre ) or sent to Gulag. Of the 10,000–12,000 Poles sent to Kolyma in 1940–41, most prisoners of war , only 583 men survived, released in 1942 to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East . Out of General Anders ' 80,000 evacuees from Soviet Union gathered in Great Britain only 310 volunteered to return to Soviet-controlled Poland in 1947. During
9729-545: The city be abandoned, the Red Army was soon encircled by the Germans . While the Germans stated they took 655,000 prisoners, according to the Soviets, 150,541 men out of 677,085 escaped. Primary sources differ on Khrushchev's involvement. According to Marshal Georgy Zhukov , writing some years after Khrushchev fired and disgraced him in 1957, Khrushchev persuaded Stalin not to evacuate troops from Kiev. However, Khrushchev noted in his memoirs that he and Marshal Semyon Budyonny proposed redeploying Soviet forces to avoid
9870-516: The civil war ended, and Khrushchev was demobilized and assigned as commissar to a labor brigade in the Donbas, where he and his men lived in poor conditions. The wars had caused widespread devastation and famine, and one of the victims was Khrushchev's wife, Yefrosinia, who died of typhus in Kalinovka while Khrushchev was in the army. The commissar returned for the funeral and, loyal to his Bolshevik principles , refused to allow his wife's coffin to enter
10011-510: The commissar to return to the front by sending him to Stalingrad . Khrushchev reached the Stalingrad Front in August 1942, soon after the start of the battle for the city . His role in the Stalingrad defense was not major—General Vasily Chuikov , who led the city's defense, mentions Khrushchev only briefly in a memoir published while Khrushchev was premier—but to the end of his life, he
10152-498: The confession in his stride, and, after initially advising Khrushchev to keep it quiet, suggested that Khrushchev tell his tale to the Moscow party conference. Khrushchev did so, to applause, and was immediately reelected to his post. Khrushchev related in his memoirs that he was also denounced by an arrested colleague. Stalin told Khrushchev of the accusation personally. Khrushchev speculated in his memoirs that had Stalin doubted his reaction, he would have been categorized as an enemy of
10293-530: The construction and spent much of his time down in the tunnels. When the inevitable accidents did occur, they were depicted as heroic sacrifices in a great cause. The Metro did not open until 1 May 1935, but Khrushchev received the Order of Lenin for his role in its construction. Later that year, he was selected as First Secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee which was responsible for Moscow oblast ,
10434-659: The cuts, Khrushchev's time in office saw the tensest years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. As leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev enjoyed considerable popularity throughout the 1950s due to the successful launching of Sputnik and victorious outcomes in the Suez Crisis , the Syrian Crisis of 1957 , and the 1960 U-2 incident . By the early 1960s, however, support for Khrushchev's leadership
10575-554: The development of the camp system followed economic lines. The growth of the camp system coincided with the peak of the Soviet industrialisation campaign. Most of the camps established to accommodate the masses of incoming prisoners were assigned distinct economic tasks. These included the exploitation of natural resources and the colonization of remote areas, as well as the realisation of enormous infrastructural facilities and industrial construction projects. The plan to achieve these goals with " special settlements " instead of labor camps
10716-549: The elderly, sending them to the eastern parts of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev viewed this policy as very effective and recommended its adoption elsewhere to Stalin. He also worked to impose collectivization on Western Ukraine. Lack of resources and armed resistance by partisans slowed the process. The partisans, many of whom fought as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), were gradually defeated, as Soviet police and military reported killing 110,825 "bandits" and capturing
10857-412: The encirclement until Marshal Semyon Timoshenko arrived from Moscow with orders for the troops to hold their positions. Early Khrushchev biographer Mark Frankland suggested that Khrushchev's faith in his leader was first shaken by the Red Army's setbacks. Khrushchev stated in his memoirs: But let me return to the enemy breakthrough in the Kiev area, the encirclement of our group, and the destruction of
10998-724: The end of 1947, Kaganovich had been recalled to Moscow and the recovered Khrushchev had been restored to the First Secretaryship. He then resigned the Ukrainian premiership in favor of Demyan Korotchenko , Khrushchev's protégé. Khrushchev's final years in Ukraine were generally peaceful, with industry recovering, Soviet forces overcoming the partisans, and 1947 and 1948 seeing better-than-expected harvests. Collectivization advanced in Western Ukraine, and Khrushchev implemented more policies that encouraged collectivization and discouraged private farms. These sometimes backfired, however:
11139-503: The entire Soviet Union, but also the lack of central aid to the Gulag during the war. The central government focused all its attention on the military and left the camps to their own devices. In 1942, the Gulag set up the Supply Administration to find their own food and industrial goods. During this time, not only did food become scarce, but the NKVD limited rations in an attempt to motivate the prisoners to work harder for more food,
11280-686: The fact that the few mentions of Khrushchev in military memoirs published during the Brezhnev era were generally favorable, at a time when it was "barely possible to mention Khrushchev in print in any context". Tompson suggests that these favorable mentions indicate that military officers held Khrushchev in high regard. Almost all of Ukraine had been occupied by the Germans, and Khrushchev returned to his domain in late 1943 to find devastation. Ukraine's industry had been destroyed, and agriculture faced critical shortages. Even though millions of Ukrainians had been taken to Germany as workers or prisoners of war, there
11421-409: The full official name of the agency changed several times . The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union . The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners , a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extrajudicial punishment . In 1918–1922, the agency was administered by
11562-490: The government. The Soviet government sought to collect as much grain as possible to supply communist allies in Eastern Europe. Khrushchev set the quotas at a high level, leading Stalin to expect an unrealistically large quantity of grain from Ukraine. Food was rationed—but non-agricultural rural workers throughout the USSR were given no ration cards. The inevitable starvation was largely confined to remote rural regions and
11703-461: The guidance for the creation of the system of "corrective labor camps" ( исправи́тельно-трудовые лагеря , Ispravitel'no-trudovye lagerya ), the backbone of what is commonly referred to as the "Gulag", was a secret decree from the Sovnarkom of July 11, 1929, about the use of penal labor that duplicated the corresponding appendix to the minutes of the Politburo meeting of June 27, 1929. One of
11844-453: The high-level work of government took place at dinners hosted by Stalin for his inner circle of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov , Vyacheslav Molotov , and Nikolai Bulganin . Khrushchev took early naps so that he would not fall asleep in Stalin's presence; he noted in his memoirs, "Things went badly for those who dozed off at Stalin's table." In 1950, Khrushchev began
11985-399: The inmates' food rations were to be linked to their rate of production, a proposal known as nourishment scale (шкала питания). This notorious you-eat-as-you-work system would often kill weaker prisoners in weeks and caused countless casualties. The letter caught the attention of a number of high communist officials including Genrikh Yagoda and Frenkel soon went from being an inmate to becoming
12126-419: The intelligentsia derive from the extrapolations of Viktor Zemskov from a collection of prison camp population movements data. On the eve of World War II, Soviet archives indicate a combined camp and colony population upwards of 1.6 million in 1939, according to V. P. Kozlov. Anne Applebaum and Steven Rosefielde estimate that 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in Gulag system's prison camps and colonies when
12267-562: The lift operator at the Rutchenkovo mine. In 1915, they had a daughter, Yulia, and in 1917, a son, Leonid. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, the new Russian Provisional Government in Petrograd had little influence over Ukraine. Khrushchev was elected to the worker's council (or soviet ) in Rutchenkovo, and in May he became its chairman. He did not join the Bolsheviks until 1918,
12408-455: The local church. With the only way into the churchyard through the church, he had the coffin lifted and passed over the fence into the burial ground, shocking the village. Through the intervention of a friend, Khrushchev was assigned in 1921 as assistant director for political affairs for the Rutchenkovo mine in the Donbas region, where he had previously worked. There were as yet few Bolsheviks in
12549-470: The mercenary, fascist dogs of the Trotskyite- Zinovievite gang. That word is execution. Khrushchev assisted in the purge of many friends and colleagues in the Moscow oblast . Of 38 top Party officials in Moscow city and province, 35 were killed —the three survivors were transferred to other parts of the USSR. Of the 146 Party secretaries of cities and districts outside Moscow city in
12690-531: The multiple passages of the notorious Article 58 of the Criminal Codes of the Union republics, which defined punishment for various forms of "counterrevolutionary activities". Under NKVD Order No. 00447 , tens of thousands of Gulag inmates were executed in 1937–38 for "continuing counterrevolutionary activities". Between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased more than eight times, and
12831-530: The nineteenth century, the members of the failed Decembrist revolt and Polish nobles who resisted Russian rule were sent into exile. Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to die for reading banned literature in 1849, but the sentence was commuted to banishment to Siberia. Members of various socialist revolutionary groups, including Bolsheviks such as Sergo Ordzhonikidze , Vladimir Lenin , Leon Trotsky , and Joseph Stalin were also sent into exile. Convicts who were serving labor sentences and exiles were sent to
12972-437: The number of prisoners with high education increased five times. It resulted in their increased share in the overall composition of the camp prisoners. Among the camp prisoners, the number and share of the intelligentsia was growing at the quickest pace. Distrust, hostility, and even hatred for the intelligentsia was a common characteristic of the Soviet leaders. Information regarding the imprisonment trends and consequences for
13113-407: The other annexed lands, regardless of their ethnic origin, were arrested and sent to the Gulag camps. However, according to the official data, the total number of sentences for political and anti-state (espionage, terrorism) crimes in the USSR in 1939–41 was 211,106. Approximately 300,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the "Polish Defensive War" . Almost all of
13254-667: The people then and there. Nonetheless, Khrushchev became a candidate member of the Politburo on 14 January 1938 and a full member in March 1939. In late 1937, Stalin appointed Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party in Ukraine . Khrushchev left Moscow for Kiev, again the Ukrainian capital, in January 1938. Ukraine had been the site of extensive purges, with the murdered including professors in Stalino whom Khrushchev greatly respected. The high ranks of
13395-518: The prison system that was still under the purview of the NKVD . The purpose of these new camps was to colonise the remote and inhospitable environments throughout the Soviet Union. These changes took place around the same time that Stalin started to institute collectivisation and rapid industrial development. Collectivisation resulted in a large scale purge of peasants and so-called Kulaks . The Kulaks were supposedly wealthy, comparatively to other Soviet peasants, and were considered to be capitalists by
13536-432: The problem, and the dekulakisation process was a failure in providing the government with a steady forced labor force. These prisoners were also lucky to be in the gulag in the early 1930s. Prisoners were relatively well off compared to what the prisoners would have to go through in the final years of the gulag. The Gulag was officially established on April 25, 1930, as the GULAG by the OGPU order 130/63 in accordance with
13677-612: The province, only 10 survived the purges. In his memoirs, Khrushchev noted that almost everyone who worked with him was arrested. By Party protocol, Khrushchev was required to approve these arrests and did little or nothing to save his friends and colleagues. Party leaders were given numerical quotas of "enemies" to be turned in and arrested. In June 1937, the Politburo set a quota of 35,000 enemies to be arrested in Moscow province; 5,000 of these were to be executed. In reply, Khrushchev asked that 2,000 wealthy peasants, or kulaks living in Moscow be killed in part fulfillment of
13818-400: The purges there. During what was known as the Great Patriotic War , Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the defense of Stalingrad , a fact he took great pride in. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. On 5 March 1953, Stalin's death triggered
13959-535: The quota. In any event, only two weeks after receiving the order, Khrushchev was able to report to Stalin that 41,305 "criminal and kulak elements" had been arrested. Of the arrestees, according to Khrushchev, 8,500 deserved execution. Khrushchev had no reason to think himself immune from the purges, and in 1937, confessed his own 1923 dalliance with Trotskyism to Kaganovich, who, according to Khrushchev, "blanched" (for his protégé's sins could affect his own standing) and advised him to tell Stalin. The dictator took
14100-501: The reliability of such data heavily rely on memoir sources that come to higher estimations. Archival researchers have found "no plan of destruction" of the gulag population and no statement of official intent to kill them, and prisoner releases vastly exceeded the number of deaths in the Gulag. This policy can partially be attributed to the common practice of releasing prisoners who were suffering from incurable diseases as well as prisoners who were near death. Almost immediately after
14241-519: The school, arranging for the delegates to be withdrawn, and, afterward, purging the cell of the rightists. Khrushchev rose rapidly through the Party ranks, first becoming Party leader for the Bauman district, site of the academy, before taking the same position in the Krasnopresnensky district, the capital's largest and most important. By 1932, Khrushchev had become second in command, behind Kaganovich, of
14382-410: The state, and by extension enemies of socialism. The term would also become associated with anyone who opposed or even seemed unsatisfied with the Soviet government. By late 1929, Stalin began a program known as dekulakization . Stalin demanded that the kulak class be completely wiped out, resulting in the imprisonment and execution of Soviet peasants. In a mere four months, 60,000 people were sent to
14523-405: The subject was published in Pravda in March 1951, Stalin disapproved of it. The periodical quickly published a note stating that Khrushchev's speech was merely a proposal, not policy. In April, the Politburo disavowed the agro-town proposal. Khrushchev feared that Stalin would remove him from office, but the leader mocked Khrushchev, then allowed the episode to pass. On 1 March 1953, Stalin had
14664-426: The tenets of Bolshevism, and promoting troop morale and battle readiness. Beginning as commissar to a construction platoon, Khrushchev rose to become commissar to a construction battalion and was sent from the front for a two-month political course. The young commissar came under fire many times, though many of the war stories he would tell in later life dealt more with cultural awkwardness rather than combat. In 1921,
14805-426: The term katorga works ( каторжные работы ) was reintroduced. They were initially intended for Nazi collaborators , but then other categories of political prisoners (for example, members of deported peoples who fled from exile) were also sentenced to "katorga works". Prisoners sentenced to "katorga works" were sent to Gulag prison camps with the most harsh regime and many of them perished. Up until World War II,
14946-463: The term Gulag was originally used in reference to a government agency, in English and many other languages, the acronym acquired the qualities of a common noun, denoting the Soviet system of prison -based, unfree labor . Even more broadly, "Gulag" has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the "meat-grinder": the arrests, the interrogations,
15087-704: The total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465,000 were political prisoners. Between the years 1934 to 1953, 20% to 40% of the Gulag population in each given year were released. The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the formal distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. GUPVI (ГУПВИ) was the Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees ( Главное управление по делам военнопленных и интернированных , [Glavnoye upravleniye po delam voyennoplennyh i internirovannyh] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) ),
15228-434: The transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths. Western authors use the term Gulag to denote all the prisons and internment camps in the Soviet Union. The term's contemporary usage is at times notably not directly related to the USSR, such as in the expression " North Korea's Gulag " for camps operational today. The word Gulag
15369-460: The underpopulated areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East – regions that lacked towns or food sources as well as organized transportation systems. Despite the isolated conditions, some prisoners successfully escaped to populated areas. Stalin himself escaped three of the four times after he was sent into exile. Since these times, Siberia gained its fearful connotation as a place of punishment,
15510-624: The war started. After the German invasion of Poland that marked the start of World War II in Europe, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed eastern parts of the Second Polish Republic . In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , Bessarabia (now the Republic of Moldova) and Bukovina . According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens and inhabitants of
15651-510: Was a freethinker who upset the villagers by not attending church, and when her brother visited, he gave Khrushchev books which had been banned by the Imperial Government. She urged Nikita to seek further education, but family finances did not permit this. In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka; fourteen-year-old Nikita followed later that year, while Kseniya Khrushcheva and her daughter came after. Yuzovka, which
15792-589: Was a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union . The word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin 's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era . The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for " Г ла́вное У правле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х ЛАГ ере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps ), but
15933-409: Was able to take control of the government, and began to form the gulag system. On June 27, 1929, the Politburo created a system of self-supporting camps that would eventually replace the existing prisons around the country. These prisons were meant to receive inmates that received a prison sentence that exceeded three years. Prisoners who had a shorter prison sentence than three years were to remain in
16074-506: Was appointed Premier of the Ukrainian SSR in addition to his earlier party post, one of the rare instances in which the Ukrainian party and civil leader posts were held by one person. According to Khrushchev biographer William Tompson, it is difficult to assess Khrushchev's war record, since he most often acted as part of a military council, and it is not possible to know the extent to which he influenced decisions. However, Tompson points to
16215-440: Was appointed party secretary of the entire tekhnikum , and became a member of the bureau—the governing council—of the party committee for the town of Yuzovka (renamed Stalino in 1924). He briefly joined supporters of Leon Trotsky against those of Joseph Stalin over the question of party democracy. All of these activities left him with little time for his schoolwork, and while he later said he had finished his rabfak studies, it
16356-402: Was at only a quarter of pre-war levels, and the harvest actually dropped from that of 1944, when the entire territory of Ukraine had not yet been retaken. In an effort to increase agricultural production, the kolkhozes (collective farms) were empowered to expel residents who were not pulling their weight. Kolkhoz leaders used this as an excuse to expel their personal enemies, invalids, and
16497-470: Was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War . Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich , Khrushchev worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He originally supported Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR , and he continued
16638-467: Was born in 1929, son Sergei in 1935 and daughter Elena in 1937. In mid-1925, Khrushchev was appointed Party secretary of the Petrovo-Marinsky raikom , or district, near Stalino. The raikom was about 1,000 square kilometres (400 sq mi) in area, and Khrushchev was constantly on the move throughout his domain, taking an interest in even minor matters. In late 1925, Khrushchev was elected
16779-663: Was difficult to keep them all straight. In March 1918, as the Bolshevik government concluded a separate peace with the Central Powers , the Germans occupied the Donbas and Khrushchev fled to Kalinovka. In late 1918 or early 1919, he was mobilized into the Red Army as a political commissar . The post of political commissar had recently been introduced as the Bolsheviks came to rely less on worker activists and more on military recruits; its functions included indoctrination of recruits in
16920-459: Was dropped after the revealing of the Nazino affair in 1933. The 1931–32 archives indicate the Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; while in 1935, approximately 800,000 were in camps and 300,000 in colonies. Gulag population reached a peak value (1.5 million) in 1941, gradually decreased during the war and then started to grow again, achieving a maximum by 1953. Besides Gulag camps,
17061-574: Was due to Khrushchev's instigation. Kaganovich transferred Khrushchev to Kharkov , then the capital of Ukraine, as head of the Organizational Department of the Ukrainian Party's Central Committee. In 1928, Khrushchev was transferred to Kiev , where he served as head of the organizational department, second-in-command of the Party organization there. In 1929, Khrushchev again sought to further his education, following Kaganovich (now in
17202-455: Was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, and laboring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, and Sergei Khrushchev generally left his family in Kalinovka, returning when he had enough money. When Nikita was six or seven, the family moved to Yuzovka (now Donetsk , Ukraine) for about
17343-489: Was executed. Biographer William Taubman suggested that because Khrushchev was again unsuccessfully denounced while in Kiev, he must have known that some of the denunciations were not true and that innocent people were suffering. In 1939, Khrushchev addressed the Fourteenth Ukrainian Party Congress, saying "Comrades, we must unmask and relentlessly destroy all enemies of the people. But we must not allow
17484-529: Was highly successful at the Rutchenkovo mine, and in mid-1922 he was offered the directorship of the nearby Pastukhov mine. However, he refused the offer, seeking to be assigned to the newly established technical college ( tekhnikum ) in Yuzovka, though his superiors were reluctant to let him go. As he had only four years of formal schooling, he applied to the training program ( rabfak , short for Рабочий факультет / Rabotchyi Fakultyet, or Worker's Faculty) attached to
17625-434: Was his plane found or body recovered. One theory has Leonid surviving the crash and collaborating with the Germans, and when he was recaptured by the Soviets, Stalin ordering him shot despite Khrushchev pleading for his life. This supposed killing is used to explain why Khrushchev later denounced Stalin. While there is no supporting evidence for this account in Soviet files, some historians allege that Leonid Khrushchev's file
17766-475: Was insufficient housing for those who remained. One out of every six Ukrainians were killed in World War II. Khrushchev sought to reconstruct Ukraine and complete the interrupted work of imposing the Soviet system on it, though he hoped that the purges of the 1930s would not recur. As Ukraine was recovered militarily, conscription was imposed; 750,000 men aged between nineteen and fifty were sent to join
17907-475: Was launched, Khrushchev spent much time checking on troop readiness and morale, interrogating Nazi prisoners, and recruiting some for propaganda purposes. Soon after Stalingrad, Khrushchev met with personal tragedy, as his son Leonid , a fighter pilot , was apparently shot down and killed in action on 11 March 1943. The circumstances of Leonid's death remain obscure and controversial, as none of his fellow fliers stated that they witnessed him being shot down, nor
18048-589: Was little noticed outside the USSR. Khrushchev, realizing the desperate situation in late 1946, repeatedly appealed to Stalin for aid, to be met with anger and resistance. When letters to Stalin had no effect, Khrushchev flew to Moscow and made his case in person. Stalin finally gave Ukraine limited food aid, and money to set up free soup kitchens . However, Khrushchev's political standing had been damaged, and in February 1947, Stalin suggested that Lazar Kaganovich be sent to Ukraine to "help" Khrushchev. The following month,
18189-514: Was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. Under the Imperial Russian penal system, those who were convicted of less serious crimes were sent to corrective prisons and they were also made to work. Forced exile to Siberia had been in use for a wide range of offenses since the seventeenth century and it was a common punishment for political dissidents and revolutionaries. In
18330-423: Was not often used in Russian, either officially or colloquially; the predominant terms were the camps (лагеря, lagerya ) and the zone (зона, zona ), usually singular, for the labor camp system and for the individual camps. The official term, " correctional labour camp ", was suggested for official use by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the session of July 27, 1929. The Tsar and
18471-523: Was on the Southwest Front, and he and Timoshenko proposed a massive counteroffensive in the Kharkov area. Stalin approved only part of the plan, but 640,000 Red Army soldiers were involved in the offensive. The Germans, however, had deduced that the Soviets were likely to attack at Kharkov , and set a trap. Beginning on 12 May 1942, the Soviet offensive initially appeared successful, but within five days
18612-402: Was proud of his role. Though he visited Stalin in Moscow on occasion, he remained in Stalingrad for much of the battle and was nearly killed at least once. He proposed a counterattack , only to find that Georgy Zhukov and other generals had already planned Operation Uranus , a plan to break out from Soviet positions and encircle and destroy the Germans; it was being kept secret. Before Uranus
18753-460: Was renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961, was at the heart of one of the most industrialized areas of the Russian Empire. After working briefly in other fields, Khrushchev's parents found Nikita a place as a metal fitter's apprentice. Upon completing that apprenticeship, the teenage Khrushchev was hired by a factory. He lost that job when he collected money for the families of the victims of
18894-513: Was renamed several times, e.g., to Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Colonies ( Главное управление исправительно-трудовых колоний (ГУИТК) ), which names can be seen in the documents describing the subordination of various camps. Some historians estimate that 14 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953 (the estimates for the period from 1918 to 1929 are more difficult to calculate). Other calculations, by historian Orlando Figes , refer to 25 million prisoners of
19035-550: Was significantly eroded by domestic policy failures and his mishandling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such developments emboldened his political rivals who quietly rose in strength and ultimately deposed him in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the deadly fate of the losers of previous Soviet power struggles and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside. His lengthy memoirs were smuggled to
19176-488: Was still at his post in Kiev. Stalin appointed him a political commissar, and Khrushchev served on a number of fronts as an intermediary between the local military commanders and the political rulers in Moscow. Stalin used Khrushchev to keep commanders on a tight leash, while the commanders sought to have him influence Stalin. As the Germans advanced, Khrushchev worked with the military to defend and save Kiev. Handicapped by orders from Stalin that under no circumstances should
19317-436: Was tampered with after the war. In later years, Leonid Khrushchev's wingmate stated that he saw his plane disintegrate, but did not report it. Khrushchev biographer Taubman speculates that this omission was most likely to avoid the possibility of being seen as complicit in the death of the son of a Politburo member. In mid-1943, Leonid's wife, Liuba Khrushcheva, was arrested on accusations of spying and sentenced to five years in
19458-417: Was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both camp systems were similar: hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, and high mortality rate. For the Soviet political prisoners, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , all foreign civilian detainees and foreign POWs were imprisoned in the GULAG; the surviving foreign civilians and POWs considered themselves prisoners in
19599-491: Was the first step towards downfall and demise. However, Khrushchev's children remembered their father as having been seriously ill. Once Khrushchev was able to get out of bed, he and his family took their first vacation since before the war, to a beachfront resort in Latvia . Khrushchev, though, soon broke the beach routine with duck-hunting trips, and a visit to the new Soviet Kaliningrad , where he toured factories and quarries. By
19740-469: Was to ensure that the occupied areas voted for union with the USSR. Through a combination of propaganda, deception as to what was being voted for, and outright fraud, the Soviets ensured that the assemblies elected in the new territories would unanimously petition for union with the USSR. When the new assemblies did so, their petitions were granted by the USSR Supreme Soviet , and Western Ukraine became
19881-500: Was too low in the Party hierarchy to enjoy Stalin's patronage and that if influence was brought to bear on Khrushchev's career at this stage, it was by Kaganovich. While head of the Moscow city organization, Khrushchev superintended the construction of the Moscow Metro , a highly expensive undertaking, with Kaganovich in overall charge. Faced with an already-announced opening date of 7 November 1934, Khrushchev took considerable risks in
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