Nikita Khrushchev

Where they went

4 related events

1. 1
   1957Launch of Sputnik 1related figure

   The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite. Shocked, the United States founded NASA, and the space race between the two powers began.

2. 2
   1960 – 1969Sino-Soviet Splitkey figure

   Disagreement between China and the Soviet Union over de-Stalinisation and peaceful coexistence led to the withdrawal of Soviet experts in 1960, open polemics in the 1960s and armed clashes on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River in 1969. The rift set the stage for China’s opening to the United States.

3. 3
   1961Construction of the Berlin Wallrelated figure

   Overnight, East Germany strung barbed wire and then built a wall between East and West Berlin. The Berlin Wall became the symbol of the Cold War and of division.

4. 4
   1962Cuban Missile Crisiskey figure

   When the US discovered Soviet nuclear missile sites under construction in Cuba it imposed a naval blockade. For thirteen days the world stood on the brink of nuclear war until the Soviets withdrew the missiles.

People who appear alongside

• John F. Kennedy1917 – 1963

  35th US president (1961–1963) who resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis and launched the Apollo programme; assassinated in Dallas in 1963

• Mao Zedong1893 – 1976

  Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

• Deng Xiaoping1904 – 1997

  General Secretary of the Communist Party (1956–1966), twice purged during the Cultural Revolution, and from 1978 China’s paramount leader who launched “reform and opening up”

• Fidel Castro1926 – 2016

  Leader of the 1959 Cuban Revolution who made Cuba a socialist state and ruled it until 2008

Themes this person appears in

• The Cold War1945 – 1991

  From Yalta to the dissolution of the Soviet Union — half a century in which two blocs led by the US and the USSR divided the world

• From the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution1927 – 1976

  From the collapse of the United Front in 1927, through rural bases, the Long March and Yan’an, to the Communists’ victory in the civil war and the founding of the People’s Republic — then land reform, the Great Leap Forward and famine, the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, up to Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, while the Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan

• The Division and Reunification of Germany1945 – 1990

  From Potsdam to 3 October 1990 — how a Germany occupied by four powers split into East and West, and reunited after 45 years