Nikita Sergeyevich AKA Khrushchev

Biography of one of the most flamboyant figures of the 20th Century. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev's dramatic rise to power and his humiliating removal from office are depicted. In the early 1950s Khrushchev becomes leader of the Soviet Union. Replacing the cold, quiet scheming ways of the previous Lenin and Stalin regimes would be the administration of a boisterous, uneducated Ukrainian farmer unashamed of his Marxist roots and desire for world domination. But Khrushchev's dramatic denunciation of the revered Stalin in 1956 leads to a plot to remove him from office. He survives the coup attempt, and the Cold War heats up further as the Soviet dictator oversees the launching of Sputnik. the world's first space satellite, and he orders the Soviet invasion of Hungary to crush an anti-Communist revolt. He authorizes the building of the Berlin Wall in occupied East Berlin and publicly boasts to the West that "We will bury you!" However, Khrushchev's determination to spread Communism around the globe knows no limits and his installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba pushes the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. Shortly after the crisis ends Khrushchev's politics and personality are viewed as intolerable by Soviet hardliners and he is removed from power. But because of his political reforms Khrushchev faces a humiliating retirement instead of a firing squad. Sputnik, Hungary, the UN debate, Cuba, the Berlin Wall - all these symbols of the Cold War are dwarfed by the raised-fisted image of the most notorious symbol of the era - Khrushchev.