Gennady Zyuganov vs Nikita Khrushchev: Comparing Two Political Leaders

Who they are and where they stand

Gennady Zyuganov has led the CPRF since 1993. The party is the largest tolerated opposition force but operates within the Kremlin-managed political system, rarely challenging Putin on fundamental questions. Zyuganov ran for president multiple times, most seriously in 1996 against Yeltsin. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (1894–1971) led the Soviet Union as First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964, following Stalin's death, and as Premier from 1958 to 1964. His tenure was defined by the "Secret Speech" at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, in which he denounced Stalin's personality cult and the crimes of the purges in terms that shocked Soviet society and reverberated through the global communist movement. De-Stalinization released cultural energies — the "Khrushchev Thaw" allowed previously censored literature and some degree of open debate — and freed millions of Gulag prisoners. But it also triggered the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which Khrushchev crushed with Soviet tanks, killing approximately 2,500 Hungarians. The technological race with the US produced the Sputnik satellite launch (1957) and Yuri Gagarin's space flight (1961); the geopolitical competition brought the Berlin Wall (1961) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) — the closest the world came to nuclear war. His erratic diplomacy, his famous shoe-banging at the UN (1960), and his boast that the Soviet Union would "bury" the West made him a global figure of both menace and unintentional comedy. He was removed from power in a party coup in October 1964 while on vacation, the first Soviet leader to be peacefully ousted rather than dying in office.