Question by Shan: How did Nikita Khrushchev differ from Stalin as premier and what was his influence in Cuba?
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Answer by Tyler Durden
Nikita Khrushchev was a much weaker and more ineffective leader than Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev caused the Cuban Missile Crisis.
EDIT: I wasn’t trying to demean Khrushchev. He did make a very unselfish decision during the Cuban Crisis. But lets not forget that he did install missiles first in Cuba. In essense, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of WWIII was HIS fault. That is why I said he was ineffective.
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Whortleberry says
Kruschev weaker and ineffectual? Well, true, he didn't order the thousands of Russian deaths that Stalin racked up in his numerous purges. But he made what in my opinion is one of the bravest and most unselfish moves in history, when he ordered the Russian ships away from Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was when JFK told him to move the ships or the US would bomb the missile sites in Cuba. Because Kruschev "backed down" and called the Russian ships home, he was belittled and criticized for a weakling in the USSR — in effect, he threw his political career away. And why? Because he knew that if JFK bombed Cuba, Russia MUST respond with bombs to the US, and voila! WW3, the one no one could win, or perhaps even survive.
Interesting note: Years after JFK's death, his physician stated that he prescribed for JFK's chronic back pain a pain-relief medication _that_gives_the_patient_the_feeling_of_invulnerability. So that answers the question many of us thought about during those horrible Missile Crisis days –the question being, What the @#$ %$ was JFK thinking, ordering another head of state to do or not do something. And suppose Kruschev had been on the same or similar meds? Well, we probably would not be having this conversation, because we probably would have been wiped out in the long-dreaded atomic war.