Latest news with #NikitaKhrushchev
Channel 4
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Channel 4
‘Hell will freeze' before Putin meets Zelenskyy, says Khrushchev's great-granddaughter
We are joined by Nina Khrushcheva, who's a Professor of International Affairs at the New School in New York and great-granddaughter of the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
The Hill
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Krushchev was rescuing Crimea when he made it Ukrainian — it must remain so
Even Ukraine's staunchest allies sometimes waver, tempted to suggest that Kyiv concede Crimea to Russia as the long-running war there wages on. They often fall prey to a persistent myth: that Crimea had been eternally Russian until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily 'gifted' the peninsula to Ukraine in 1954. Such proposals dangerously misread history. In truth, the Kremlin handed Crimea to Ukraine not out of benevolence but because a decade of disastrous Soviet policies had left the territory an economic and humanitarian disaster. As University of Cambridge professor Rory Finnin notes, 'The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was no mistake. It was a rescue.' During a visit to Crimea in October 1953, Khrushchev witnessed the devastation firsthand. Driving through the peninsula with his son-in-law, Aleksey Adzhubey — editor-in-chief of Izvestia and one of the Soviet Union's most influential journalists — Khrushchev encountered not only the ruins of the Crimean Tatar Bakhchysaray Palace but also vast stretches of barren land strewn with abandoned military hardware. Most telling were the desperate Russian settlers blocking the roads, pleading for water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Soviet archives show that the entire region, roughly the size of Massachusetts, had only 24 bread stores, 18 meat stores, and eight milk stores. According to Adzhubey, the settlers complained bitterly: 'Potatoes don't grow here, the cabbage is withering, and the bedbugs are eating us alive.' When Khrushchev asked why they had come, they answered simply: They had been 'tricked.' This grim tableau was the result of a centuries-long pattern. Since Russia's annexation of Crimea from the Crimean Tatar Khanate in 1783, successive Russian regimes systematically eradicated indigenous populations they deemed 'unreliable.' Tsar Alexander II ordered mass expulsions of Crimean Tatars in the 1850s. Stalin deported nearly 188,000 Crimean Tatars in 1944, along with approximately 90,000 Armenians, Bulgarians and Greeks. Tens of thousands died in exile. With the native agriculturalists gone, Russian settlers struggled to survive in Crimea's harsh, unfamiliar climate. Khrushchev understood that Crimea's salvation depended on reconnecting it to Ukraine's southern steppes and the life-giving Dnipro River, ties that had sustained the peninsula for millennia. Crimea had always relied on Ukrainian resources and trade, long before Russian conquest. Even during the major wars fought over Crimea — the Crimean War and World War II — ethnic Ukrainians formed the backbone of the Russian army and Black Sea Fleet. To justify the economic necessity politically, Khrushchev and the Communist Party leadership invoked the upcoming 300th anniversary of Ukraine's so-called 'reunification' with Russia. First, the Presidium of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a resolution proposing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. Then the USSR's central government — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — ratified the transfer on Feb.19, 1954, citing 'the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity, and the close economic and cultural ties between Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR.' Two months later, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet Constitution, officially transferring the Crimean Oblast from Russia to Ukraine. Ukraine's Communist leadership, under pressure from Moscow, agreed to the transfer — along with the immense burden of reviving the devastated region. Over the next decades, Ukraine poured resources into developing Crimea. In 1957, it launched the construction of the North Crimean Canal, completed in 1971, to bring water from the Dnipro River to the arid peninsula. Ukraine invested heavily in infrastructure, agriculture and tourism, building reservoirs, irrigating fields, establishing resorts and creating economic opportunities. Between 1954 and 1990, Ukraine invested close to five times more per capita in Crimea than in comparable regions elsewhere in the republic. These efforts bore fruit. By the time of Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum, 54 percent of Crimean voters — including 57 percent in Sevastopol — chose to remain part of an independent Ukraine. A subsequent poll by Baltic Surveys/Gallup showed 65 percent of respondents favoring Crimea's autonomy within Ukraine, with only 23 percent preferring union with Russia. Russia itself formally recognized Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea multiple times: through the 1991 Belovezhskaya Pushcha Accords that dissolved the USSR, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for nuclear disarmament, and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship between Ukraine and Russia. Any proposal to force Ukraine to cede Crimea ignores overwhelming geographical, historical, legal and moral realities. Crimea's reintegration into Ukraine is not only vital for justice but essential for long-term stability, economic prosperity and peace across the broader European region. Moreover, allowing Russia to retain Crimea would be a death knell for the Crimean Tatars — the peninsula's indigenous people — who have already faced systemic repression, imprisonment, forced disappearances and cultural erasure under Russian occupation. Their survival as a distinct community depends on Crimea's reintegration into a democratic Ukraine. Ultimately, the question of Crimea is not even a matter of history but of international law. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are the cornerstones of the postwar global order. To accept Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea is to accept a world in which powerful states can erase borders by force — where might makes right, and justice becomes irrelevant. That is a world none of us can afford. The path to sustainable peace runs through a Ukrainian Crimea — not a Russia-occupied one. Kateryna Yushchenko was the First Lady of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Krushchev was rescuing Crimea when he made it Ukrainian — it must remain so
Even Ukraine's staunchest allies sometimes waver, tempted to suggest that Kyiv concede Crimea to Russia as the long-running war there wages on. They often fall prey to a persistent myth: that Crimea had been eternally Russian until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily 'gifted' the peninsula to Ukraine in 1954. Such proposals dangerously misread history. In truth, the Kremlin handed Crimea to Ukraine not out of benevolence but because a decade of disastrous Soviet policies had left the territory an economic and humanitarian disaster. As University of Cambridge professor Rory Finnin notes, 'The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was no mistake. It was a rescue.' During a visit to Crimea in October 1953, Khrushchev witnessed the devastation firsthand. Driving through the peninsula with his son-in-law, Aleksey Adzhubey — editor-in-chief of Izvestia and one of the Soviet Union's most influential journalists — Khrushchev encountered not only the ruins of the Crimean Tatar Bakhchysaray Palace but also vast stretches of barren land strewn with abandoned military hardware. Most telling were the desperate Russian settlers blocking the roads, pleading for water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Soviet archives show that the entire region, roughly the size of Massachusetts, had only 24 bread stores, 18 meat stores, and eight milk stores. According to Adzhubey, the settlers complained bitterly: 'Potatoes don't grow here, the cabbage is withering, and the bedbugs are eating us alive.' When Khrushchev asked why they had come, they answered simply: They had been 'tricked.' This grim tableau was the result of a centuries-long pattern. Since Russia's annexation of Crimea from the Crimean Tatar Khanate in 1783, successive Russian regimes systematically eradicated indigenous populations they deemed 'unreliable.' Tsar Alexander II ordered mass expulsions of Crimean Tatars in the 1850s. Stalin deported nearly 188,000 Crimean Tatars in 1944, along with approximately 90,000 Armenians, Bulgarians and Greeks. Tens of thousands died in exile. With the native agriculturalists gone, Russian settlers struggled to survive in Crimea's harsh, unfamiliar climate. Khrushchev understood that Crimea's salvation depended on reconnecting it to Ukraine's southern steppes and the life-giving Dnipro River, ties that had sustained the peninsula for millennia. Crimea had always relied on Ukrainian resources and trade, long before Russian conquest. Even during the major wars fought over Crimea — the Crimean War and World War II — ethnic Ukrainians formed the backbone of the Russian army and Black Sea Fleet. To justify the economic necessity politically, Khrushchev and the Communist Party leadership invoked the upcoming 300th anniversary of Ukraine's so-called 'reunification' with Russia. First, the Presidium of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a resolution proposing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. Then the USSR's central government — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — ratified the transfer on Feb.19, 1954, citing 'the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity, and the close economic and cultural ties between Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR.' Two months later, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet Constitution, officially transferring the Crimean Oblast from Russia to Ukraine. Ukraine's Communist leadership, under pressure from Moscow, agreed to the transfer — along with the immense burden of reviving the devastated region. Over the next decades, Ukraine poured resources into developing Crimea. In 1957, it launched the construction of the North Crimean Canal, completed in 1971, to bring water from the Dnipro River to the arid peninsula. Ukraine invested heavily in infrastructure, agriculture and tourism, building reservoirs, irrigating fields, establishing resorts and creating economic opportunities. Between 1954 and 1990, Ukraine invested close to five times more per capita in Crimea than in comparable regions elsewhere in the republic. These efforts bore fruit. By the time of Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum, 54 percent of Crimean voters — including 57 percent in Sevastopol — chose to remain part of an independent Ukraine. A subsequent poll by Baltic Surveys/Gallup showed 65 percent of respondents favoring Crimea's autonomy within Ukraine, with only 23 percent preferring union with Russia. Russia itself formally recognized Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea multiple times: through the 1991 Belovezhskaya Pushcha Accords that dissolved the USSR, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for nuclear disarmament, and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship between Ukraine and Russia. Any proposal to force Ukraine to cede Crimea ignores overwhelming geographical, historical, legal and moral realities. Crimea's reintegration into Ukraine is not only vital for justice but essential for long-term stability, economic prosperity and peace across the broader European region. Moreover, allowing Russia to retain Crimea would be a death knell for the Crimean Tatars — the peninsula's indigenous people — who have already faced systemic repression, imprisonment, forced disappearances and cultural erasure under Russian occupation. Their survival as a distinct community depends on Crimea's reintegration into a democratic Ukraine. Ultimately, the question of Crimea is not even a matter of history but of international law. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are the cornerstones of the postwar global order. To accept Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea is to accept a world in which powerful states can erase borders by force — where might makes right, and justice becomes irrelevant. That is a world none of us can afford. The path to sustainable peace runs through a Ukrainian Crimea — not a Russia-occupied one. Kateryna Yushchenko was the First Lady of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Ya Libnan
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Khrushchev's warning and the erosion of American greatness
Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev chillingly predicted in 1956: 'We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.' by : Vlad Green There was a time when America was admired not just for its power, but for its generosity. We were the nation that designed the Marshall Plan, helping rebuild Europe from the devastation of World War II. We were the architects of USAID, offering economic development and humanitarian assistance to countries in need. We shipped tons of butter to post-war Germany—not because we had to, but because it was the right thing to do. Our moral leadership was as potent as our military might, and we won not only wars, but trust. Today, that spirit seems to be fading. Instead of investing in global partnerships, we're retreating into transactional politics. Instead of strengthening our alliances, we are testing them with tariffs, trade wars, and short-sighted economic nationalism. These new tariff plans being floated will hurt not just foreign producers—they will hit America's own middle class the hardest. The very people who are struggling to make ends meet will end up paying more for everyday goods, while the wealthiest corporations and individuals find ways to profit regardless of policy changes. The irony is painful: as inequality widens and the system begins to feel rigged, the foundations of our democracy grow weaker. When a society forgets how to take care of its own—and loses sight of its obligations to others—it creates a vacuum. And in that vacuum, ideologies like communism and authoritarian populism begin to find space. People don't turn to radical alternatives because they hate freedom; they turn because they feel abandoned, disillusioned, and left behind. Is this where we're heading? Our adversaries certainly hope so. Russia, Iran, North Korea—all are watching closely as the West turns inward and fractures along economic, social, and political lines. They don't need to fire a single shot to weaken us. As Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev chillingly predicted in 1956: 'We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.' We have to ask ourselves: what kind of America do we want to be? Do we still believe in being a global force for good? Do we still believe in lifting others up, knowing that generosity breeds stability, loyalty, and long-term peace? Or are we content to become a fortress nation—wealthy at the top, fractured at the bottom, and increasingly isolated in a world that no longer looks to us for guidance? It's not too late to reclaim our legacy. We can still be the nation that leads with heart as well as strength, that recognizes fairness as a pillar of greatness, and that remembers that a healthy middle class is the backbone of democracy—not just a byproduct of it. Let us not forget: America's true greatness has always come not just from what we build, but from what we give.
Asia Times
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
Settling balance sheets of history or financing futures
In March 2014, the Wilson Center published 'Why Did Russia Give Away Crimea Sixty Years Ago?' The piece drew on original documents that had come to light after the fall of the Soviet Union. The analysis compared those documents with official statements the Soviet government had given in 1954, when it transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The documents provided a brief, inaccurate history of events involving the two countries going back 300 years. The invented histories were a mask for power struggles within the Soviet Union, related to Nikita Khrushchev's manipulations to consolidate power after being elevated to the post of first secretary of the Communist Party in September 1953. The Wilson analysis ends with the observation that the irony of the Crimean transfer in 1954 – that Moscow undertook to strengthen its control over Ukraine – had come to haunt Ukraine. The irony is elsewhere: Politicians are mired in backward looking strategies to settle balance sheets of history rather than pursue options to finance the future. Europe made this mistake with the Treaty of Versailles and the Munich Agreement, to mention just two. President Zelensky is making a similar mistake. He insists on adding security clauses to the financial contract that President Trump proposed, believing that this would deter Russia. Yet there is Munich on September 29, 1938. Neville Chamberlain of England and Edouard Daladier of France signed an agreement with Germany letting it carve out Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised not to make further territorial demands in Europe, and then invaded. The League of Nations – the incompetent and toothless version of the present-day United Nations – remained silent on the invasion. Briefly, clauses in political contracts are toothless. Wars are fought with words, true, but mainly with swords by well-trained and patriotic military. Israel has no written security agreement with the US (and is not counting on Europe and NATO). Yet, surrounded by ruthless, savage theocratic and other dictatorships, as well as dozens of military organizations roaming neighboring failed countries that had superior manpower, it won wars and deflected terrorist attacks. With its patriotic military, helped mainly by US military equipment, it has been not just winning but even becoming a 'start-up nation.' With these reminders, take a forward look. As is the case with Israel's leaders, President Zelensky cannot change his country's location. However, he could change its demography. Decades before the Crimea event, Ukraine had Europe's lowest fertility rate, standing at 1.16 in 2000, with 2.5 million young Ukrainians having left between their independence in 1991 and 2014. Since the war, some 6 million more have left, mainly young, and fertility has dropped to 1, when population replacement level requires 2.1. Ukrainian demographers predicted already before the war that the population would rapidly drop from roughly 40 million to 26 million. Notions of 'fatherlands' and 'motherlands' are nice traditions. But if the younger generations vote with their wombs and feet and move away from these lands, what does a continuing war achieve? Demography is not destiny – but … So what are the options? I do not know if former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's recommendations years ago that Kyiv compromise, ceding territory to Russia, drew on the above numbers. Diplomat as he was, if he thought of them, he held them close to his chest or discussed them behind closed doors. Publicly, Kissinger suggested that Ukraine should better accept ceding the eastern territories that it no longer controlled to Russia. President Trump did not suggest this as a starting point, but offered a strictly commercial/financial contract to use as first step to negotiate a cease fire with Russia – and go from there. Kissinger, also issued a stark warning to both the Ukrainian government and its Western allies saying that 'Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,' which is roughly what President Trump said, in more alarming terms, referring to World War III, although Kissinger too mentioned the risk of pushing Russia in China's arms. Zelensky was harsh on Kissinger too, saying: 'Those who advise Ukraine to give something to Russia, these 'great geopolitical figures,' never see ordinary people, ordinary Ukrainians, millions living on the territory they are proposing to exchange for an illusory peace. You must always see people.' It never helps when anyone speculates loudly what others might be thinking, feeling – certainly not in an open forum in the Oval Office, implying inhumanity. President Zelensky does not appear to realize that, while he reiterates his determination for lands and security guarantees, it's he who is giving up on the Ukrainians as the place is getting de-populated. Few young Europeans volunteer to go and fight there. They hardly have the patriotism to fight for Brussels, or the EU – never mind for Ukraine, notwithstanding chanting slogans in Western European capitals for … whatever. Henry Ford is far from a historical character I look up to, his entrepreneurial vision and execution notwithstanding, but I agree with his statement in 1916, that 'History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today.' This observation does not imply lack of feeling for suffering Ukrainians. However, leaps into the future must be financed, and financing requires retaining and attracting critical masses of young brains, for which political compromises are necessary. An aging population neither climbs barricades, nor carries hopes for the future. Kissinger did observe in the Davos speech that 'I hope the Ukrainians will match the heroism they have shown with wisdom.' Perhaps instead of 'wisdom,' the statement 'matching heroism with a clearer vision of both the country's' demography, and that the future depends on matching young brains with continuous access to finance – and which requires political stability more than territory – offers concrete, less emotional guidance. Agree or disagree with the way events unfolded in the Oval office, President Trump did offer this forward-looking solution, whereas President Zelensky, unfortunately, got stuck with selective backward-looking failed ideas, believing that clauses on political papers are keys to stabilizing solutions. The article draws on Brenner's Force of Finance , and 'How to Relink 7 billion People.'
