On February 25, 1956, at the Twentieth Party Congress, he delivered the 'Secret Speech', denouncing Stalin's purges and ushering in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union. In the power struggle triggered by Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev, after several years, emerged victorious. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War (Eastern Front of World War II), Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. In 1939, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, and he continued the purges there. He supported Joseph Stalin's purges, and approved thousands of arrests. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar.

Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy.

He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Soviet Union's leader during part of the Cold War.

Khrushchev remembers the last testament