Certainly the most colorful Soviet leader, Khrushchev is best remembered for his dramatic, oftentimes boorish gestures and "harebrained schemes" designed to attain maximum propaganda effect, his enthusiastic belief that Communism would triumph over capitalism, and the fact that he was the only Soviet leader ever to be removed peacefully from office--a direct result of the post-Stalin thaw he had instigated in 1956.

Nikita Khrushchev, at the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 1963. © Khrushchev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1955 until 1964, succeeding Joseph Stalin. He presided over the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born in 1894 into a poor family near Kursk in south-western Russia. He received very little formal education.