Editing Nikita Khrushchev (section)

== Early life ==
Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894,{{efn|name=birth}}{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=2}} in [[Kalinovka, Khomutovsky District, Kursk Oblast|Kalinovka]],{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=20}} a village in what is now Russia's [[Kursk Oblast]] (then [[Kursk Governorate]]), near the present Ukrainian border.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=18}} His parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Kseniya Khrushcheva, were poor [[Russians|Russian]] peasants,{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=21}} and had a daughter two years Nikita's junior, Irina.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=2}} Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the [[Donbas]] area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, and laboring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, and Sergei Khrushchev generally left his family in Kalinovka, returning when he had enough money.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=2–3}} When Nikita was six or seven, the family moved to Yuzovka (now [[Donetsk]], Ukraine) for about a year before returning to Kalinovka.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=3}}

Kalinovka was a peasant village; Khrushchev's teacher, Lydia Shevchenko, later stated that she had never seen a village as poor.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=27}} Nikita worked as a [[Herder|herdsboy]] from an early age. He was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village school and part under Shevchenko's tutelage in Kalinovka's state school. According to Khrushchev's memoirs, Shevchenko was a [[Freethought|freethinker]] who upset the villagers by not attending church, and when her brother visited, she gave Khrushchev books which had been banned by the Imperial Government.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=26}} She urged Nikita to seek further education, but family finances did not permit this.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=26}}

In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka; fourteen-year-old Nikita followed later that year, while Kseniya Khrushcheva and her daughter came after.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=30}} Yuzovka, which was renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961, was at the heart of one of the most industrialized areas of the Russian Empire.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=30}} After working briefly in other fields, Khrushchev's parents found Nikita a place as a metal fitter's apprentice. Upon completing that apprenticeship, the teenage Khrushchev was hired by a factory.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=6–7}} He lost that job when he collected money for the families of the victims of the [[Lena Goldfields massacre]], and was hired to mend underground equipment by a mine in nearby Ruchenkovo,{{sfn|Taubman|2003|pp=37–38}} where his father was the union organizer, and he helped distribute copies and organize public readings of ''[[Pravda]]''.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=8}} He later stated that he considered emigrating to the United States for better wages, but did not do so.{{sfn|Carlson|2009|p=141}} He later recalled his working days:
{{blockquote|I started working as soon as I learned how to walk. Until the age of fifteen, I worked as a shepherd. I tended, as the foreigners say when they use the Russian language, "the little cows," I was a sheepherder, I herded cows for a capitalist, and that was before I was fifteen. After that, I worked at a factory for a German, and I worked in a French-owned mine, I worked at a Belgian-owned chemical factory, and [now] I'm the Prime Minister of the great Soviet state. And I am in no way ashamed of my past because all work is worthy of respect. Work as such cannot be dirty, it is only conscience that can be.|source=Khrushchev's speech in Hollywood, translated by [[Viktor Sukhodrev]]<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnsD5ZjFWcw&t=198 Khrushchev in Hollywood (1959)], [[CBS News]] (3:50–6:09)</ref>|style=font-size:9.5pt}}

When [[World War I]] broke out in 1914, Khrushchev was exempt from [[conscription]] because he was a skilled metal worker. He was employed by a workshop that serviced ten mines, and he was involved in several strikes that demanded higher pay, better working conditions, and an end to the war.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=8–9}} In 1914, he married Yefrosinia Pisareva, daughter of the lift operator at the Rutchenkovo mine. In 1915, they had a daughter, Yulia, and in 1917, a son, Leonid.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|pp=38–40}}

After the abdication of [[Nicholas II|Tsar Nicholas II]] in 1917, the new [[Russian Provisional Government]] in [[Saint Petersburg|Petrograd]] had little influence over Ukraine. Khrushchev was elected to the worker's council (or [[Soviet Union#Etymology|''soviet'']]) in Rutchenkovo, and in May he became its chairman.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=47}} He did not join the [[Bolsheviks]] until 1918, a year in which the [[Russian Civil War]], between the Bolsheviks and a coalition of opponents known as the [[White Army]], began in earnest. His biographer, [[William Taubman]], suggests that Khrushchev's delay in affiliating himself with the Bolsheviks was because he felt closer to the [[Mensheviks]] who prioritized economic progress, whereas the Bolsheviks sought political power.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|pp=47–48}} In his memoirs, Khrushchev indicated that he waited because there were many groups, and it was difficult to keep them all straight.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|pp=47–48}}

In March 1918, as the Bolshevik government concluded [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk|a separate peace]] with the [[Central Powers]], [[Ukrainian War of Independence#German intervention|the Germans occupied the Donbas]] and Khrushchev fled to Kalinovka. In late 1918 or early 1919, he was mobilized into the [[Red Army]] as a [[political commissar]].{{sfn|Taubman|2003|pp=48–49}} The post of political commissar had recently been introduced as the Bolsheviks came to rely less on worker activists and more on military recruits; its functions included indoctrination of recruits in the tenets of Bolshevism, and promoting troop morale and battle readiness.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=50}} Beginning as commissar to a construction platoon, Khrushchev rose to become commissar to a construction battalion and was sent from the front for a two-month political course. The young commissar came under fire many times,{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=12}} though many of the war stories he would tell in later life dealt more with cultural awkwardness rather than combat.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=50}} In 1921, the civil war ended, and Khrushchev was demobilized and assigned as commissar to a labor brigade in the Donbas, where he and his men lived in poor conditions.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=50}}

The wars had caused widespread devastation and famine, and one of the victims was Khrushchev's wife, Yefrosinia, who died of [[typhus]] in Kalinovka while Khrushchev was in the army. The commissar returned for the funeral and, loyal to his [[Soviet anti-religious legislation|Bolshevik principles]], refused to allow his wife's coffin to enter the local church. With the only way into the churchyard through the church, he had the coffin lifted and passed over the fence into the burial ground, shocking the village.{{sfn|Taubman|2003|p=50}}