Nikita Khrushchev, born in 1894, served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Premier from 1958 to 1964. His rule marked the denunciation of Stalin’s crimes, de-Stalinization, and reforms. Khrushchev supported the Soviet space program, negotiated with the U.S. to ease Cold War tensions, and played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Born in western Russia, he rose through Soviet ranks under Stalin, governing the Ukrainian SSR. Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” in 1956 denounced Stalin, but his domestic policies faced challenges. He was ousted in 1964, living out his life in Moscow until his death in 1971.
Nikita Khrushchev Quotes
1. “We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
2. “Berlin is the testicles of the West, every time I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
3. “You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
4. “I can prophecy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism – Our firm conviction is that sooner or later Capitalism will give way to Socialism. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
5. “If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
6. “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
7. “The living will envy the dead.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
8. “If you don’t like us, don’t accept our invitations and don’t invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
9. “Once you pledge, don’t hedge.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
10. “I once said, ‘We will bury you,’ and I got into trouble with it. Of course, we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
11. “Historians are dangerous people. They are capable of upsetting everything.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
12. “The John Birch Society is Communism’s greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
13. “The press is our chief ideological weapon.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
14. “President Roosevelt proved that a President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a President.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
15. “You must never believe all these things which the scientists say because they always want more than they can get-they are never satisfied.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
16. “The main difference for the history of the world if I had been shot rather than Kennedy is that Onassis probably wouldn’t have married Mrs Khrushchev.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
17. “Any fool can start a war, and once he’s done so, even the wisest of men are helpless to stop it – especially if it’s a nuclear war.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
18. “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
19. “The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
20. “They talk about who won and who lost. Human reason won. Mankind won.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
21. “Let there be more corn and more meat and let there be no hydrogen bombs at all.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
22. “The United States now sleeps under a Soviet moon.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
23. “America has been in existence for 150 years and this is the level she has reached. We have existed not quite 42 years and in another seven years, we will be on the same level as America. When we catch you up, in passing you by, we will wave to you.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
24. “Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that?”
— Nikita Khrushchev
25. “They pay little attention to what we say and prefer to read tea leaves.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
26. “If we were to promise people nothing better than only revolution, they would scratch their heads and say: ‘Is it not better to have good goulash?’”
— Nikita Khrushchev
27. “Don’t you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down?”
— Nikita Khrushchev
28. “No matter how humble a man’s beginnings, he achieves the stature of the office to which he is elected.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
29. “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!”
— Nikita Khrushchev
30. “Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
31. “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
32. “When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to heal, so that you can skin them again.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
33. “Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect one’s wishes.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
34. “If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
35. “When all the world is socialist, Switzerland will have to remain capitalist, so that it can tell us the price of everything.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
36. “If Adenauer were here with us in the sauna, we could see for ourselves that Germany is and will remain divided but also that Germany never will rise again.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
37. “Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
38. “If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
39. “The Americans have surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they will learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointed at you; we’d be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
40. “In the future, if nuclear weapons are unleashed there will be no front and no rear.”
— Nikita Khrushchev
