The reign of Khrushchev (1953-1964) is the only period in Soviet history that people remember with kind words. The hero of the article is Leonid Khrushchev's son, whose biography is still the subject of controversy among historians who have not come to a consensus.
Parents
It is known for certain that the young man was born in the territory of modern Donbass - in the village of metallurgists Yuzovka, three days after the October Revolution. Date of birth - 10.11.1917. He was the youngest son of Nikita Sergeevich and Efrosinya Ivanovna Khrushchev (nee Pisarev). 02/07/1914 in the documents of the Nikolaev Church of Bakhmutsky Uyezd (Rutchenkovsky mine) there is a record of their official registration of marriage. Until Nikita Sergeyevich retires, this union will be the only documented.
Efrosinya was one of the five daughters of the owner of the house, who at that time Khrushchev was "dining" on. Leonid in childhood hardly remembered his father. In 1918, he went to the Civil War to fight for the Bolsheviks, and his wife went to the Kursk province, to his parents. In 1920, she died of typhus, leaving her husband Julia, born in 1915, with her husband. and son. Photos of women can be seen in the article below. For Nikita Sergeyevich it was a hard blow, from which he will recover only after 4 years, creating a new family.
Childhood
The children stayed with their grandparents until their father took them to him. His party career went uphill, and in 1931 Khrushchev moved to Moscow. Yulia has a good relationship with Nikita Sergeyevich’s new wife, Nina Kukharchuk, which can’t be said about Leonid. He actually grew up on the street, being left to his own devices. After graduating from seven classes, he entered the FZU, at 17 he began working at the factory.
Leonid Khrushchev enjoyed great success with women. By the age of twenty, he had already left two cohabitants, and one with a child in her arms. Both were Jewish. He even signed with Rosalia Treivas, an actress, but his father defiantly broke his marriage certificate. Esther Etinger, the daughter of an aircraft designer, in 1935 gave birth to his son Yuri, who had a middle name and last name of Leonid Khrushchev all his life. Father was appointed First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee a year earlier, which provided his son with new opportunities.
“Youth to heaven!”
Stalin's call to aviation had an effect on the "golden youth" of his time. The sons of the first persons studied at the VVA them. Zhukovsky. It was very honorable, they were equated. With his education, Leonid Khrushchev could not apply for Zhukovka, but went to the pilot training school of the Civil Air Fleet (Balashov). After graduating from it in 1937, he was enrolled in the academy, but did not sit at his desk. In 1939, he voluntarily joined the Red Army, continuing his studies at the EVASCH (Aviation School of Engels).
During the Soviet-Finnish war, he volunteered for the front, flying on Ar-2 bombers. The air division commander gave an excellent description to the lieutenant who took part in the bombing of the Mannerheim line.
Myth one - first conviction
In 1938, his father (N. S. Khrushchev) was transferred to Ukraine, where he went with a promotion. A year later, Leonid married the pilot of the Moscow flying club Lyubov Sizykh, and in January 1940, daughter Julia was born. The wife resembled the character of her own husband: a fearless parachutist, famously driving a motorcycle. He, too, was known as bold and even reckless. He could climb over the supports of the bridge from one bank of the Dnieper to the other. The young woman already had a child, but this did not stop Nikita Sergeevich from accepting the choice of his son.
It was during these years, according to the memoirs of Sergo Beria, Leonid Khrushchev - the son of Nikita Khrushchev - got in touch with criminals. The gang was engaged in robberies and was exposed on the eve of the war. Many were shot, and the son of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine allegedly received 10 years in prison. So the first myth was born, not finding any documentary evidence. In the personal file of L. Khrushchev, stored in the archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (Podolsk), there is no mention of a criminal record in the original autobiography.
Start of war
From the first day of the war, like other “Kremlin lieutenants” - the brothers Mikoyan, Yakov Dzhugashvili, Timur Frunze, Vasily Stalin, the son of Nikita Sergeevich goes to the front. The first two months, the regiment flew without cover, having lost most of its pilots. German aces, who had completed flight practice in Europe, were opposed by yesterday’s college graduates, who first sat at the helm.
Among them stood out already the experienced and fearless Khrushchev. Leonid fought in 134 air regiment (46th division), having completed only 27 sorties in July. Having completed the task of destroying a bridge across the Zapadnaya Dvina River, he was presented for a military award. To receive the Order of the Red Banner at the beginning of the war was a real rarity. On January 9, 1942, his plane was shot down and landed on neutral territory. The crew was saved, but the pilot was seriously injured. As a result of an open fracture, the bone broke through the boot, and in the hospital, legs were amputated for surgery.
Treatment in Kuibyshev
For a young man, life without sky was impossible. Eyewitnesses say that he, threatening doctors with a gun, demanded that they abandon the operation. I lay in bed for two months, but the young body coped. Lameness due to the fact that one leg has become slightly shorter than the other will remain with him until the end of days. The pilot was sent to Kuibyshev, where the best luminaries of medicine were evacuated. The family lived here. Nikita Sergeyevich personally came from the front to visit his wounded son, whom he treated with special tenderness.
Leonid Khrushchev was in the same room with Ruben Ibarruri. In the hospital he met Stepan Mikoyan, who became the main eyewitness of his Kuibyshev period of his life. According to Mikoyan, wounded pilots often drank, made friends with the dancers of the Bolshoi Theater, evacuated to the city. At the end of the rehabilitation, they were involved in a drunken story with a tragic ending.
Myth two: second conviction
At one of the parties, young people made a real game of Russian roulette. A naval officer, who learned that Leonid Khrushchev shoots superbly, suggested that he fall from a pistol into a bottle on his head. The shooter struck the neck. This did not suit the sailor, and he forced the pilot to repeat the attraction. Khrushchev hit the forehead with a second shot, killing an officer. Stepan Mikoyan tells this story with the words of others, without being an eyewitness to what is happening. The fact that his brother had some dubious story was also spoken by his sister Rada Adzhubei.
In the memoirs of the opponents of N. S. Khrushchev (all of them appeared after his death), it is said that Nikita Sergeyevich personally extorted forgiveness from Stalin for his son. But he was still sentenced to 8 years with serving his sentence at the front.
Was it or wasn’t?
Not a single journalistic investigation of this fact was successful. There is no documentary evidence. Rumors about the incident are so varied that it is impossible to draw any conclusions. All subsequent events violate the logic of a pilot being punished, because in the autumn of 1942 he was sent not to the battalion battalion, but to retraining, retraining as a fighter pilot. In November, he passes the exam with a rating of "good", receives under his command the link and shoulder straps of the senior lieutenant. Moreover, he arrives in the army with weapons, which, if convicted, would have been withdrawn.
Leonid Khrushchev, whose biography is the subject of close study today, continued to fight in the 18th air regiment, reseeding on the maneuverable Yak-7. Got practice, driving aircraft from a military factory to the front. Experts say that for the development of new technology, the pilot needs time, but he was not there during the war.
March 11, 1943
There is evidence that Khrushchev was transferred to the Army Headquarters, but he refused. Heaven was his calling. During the service, he made 172 sorties, but only 32 - on a fighter (the flight time was only 4 hours 27 minutes). 11. 03. 1943 two aircraft flew to the Zhizdra region for reconnaissance. In a pair he was a follower. In the place of the leader - Art. Lieutenant Zamorin, who became the main witness to the events of the historical battle, from which the son of a prominent party leader was not destined to return.
The fighters met the four "Fokkers" who attacked Soviet pilots in pairs. Only the flight commander returned from a combat mission on a damaged fighter. The mystery of the death of Leonid Khrushchev is associated with two circumstances: changes in the testimony of I. Zamorin and the inability to track down the remains of the Yak-7 aircraft due to marshy terrain and an air battle over enemy territory.
The testimony of Ivan Zamorin
The first report was written by a senior lieutenant after visiting the regiment headquarters. In it, he pointed out: pursuing the "fokker", he lost sight of the plane of L. Khrushchev. I only saw how he went into a tailspin, rushing to the ground. Later, partisans organized a search for the remnants of the aircraft, which were unsuccessful. First, the father was informed that the eldest son was missing. A month later, on the night of April 12, Stalin personally expressed his condolences to his comrade-in-arms, notifying that there was no more hope. In June, the father received the Order of the Patriotic War I degree (posthumous) for his son.
In the 80s, rumors began to spread about how Leonid Khrushchev got to the Germans. Allegedly, he survived and was captured, becoming a traitor. Rumors appeared earlier, so after Khrushchev’s resignation , an investigation was carried out into the death of the pilot (investigator Tokarev S.I.), during which no evidence of his betrayal was found. Zamorin changed his testimony, saying that the slave saved him by throwing his Yak-7 against the fokker’s fire attack. The plane actually crumbled in the air. He explained his previous report: the command of the regiment was afraid of responsibility for not saving the son of a high-ranking official, and therefore preferred to introduce him as missing.
Betrayal Version
War journalist I. Stadnyuk, historians G. Kumanev, N. Dobryukha, writer F. Chuev and some others adhere to the version that Leonid Khrushchev was shot. They refer to the fact that N. Khrushchev, during his reign, destroyed documents exposing his son. Referring to the testimonies of the NKVD generals (V. Udilov), Molotov, the son of Beria, they describe the picture of how the pilot managed to catapult when he was captured by the enemy. There he began to testify, undermining the security of the country. Stalin ordered the SMERSH special group to steal the traitor. The operation was successful, and Khrushchev's son was delivered to Moscow.
My father begged forgiveness on his knees, but Stalin relied on the decision of the Politburo members who sentenced the traitor to death. It was carried out. This explains the hatred of N. S. Khrushchev for the members of the Central Committee: they shot Beria, renamed the Shcherbakovsky district of Moscow, and sent Kaganovich, Molotov and Malenkov to exile. An indirect confirmation of the version is the arrest of Lyubov Sizykh in 1943 and her sending to camps on charges of espionage. Subsequently, it turned out that these two events are in no way connected with each other.
Official version
Confident, stubborn and cheerful, the 25-year-old boy became hostage to the confrontation between Nikita Khrushchev, the main author of the “thaw” of the 60s, and the NKVD generals who did everything to denigrate the name of the former First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Drawing an analogy with the fate of Jacob Dzhugashvili, who was captured by the Germans, after the capture of the son of a high political figure, one should expect the reaction of the Nazis: propaganda leaflets, radio messages, any hype. But there are no sources from the German side confirming the pilot's captivity.
The stories of how they killed Leonid Khrushchev vary. His execution is described in different ways by “eyewitnesses,” while Metrostroy’s employees found the wreckage of the Yak-7 aircraft, by the number of the fighter st. lieutenant. Data on this is stored in the archive of the city of Podolsk. On the mass grave of the city of Zhizdra, the name of Khrushchev is mentioned, which gives reason to talk about his burial in the area of ​​death.
Afterword
His relatives and those who personally knew him did not believe in the betrayal of the young pilot. Son Yuri and granddaughter of Nina demanded a public refutation of the information that is provided in many publications without reference to any documents. Direct command, combat comrades, including the technique of the Yak-7 aircraft, give the most flattering characteristics to the pilot: Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev was a brave and fearless man. He was eager for battle, not hiding behind the backs of his comrades, and the report of I. Zamorin is an additional confirmation of this. The reputation of the hero is more important than the pursuit of cheap sensations. Conducting additional research is a matter of honor for historians who must put an end to the dissemination of speculation and rumor.