The son of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev, Sergei, a professor at Brown University in the United States, told why his father gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.
“My father gave Crimea to Ukraine because if you look at the map, Crimea will be tied to Ukraine, and when they began to deal with the economy there and, most importantly, to build the canal that has now, unfortunately, been buried, the State Planning Committee said that it would be better, if it will be built under one legal entity, and transferred to Ukraine, just as many regions did, the website of the 112 Ukraine TV channel quotes Khrushchev.
According to Sergei Khrushchev, there was “no politics” in this decision, as well as “attempts to appease the Ukrainian bureaucracy” and to make a “gift” to his mother. “It was a structural and correct decision. Crimea began to revive, a lot of grapes were planted,”he added.
Crimea, which was a region within the RSFSR, was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR on February 19, 1954 by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It is believed that this was done on the initiative of the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who worked in Ukraine for a long time.
After the collapse of the USSR, Crimea remained a part of Ukraine. It again became a Russian region after a referendum held there in March 2014, in which 96.77% of voters in the Republic of Crimea and 95.6% of Sevastopol residents spoke in favor of joining Russia. Crimean authorities held a referendum following a coup in Ukraine in February 2014. Ukraine still considers Crimea to be its own, but temporarily occupied territory.
The Russian leadership has repeatedly stated that the inhabitants of Crimea democratically, in full compliance with international law and the UN Charter, voted for reunification with Russia. According to the Russian President, the issue of Crimea is "finally closed."
Sergei Khrushchev in Soviet times worked in a number of design bureaus and institutes, was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. He was also awarded the Lenin Prize. In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, he was invited to a private Brown University in the United States to lecture on the Cold War. He stayed in the United States, now has an American citizenship, and is a professor at the Thomas Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
