Ukraine 450,000 ethnic Germans from Ukraine and more than 200,000 Crimean Tatars were victims of forced deportations. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the USSR. Having served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukrainian SSR in 1938–49, Khrushchev was intimately familiar with the republic; after taking power union-wide, he began to emphasize "the friendship" between the Ukrainian and Russian nations. In 1954, the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav was widely celebrated. Crimea was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. By 1950, the republic had fully surpassed
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era 11, 1971. "Khrushchev: The Man and His Era" was written by William Taubman, who serves as a professor of political science at Amherst College. The book is the first in-depth biography of Khrushchev, the publication of which was made possible by newly established access to archives in Russia and Ukraine, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Prior to "Khrushchev: The Man and His Era", no other book was able to fully reflect the personal life and professional background of Soviet leaders, due to open source restrictions and lack of accessible materials and documentation. He spent almost 20 years researching