1954 transfer of Crimea Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of Ukraine, so I think to some degree it was also a personal gesture toward his favorite republic. He was ethnically Russian, but he really felt great affinity with Ukraine." Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev's son, claimed that the decision was due to the building of a hydro-electric dam on the Dnieper River and the consequent desire for all the administration to be under one body. Sevastopol in Crimea being the site of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, a quintessential element of Russian and then of Soviet foreign policy, the transfer had the intended effect of binding
Nikita Khrushchev and tranquilizers. One of his grandsons was asked what the ex-premier was doing in retirement, and the boy replied, "Grandfather cries." He was made a non-person to such an extent that the thirty-volume "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" omitted his name from the list of prominent political commissars during the Great Patriotic War. As the new rulers made known their conservatism in artistic matters, Khrushchev came to be more favorably viewed by artists and writers, some of whom visited him. One visitor whom Khrushchev regretted not seeing was former U.S. Vice President Nixon, then in his "wilderness years" before his election to