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
Nikita Khrushchev Stalin had Khrushchev, then aged almost sixty, dance a traditional Ukrainian dance. Khrushchev did so, later stating, "When Stalin says dance, a wise man dances." Khrushchev attempted to nap at lunch so that he would not fall asleep in Stalin's presence; he noted in his memoirs, "Things went badly for those who dozed off at Stalin's table." In 1950, Khrushchev began a large-scale housing program for Moscow. A large part of the housing was in the form of five- or six-story apartment buildings, which became ubiquitous throughout the Soviet Union; many remain in use today. Khrushchev had prefabricated reinforced concrete