History of Ukraine Nations. After the death of Stalin (1953), Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party of Soviet Union enabled a Ukrainian revival. Nevertheless, political repressions against poets, historians and other intellectuals continued, as in all other parts of the USSR. In 1954 the republic expanded to the south with the transfer of the Crimea. Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This started a period of transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine suffered an eight-year recession. Subsequently, however, the economy experienced a high increase in GDP growth. Ukraine was caught up in the worldwide economic
Nikita Khrushchev Khrushchev's instigation. Kaganovich transferred Khrushchev to Kharkov, then the capital of Ukraine, as head of the Organizational Department of the Ukrainian Party's Central Committee. In 1928, Khrushchev was transferred to Kiev, where he served as second-in-command of the Party organization there. In 1929, Khrushchev again sought to further his education, following Kaganovich (now in the Kremlin as a close associate of Stalin) to Moscow and enrolling in the Stalin Industrial Academy. Khrushchev never completed his studies there, but his career in the Party flourished. When the school's Party cell elected a number of rightists to an upcoming district Party conference,