Khrushchev was a peasant miner who only got about 2 years of education as a child and became educated in his mid twenties. He was influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1918. He started to receive practical training due to the October Revolution. He believed in communism and its benefit to the workers. He began to move up in rank within the revolutionary party. In 1934, he was part of the Central Committee, in 1939, he joined the politburo, and after Stalin’s death in 1953, he became the first Secretary of the Soviets Communist Party. He likened his strategy of power to Stalin by replacing his nemesis within the party with his own friends. Finally, he became the leader of the Soviet Union. During his control, he surprised the entire world by giving his Secret Speech that criticized Stalin’s leadership. Khrushchev believed that the Communist Party would rule the world and crush capitalism. He also set targets during his control that were to surpass the west in food supply; this never happened. He was an known agriculturist specialist who once projected that corn would blossom in the Soviet Union, and began a corn-harvesting program. The program failed because the environment in the Soviet Union was not fit to plant corn. During his reign, he loosened censorship laws, and relaxed the military. He also began an advanced space program that sent the first people into space, and attempted to give nuclear missiles to Cuba in the Bay of Pigs incident, which did not go as planned. This incident stripped him from his position in the Soviet Union and landed him in house arrest for 7 years. He died on September 11 1971.