Lazar Kaganovich in the context of Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. As leader of the Soviet Union, he stunned the world by denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin, embarking on a campaign of de-Stalinization, and presiding over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Nikita Khrushchev was born in a village in western Russia on 15 April 1894. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth and was a political commissar in the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, Khrushchev rose through the ranks of the Soviet hierarchy. During Stalin's rule, he actively supported the Great Purge and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there. During the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. He was also present at the defense of Stalingrad, a fact in which he took great pride. After the war, Khrushchev returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Булга́нин; 11 June [O.S. 30 May] 1895 – 24 February 1975) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1958. He also served as Minister of Defense, following service in the Red Army during World War II.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Bulganin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and became a member of the Soviet political police Cheka a year later. After the Russian Civil War, he held a number of administrative positions until 1931, when he became chairman of the Moscow City Soviet with the support of Lazar Kaganovich. A loyal Stalinist, Bulganin rose through the Soviet hierarchy in the middle of Stalin's purges, and in 1937 he was named premier of the Russian SFSR and a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. A year later he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union and head of the Soviet State Bank. Although he was never a front-line commander, Bulganin held a number of important political posts in the Red Army during World War II, and served in Stalin's State Defense Committee. In 1947, he succeeded Stalin as Minister for the Armed Forces and was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In early 1948, he became a full member of the Politburo.