Nikita Khrushchev. A Stalinist who ended the terror of his predecessor. A reformer who brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis. What remains is the memory of a shoe Khrushchev thundered on the table at the UN General Assembly. Stalin’s terror, the Second World War, de-Stalinisation and the greatest crises of the Cold War – all this is closely linked to Nikita Khrushchev.