Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program and the enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary & Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

Khrushchev was granted a pension of 500 rubles per month and was given a house, a dacha and a car. Following his removal, he fell into deep depression. He received few visitors, especially since his security guards kept track of all guests and reported their comings and goings. His pension was reduced to 400 rubles per month, though his retirement remained comfortable by Soviet standards. One of his grandsons was asked what the ex-premier was doing in retirement, and the boy replied, "Grandfather cries." Khrushchev was made a non-person to such an extent that the thirty-volume Great Soviet Encyclopedia omitted his name from the list of prominent political commissars during the Great Patriotic War.

Khrushchev died of a heart attack around noon in the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital on 11 September 1971, at the age of 77. He was denied a state funeral with interment in the Kremlin Wall and was instead buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Fearing demonstrations, the authorities did not announce Khrushchev's death until the hour of his wake, which would be held in a morgue in the southern suburbs of Moscow and surrounded the cemetery with troops. Even so, some artists and writers joined the family at the graveside for the interment.