Khrushchev’s son: Decision to transfer Crimea to Ukraine was not political but economic
Khrushchev's decision to transfer the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was structural, but in no way political. The son of Nikita Khrushchev, Brown University professor Sergei Khrushchev spoke about this during a broadcast of the program Gordon
"My father gave the Crimea to Ukraine, because if you look at the map, Crimea is attached to Ukraine, and when they began to deal with the economy there, and most importantly, to build that channel that is now unfortunately buried, the State Planning Committee said it would be better if it was built under the same legal entity and transferred to Ukraine, just as they transferred many regions," Khrushchev said.
According to him, it was a structural, not political, decision.
"There was no politics; no, as they love to say in Russia, attempts to please the Ukrainian bureaucracy, nor even a gift to my mother, who was born in Western Ukraine. It was a structural and rational decision. Crimea began to be reborn; [they] planted a lot of grapes," he said.
The Crimean Region was transferred from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 19, 1954. The need for the decree was explained by "the generality of the economy, territorial proximity and close economic and cultural ties between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR."