How did Nikita Khrushchev die?

Nikita Khrushchev died of natural causes, specifically a heart attack, in 1971. He died on September 11 at age 77 in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital after suffering from serious heart problems.

Khrushchev had been removed from power in 1964, when rivals within the Communist Party forced him into retirement. He then lived quietly at a country dacha outside Moscow, where he worked on memoirs that were secretly recorded and later published in the West. His death was not announced immediately by Soviet authorities, partly because the leadership feared public demonstrations or political attention.

Khrushchev was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow rather than receiving a state funeral in the Kremlin Wall. The answer is sometimes stated more precisely as “a heart attack,” but “natural causes” is factually correct because he died from illness rather than execution, assassination, or an accident.