 In 1949, he brought Nikita Khrushchev from Ukraine to Moscow, appointing him a Central Committee secretary and the head of the city's party branch.In the Leningrad Affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950.In the post-war period there were often food shortages in Soviet cities, and the USSR experienced a major famine from 1946 to 1947.