Andrei Kirilenko (politician)

Andrei Kirilenko (politician)

Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko (Russian: Андрей Павлович Кириленко) (8 September 1906 – 12 May 1990) was a Soviet statesman from the start to the end of the Cold War. In 1906, Kirilenko was born in Alexeyevka, Belgorod Oblast, Russian Empire, to a Russian working-class family. He graduated in the 1920s from a local vocational school, and again in the mid-to-late 1930s from the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute. He became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) in 1930. As many like him, Kirilenko climbed up the Soviet hierarchy through the "industrial ladder"; by the 1960s, he was Vice-Chairman of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). After Nikita Khrushchev's forced resignation, Kirilenko became Leonid Brezhnev's "chief lieutenant" within the Central Committee.

His main objective was to ensure Brezhnev's power base and, if possible, to strengthen Brezhnev's position within the Party. He was the first organisational secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from Khrushchev's ouster to the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Kirilenko was responsible for personnel selection and detailed supervision of the economic planning of the CPSU during most of the Brezhnev Era. In 1976, Brezhnev appointed Konstantin Chernenko to be his "counterweight" in the Central Committee (CC). He became a member of the Political Bureau (Politburo) in 1965. He was forced to resign from active politics due to health reasons and because Yuri Andropov was appointed to the General Secretaryship. When Andropov became General Secretary in 1982, Kirilenko was pushed aside. He died on 12 May 1990 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.