Early Life and Career
Andrei Kirilenko was born on 8 September 1906 in the village of Alexeyevka, Belgorod Oblast, Russian Empire, to a working-class family. As a young boy, he worked as an electrician and a locksmith. In 1920, Kirilenko graduated from one of the local schools; five years later, he graduated from the Alekseevskii vocational technical school. In the mid-to-late 1920s, Kirilenko started working for a mining enterprise located in the Voronezh Oblast. He became an active member of Komsomol in 1929 and, two years later, became a member of the All-Union Communist Party. In 1936, he graduated from the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute. He started working as a design engineer for the aircraft factory, Zaporizhia Engine Plant. In 1938, Kirilenko became an active participant in party politics and was eventually selected to the position of Second Secretary of the Voroshilov District Party Committee in Zaporozhye Oblast. The following year, he was voted in as First Secretary. Later that year he was appointed to Second Secretary of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Party Committee of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In this role, Kirilenko made significant contributions to the development of metallurgical and electrical engineering, but also other sorts of industry.
During the Great Patriotic War, Kirilenko was directly involved with evacuating industry to safe zones. From 1941 to 1943, he was a member of the Military Soviet of the 18th Army of the Southern Front. He contributed by improving discipline among soldiers as well as improving the materiel support for the troops. In 1943, Kirilenko was relocated to Moscow, and during his stay there the production of advanced aircraft increased rapidly. By the end of the war, in 1944, Kirilenko was made First Secretary of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Party. He succeeded Leonid Brezhnev, future Soviet leader, as First Secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Party Committee. From 1955 to 1962, he was First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee; he was appointed by Nikita Khrushchev himself to take charge of economic planning and personnel selection in urban areas of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Kirilenko was later promoted to Khrushchev's Vice-Chairman of the Bureau of the Central Committee. Brezhnev benefited from Kirilenko's position, Brezhnev used him to win over supporters of his conspiracy against Khrushchev.
Read more about this topic: Andrei Kirilenko (politician)
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