Early Years and Career
Suslov was born in Shakhovskoye, a rural locality in Pavlovsky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russian Empire on 21 November 1902. Suslov began work in the local Komsomol organisation in Saratov in 1918, eventually becoming a member of the Poverty Relief Committee. After working in the Komsomol for nearly three years, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) in 1921. After graduating from the rabfak, he studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy between 1924–1928. In the summer of 1928, after graduating from the Plekhanov institute, he became a graduate student (research fellow) in economics at the Institute of Red Professors, teaching at Moscow State University and at the Industrial Academy.
In 1931 he abandoned teaching in favour of the party apparatus. He became an inspector on the Communist Party's Soviet Control Commission and on the People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. His main task there was to adjudicate on large numbers of "personal cases", breaches of discipline, and appeals against expulsion from the party. In 1933 and 1934 Suslov directed a commission charged with purging the party in the Ural and Chernigov provinces. The purge was organised by Lazar Kaganovich, then Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission. Author Yuri Druzhnikov contends that Suslov was involved with setting up several show trials, and contributed to the Party by expelling all members deviating from the Party line, meaning Trotskyists, Zinovievists, and other left-wing deviationists. On the orders of Joseph Stalin, Suslov purged the city of Rostov in 1938. Suslov was made First Secretary of the Stavropol Krai's Communist Party in 1939.
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