Alexei Kirichenko | |
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Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union | |
In office 17 December 1957 – 5 April 1960 | |
Preceded by | Mikhail Suslov |
Succeeded by | Frol Kozlov |
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine | |
In office 12 June 1953 – 26 December 1957 | |
Preceded by | Leonid Melnikov |
Succeeded by | Nikolai Podgorny |
Full member of the 19th, 20th Presidium | |
In office 12 July 1955 – 4 May 1960 | |
Member of the 20th Secretariat | |
In office 17 December 1957 – 5 April 1960 | |
Personal details | |
Born | 25 February [O.S. 12 February] 1908 Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire |
Died | 28 December 1975 Moscow, Soviet Union | (aged 67)
Nationality | Soviet |
Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1938-1962) |
Profession | Mechanical engineer, civil servant |
Oleksii Kyrychenko aka Aleksei Illarinovich Kirichenko' (Russian: Алексе́й Илларио́нович Кириче́нко; 12(25) February 1908 – 28 December 1975) was a Ukrainian politician, who was the first ethnic Ukrainian to head the republic's communist party during the Soviet era.[1] Between 1957 and 1960, he was a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the second-highest ranking official within the party after Nikita Khrushchev.[2]
Biography
Kyrychenko was born in the village Chornobayivka in the Kherson region of south east Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire in a family of Ukrainian factory workers.[3] From the age of 11 he started earning for living by working in the fields and then at railways. After graduating from a mechanical school he worked in Kazakhstan as an engineer in a sovkhoz. He then returned to Ukraine to receive a university degree (1936) and teach agricultural engineering. In 1938, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine {CP(b)U}, soon after Nikita Khrushchev had been appointed as First Secretary. In 1941, he was appointed Secretary of the CP(b)U. During the war with Germany, he served as a member of the military council on several fronts.
Kyrychenko was First Secretary of the Odesa regional party committee, in 1945-49. It was a period of famine in Ukraine, caused by the war, drought, and by the Soviet policy of rebuilding heavy industry and removing grain from Ukraine to feed Russian factory workers. During this period, Kyrychenko told Khrushchev that, while visiting the home who worked on a collective farm...:
I found a scene of horror. The woman had the corpse of her own child on the table and was cutting it up. She was chattering away as she worked. 'We've already eaten Manechka. Now we'll salt down Vanechka. This will keep us for some time. Can you imagine? This woman had gone crazy with hunger and butchered her own children![4]
Kyrychenko was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1952-61; and Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, 1949-53.
According to Khrushchev, Kyrychenko's promotion to First Secretary the Ukrainian party in June 1953 was originally proposed by the police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, shortly before his downfall. He was, though, one of Khrushchev's most influential allies. In July 1955, he was promoted to the 11-member Praesidium (or Politburo. In June 1957, he rushed to Moscow at short notice to take part in a Praesidium meeting at which Khrushchev's rivals, led by Georgy Malenkov were seeking to remove him from office. He helped Khrushchev turn the tables and oust Malenkov and others.[5]
In December 1957, Kyrychenko was transfered to Moscow as the Central Committee Secretary in charge of party appointments. This meant that he was officially ranked as one of the five most senior figures in the party, but because of his office and relative youth, he was the person most obviously placed to succeed Khrushchev. Khrushchev mentiooned this to the US Ambassador, Averell Harriman, in June 1959, but added: "I am very jealous of my prerogatives, and while I live, I will run the party." He flew into a rage, banged the desk with his fist and shouted down the phone when Kyrychenko tried to transfer a senior official from Moscow to Leningrad without consulting him.[6]
On 13 January, 1960, it was suddenly announced that Kyrychenko had been appointed First Secretary of the Rostov provincial party committee. In May, he was formally dismissed from the Praesidium and the party secretariat, and on 15 June 1960, he was sacked from his post in Rostov, after just five months.[7]
He retired in 1962, died in 1975 and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.[2]
According to Enver Hoxha, in the midst of the Soviet-Albanian split an Albanian military student studying in the Soviet Union had met Kirichenko during a train ride. The latter said to him, "Good for your Party, which exposed Khrushchev. Long live Enver Hoxha! Long live socialist Albania! . . . Don't yield, give Enver my best wishes!"[8]
References
- ^ Plokhy, Serhii (2016). The Gates of Europe, A HIstory of Ukraine. London: Penguin. p. 297. ISBN 978-0-141-98061-4.
- ^ a b Микалай Аляксандравич Зянькович (2002). Самые закрытые люди: Энциклопедия биографий. Olma Media Group. pp. 246–248. ISBN 978-5-94850-035-5. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
- ^ "Кириченко Алексей Илларионович 1908-1975 Биографический указатель". Khronos. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
- ^ Khrushchev, Nikita (1971). Khrushchev Remembers. London: Sphere. pp. 205–06.
- ^ Taubman, William (2003). Khrushchev. London: Simon & Schuster. pp. 317–18. ISBN 0-7432-7564-0.
- ^ Taubman. Khrushchev. pp. 413, 612–13.
- ^ Conquest, Robert (1961). Power and Policy in the U.S.S.R. London: MacMillan. pp. 387–88.
- ^ Hoxha, Enver. The Khrushchevites. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1984. pp. 202-203.