The reign of Andropov and Chernenko is brief. The Soviet Union during the reign of Yu.V. Andropov and K.U. Chernenko

October 7th, 2016

As I remember now, we were sitting on chairs in a children's sanatorium and on the radio they announced “The General Secretary of the USSR Konstantin Chernenko has died” and then we laughed as a whole group. There was just a boy in our group - Chernenko.

How much do you know about this Secretary General? They write a lot about Brezhnev, Andropov, Khrushchev. But this one... let's find out something more detailed.

In February 1984, Soviet citizens experienced mixed feelings - some felt awkward, others were downright amused. 72-year-old Konstantin Chernenko was elected as the new General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee instead of 69-year-old Yuri Andropov, who died of a serious illness. The new Soviet leader was also seriously ill, and, looking at his appearance, the residents of the Land of Soviets said: it would not be long to wait for a new funeral.

The forecast turned out to be correct: Chernenko’s reign lasted just over a year, and during this period the leader spent most of his time in a hospital bed.

The late USSR in this sense resembled the Vatican: just as Catholic hierarchs sometimes choose an elder as a pontiff as a temporary compromise figure, so representatives of the Soviet party elite elected the sick Chernenko so that for some time he would serve as a screen for a furious struggle for power hidden from view.

Konstantin Chernenko himself was not eager to become a leader. All his life he was a skillful and diligent performer, who, at the end of his life, suddenly found himself at the very top.

Ukrainian from Siberia

It is all the more surprising that the biography of this Soviet General Secretary has perhaps the largest number of “blank spots”. Chernenko himself created the “spots”, taking advantage of his official position. Having headed the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee in the 1960s, he gained access to the most important party secrets, including the biographies of leaders.

Having established the strictest system of access to work with archive documents, Chernenko tried to ensure that the most controversial and ambiguous pages of his own biography disappeared forever from his archive.

He was born on September 24, 1911 in the village of Bolshaya Tes, Yenisei province. His father, Ustin Demidovich Chernenko, came from a family of Ukrainian peasants who moved to Siberia. My father worked in copper mines and gold mines.

Many years later, when Chernenko had already entered the top leadership of the USSR, his native village would be flooded during the creation of the Krasnoyarsk reservoir.

Chernenko had quite a lot of relatives and, having become a “big man,” he helped them get “grain” jobs. However, in contrast to the wild lifestyle of Brezhnev’s daughter, Chernenko’s relatives, like himself, skillfully remained in the shadows, without causing irritation.

Women could ruin a functionary's career

In his youth, Kostya Chernenko graduated from a three-year school for rural youth, after which he began his party career. At the age of 18, he became the head of the agitation and propaganda department of the district Komsomol committee. Then he served in the border troops, where he distinguished himself both in the liquidation of a dangerous gang and in his main “specialty” as an agitator-propagandist. During his service, Chernenko joined the party and became secretary of the party organization of the border detachment.

Returning from the army, the 22-year-old young man was determined to continue his successful party career.

By the beginning of the war, Chernenko had risen to the rank of secretary of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and at the very height of the war he was sent to the Higher School of Party Organizers under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. After graduation, the functionary was sent to work in Penza. In 1948, Moscow intended to hire him to work in the central office.

And here the career failed. A letter arrived in Moscow from a certain woman who claimed that Chernenko was an immoral person living among several families at once. Subsequently, Chernenko tried to hide all documents related to the party’s investigation into this fact as deeply as possible or completely destroy it.

It is known, however, that party comrades came to the conclusion that certain facts discrediting Konstantin Ustinovich had taken place. This did not completely destroy his career, but instead of Moscow he ended up in Chisinau, taking the post of head of the propaganda and agitation department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova.

Exemplary performer

Two years later, Leonid Brezhnev became the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova. Acquaintance with him, which grew into friendship, became fateful for Chernenko. It is not known whether the fact that both in their youth had an increased attraction to the female sex played a role in this, but it is reliably known that Brezhnev very quickly appreciated Chernenko’s skills as a performer and organizer. Moving upward, Leonid Ilyich will begin to pull his friend along with him.

In 1956, Chernenko finally got a job in Moscow, becoming the head of the mass agitation sector in the department of propaganda and agitation of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1960, Leonid Brezhnev became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and Chernenko was appointed to the post of head of the Secretariat of the Presidium.

In 1965, after Brezhnev became “man number one” in the USSR, Chernenko was appointed head of the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee.

It is difficult to call him Brezhnev’s “right hand” - he was too inconspicuous and unambitious for this role. But it depended on Chernenko how quickly this or that issue would be resolved, and what kind of decision could be made. In his hands was all the correspondence of the Secretary General, he prepared draft replies, materials for Politburo meetings and much more. Over time, Chernenko de facto began to make decisions on many issues himself, only bringing a ready-made verdict for Brezhnev to approve. However, this did not concern key issues - Chernenko never crossed the border.

From the second half of the 1970s, when Brezhnev’s health began to deteriorate, “friend Kostya” became an irreplaceable person for him. In 1978, he was introduced to the ranks of the country's top leaders, becoming a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.

At the same time, part of the party elite began to consider him as a possible successor to Brezhnev, in defiance of another group that supported Yuri Andropov.

In November 1982, when Brezhnev died, Andropov’s supporters took over, Chernenko at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee personally announced the candidacy of the former chairman of the USSR KGB for the post of Secretary General. The proposal was adopted unanimously.

And on February 13, 1984, Chernenko himself, after Andropov’s death, was confirmed to the post of Secretary General.

Year of Secretary General Chernenko: boycott of the Olympics, school reform and persecution of rockers

As already mentioned, by this time he was seriously ill. However, during the short period of his reign, some significant things happened. A school reform was launched, which provided, in particular, for education from the age of 6 and the introduction of a five-day period.

Chernenko, who graduated from a pedagogical institute while working in Moldova, was generally actively interested in issues of education - it was under him that the Day of Knowledge holiday appeared.

Under Chernenko, a response was given to the American boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow - the USSR national team refused to participate in the Games in Los Angeles, and as an alternative, large-scale competitions “Friendship-84” were organized.

Chernenko launched a campaign to combat musical groups that cause “ideological and aesthetic damage.” This period became the time of the toughest pressure on representatives of “Russian rock”.

Contrary to misconception, the investigation into major corruption cases that began under Andropov was not curtailed under Chernenko. The former head of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Nikolai Shchelokov, was stripped of the rank of army general, state awards and expelled from the party during the reign of Konstantin Ustinovich.

Chernenko was a supporter of the party rehabilitation of Stalin, but he failed to carry out this project. But he reinstated the famous figure of the Stalin era, Vyacheslav Molotov, into the party. This step towards the 94-year-old Molotov will give rise to the joke: “Chernenko has found a successor.”

Jokes aside, the mighty Stalinist People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and head of the Soviet government will outlive Chernenko, ending his earthly journey in the era of perestroika.

Last election of a dying man

In the mid-1970s, the Soviet leadership was struck by an epidemic of mutual rewards, which also affected Chernenko. Under Brezhnev, he became twice a Hero of Socialist Labor, and he received a third “Golden Star” in 1984, on his last birthday.

In February 1985, elections to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR were held, and the first person of the state, according to tradition, was nominated as a deputy by labor collectives. Chernenko did not leave the room in the Central Clinical Hospital, and everyone understood that he was living his last days. However, the decorations of the polling station were created right in the chamber in order to show the people the participation of the Secretary General in an important state event.

On February 28, 1985, the Vremya program showed the ceremony of presenting Chernenko with a deputy’s certificate. This broadcast made a depressing impression - the leader of the country was out of breath, spoke with difficulty and practically could not stand on his feet without the help of outsiders. Against this background, even Brezhnev in recent years seemed like a cheerful, big man.

We must pay tribute to Konstantin Chernenko - the party functionary played the role to which he devoted his entire life until the very end, even trying to talk about the need for new labor achievements. However, the country, listening to him, was preparing for the next series of epics known as the “carriage races.”

Problem "Ku"

Konstantin Chernenko died on March 10, 1985 at 19:20 Moscow time. Three days later he became the last person to be buried at the Kremlin wall.

The Secretary General never found out what role he played in the fate of the comedy film “Kin-dza-dza!”, which has now become a classic of Russian cinema. The fact is that Chernenko came to power in the midst of work on the film, putting the creators in a dead end: the main word of the aliens, “ku,” coincided with the initials of the Secretary General, Konstantin Ustinovich. Fearing trouble, Georgy Danelia and Rezo Gabriadze decided to replace the “ku” with something else, but neither option seemed suitable. While the issue of a replacement was being decided, Chernenko passed away, and the film remained unchanged. So the “ku” in this comedy is also a memory of the strangest leader of the Soviet era.

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After the death of L.I. Brezhnev, the Politburo elected Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Yu. V. Andropov has headed the State Security Committee of the USSR (KGB) since 1967. Let us immediately note that he led poorly, because he did not ensure state security and the state began to collapse from within even under the leadership of the KGB by Andropov. Did Yu. V. Andropov understand that the continuation of the anti-Stalinist course adopted after the 20th Congress of the CPSU would lead to the collapse of the USSR? Unfortunately, there is no evidence of Andropov speaking on this issue. But when discussing L. I. Brezhnev’s report on the 20th Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Andropov suggested not mentioning Stalin’s name at all, while many suggested speaking honestly about I.V. Stalin’s enormous contribution to our Victory. The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish ASSR, Kuusinen, played a major role in Andropov’s promotion, which gives reason to think about the possible influence of the West on his career growth. Andropov promoted the destroyers of the USSR to power: M. S. Gorbachev, A. I. Lukyanov, N. I. Ryzhkov, G. A. Aliev, E. A. Shevardnadze. Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, of course, could not stop the invasion of the state by the promoters of Yu. V. Andropov, but he allowed the people to live in a beautiful country for one more year. K.U. Chernenko accepted a state that had already been deceived and poisoned by the poison of liberalism and, given his state of health and personal abilities, of course, could not change anything. He died on March 10, 1985. While maintaining the USSR and Russian socialism, our country, after a maximum of two five-year plans, became the first power in the world in the production of industrial and agricultural products and the standard of living of the population. The West could not allow this. All our troubles are associated with Western interference in the internal life of the country. After the death of K.U. Chernenko, this intervention became almost open.

Chairman KGB Soviet Union, was elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee November 12, 1982, a day after the death of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev from a heart attack.

Yuri Vladimirovich, like a typical KGB officer, immediately began his activities as Secretary General by establishing order. The persecution of dissidents and various kinds of “sectarians” intensified. Most of the weakened and fattened officials (especially representatives of the “Dnepropetrovsk mafia”, that is, “friends” of Brezhnev and Khrushchev from central and eastern Ukraine) were removed from their posts, and some were sent to jail.

Yuri Andropov could well have become the person who could lead the Union out of Brezhnev’s “stagnation”, as well as prevent the crisis that occurred seven years later. But on February 9, 1984, the Secretary General died, according to an official statement, from kidney failure caused by long-standing renal failure. However, according to an interview with the last KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov to Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2007, Yuri Vladimirovich struggled with a serious illness - brain cancer - for more than 10 years, and in the last days of his leadership the disease progressed. As a result, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee shot himself.

Chernenko.

February 13, 1984 Central Committee CPSU elected Konstantin Ustinovich General Secretary Chernenko, a soft, weak and very sick person. At the time of election, the newly elected Secretary General suffered from severe heart, pulmonary and kidney failure. However, such a candidate was beneficial to the bureaucrats from the Politburo. All the officials removed by Andropov, including representatives of the “Dnepropetrovsk clan,” were returned as soon as possible.

Chernenko conceived several serious reforms in the sphere of labor and education, but did not have time to implement them.

Everyone knows that the only head of the Soviet Union who fought at the front during the Great Patriotic War was L.I. Brezhnev. For N. Khrushchev, Yu. Andropov and K. Chernenko, age also allowed them to go defend their homeland with arms in hand - but a different fate awaited them. Let's see what the heads of the Soviet state did instead of fighting together with the entire Soviet people.

Khrushchev

In 1941, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev turned 47 years old. At that time, he was a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, that is, in fact, the leader of this union republic. In those days, he was known as a communist very devoted to I. Stalin, who obediently implemented repressive policies. When the war began, he became military commissar of five fronts in the southern, southwestern and western directions. Simply put, he was a senior staff officer. That is, he took part in the war, but as a commander, not a fighter. Let us note that Khrushchev already had combat experience - during the Civil War he led a detachment of the Red Guard, and then was an instructor in the army political department.

However, apparently, such experience was clearly not enough. His activities in the position of military commissar are assessed rather negatively. He was directly related to two major defeats of the Soviet army - the encirclement of Soviet troops near Kiev in 1941 and the unsuccessful battles near Kharkov in 1942.

Khrushchev's role in the Kyiv tragedy is controversial. Many blame him for the fact that the Soviet troops, who did not receive an order to retreat, were surrounded. However, it is not. Khrushchev just gave such an order, and without consulting Stalin. But due to the fact that the decision was not agreed with the headquarters, it did not come into force and did not reach the troops.

In 1942, the Soviet army was defeated near Kharkov, and the Germans advanced the front line to the Caucasus. Our formations were ordered to resist to the end, although it was obvious that due to a lack of resources it would not be possible to hold the city. As a result, we suffered heavy losses, but the Germans were able to take positions that were more advantageous than those that they would have gotten if the defenders of Kharkov had retreated. Here, too, there was a mistake by the Soviet command, which is often attributed to Khrushchev. However, it was not carried out by him personally, but by a collective military council.

Andropov

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, who headed the USSR from 1982 to 1984, was 27 years old in 1941. At this time, he, a Komsomol activist, was organizing the work of the Komsomol in the territories of the newly formed Karelo-Finnish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Official biographies of Andropov briefly report on his war period: at the beginning of the war he organized a partisan underground, from 1942 to 1944, under the call sign Mohican, he was involved in the formation of a Komsomol underground in the territory of Karelia, occupied by the Germans and Finns. In the book by Yu. Shleikin "Andropov. Karelia. 1940-1951." Documentary evidence of Andropov's partisan activities is provided. Here, for example, is a fragment of the memoirs of partisan Silva Udaltsova:

“In July 1943, together with a group of comrades, I was summoned to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the KFSSR and given the task: to penetrate the territory of the occupied Sheltozero region, create underground party and Komsomol organizations, establish strong ties with the local population, among whom to launch political work aimed at disruption of activities carried out by the occupation authorities, report the necessary intelligence data to the Center.

... Before us, liaison officers of the Central Committee of the Party of the Republic Anna Lisitsyna and Maria Melentyeva visited Sheltozero, who were later awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their courage and bravery. I.I. was sent and worked in Sheltozero. Zinoviev and a number of other comrades. However, it was not possible to establish constant work of the underground for a long period. Our group included: D.M. Gorbachev - secretary of the underground district party committee, P.I. Udaltsov is the secretary of the underground district committee of Komsomol, M.F. Asanov is the liaison officer and I am the group’s radio operator. When I was appointed radio operator, I had just turned 19 years old.

We were accompanied by Yu.V. Andropov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of our republic. We flew to the rear on four U-2 planes. Yuri Vladimirovich approached each group standing near the plane and once again spoke parting words."

Chernenko

Konstantin Ustinovich, “the strangest ruler of Russia,” became Secretary General in 1984, being a decrepit and sick old man.

Chernenko was born into a Siberian family and grew up to be a strong guy. His mother was Tofalar, and his father was Ukrainian. From his youth, Konstantin was accustomed to hard work and worked in the mines. In the 1930s he was drafted into the army, where he joined the Komsomol, deciding to become an activist. In 1941 he turned 30 years old. By this time, he was also already an established party leader - the head of the agitation and propaganda department of two district committees of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In 1943, he was sent to party courses in Moscow, which he completed in 1945. It is worth noting that his then position in itself was low and did not exempt him from military duty. Apparently, the strong young man was helped to avoid going to the front by his sister, who worked as the head of the organizational department of the Krasnoyarsk City Committee and was on good terms with Averky Aristov, who headed the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

History of Russia [for students of technical universities] Shubin Alexander Vladlenovich

§ 4. POLITICS OF Y. V. ANDROPOV AND K. U. CHERNENKO

Andropov believed that it was necessary to ensure the acceleration of the socio-economic development of the USSR - mainly by introducing discipline in every workplace and fighting corruption. Under Andropov, criminal cases, which had previously been slowed down by Brezhnev’s entourage, were set in motion. About a fifth of the top party and government leaders were removed from their posts. A particularly widespread purge took place in Uzbekistan, where major scams in the supply of cotton were revealed. The first secretary of the republic, Sh. R. Rashidov, escaped arrest because he died suddenly.

“Bringing order” affected every Soviet person. Now the authorities carefully monitored the implementation of every instruction, even the most absurd. The police raided shops, cinemas and hairdressers, detaining anyone who could not explain why they were there during working hours.

However, Andropov understood that in this way it was possible to mobilize the labor activity of workers only for a short time. For a longer acceleration it was necessary to somehow interest the workers. To develop the reform program, Andropov involved relatively young members of the Central Committee and the Politburo, such as M. S. Gorbachev and G. V. Romanov. Gorbachev was inclined to the need to strengthen market mechanisms and weaken departmental bureaucracy, while Romanov advocated a more decisive fight against localism and strengthening the state vertical control.

In the summer of 1982, a special department was created in the Central Committee under the leadership of N. I. Ryzhkov to prepare economic reform. At the beginning of 1983, Yu. V. Andropov instructed M. S. Gorbachev and N. I. Ryzhkov to begin preparing economic reform. Prominent scientists were involved in the development of the party-state course: academicians A. G. Aganbegyan, G. A. Arbatov, T. I. Zaslavskaya, O. T. Bogomolov, doctors of economic sciences L. I. Abalkin, N. Ya. Petrakov and some others whose views were mainly market-oriented. In June 1983, the Law on Labor Collectives was adopted, formally granting workers the right to participate in the management of the affairs of the enterprise. However, no real mechanism for the implementation of these rights was provided.

In order to more accurately determine how increasing the market interest of workers in the results of their labor will affect the socialist economy, Andropov decided to conduct a large-scale experiment. For this purpose, certain industries and large enterprises were singled out in a number of republics of the USSR. They introduced a dependence of wages on profits, and enterprises themselves could set prices and develop product samples. This was an expanded version of self-financing.

On February 9, 1984, Andropov died. The Politburo nominated K.U. Chernenko to the post of General Secretary, whose state of health left no hope for his long reign. This was a transitional figure, necessary for the contenders for the highest power in the country in order to gain time to strengthen their positions.

Chernenko was an experienced CPSU apparatchik. Many saw him as a successor to Brezhnev’s work, a protégé of the conservative wing of the Politburo. However, in practice, Chernenko continued many of Andropov’s initiatives. Under him, investigations into corruption and abuse of officials were resumed.

Sick and weakening before our eyes, Chernenko entrusted the solution of current political and economic issues to other members of the Politburo. As the death of the next secretary general approached, the struggle for power intensified between his “comrades-in-arms.” Supporters of continuing Andropov's course, Ustinov and Gromyko supported Gorbachev's candidacy for the post of party leader. Gorbachev achieved an appointment to an important post in the Central Committee apparatus - he was supposed to conduct Politburo meetings in Chernenko’s absence. A powerful coalition of regional clans of the nomenklatura, the agrarian lobby, representatives of the director corps and law enforcement agencies has formed around the second secretary of the Central Committee. However, there were other influential contenders for the post of General Secretary: Chairman of the Council of Ministers N.A. Tikhonov, an old comrade of Brezhnev, as well as G.V. Romanov, who was responsible for the military-industrial complex. The positions of each group were not stable.

Chernenko died on March 10, 1985. At Gromyko’s suggestion, the Politburo nominated Gorbachev for the post of General Secretary. Other members of the Politburo did not dare to contradict the most influential member of the Brezhnev team. The candidacy of a relatively young and energetic party leader aroused the support of the Central Committee and great hopes in society.

From the book History of Russia from Rurik to Putin. People. Events. Dates author Anisimov Evgeniy Viktorovich

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