Konstantin Chernenko
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| Konstantin Chernenko КонÑтантин УÑтинович Черненко |
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| In office February 9, 1984 – March 10, 1985 |
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| Preceded by | Yuri Andropov |
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| Succeeded by | Mikhail Gorbachev |
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| Born | September 24, 1911 Bolshaya Tes, Russian Empire |
| Died | March 10, 1985 Moscow, USSR |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (Russian: КонÑтантиÌн УÑтиÌнович ЧернеÌнко; September 24, 1911 – March 10, 1985) was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the CPSU who led the Soviet Union from February 13, 1984 until his death just thirteen months later on March 10, 1985. Chernenko was also Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from April 11, 1984, until his death.
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[edit] Early life
Chernenko was born in the village of Bolshaya Tes (now in Novosyolovsky District, Krasnoyarsk Krai) to poor family. His father worked in copper and gold mines whilst his mother took care of the farm work. Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1926 and the Communist Party in 1931. From 1930 to 1933 he served in the Soviet frontier guards on the Soviet-Chinese border and subsequently specialized in propaganda activity for the Communist Party. In 1945 he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow, and in 1953 he finished a correspondence course for schoolteachers.
The turning point in Chernenko’s career was his assignment in 1948 to head the party’s propaganda department in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). There he met and won the confidence of Leonid Brezhnev, the first secretary of Moldova from 1950 to 1952 and future leader of the Soviet Union. Chernenko followed Brezhnev in 1956 to fill a similar propaganda post in the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow. In 1960, after Brezhnev was named chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (titular head of state of the Soviet Union), Chernenko became his chief of staff.
[edit] Brezhnev's shadow
In 1965, Chernenko became Director of Personnel in the party's General Department. He continued his work as a clerk, but he now held a powerful position. He had knowledge about all the top people in the party and monitored wiretapping and surveillance devices in offices, but his main job was to sign hundreds of documents every day. He did this for 20 years. Even when he became General Secretary, he continued to sign papers, although thanks to Soviet bureaucracy, his signature meant little more than it did in his previous position. Eventually, when he became ill, he was no longer physically able to sign documents and a facsimile was used instead, further devaluing his signature.
Following the death of Brezhnev in 1982, Chernenko lost the power struggle and instead Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB, was nominated as General Secretary.
[edit] Leader of the Soviet Union
When Andropov died in February 1984, after 16 months in office, Chernenko was elected to replace him, despite concerns over his health. Chernenko represented a return to the policies of the late Brezhnev era. Nevertheless, he supported a greater role for the labour unions, and reform in education and propaganda. The one major personnel change that Chernenko made was the firing of the chief of the General Staff, Nikolay Ogarkov, who had advocated less spending on consumer goods in favor of greater expenditures on weapons research and development.
In foreign policy, he negotiated a trade pact with the People's Republic of China. Despite calls for renewed détente, Chernenko did little to prevent the escalation of the Cold War with the United States. For example, in 1984, the USSR prevented a visit to West Germany by East German leader Erich Honecker. However, in the late autumn of 1984, the U.S. and the Soviet Union did agree to resume arms control talks in early 1985.
[edit] Death and Legacy
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By the end of 1984 Chernenko could hardly leave the hospital, and the Politburo was affixing a facsimile of his signature to all letters, as Chernenko had done with Andropov's when he was dying. In what was almost universally regarded, even by his opponents, as a cruel act against Chernenko, Politburo member Viktor Grishin dragged the terminally ill Chernenko from his hospital bed to a ballot box to vote in the elections in early 1985.
The impact of Chernenko—or the lack of it—was evident in the way in which his death was reported in the Soviet press. Soviet newspapers carried stories about Chernenko's death and Gorbachev's selection on the same day. The papers had the same format: page 1 reported the party Central Committee session on March 11 that elected Gorbachev and printed the new leader's biography and a large photograph of him; page 2 announced the demise of Chernenko and printed his obituary. Cities with populations ranging from 250,000 to 600,000 had been named for Andropov, Brezhnev, and Ustinov at their deaths, but Chernenko's name was given to the Siberian town of Sharypo, with 20,000 inhabitants.
After the death of a Soviet leader it was customary for his successors to open his safe and look in it. When Gorbachev had the safe opened it was found to contain a small folder of personal papers, and more surprisingly, large bundles of money; money was also found in his desk.
He was buried in the Kremlin necropolis.
He had a son by his first wife (whom he divorced) who became a propagandist in Tomsk. His second wife, Anna Dmitrevna Lyubimova, bore him two daughters, Yelena (who worked at the Institute of Party History) and Vera (who worked at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC), and a son, Vladimir, who was a Goskino editorialist.
He had a Gosdacha named Sosnovka-1 that stretched over 11.5 hectares by the Moskva River with a private beach. Before him, Mikhail Suslov had used it.[citation needed]
| Preceded by Yuri Andropov |
General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party 1984–1985 |
Succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev |
| Historical Russian Leadership |
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 Pre-imperial Russian Leadership (860-1721)
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