Politburo chairmen
A member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a member of the nomenklatura, the country's de facto ruling class.[1] From 1955 to 1964 and from 1964 to 1982 the Politburo was chaired by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev respectively.[2] It was normal that a full member of the Politburo had previously served as a candidate member, but this was not always the case.[3] During the 1960s 32 people held seats in the Politburo: 23 full members and 14 candidate members.
Alexei Kosygin[4] and Nikolai Podgorny[5] were elected to the Presidium in 1960 at a Central Committee plenum. Averky Aristov, Nikolai Belyaev, Yekaterina Furtseva, Nikolai Ignatov and Nuritdinov Mukhitdinov were either demoted or lost their Politburo seats at the Central Committee plenum of May 1960, held three days after the U-2 incident. The new Politburo was more evenly divided between the pro- and anti-Khrushchev factions. Alexey Kirichenko's successor as Second Secretary was Frol Kozlov, considered by many in the West at the time as an anti-Khrushchevite.[6] The Central Committee and Politburo at the 22nd Party Congress (17 October–31 October 1961) was, according to sovietologists Merle Fainsod and Jerry F. Hough, elected unanimously.[7] Brezhnev, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was considered as an alternative to Kozlov as Second Secretary, but was instead made Third Secretary, the secretary responsible for industry. In 1963, for unknown reasons, possibly health reasons, Brezhnev took over Kozlov's duties at the Secretariat, and became the de facto Second Secretary. When a Western journalist asked Khrushchev in 1963 who would succeed him, Khrushchev responded bluntly "Brezhnev".[8] After a prolonged power struggle, Khrushchev was ousted from power,[9] and a collective leadership led by Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny,[10] Mikhail Suslov[5] and Andrei Kirilenko[11] was formed.
In the months following Khrushchev's ousting, three members were elected to the Politburo: Alexander Shelepin, the Chairman of the State Control Commission, Petro Shelest, the First Secretary of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine and Kirill Mazurov, a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. At the 23rd Party Congress (29 March–8 April 1966), the first congress since Khrushchev's ousting, the Presidium reverted to its previous name, Politburo. Mikoyan and Nikolai Shvernik, the two oldest members, were not reelected to the Politburo, while Arvīds Pelše became the only Politburo débutant.[12] While Brezhnev may have been General Secretary, he did not have a majority in the Politburo; when Kosygin and Podgorny agreed on policy, which was not often the case, Brezhnev found himself in the minority. Brezhnev could only count on three to four votes in the Politburo: Suslov, who often switched sides, Kirilenko, Pelše and Dmitry Polyansky.[13] Brezhnev and Kosygin often disagreed on policy; Brezhnev was a conservative while Kosygin was a modest reformer. Kosygin, who had begun his premiership as Brezhnev's equal, lost much power and influence within the Politburo when he introduced the 1965–1971 Soviet economic reform.[14]
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General
Full- and candidate membership of the Politburo were taken from these sources:
Specific