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Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko[a][b] (24 September [O.S. 11 September] 1911 – 10 March 1985)[2][3] was a Soviet politician who served as thede jureleader of the Soviet Union from February 1984 until his death in March 1985.
Born to a poor family inSiberia, Konstantin Chernenko joined theKomsomol in 1929 and became a full member of the rulingCommunist Party of the Soviet Union in 1931. After holding a series ofpropaganda posts, in 1948 he became the head of the propaganda department inMoldavia, serving underLeonid Brezhnev. After Brezhnev took over as First Secretary of the CPSU in 1964, Chernenko was appointed to head the General Department of theCentral Committee. In this capacity, he became responsible for setting the agenda for thePolitburo and drafting Central Committee decrees. By 1971 Chernenko became a full member of the Central Committee and later a full member of the Politburo in 1978.
Following the death ofYuri Andropov, Chernenko was elected General Secretary of the party'sCentral Committee on 13 February 1984 andChairman of thePresidium of the Supreme Soviet on 11 April 1984. Despite assuming offices associated with the Soviet Union's highest authority, Chernenko's power was significantly undermined by his failing health and lack of support among thenomenklatura who viewed him as a transitionalfigurehead.[4] Thus, he was compelled to rule the country as part of an unofficialtriumvirate alongside Defense MinisterDmitry Ustinov and Foreign MinisterAndrei Gromyko for most of his tenure. After leading the party for less than 13 months, Chernenko died on 10 March 1985 and was succeeded as General Secretary byMikhail Gorbachev.
Chernenko joined theKomsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1929. By 1931 he became a full member of the ruling Communist Party. From 1930 to 1933, he served in theSoviet frontier guards on the Soviet–Chinese border. After completing his military service, he returned toKrasnoyarsk as apropagandist. In 1933 he worked in the Propaganda Department of the Novosyolovsky District Party Committee. A few years later he was promoted to head of the same department in Uyarsk Raykom.
Chernenko steadily rose through the Party ranks, becoming the Director of the Krasnoyarsk House of Party Enlightenment before being named Deputy Head of theAgitprop Department of Krasnoyarsk's Territorial Committee in 1939. In the early 1940s, he began a close relationship withFyodor Kulakov and was named Secretary of the Territorial Party Committee for Propaganda.[6] By 1945 he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow then later finished acorrespondence course for schoolteachers in 1953.
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Chernenko in 1962
The turning point in Chernenko's career was his assignment in 1948 to head the Communist Party's propaganda department in theMoldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. There, he met and won the confidence ofLeonid Brezhnev, the first secretary of the Moldavian branch of the Communist Party from 1950 to 1952 and future leader of the Soviet Union. Chernenko followed Brezhnev in 1956 to fill a similar propaganda post in theCPSU Central Committee in Moscow. In 1960 after Brezhnev was named chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e. the titular head of state of the Soviet Union), Chernenko became his chief of staff.
In 1965, Chernenko was nominated head of the General Department of the Central Committee, and given the mandate to set thePolitburo agenda as well as prepare drafts of numerous Central Committee decrees and resolutions. He also monitoredtelephone wiretaps andcovert listening devices in various offices of the top Party members. Another of his jobs was to sign hundreds of Party documents daily, a job he did for the next 20 years. Even after he became General Secretary of the Party, he continued to sign papers referring to the General Department (when he could no longer physically sign documents, afacsimile was used instead).
In 1971, Chernenko was promoted to full membership in the Central Committee: overseeing Party work over the Letter Bureau, dealing with correspondence. In 1976 he was elected secretary of the Letter Bureau. He became Candidate in 1977, and in 1978 a full member of the Politburo, second to the General Secretary in the Party hierarchy.
During Brezhnev's final years, Chernenko became fully immersed inideological Party work: heading Soviet delegations abroad, accompanying Brezhnev to important meetings and conferences, and working as a member of the commission that revised theSoviet Constitution in 1977. In 1979, he took part in theVienna arms limitation talks.
AfterBrezhnev's death in November 1982, there was speculation that the position of General Secretary would fall to Chernenko, but he was unable to rally enough support for his candidacy. Ultimately,KGB chiefYuri Andropov eventually won the position.
As a result of Chernenko's weak hold on power, Foreign MinisterGromyko (left) and Defense MinisterUstinov (right) held enormous influence over Soviet policy throughout his leadership.
At the time of his ascent to the country's top post, Chernenko was primarily viewed as a transitional leader who could give the Politburo's "Old Guard" time to choose an acceptable candidate from the next generation of Soviet leadership. In the interim, Chernenko's authority was severely limited by his lack of support within the party and his deteriorating health which led him to miss meetings with increasing frequency.[9][10] At Andropov's funeral, he could barely read theeulogy.[11] Therefore, he was forced to govern the country as part of atriumvirate alongsideDefense MinisterDmitriy Ustinov andForeign MinisterAndrei Gromyko.[12][13][14] According to historianVladislav M. Zubok, "Ustinov and Gromyko retained a virtual monopoly in [Soviet] military and foreign affairs" as a result of Chernenko's feeble hold on power.[15]
Chernenko addresses Komsomol leaders in his capacity as General Secretary in 1984.
Inforeign policy, he negotiated atrade deal withChina. Despite calls for reneweddétente, Chernenko did little to prevent the escalation of theCold War with the United States. For example, in 1984 the Soviet Union prevented a visit toWest Germany byEast German leaderErich Honecker. However, in late autumn of 1984, the U.S. and the Soviet Union did agree to resume arms control talks in early 1985. In November 1984 Chernenko met with Britain'sLabour Party leader,Neil Kinnock.[16]
Before his death, Chernenko signed preliminary documents stating that on 9 May 1985, on the day of the 40th Victory Day Parade, the city ofVolgograd would be renamed to Stalingrad. In his letter toStalin's daughterSvetlana Alliluyeva, he wrote about "the upcoming restoration of justice in relation to the memory and heritage of I.V. Stalin", which presumably referred to Stalin's political rehabilitation.[19]
Chernenko startedsmoking at the age of nine,[20] and he was always known to be a heavy smoker as an adult.[21] Long before his election as general secretary, he had developedemphysema and right-sidedheart failure. In 1983, he had been absent from his duties for three months due tobronchitis,pleurisy andpneumonia. HistorianJohn Lewis Gaddis described him as "an enfeebledgeriatric so zombie-like as to be beyond assessing intelligence reports, alarming or not" when he succeeded Andropov in 1984.[22]
In early 1984, Chernenko was hospitalized for over a month but kept working by sending the Politburo notes and letters. During the summer, his doctors sent him toKislovodsk for the mineralspas, but on the day of his arrival at the resort Chernenko's health deteriorated, and he contracted pneumonia. Chernenko did not return to the Kremlin until later in 1984. He awarded Orders to cosmonauts and writers in his office, but was unable to walk through the corridors and was driven in a wheelchair. By the end of 1984, Chernenko could hardly leave theCentral Clinical Hospital, a heavily guarded facility in west Moscow, and the Politburo was affixing a facsimile of his signature to all letters, as Chernenko had done with Andropov's when he was dying. Chernenko's illness was first acknowledged publicly on 22 February 1985 by theFirst Secretary of the Moscow City Committee,Viktor Grishin, during a televised election rally in Kuibyshev Borough of northeast Moscow.[23] Two days later, in a televised scene that shocked the nation,[24] Grishin dragged the terminally ill Chernenko from his hospital bed to a ballot box to vote. On 28 February 1985, Chernenko appeared once more on television to receive parliamentary credentials and read out a brief statement on his electoral victory: "the election campaign is over and now it is time to carry out the tasks set for us by the voters and the Communists who have spoken out".[23]
Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in two and a half years. Upon being informed in the middle of the night of his death, U.S. PresidentRonald Reagan is reported to have remarked, "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians if they keep dying on me?"[37]
The impact of Chernenko—or the lack thereof—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 11 March that electedMikhail 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.[40]
After the death of a Soviet leader it was customary for his successors to open his safe. When Gorbachev had Chernenko's safe opened, it was found to contain a small folder of personal papers and several large bundles of money; more money was found in his desk. It is not known where he had obtained the money or what he intended to use it for.[41]
Chernenko had a son with his first wife, Faina Vassilyevna Chernenko, namedAlbert. With his second wife,Anna Dmitrevna Lyubimova, who married him in 1944, he had two daughters, Yelena and Vera, and a son, Vladimir. In 2015 archival documents were published, according to which Chernenko had many[clarification needed] more wives, and many more children with them; this circumstance, perhaps, was the reason for the slowing of Chernenko's career growth in the 1940s.[42]
^Miles 2020, p. 100 "As the leader of the Soviet Union] Chernenko delegated increasing amounts of responsibility and decision-making to his inner circle because of his health. Gorbachev, for example, chaired politburo meetings in Chernenko's (frequent) absence. In public, inspired by his initials K.U.Ch., Soviet citizens had taken to calling himkucher, or 'coachman,' to evoke the image of an old man struggling to control his team of horses."
^Bialer 1986, p. 103 "While in office Chernenko labored under major constraints. He was supposed to lead a Politburo that only fifteen months before had rejected him in favor of Andropov. The new members of the Politburo and the score of high officials who joined the central Party apparatus after Brezhnev's death were all Andropov loyalists. They shared their patron's position on the issues. Almost all belonged to the younger generation. Many had replaced Brezhnev loyalists who were close to Chernenko. Moreover, Chernenko did not enjoy the respect of the older generation, all of whom had had more illustrious careers and more independent positions than he. They controlled major bloc of bureaucratic support from the hierarchies they supervised. Nor was Chernenko personally respected by the younger generation. For them he represented the past, and particularly the years of paralysis at the end of Brezhnev's rule...[¶] Most important, however, Chernenko's power and his independence were sharply circumscribed by the widely recognized fact that he was a transitional leader who was keeping the seat of the general secretary warm for the real successor to come. The lame-duck nature of Chernenko's leadership meant that officials were not likely to become preoccupied with an effort to please him, or to identify themselves with him."
^Zubok, Vladislav M. (2009) [1st pub. 2007].A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union In The Cold War From Stalin to Gorbachev. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 276.ISBN978-0-8078-5958-2.
Brown, Archie (April 1984). "The Soviet Succession: From Andropov to Chernenko".World Today.40:134–141.
Daniels, Robert V. (20 February 1984). "The Chernenko Comeback".New Leader.67:3–5.
Halstead, John (May–June 1984). "Chernenko in Office".International Perspectives:19–21.
Meissner, Boris (April 1985). "Soviet Policy: From Chernenko to Gorbachev".Aussenpolitik.36 (4). Bonn:357–375.
Miles, Simon (2020).Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War. Cornell University Press.ISBN9781501751707.
Mitchell, R. Judson (1990).Getting to the Top in the USSR: Cyclical Patterns in the Leadership Succession Process. Hoover Institution Press.ISBN0-8179-8921-8.
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