Konstantin Chernenko

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"Chernenko" redirects here. For the surname, see Chernenko (surname).

Konstantin Chernenko
Константин Черненко
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office
10 November 1982 – 9 February 1984
Preceded byYuri Andropov
Succeeded byMikhail Gorbachev (de facto)
In office
25 January 1982 – 24 May 1982
Preceded byMikhail Suslov
Succeeded byYuri Andropov
Personal details
Born(1911-09-24)24 September 1911
congestive heart failure and liver cirrhosis
Resting placeKremlin Wall Necropolis
Political partyCPSU (1931–1985)
Spouse(s)Faina Vassilyevna Chernenko
​
​
(m. 1944)​
Children4, including Albert
Awards
See List
  • Hero of Socialist Labour Hero of Socialist Labour Hero of Socialist Labour
    Order of Lenin Order of Lenin Order of Lenin Order of Lenin
    Order of the Red Banner of Labour Order of the Red Banner of Labour Order of the Red Banner of Labour Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
    Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" Jubilee Medal "60 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
Signature
Military service
AllegianceSoviet Union
Branch/serviceSoviet Armed Forces
Years of service1930–1933
Central institution membership
Other political offices held
Leader of the Soviet Union

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko[a][b] (24 September [O.S. 11 September] 1911 – 10 March 1985)[2][3] was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1984 until his death a year later.

Born to a poor family in Siberia, Chernenko joined the Komsomol in 1929 and became a full member of the party in 1931. After holding a series of propaganda posts, in 1948 he became the head of the propaganda department in Moldavia, serving under Leonid Brezhnev. After Brezhnev took over as First Secretary of the CPSU in 1964, Chernenko was appointed to head the General Department of the Central Committee. In this capacity, he became responsible for setting the agenda for the Politburo 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 of Brezhnev and his successor

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in April 1984. However, due to his rapidly failing health, he was often unable to fulfill his official duties. He died in March 1985 after leading the country for only 13 months, and was succeeded as General Secretary by Mikhail Gorbachev
.

Early life and political career

Chernenko's Party card following his promotion to the Soviet Union's ruling Central Committee.

Origins

Chernenko was born to a poor family in the

Siberian village of Bolshaya Tes (now in Novosyolovsky District, Krasnoyarsk Krai) on 24 September 1911.[4]

Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1929. By 1931 he became a full member of the ruling Communist Party. From 1930 to 1933, he served in the Soviet frontier guards on the Soviet–Chinese border. After completing his military service, he returned to Krasnoyarsk as a propagandist. 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 the Agitprop Department of Krasnoyarsk's Territorial Committee in 1939. In the early 1940s, he began a close relationship with Fyodor Kulakov and was named Secretary of the Territorial Party Committee for Propaganda.[5] By 1945 he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow then later finished a correspondence course for schoolteachers in 1953.

Rise to the Soviet leadership

Chernenko in 1962.

The turning point in Chernenko's career was his assignment in 1948 to head the Communist Party's propaganda department in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. There, he met and won the confidence of Leonid 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 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.

In 1964, Soviet leader

telephone wiretaps and covert 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, a facsimile
was used instead).

Chernenko (seated second from left in the front row) attending the USSR's 60th Anniversary in 1982.

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 in

Vienna arms limitation talks
.

After Brezhnev'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 within the Party. Ultimately, KGB chief Yuri Andropov eventually won the position.

Leader of the Soviet Union

kidney failure. Chernenko was then elected to replace Andropov even though the latter stated he wanted Mikhail Gorbachev to succeed him. Chernenko was also terminally ill himself.[6]

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, he was forced to govern the country as part of a

Dmitriy Ustinov and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.[7] This became a growing problem as Chernenko's illness led him to miss meetings with increasing frequency. At Andropov's funeral, he could barely read the eulogy.[8] As a result of Chernenko's weak hold on power, Foreign Minister Gromyko and Defense Minister Ustinov
held enormous influence over Soviet policy throughout his leadership.

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 Chernenko made was the dismissal of the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov. Ogarkov was subsequently replaced by Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev.

In foreign policy, he negotiated a trade deal with 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 Soviet Union prevented a visit to West Germany by East German leader Erich 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's Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock.[9]

In 1980 the United States led an international boycott of the Summer Olympics held in Moscow in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The following 1984 Summer Olympics were due to be held in Los Angeles, California. On 8 May 1984, under Chernenko's leadership, the USSR announced its intention not to participate in the Games, claiming "security concerns and chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States".[10] The boycott was joined by 14 Eastern Bloc satellites and allies, including Cuba (but not Romania). The action was widely seen as revenge for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games. The boycotting countries organised their own "Friendship Games" in the summer of 1984.[11]

Before his death, Chernenko signed preliminary documents stating that on 9 May 1985, on the day of the 40th Victory Day Parade, the city of Volgograd would be renamed to Stalingrad. In his letter to Stalin's daughter Svetlana 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.[12]

Health problems, death and legacy

Chernenko started

geriatric so zombie-like as to be beyond assessing intelligence reports, alarming or not" when he succeeded Andropov in 1984.[15]

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 to

Russian SFSR, when Politburo member Viktor Grishin revealed that the General Secretary was absent in accordance with doctors' advice.[16] Two days later, in a televised scene that shocked the nation,[17] 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".[16]

Emphysema and the associated lung and heart damage worsened significantly for Chernenko in the last three weeks of February 1985. According to the Chief Kremlin doctor,

congestive heart failure and liver cirrhosis. A three-day period of mourning across the country was announced.[18][19] India,[20] Brazil,[21] Iraq,[20] Syria[22] and Nicaragua[23] all declared three days of mourning; Pakistan[24] declared two days of mourning; East Germany[25] and Czechoslovakia[26]
declared one day of mourning.

Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in less than three years. Upon being informed in the middle of the night of his death, U.S. President Ronald Reagan is reported to have remarked, "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians if they keep dying on me?"[27]

Chernenko was honored with a

Kremlin wall.[28] He is the last person to have been interred there.[29]

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 elected Mikhail 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.[30]

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.[31]

Honors and awards

Personal life

Chernenko had a son with his first wife, Faina Vassilyevna Chernenko, named Albert. 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 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.[32]

Notes

  1. East Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Ustinovich and the family name
    is Chernenko.
  2. ^ /tʃɜːrˈnɛŋkoʊ/ ⓘ chur-NENK-oh;[1] Russian: Константин Устинович Черненко, IPA: [kənstɐnˈtʲin ʊˈsʲtʲinəvʲɪtɕ tɕɪrˈnʲenkə]
    Ukrainian: Костянтин Устинович Черненко, romanized: Kostiantyn Ustynovych Chernenko

References

  1. ^ "Chernenko" Archived 1 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Collins English Dictionary.
  2. ISBN 9780313281129. Archived
    from the original on 2 June 2024. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  3. ^ "Konstantin Chernenko". The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 26 May 2025.
  4. ^ Jessup, John E. (1998). An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Conflict and Conflict Resolution, 1945–1996. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 121. Archived from the original on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2017.[ISBN missing]
  5. ISBN 0-8157-3748-3. Archived
    from the original on 2 June 2024. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  6. ^ de Lama, George (16 February 1985). "CHERNENKO TERMINALLY ILL: U.S." Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 28 March 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  7. ^ Saxon, Wolfgang (12 March 1985). "Succession In Moscow: Siberian Peasant Who Won Power; Konstantin Chernenko, A Brezhnev Protege, Led Brief Regime". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 29 September 2023. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  8. ^ Washington Post Foreign Service. "Briton Thinks Chernenko Is Ill". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 28 August 2017. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  9. ^ "SUCCESSION IN MOSCOW: A PRIVATE LIFE, AND A MEDICAL CASE; Briton Is Optimistic on Gorbachev Views". The New York Times. 1985. Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  10. ^ a b Altman, Lawrence K., "Succession in Moscow: A Private Life, and a Medical Case; Autopsy Discloses Several Diseases" Archived 28 September 2023 at the Wayback Machine, New York Times, 25 March 1985.
  11. doi:10.1080/09523367.2014.958669. Archived
    from the original on 28 January 2024. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  12. ^ "Реабилитация Сталина и другие вещи, которые хотел слелать Черненко | Русская Семёрка". 22 July 2020. Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  13. ISBN 0-8014-4169-2
    .
  14. ^ Burns, John F. (16 February 1984). "World Attention Turns To Chernenko's Health". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  15. ISBN 978-1594200625. Archived
    from the original on 2 June 2024. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  16. ^ a b Mydans, Seth (1 March 1985). "A Halting Chernenko is on TV Again". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 15 September 2012.
  17. ISBN 0684834200
  18. ^ Doder, Dusko (12 March 1985). "Gorbachev Becomes Soviet Leader Hours After Chernenko Dies at 73". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  19. ^ "Gorbachev Chosen". Chicago Tribune. 12 March 1985. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  20. ^ a b "East, West Leaders Mourn Chernenko's Death". Los Angeles Times. 12 March 1985. Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  21. ^ https://www.normasbrasil.com.br/norma/decreto-91067-1985_45476.html
  22. ISBN 978-1-349-11484-9. Archived
    from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  23. ^ Rohter, Larry (23 March 1985). "Sandinista Government Viewed as Leftist Hybrid". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 29 September 2023. Retrieved 27 August 2022.
  24. JSTOR 41393726. Archived
    from the original on 29 September 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
  25. ^ Kaufman, Michael T. (12 March 1985). "Succession in Moscow: Tributes from Abroad; Moscow's Allies Extend Condolences". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 29 September 2023. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  26. ^ Šprinc, Radek (14 April 2010). "Polská tragédie: Hradec vyvěsí vlajky na půl žerdi". Chrudimský Deník. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  27. ^ Maureen Dowd, "Where's the Rest of Him?" Archived 2 June 2024 at the Wayback Machine The New York Times, 18 November 1990.
  28. ^ "USSR: Soviet Leader Chernenko Buried". Reuters Archive Licensing. Archived from the original on 24 October 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  29. ^ Trevelyan, Mark (3 September 2022). "Honour or disgrace - how Russia has buried its past leaders". Reuters. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
  30. ^ "1985: Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader". 11 March 1985. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  31. ISBN 9780006388180
  32. ^ Леонид Максименков. Человек одного года Archived 9 February 2023 at the Wayback Machine // "Огонёк", 16 March 2015.

Sources

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Party political offices
Preceded by General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
13 February 1984 – 10 March 1985 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

10 November 1982 – 9 February 1984 		Succeeded by
Senior Secretary of Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
10 November 1982 – 9 February 1984
Preceded by
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

(Acting)
25 January 1982 – 24 May 1982 		Succeeded by
Senior Secretary of Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(Acting)
25 January 1982 ― 24 May 1982
Preceded by Senior Secretary of Cadres for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
March 1976 – January 1983 		Succeeded by
Government offices
Preceded by Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
11 April 1984 – 10 March 1985 		Succeeded by
Sporting positions
Preceded by
President of Organizing Committee for Summer Olympic Games
1980
 Succeeded by
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