Nikolay Kruchina
Nikolay Kruchina Николай Кручина | |
|---|---|
24th Central Committee | |
| In office 9 April 1971 – 5 March 1976 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 14 May 1928 Novopokrovka, Khabarsky District, Siberian Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Died | 26 August 1991 (aged 63) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
Nikolay Yefimovich Kruchina (Russian: Николай Ефимович Кручина; 14 May 1928 – 26 August 1991), was a top Soviet communist official, the administrator of affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) since 1983 and until his death, effectively the party's chief treasurer, responsible for its enormous assets (popularly dubbed as the party's gold, Russian: золото Партии) estimated to be worth nearly $9 billion, which have never been located since.[1]
Career
Born in Siberian Krai (now
Death
Kruchina died as a result of falling out of the window of his apartment in Moscow in the early morning of August 26, five days after the coup attempt. Still, he allegedly left two suicide notes, where it was claimed that he was not a plotter, despite having never been publicly linked to the attempted coup.[2] He apparently left near his desk on the armchair a thick file of recent Communist Party's illegal commercial operations.[3] This wasn't the only alleged suicide among the Soviet leadership those days; Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo, one of the plotters, allegedly shot his wife and himself in their apartment on August 22, while Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev, Adviser to the President of the Soviet Union on military affairs, allegedly hanged himself in his office on August 24. On October 6, Kruchina's predecessor, Georgy Pavlov, fell to his death. On October 17, Dmitry Lisovolik, former deputy chief of the party's international department, was also found dead in the same manner several weeks after investigators found $600,000 in the office of his boss, Valentin Falin.[4] Kruchina was laid to rest at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.
References
- ^ Soviet Turmoil. New Suicide: Budget Director. The New York Times, August 27, 1991.
- ^ Jackson, James O. The Party Is Over. Time, September 9, 1991.; Klebnikov, Paul. Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. New York, 2000. p. 76.
- ^ "Золото КПСС - десять лет спустя: Почему "новые русские" капиталисты финансируют коммунистов" [Gold of the CPSU - ten years later: Why the "new Russian" capitalists finance the communists]. Free Lance Bureau (FLB) (in Russian). 7 May 2001. Archived from the original on 20 February 2005. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
- ^ Tifft, Susan. Desperately Seeking Rubles. Time, November 4, 1991.
Further reading
- Бунич, Игорь Львович. Золото Партии: Историческая хроника. – Санкт-Петербург: Шанс, 1992. P. 245–314. ISBN 978590074003-4
External links
- "Kruchina's tomb". Archived from the original on April 21, 2010. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) (in Russian) - Черняев, А. 1990 год. Из дневников // НЛО 2007, No.84.
