Alexei Kosygin

Alexei Kosygin
Алексей Косыгин
Kosygin in 1967
8th Premier of the Soviet Union
In office 15 October 1964 – 23 October 1980
President	Anastas Mikoyan Nikolai Podgorny Leonid Brezhnev
Deputy	First Deputy Premiers Dmitriy Ustinov Kirill Mazurov Dmitry Polyansky Nikolai Tikhonov
Leader	Leonid Brezhnev
Preceded by	Nikita Khrushchev
Succeeded by	Nikolai Tikhonov
First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union
In office 4 May 1960 – 15 October 1964
Premier	Nikita Khrushchev
Preceded by	Frol Kozlov
Succeeded by	Dmitriy Ustinov
Additional positions Chairman of the State Planning Committee In office 20 March 1959 – 4 May 1960 Premier Nikita Khrushchev Preceded by Joseph Kuzmin Succeeded by Vladimir Novikov Premier of Russian SFSR In office 23 June 1943 – 23 March 1946 Premier Joseph Stalin Preceded by Ivan Khokhlov Succeeded by Mikhail Rodionov Full member of the 18th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, & 25th CPSU Politburo In office 4 May 1960 – 21 October 1980 In office 4 September 1948 – 16 October 1952 Candidate member of the 18th, 19th, & 20th CPSU Politburo In office 29 June 1957 – 4 May 1960 In office 16 October 1952 – 5 March 1953 In office 18 March 1946 – 4 September 1948
Personal details
Born	21 February [O.S. 8 February] 1904 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died	18 December 1980(1980-12-18) (aged 76) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow
Citizenship	Soviet
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1927–1980)
Spouse	Klavdia Andreyevna (died 1967)
Residence	House on the Embankment
Profession	Teacher, civil servant[1]
Awards
Military service
Allegiance	Russian SFSR
Branch/service	Red Army
Years of service	1919–1921[2]
Rank	Conscript
Commands	Red Army
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War

Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (Russian: Алексе́й Никола́евич Косы́гин, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsɨɡʲɪn]; 21 February [O.S. 8 February] 1904 – 18 December 1980)^[3] was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980 and was one of the most influential Soviet policymakers in the mid-1960s along with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

Kosygin was born in the city of Saint Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working-class family. He was conscripted into the labour army during the Russian Civil War, and after the Red Army's demobilization in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager. Kosygin returned to Leningrad in the early 1930s and worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), Kosygin was a member of the State Defence Committee and was tasked with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German Army. He served as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry (later, Minister of Light Industry and Food). Stalin removed Kosygin from the Politburo one year before his own death in 1953, intentionally weakening Kosygin's position within the Soviet hierarchy.

Stalin died in 1953, and on 20 March 1959, Kosygin was appointed to the position of chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), a post he would hold for little more than a year. Kosygin next became First Deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. When Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power in 1964, Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev succeeded him as Premier and First Secretary, respectively. Thereafter, as a member of the collective leadership, Kosygin formed an unofficial Triumvirate (also known by its Russian name Troika) alongside Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, that governed the Soviet Union in Khrushchev's place.

During the initial years following Khrushchev's ouster, Kosygin initially emerged as the leading figure in Soviet politics.^[4][5][6] In addition to managing the Soviet Union's economy, he assumed a preeminent role in its foreign policy by leading arms control talks with the US and overseeing relations with other communist countries. However, the onset of the Prague Spring in 1968 sparked a severe backlash against his policies, enabling Brezhnev to eclipse him as the dominant force in the Politburo. While he and Brezhnev disliked one another, he remained in office until being forced to retire on 23 October 1980, due to bad health. He died two months later on 18 December 1980.