In 1957 Vsevolod Holub’s book Konspektyvnyi narys istorii KP(b)U (Concise History of the CP(B)U) was published in Munich. Commenting on the June 1953 plenum of the CC CP(B)U, when Kyrychenko was elected first secretary, he noted: “For the first time in its history the CP(B)U was headed by the Ukrainian Oleksii Illarionovych Kyrychenko, an obscure Bolshevik from Odesa, who began occupying leading party posts after the Second World War. There are reasons to believe that Kyrychenko was born in a village in Pervomaisky or Kryvoozersky raion in Odesa oblast and had distinguished himself by his party work when Odesa was defending itself from the Germans in 1941. After the war he was the secretary of the Odesa oblast party committee until he became second secretary of the CC CP(B)U.”
This is the “concise” — and somewhat inaccurate — biography of a man who was the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine. It may be regarded as a “mark of destiny”: Kyrychenko’s political biography, little known even during his own lifetime, would be almost totally forgotten for many decades after the sudden end of his career. It was only in 1988, in conjunction with his 80th anniversary, that two brief newspaper articles appeared. This year, everyone — including today’s communists — seems to have forgotten about the centennial of his birth.
Kyrychenko was born on Feb. 25, 1908, into a worker’s family in Chornobaivka, a picturesque village in what is today Kherson oblast. Like many of his peers from poor families, he had a difficult childhood. His father, a railroad worker, was killed on the Southwestern Front in Galicia during the First World War, leaving his wife with six small children. After completing four grades, the boy left school to start working in order to support the family. He was a herder’s assistant, then a herder, hired farm hand, unskilled worker at a quarry, repairman for the Katerynoslav railway company, and later a tractor driver with an agricultural mutual assistance society. These were the early stages of Kyrychenko’s “universities of life.”
In 1927 he enrolled in a one-year course for truck and tractor drivers and mechanics at the Ukrainian Professional and Technical School in Kherson (the approximate equivalent of today’s technical secondary school). After completing the course, he worked as a mechanic at Kherson’s automotive repair shops. In the fall of 1928 he became a mechanic on a large grain-growing state farm in Kustanai, in faraway Kazakhstan. He returned a year later and was appointed senior mechanic, and three months later, he became department head of the grain-growing state farm Chervony Perekop in Kherson oblast.
This smart and energetic young man, who even then was not very tactful, craved a higher education. In August 1931 he enrolled at the Institute of Engineers of Socialist Farming Mechanics in Zernohrad, in what was known as the Azovo-Chornomorsky Krai (Azov-Black Sea Region).
As a student, Kyrychenko took an active part in the life of the institute and party work (he joined the party in 1930). During the collectivization and grain delivery campaigns he was dispatched to the countryside as a district party committee inspector. These circumstances, together with the atmosphere of the “great turning point,” undoubtedly helped develop his tough manner of handling people, who were practically defenseless when faced with the official authority of this party inspector. He enjoyed giving orders and being in the limelight. During his student years he was elected to the institute’s party committee and headed the local Komsomol organization for three years. He acquired some knowledge of agriculture at the institute. Later he moved to Okhtyrka, a town in Kharkiv oblast, where he headed the teaching department at the technical school for the mechanization of agriculture and also taught.
The Great Terror had tangible consequences for Ukraine: tens of thousands of experienced specialists, members of the national intelligentsia, and administrators were physically destroyed or sent to the prison camps. There was no one to replace them. It thus became necessary to overcome the shortage of qualified personnel and quickly appoint new workers on all levels. In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev recalls his arrival in Ukraine in 1938 (he became first secretary of the CC CP(B)U in January): “When we came to Ukraine, Kosior told us about the hardships...It looked as though Ukraine did not have a single district party or executive committee secretary, or a single member of the Council of People’s Commissars or his deputy.”
It was under these circumstances that Kyrychenko was transferred to the CC CP(B)U office. In March 1938 he was appointed instructor. In less than two years he worked as an instructor in science departments, leading party bodies, personnel departments, and as the head of the Central Committee’s transportation department. It was, no two ways about it, a spectacular career. Khrushchev, who had been sent to Ukraine by Stalin, needed “his own men” — people who were loyal and disciplined, but also workers who were personally devoted to him and capable of carrying out his policy no matter what.
Kyrychenko became one of these men. Rather quickly and effectively he mastered the leadership’s “pressure” methods, one of the most powerful levers in solving most problems, where success often depended on the boss’s booming voice and his ability to tighten the screws. Kyrychenko became versed in the laws of the system (probably owing to his character) and unquestioningly applied them as guidelines, as a convenient form of self-realization.
It would be important to know how, where, and under what circumstances Khrushchev and Kyrychenko first met and got to know each other better. Unfortunately, there is no mention of this in archival documents or memoirs. However, people who were working at the CC CP(B)U office at the time agree that the two could not have met any later than the summer of 1938 (Kyrychenko began working for the CC CP(B)U in March of that year). Dealing with personnel matters, he had the duty and opportunity to communicate with the CC secretaries, including Khrushchev, the first secretary of the CC CP(B)U.
Kyrychenko’s energy, knowledge of agriculture, his occasional impulsiveness and eccentric behavior, manner of speech, and communication style endeared him to Khrushchev and made it very easy for them to communicate and understand each other. Toward the end of 1940 the Politburo of the CC CP(B)U entered Kyrychenko’s name on the reserve list of candidate secretary of the CC CP(B)U. In February 1941 the 33-year-old Kyrychenko became CC secretary in charge of industries, although he only held this post for slightly more than four months.
After the war with Germany began, Kyrychenko obtained the rank of brigadier commissar in July 1941 and became a member of the Military Council of the Southwestern Front, working alongside the more experienced and well-known figures of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Korniiets, and Mykhailo Burmystenko. Kyrychenko was placed in charge of the organs and units in the rear, as well as logistics. He took part in all the heavy operations of the defensive period and helped evacuate industrial enterprises and railways in Ukraine.
In July 1942, after the Soviet army suffered a defeat near Kharkiv, the Southwestern Front was reorganized as the Stalingrad Front. Kyrychenko became a member of its Military Council, and in September of that year he was made a member of the Military Council of the Don Front. When Corps Commissar Zheltov, the so-called first member of the council, was transferred to another front, Kyrychenko replaced him. Now he was responsible for all political work among the troops. However, in the complicated conditions of the Battle of Stalingrad his brutal style of work, his desire to meddle in all operational matters, his inadequate military knowledge and incompetent approach to operational-strategic problems, as well as his arrogance led to a conflict with General Mikhail Malinin, Chief of Staff of the Don Front, and later with the commander of the front units, Lieutenant General Konstantin Rokosovsky. To resolve this conflict, Kyrychenko was transferred to the Stalingrad Front, where Khrushchev was the de facto head of the Military Council. Kyrychenko became a council member in charge of rear services.
He was with Khrushchev on the Southern Front and in December 1942 was promoted to the rank of major general and awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his contribution to the victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. So long as Khrushchev and General Andrei Yeremenko were working at the front, Kyrychenko understood his role and place in the complex mechanism of frontline command and tried to hold his temper in check. In March 1943 Khrushchev became a member of the Military Council of the Voronezh Front. Yeremenko was convalescing after being wounded in February. The willful and resolute General Rodion Malinovsky became the new commander of the front. He and Kyrychenko could not work well together. When Fedor Tolbukhin became commander and General Sergei Biriuzov was appointed chief of staff, the front-line command headquarters was the scene of regular confrontations because Kyrychenko wanted to demonstrate his authority.
This is why Kyrychenko was sent home to do party work even before the end of the war. In February 1944 he was elected CC CP(B)U secretary in charge of personnel. In July 1945, on the recommendation of the CC CP(B)U, he was appointed first secretary of the Odesa oblast party committee and in September 1946 he was appointed to head the city party committee. At this time he became friends with Georgii Zhukov, Marshal of the Soviet Union. In 1945-49 Kyrychenko was first secretary of the regional party committee and a member of the Military Council of the Odesa Military District. Zhukov, who was in Stalin’s bad books at the time, was the commander of this small military district. Many know about this from the popular TV series Liquidation.
It was in Odesa oblast that Kyrychenko lived through the difficult period of the postwar famine. Khrushchev writes in his memoirs: “Soon we started receiving official reports about people who had starved to death. There were cases of cannibalism...Kyrychenko, who was then secretary of the Odesa regional party committee, told me that he had visited a collective farm to see how people were surviving the winter. He was invited to a visit a woman, who was a collective farm worker. This is what he told me: ‘I saw a hair-raising sight. The woman was chopping the body of her child into pieces on the table. She kept saying, “We’ve eaten Manechka, now we’re going to pickle Ivanchyk and this will keep us alive for a while.” Can you imagine? That woman had been driven insane from hunger and had butchered her children!’”
In December 1949 Kyrychenko was elected second secretary and member of the presidium of the CC CP(B)U. And then it happened: for the first time in the history of the Communist Party of Ukraine a Ukrainian became its leader. In June 1953, after Leonid Melnykov retired (at Lavrentii Beria’s insistence), Kyrychenko became first secretary of the Central Committee.
A plenary meeting of the CC CP(B)U was held on June 2-4, 1953. The issue on the agenda was “On the Resolution of the CC CPSU ‘The Question of the Western Oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR’ and Com[rade] L. P. Beria’s Memorandum to the Presidium of the CC CPSU.” Kyrychenko, who gave a speech during the plenum, acted on the principle “Whatever they say in Moscow is right.” At the time, Beria was considered the main expert on the “Ukrainian question.” After reading his memorandum, Kyrychenko declared: “On May 20 the question of the situation in the western oblasts was considered by the Presidium of the CC CPSU, where Com[rade] Melnykov, the secretary of the CC CPU, was summoned.”
During the discussion of the situation in the western regions, Comrade Melnykov, instead of analyzing the situation in detail and criticizing the mistakes and shortcomings, reduced his presentation to an assortment of petty details and then proceeded to refute certain aspects of the situation in the western oblasts.
The Presidium of the CC CPSU formed a commission to prepare a study of this issue and summoned three of its members: Comrades Korotchenko, Korniichuk, and Kyrychenko, as well as Comrade Korniiets, who was a candidate member of the CC CPSU. On May 26 the situation in the western oblasts was discussed in detail and the opinions of the three men were heard. During the meeting of the Presidium and meetings of the commission Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, and Mikoian sharply and justly criticized the Politburo of the CC CPU, the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, and specifically Comrade Melnykov, secretary of the CC CPU, for “serious mistakes and shortcomings in the administration of the western regions of Ukraine.”
These criticisms resulted in the ousting of Melnykov from his post as first secretary of the CC CPU. He then took the floor and gave a “speech of repentance.”
Soon, however, the situation changed. Khrushchev got rid of Beria as his possible rival in the higher party ranks. On July 29-30 a plenary meeting of the CC CPU, presided over by Kyrychenko, approved the CC CPSU’s decisive measures to overcome the consequences of “the criminal activities of L. P. Beria and his accomplices.” Several weeks earlier, two very influential members of the “Beria conspiracy” were arrested in Kyiv: Colonel General P. Meshyk, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR (whom Kyrychenko had specially summoned to his office), and his first deputy Lieutenant General S. Milshtein.
On July 9, 1953, Kyrychenko addressed a joint plenary meeting of Kyiv’s regional and city party committees, declaring that Beria sought to have faithful men on the local level, who included not only Meshyk and Milshtein: “By the way, Beria displayed suspicious haste in making interior ministry appointments all over the Soviet Union. Shortly before he was exposed, he replaced almost all the heads of oblast interior ministry departments in Ukraine within two hours, and all the replacements of deputy ministers and heads of oblast interior ministry departments were made without the knowledge of the oblast committee and the party’s Central Committee. That is how Beria’s treacherous mission was carried out, aimed at planting his henchmen, who would help him restore capitalism in our country.”
The XX Congress of the CPSU was followed by a short-lived and changeable “thaw” period, criticism of Stalin’s “cult of personality,” and work that was aimed at the rehabilitation of victims of the repressions. Kyrychenko actively implemented these new measures and busied himself with a rehabilitation campaign in Ukraine, making frequent trips to various regions. Did that period change Kyrychenko? Not much. His increasing authority was also making him feel omnipotent. Now he could influence all administrative and party bodies, and this aggravated his unattractive personal traits: his rude and tactless behavior.
Here is a striking example. In 1956 Kyrychenko abruptly summoned the secretary of the party committee and one of the deputy rectors of Kyiv University to his office on Ordzhonikidze Street (today: Bankova). The CPU leader declared that the university was teeming with nationalists and that they mostly came from four faculties: history, philosophy, philology, and economics. He suggested that the university’s academic council officially request their immediate closure. His visitors were thunderstruck. They tried to object, but Kyrychenko was a tough nut to crack and he spent 40 minutes straightening out the professors, using expressions they had never heard before. When he finished his obscene monolog, Kyrychenko let them go, warning them — “for dessert” — that their expulsion from the party was just a matter of time. The professors were not expelled from the party, probably because Kyrychenko had second thoughts or some other reasons.
In 1953 he became a candidate member of the Presidium (the former name of the Politburo) of the CC CPSU, and in 1955, a member of the Presidium of the CC CPSU. He had now joined the highest echelons of Soviet power. He resolutely supported Khrushchev in his pitched battle with the “antiparty group” of Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich. It was only natural that Khrushchev would properly reward Kyrychenko for his devotion. In December 1957 he was elected second secretary of the CC CPSU at a plenary meeting of this body. That same month he returned to Kyiv for a couple of days to recommend Mykola Pidhorny (Nikolai Podgorny) as his replacement at a plenary meeting of the CC CPU, and shortly afterwards he moved to Moscow.
In February 1958 Kyrychenko was lavished with loving attention by the central government. On Feb. 25, his 50th birthday, the central newspapers carried his portrait and the text of a message containing greetings from the CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR. “[We] warmly greet you as an outstanding member of the Communist Party and the Soviet state on your 50th birthday...Our Dear Friend and Comrade Aleksei Illarionovych, from the bottom of our hearts we wish you many years of good health and fruitful work...” That same day the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR conferring the Order of Lenin on Kyrychenko was published.
Meanwhile, the members of the Presidium of the CC CPSU found Kyrychenko’s conduct increasingly irritating. He could not find a common language with Mikoian, Mukhitdinov, Kuusinen, and Suslov. He openly referred to himself as the “number-two person in the party and the country.” His ambitions received special impetus when he acted in Khrushchev’s stead during the latter’s vacations in 1958 and 1959.
According to Mikoian’s son Sergo, that was when Kyrychenko rudely demanded that his father unquestioningly carry out all his orders and directives, shouting that he was “the number-two man.” Mikoian the veteran politician gave Kyrychenko an ironical look and said quietly, “If you continue to carry on like this, Aleksei Illarionovich, I am afraid you will soon find yourself the last man in the party.” Then he left, shutting the door with a bang. It is difficult to verify whether this exchange really took place, although Sergo Mikoian’s story sounds probable.
In January 1960 Kyrychenko was suddenly, and without any announcement, forced to resign his post as secretary of the CC CPSU. The official announcement in Pravda reads that his resignation was “connected to his transfer to a different post.” In May of that year a plenary meeting of the CC CPSU dismissed him from the Presidium.
Payback for his brutal character had arrived. Kyrychenko was severely punished, although he was not shot, as would have been the case in Stalinist times. For a short while he headed Rostov’s regional party committee, where he did not last long: it transpired that the former “leader” was no good as an administrator. In June 1960 he was relieved of his post as first secretary of the oblast party committee. From August 1960 until March 1962 he was the director of a diesel plant in the city of Penza (Russia), and in March-June 1962 he was the director of the Tippribor All-Union Research Institute in that city. These were his last administrative appointments. In June 1962, at the age of 54, he became a personal pensioner of Union importance.
There followed years of rest organized by his former comrades. In the last period of his life Kyrychenko wanted to write his memoirs, which he actually began. Some veteran workers of what used to be the Party Archives of the Institute of Party History under the aegis of the CC CPU told this author that Kyrychenko even made several visits to the institute to search for documents that he needed. The old and hapless Kyrychenko tried to work without his usual retinue of ever-present and helpful aides and staff “chroniclers.” One could tell that he was not making good progress; he did not know how to go about this kind of work or what information sources to use. Shortly afterward he abandoned the idea and returned to Moscow. Perhaps he decided to rely on his memory and some documents, letters, and photographs in his possession. He never finished his memoirs.
He died early, at age 68, on Dec. 28, 1975. It was an “incognito” death. In keeping with the custom of not mentioning past political figures, not a single central newspaper published an obituary about the former member of the Politburo and secretary of the CC CPSU. The defense ministry newspaper Krasnaia zvezda carried a short announcement about the death of “Aleksei Illarionovich Kyrychenko, an active participant in the Great Patriotic War, retired major general in charge of rear services and supplies.” It also stated that “from January 1944 and for a number of years until his retirement, Kyrychenko held responsible party posts in the CC CPU and CC CPSU. He was repeatedly elected a member of leading party bodies and was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.” The author of the obituary did not even list his government decorations — or maybe he thought better of it. The former secretary of the CC CPSU was thus transformed into an obscure quartermaster major general.
Khrushchev died in 1971, four years before Kyrychenko. Characteristically, the Soviet leader’s memoirs Khrushchev Remembers, along with a commentary from the publishers, appeared in London that same year. Once again, just like in Holub’s book, Kyrychenko was unlucky. One passage erroneously states that in 1949 Kyrychenko “replaced Khrushchev as first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.” As for the finale of his career, the authors of the commentary write that in 1960 he was suddenly demoted for reasons that were kept secret, as usual. As I have established, it was not just these reasons but Kyrychenko’s entire biography that was kept secret.
While Kyrychenko was still alive, a kind of “monument” to him and other leaders of his generation existed. There was a broken table in an office of one of the district party committees in Kirovohrad oblast. Kyrychenko had smashed it with his mighty hand during a working meeting, when the leader from Kyiv, running out of verbal arguments, placed all the strength of his dissatisfaction into one mighty blow. At that time party leaders’ blows were mighty indeed.
