Kosygin, Aleksei Nikolaevich

Kosygin, Aleksei Nikolaevich (b. 21 Feb. 1904, d. 18 Dec. 1980). Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers (i.e. Soviet Prime Minister) 1964–80 Born and educated in St Petersburg (later Leningrad), he worked in Siberia before studying at the Leningrad Textile Institute (1930–5). His dramatic rise to become Soviet Commissar (i.e. Minister) for the Textile Industry in January 1939 was the result of competence, hard work, and the Great Purge, which had just opened up many posts to new aspirants. He was Deputy Prime Minister (officially Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars) during World War II (1940–6), and organized the evacuation of industrial enterprises from the advancing German forces in the west. He was Minister of Finance in 1948, and was Minister for Light Industry, 1949–53. His relationship with Khrushchev was somewhat rocky, and he rose to prominence again only after Khrushchev's demise in 1964, when he became the most important person in party and state next to Brezhnev. Despite his greater vision and intellect, it was the latter's predictability and ‘greyness’ that appealed to the Communist Party machine, so that Kosygin's influence dwindled in the years before his retirement. His initial arguments for economic reform and greater expenditure on consumer goods were undercut by the events of the Prague Spring, which demonstrated to many the political dangers inherent in economic reform. He retired because of ill health just before his death.