Everything about Aleksandr Shelepin totally explained
Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin (;
18 August 1918,
Voronezh -
October 24,
1994) was the head of
KGB from
December 25,
1958 to
November 13,
1961.
A history and literature major while studying at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature, Shelepin was a guerrilla leader during
World War II, becoming a senior official of the
Communist Youth League in
1943, and at the head of the successor organization, the
World Federation of Democratic Youth, from
1952 to
1958. He accompanied
Nikita Khrushchev on the Soviet leader's trip to
China in
1954.
Shelepin then became the second head of the Soviet secret police, the
NKVD, which had been reorganized and reformed as the
KGB after the death of Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev appointed Shelepin in part because of several major KGB defections in the
1950s during the tenure of
Ivan Serov as head of the KGB. Shelepin attempted to return state security to its position of importance during the Stalinist era. He demoted or fired many KGB officers, replacing them with officials from Communist Party organizations, and, especially, from the Communist Youth League.
He left the KGB and was promoted to the Central Committee secretariat in November
1961, where it's believed he still exercised control over the KGB, which was taken over by his protégé
Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny. Shelepin became a First Deputy Prime Minister in
1962. He was a principal player in the coup against Khrushchev in October 1964, obviously influencing the KGB to support the conspirators.
Shelepin probably expected to become First Secretary and de facto head of government when Khrushchev was overthrown.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn suggested that Shelepin had been the choice of the surviving Stalinists in the government, who asked what "had been the point of overthrowing Khrushchev if not to revert to Stalinism?"
Rather, Shelepin's reward was to be made a full member of the ruling
Politburo in November
1964--by a significant margin its youngest member. But he still held ambitions of becoming the "first among equals". His colleagues on the Politburo watched him carefully, seeking to halt his ambitions. He survived in that body until
1975, when he rapidly fell from power.
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