How many USSR leaders are you able to name from memory? Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev ... Perhaps some will add Andropov. What about Konstantin Chernenko? Even historians forget about him. Completely wrong!
Chernenko became secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1984, immediately after the death of his predecessor, Yuri Andropov. He officially remained at the helm of power for the next twelve months, until March 10, 1985. What was he famous for at that time? What characterized him? What was his policy?
Each of these questions can be answered briefly:nothing, nothing, none. And this is what distinguished the forgotten Czernienka! Well, one can even risk a claim that he was a figure no less important to the fate of the Soviet Union than Mikhail Gorbachev .
First secretary with one foot in the grave
Yuri Andropov. that is, Czernienka's predecessor as the secretary general of the Central Committee of the CPSU (source:wikimedia commons, public domain).
The election of Czernienka for the highest party position already predicted his future career. In January 1984, a real political scene took place in the Soviet Union. Admittedly, the then first secretary, Andropov, was dying in a hospital bed and was completely unable to rule, but ... he was unanimously elected as the candidate for general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and chairman of the Soviet Supreme Council.
An article about the elections in the journal Prawda was titled:"Socialist Democracy in Practice". And although it was not a gloomy joke at all, it is impossible not to agree with the Russian historian Rudolf Pichoji: it would be difficult to come up with a more anti-Soviet title for this type of publication.
Of course, Andropov won the election unbeatable (literally), only to die a few days later feeling well fulfilled. Probably no one in the party leadership noticed how sick and absurd the situation was. Instead, Konstantin Czernienka was appointed first secretary ... as old and sick as Andropov.
Konstantin Chernenko in all its glory. Today they do not make such concrete anymore!
At the time of his election, he was even older than his predecessor (he was 73 years old), but it was not about age. From the perspective of the Soviet nomenclature, he had one, only significant advantage: represented political concrete opposing any reforms .
The first secretary who doesn't rule
From the first days of his "reign", Chernenko was unable to conduct even the routine meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee, not to mention carrying out more serious duties. His health did not allow him to do anything .
At various meetings, the secretary general was replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev, and Chernenko himself only called him with instructions (usually limited to agreeing to replace him). Admittedly, in favor of Czernienka you can read the fact that he eliminated the repressions from the times of his opponent, but it resulted from powerlessness rather than some kind of action plan.
For a year, the Soviet Union - in a critical situation and on the brink of bankruptcy - practically vegetated without a leader. Chernenko dealt with only one issue more intensively during his government period . Namely ... he took part in the discussion on whether there is developed or just developing socialism in the Soviet Union! Rudolf Pichoja - in his "History of Power in the Soviet Union" - comments:
These scholastic crap was taken very seriously and carefully considered. The half-alive secretary general announced that a period of intense work had begun to "give a tremendous acceleration to the development of the national economy."
Having passed this verdict, Czernienko was able to retire - on March 10, 1985, he died of heart failure, which everyone had been expecting for a long time.
Has, paradoxically, Konstantin Chernenko, by doing nothing, prepared the ground for the overthrow of communism for his successor, Mikhail Gorbachev? I guess you could say that. The photo shows the meeting of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Gorbachev in 1985 (source:wikimedia commons, public domain).
Of course, in fact, there was no question of any acceleration. If the Soviet Union in the early 1980s had any chance of recovering from the crisis, it finally lost it during Konstantin Chernenko's annual non-rule. So wouldn't it be fitting to say that to some extent it was this forgotten dictator who overthrew communism?
Source:
- Rudolf G. Pichoja, The history of power in the Soviet Union. 1945-1991 , Polish Scientific Publishers PWN, 2011.