WikipediaExtracts:Alexei Kosygin

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Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (21 February [O.S. 8 February] 1904–18 December 1980) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1964 to 1980 and initially led the Soviet Union as part of a triumvirate in the mid-to-late 1960s.

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 tasked by the State Defence Committee 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, Kosygin formed an unofficial triumvirate or troika alongside Brezhnev and CC Secretary Nikolai Podgorny that governed the Soviet Union in Khrushchev's place.

During the years immediately following Khrushchev's ouster, Kosygin initially emerged as first among equals in the ensuing troika. In addition to managing the Soviet Union's economy, he assumed a preeminent role in directing the country's foreign policy. However, the onset of the Prague Spring in 1968 sparked a severe backlash against his policies, thereby enabling Leonid Brezhnev to decisively eclipse him as the dominant force within 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.