Konstantin Chernenko (1911-1985), General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) between 1984 and 1985. Of mixed Russian and Ukrainian ancestry, Chernenko was born into a peasant family in the eastern Siberian village of Bolshaya Tes, in what is now Krasnoyarsk Territory. He was a farm labourer in his youth.

Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1926 and the Communist Party in 1931. From 1930 to 1933 he served in the Soviet frontier guards on the Soviet-Chinese border and subsequently specialized in propaganda activity for the Communist Party. In 1945 he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow, and in 1953 he finished a correspondence course for schoolteachers.

The turning point in Chernenko’s career was his assignment in 1948 to head the party’s propaganda department in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) (present-day Moldova). There he met and won the confidence of Leonid Brezhnev, the Moldavian first secretary from 1950 to 1952 and future leader of the Soviet Union.

Chernenko followed Brezhnev in 1956 to fill a similar propaganda post in the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow. In 1960, after Brezhnev was named chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (titular head of state of the Soviet Union), Chernenko became his chief-of-staff. In 1965, following Brezhnev’s election as party general secretary, Chernenko was promoted to head the Central Committee’s general department, which was responsible for confidential correspondence and records. Soon Chernenko became Brezhnev’s closest aide. As such, Chernenko became a full member of the Central Committee in 1971, and was named committee secretary in charge of administration and security in 1976. He became a full member of the Politburo, the party’s main policymaking body, in 1977.

It is unclear whether Brezhnev intended his longtime ally to succeed him as leader of the Soviet Union. When Brezhnev died in November 1982 the general secretaryship went to another official, Yuri Andropov, leaving Chernenko second in rank. Andropov’s own ill health denied him the opportunity to ease Chernenko out, so when Andropov died in February 1984 Chernenko replaced him without serious controversy. Chernenko had in 1983 attained the powerful positions of chief party ideologist and propaganda leader formerly filled by Mikhail Suslov. Chernenko’s 13 months in power were marked by a general paralysis of the Soviet leadership. Always in his mentor’s shadow, he had few ideas for solving the country’s problems. Also, like the ageing Andropov and Brezhnev before him, he lacked physical vigour. Chernenko died in March 1985 and was succeeded as general secretary by the much younger and more dynamic Mikhail Gorbachev.