Alexei Kosygin
Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War
1904 CE to 1980 CE
Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (February 21 [O.S. February 8]. 1904 – December 18, 1980) is a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War.
Kosygin was born in the city of Saint Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working-class family.
He is conscripted into the labor army during the Russian Civil War, and after the Red Army's demobilization in 1921, he works in Siberia as an industrial manager.
Kosygin returns to Leningrad in the early 1930s and works his way up the Soviet hierarchy.
During the Great Patriotic War (the Second World War), Kosygin is a member of the State Defense Committee and is tasked with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German Army.
He serves as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry (later, Minister of Light Industry and Food).
Stalin removes Kosygin from the Politburo one year before his own death in 1953, intentionally weakening Kosygin's position within the Soviet hierarchy.
Stalin dies in 1953, and on March 20, 1959, Kosygin is appointed to the position of chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), a post he will hold for little more than a year.
Kosygin next becomes First Deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers.
When Nikita Khrushchev is removed from power in 1964, Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev succeed him as Premier and First Secretary respectively.
Hereafter, Kosygin forms a troika with Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, that govern the Soviet Union in Khrushchev's place.
During the latter half of the 1960s, Kosygin initially emerges as the most prominent figure in the post-Khrushchev troika.
In addition to managing the Soviet Union's economy, he assumes a preeminent role in the nation's foreign policy by leading arms control talks with the US and directly overseeing relations with other communist countries.
However, the onset of the Prague Spring in 1968 results in a severe backlash against his policies that enable Brezhnev to eclipse him as the dominant figure in the Politburo.
While he and Brezhnev dislike one another, he remains in office until being forced to retire on October 23, 1980, due to bad health.
He dies two months later on December 18, 1980.
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The Great Crossroads
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The era of the 1970s and the early 1980s in the Soviet Union will later be designated as the Era of Stagnation.
The 1965 Kosygin reform had aimed for partial decentralization of the Soviet economy.
In 1979, after a communist-led revolution in Afghanistan, Soviet forces invade the country, ultimately starting the Soviet–Afghan War.
After the initial confusion and near panic in Israel followed by the infusion of United States weaponry, Israel is able to counterattack and succeeds in crossing to the west bank of the canal and surrounding the Egyptian Third Army.
With the Third Army surrounded, Sadat appeals to the Soviet Union for help.
Soviet prime minister Alexei Kosygin believes he has obtained the American acceptance of a
cease-fire through Henry Kissinger, United States secretary of state.
On October 22, the UN Security Council passes Resolution 338, calling for a cease-fire by all parties within twelve hours in the positions they occupy.
Egypt accepts the cease-fire, but Israel, alleging Egyptian violations of the cease-fire, completes the encirclement of the Third Army to the east of the canal.
By nightfall on October 23, the road to Suez, the Third Army's only supply line, is in Israeli hands, cutting off two divisions and forty-five thousand men.