Childhood, family
Rumors about similarities with the Tsarevich did not appear out of nowhere. Alexey was born in 1904 in St. Petersburg in the family of turner Nikolai Ilyich and Matrona Alexandrovna. Nationality: Russian.
Alexey's first biographical entry is dated 1919. It was then that a 15-year-old high school student became a Red Army volunteer and took part in the construction of fortifications. Considering that the royal family was dealt with in 1918, this coincided with the outline of the legend about the rescue of the crown prince.
Childhood and youth
The brilliant political biography of Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin was made possible thanks to the October Revolution. After all, under the tsarist regime, a guy born into a family of a simple worker simply would not have had any other opportunities to get to the powerful Olympus.
Alexey Kosygin in his youth
Alexey Nikolaevich Kosygin was born on the 21st, or according to the old style on February 8, 1904 in St. Petersburg. There is scant information about his childhood. It is only known that the parents baptized their newborn son according to the Orthodox rite in March of the same year in the Church of Samson the Stranger.
At the age of 15, Alexey, at that time a student at the Petrovsky Real School, volunteered for the Red Army. The young man built defensive structures. And after 3 years he returned to Petrograd and completed his studies. Having received a diploma from a cooperative technical school, the young specialist went to Siberia to develop industrial cooperation.
Career
Kosygin preferred the civilian path to the military path.
Returning to Petrograd two years later, he graduated from a cooperative technical school and left for Novosibirsk. In just three years, Alexey Nikolaevich rose to head of the planning department of the Siberian Union of Cooperation. There, in 1927, he joined the Communist Party. Kosygin was forced to return to his hometown by studying at a textile institute. Upon graduation, Alexey got a job as a foreman at a textile factory, and two years later became its director. A year later, the 34-year-old director took the post of chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee.
Stalin had a nose for such talents, and the following year, 1939, Alexei Kosygin received the post of People's Commissar of the Textile Industry of the USSR. It wasn't easy in my new position. Desperate to achieve timely delivery of raw materials, he decided to ask for help from the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Molotov. “You are the People's Commissar to carry out your duties yourself. But I don’t intend to be your pusher,” he snapped. Kosygin learned a lesson for life.
Tsarevich Kosygin
Remaining to live in the USSR, the heir to the throne came to terms with the revolution and decided to serve the Fatherland. Under the cover of the Cheka, he becomes Red Army soldier Alexei Kosygin, whom, after the end of the war, Stalin begins to promote not along party lines, but along economic lines. In two years, Alexey Nikolaevich rises from a foreman at the Oktyabr textile factory to its director. Two years later, in 1938, Kosygin became the head of the executive committee of the Leningrad Soviet, and a year later the People's Commissar of the Textile Industry of the USSR.
Zhelenkov explains this career rise not only by the talents of the escaped Romanov, but also by the personal patronage of Stalin. During the war, Alexey Nikolaevich organizes the evacuation of industrial enterprises in Leningrad and is engaged in laying the “Road of Life”.
According to eyewitnesses, Stalin half-jokingly called Kosygin “Tsarevich” in front of everyone. Kosygin did not participate in the party struggle and retained his positions under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. He was the only one from the Politburo who did not support the deployment of the Soviet military contingent to Afghanistan, and Kosygin held the post of head of government for 16 years. From 1966 to 1970, Alexey Nikolaevich developed and implemented a number of reforms; this period was called the “golden eighth five-year plan.”
Trial by war
The war became a serious test for everyone.
In June 1941, Kosygin was appointed responsible for the evacuation of enterprises. In six months, he brought one and a half thousand factories to the east of the country. And then the salvation of his native Leningrad fell on his shoulders. Supplying the besieged city through Ladoga and creating the Road of Life is the direct merit of Kosygin. One day, Stalin instructed him to figure out why so many products were leaving the special distribution center. It turned out that not only members of their families, but also the security and all the servants fed from the master's table of the families of Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and other bigwigs. With the approval of the leader, Kosygin introduced a limit on the issuance of special products, which made him many enemies.
"Golden Five Year Plan"
The “Leningrad Affair,” initiated by Stalin after the war, scorched almost all people from Leningrad. Kosygin, married to the cousin of Alexei Kuznetsov, the head of the city, was also waiting for them to come for him. Beria was about to arrest the young manager, since he “did not discern the anti-party, hostile nature of Kuznetsov’s group.” But Stalin did not support the initiative, and at a meeting in October 1952 he slyly joked: “How are you, Kosyga? Nothing, nothing, you’ll still have to work..."
Alexey Nikolaevich accepted Khrushchev’s coming to power without emotion. Kosygin was indignant at Nikita Sergeevich’s experiments with economics, but he did not allow himself to speak out on this matter. I worked wherever I was assigned, and there were enough appointments. In 1960, Kosygin became deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. Four years later, Khrushchev awarded him the Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, but Alexei Nikolaevich did not change his opinion about him.
Leonid Brezhnev, who took the helm of the USSR, although he did not like the gloomy Kosygin, respected him as a professional.
That’s why he put him at the head of the Council of Ministers. At that time, Alexey Nikolaevich understood the situation of the country’s economy - with the successful development of industry, it was sometimes difficult to buy basic necessities! In 1965, Kosygin began industrial reform, which improved product quality while maintaining high production volumes. This was achieved in a purely capitalist way - enterprises began to keep part of the profits, which they spent on bonuses for employees. But it used to be believed that Soviet people work not for money, but for an idea! As a result, the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1966-1970) showed record growth rates: national income grew by 186%, production of consumer goods by 203%, and the wage fund by 220%! The VAZ, KamAZ and Ostankino TV tower plants were built. As foreign observers wrote, during this period the USSR's lag behind the West was minimal, and in some places the Union surpassed the economies of the United States and Europe.
The Kosygin reforms gave the ordinary Soviet citizen the opportunity to receive an apartment from the state, purchase furniture, a TV, a washing machine, etc. “Muscovites”, “Volgas”, “Zhigulis” began to appear in the courtyards. The country's birth rate has increased, and social guarantees have allowed the average person to look to the future with confidence.
Meanwhile, the independence of industrialists was not to the liking of the majority of members of the Politburo, and Brezhnev could not help but understand this. He perfectly remembered how Khrushchev ended, and therefore Kosygin’s reforms began to slow down under the pretext of “inconsistency with the spirit of socialism.” But no one dared to remove the prime minister.
After the oil crisis broke out in the world and oil prices soared, the Kremlin decided that new revenues were enough to patch up the holes in the economy. However, Kosygin advocated that processed products should be exported, and not the raw materials themselves. Brezhnev did not support him.
It is worth noting that although Leonid Ilyich was the head of state, they always addressed each other as “you”, and Kosygin said directly everything he thought. So, at a meeting of the Politburo, Brezhnev, Grechko and Podgorny began to discuss a hockey match. Alexei Nikolaevich said reproachfully: “Here, at a meeting of the Politburo, issues of national importance are discussed, and you are talking nonsense!” Then he got up and left.
Brief biography of Kosygin
Alexey Nikolaevich Kosygin was born on February 21, 1904 in St. Petersburg, received a good education. From 1919 to 1921, he served in the army on the military field construction of a section of the road between Petrograd and Murmansk, after which he returned to the city and became a student of the All-Russian food courses of the People's Commissariat of Industry. In the same year, he entered the Leningrad Cooperative College, after graduating from which he went to Novosibirsk. In 1927, Kosygin became a member of the CPSU(b), and in 1930 he returned to Leningrad and entered the Leningrad Textile Institute.
After graduation, Kosygin’s career developed quite quickly. From 1936 to 1937, he worked first as a simple foreman, then as a shift supervisor, and then as director of the Oktyabrskaya factory. In 1938, he was appointed to the post of head of the industrial and transport department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and a year later he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. From that moment on, the political career of Kosygin began, who rapidly climbed the career ladder in the party.
At the beginning of the war, he was appointed to head the group of commissioners of the Civil Defense Committee. The committee was involved in the evacuation and supply of food for civilians in besieged Leningrad. In the course of his work, Kosygin became one of the members of the group that created and planned the famous “Road of Life,” which largely contributed to his further success in political activity.
After the war, Kosygin was appointed Chairman of the Operations Bureau of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, and in 1946 he became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. It was in these positions that his main political and economic activities took place, one of the most notable places in which was the economic reform of 1965.
Personal life
The prime minister's personal life began in 1927, it was then that Alexey Kosygin married Claudia Andreevna Krivosheina. They lived together for 40 years, until the death of Claudia Andreevna, who died at the age of 59. The wife of Alexei Kosygin was a relative of Alexei Kuznetsov, who worked as the first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city party committee in the period 1945-1946.
The Kosygin family had a daughter, Lyudmila Alekseevna Gvishiani-Kosygina, who worked in the Main Archive Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, director of the Library of Foreign Literature, and died at the age of 62.
Killer Swim
Of all the “celestials,” Kosygin was the most athletic. Back in the 1930s, he received the title of Master of Sports in rowing and did not give up this hobby even in his old age. It destroyed him.
During his next swim on the Moscow River, 74-year-old Alexei Nikolaevich's kayak somehow overturned, and he found himself upside down in the water. The prime minister suffered a mini-stroke and required emergency hospitalization. A year later - a massive heart attack. It was he who became the reason for Kosygin’s resignation from the post of prime minister. Although it is often written that this was facilitated by his disagreement with the Politburo’s decision to send Soviet troops into Afghanistan. However, one does not contradict the other.
Childhood and early years
The brilliant biography of Alexei Kosygin turned out to be possible solely thanks to the revolution. At thirty-two he got a job at a textile factory, in the same year he became a shift supervisor, and at thirty-three he became a factory director. At thirty-five he was appointed to the post of People's Commissar of Industry of the USSR. If it were not for the revolution, there would simply be no other opportunities for a young man born into the family of an ordinary turner to get to the political elite. The tsarist regime did not provide an opportunity to climb the social ladder so much.
There is very little information about the childhood of Alexei Kosygin. It is known that he was born on February twenty-first (February eighth according to the old style) 1904 in St. Petersburg. His father, Nikolai Ilyich, was a turner, but there is no information about his mother, Matrona Alexandrovna. Some sources indicate that she died in childbirth. The newborn son was baptized according to the Orthodox rite on March 7 of the same year in the Church of Sampson. Alexei Kosygin's family was quite wealthy. His father raised him.
Already at the age of fifteen, the alleged son of Nicholas II, Alexey Nikolaevich Kosygin, went to the Red Army as a volunteer. Then he was a student at the Petrovsky School. The young man dug trenches and built defensive structures. Three years later he returned to his hometown to continue his studies. After receiving a college diploma, the promising specialist went to Siberia to develop industrial cooperation for the benefit of his country.
