(b. St Petersburg, 8 (21) Feb. 1904; d. Moscow, 18 Dec. 1980) Russian; Politbureau member 1948 – 53, 1957 – 80, chair of Council of Ministers 1964 – 80 After serving in the Red Army in the Civil War Kosygin was trained as a textile worker in Leningrad. Benefiting from the rapid promotion associated with the Purges he soon became a textile factory manager and in 1938 chair of the Leningrad City Soviet. In 1939 he was made People's Commissar for the Textile Industry. He played an important part in the organization of Leningrad's war economy during the blockade. In 1946 he became a Deputy Chair of the Council of Ministers and was briefly Minister of Finance in 1948. He narrowly escaped being purged along with the other Leningrad Zhdanovites, but survived to be promoted to the Politbureau in 1948 and made Minister of Light Industry in 1949.

After Stalin's death he was demoted, having an uneasy relationship with Khrushchev, and only in 1957 regained membership of the Politbureau and became deputy chair of the Council of Ministers.

When Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as party leader Kosygin was made chair of the Council of Ministers, a post he held for sixteen years till he resigned from ill-health in 1980. Initially he wielded considerable authority, especially in economic matters. In 1965 he introduced an economic reform package designed to promote greater efficiency. Profit was to be a key performance indicator; plan targets were to be expressed in terms of goods actually sold; managers were given greater leeway in using profits; bonuses would raise motivation. But the price system was not reformed and enterprise autonomy proved illusory, so the profit motive could not function. The reforms were in difficulties even before the "Prague Spring" of 1968 made conservatives fear the link between market-orientated reform and political liberalization. Kosygin's influence rapidly declined in the early 1970s after the failure of his reforms.

For more than 16 years Aleksei Nikolaevich Kosygin (1904-1980) served as chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers and effective head of the Soviet government. With party chief Leonid Brezhnev he helped shape Soviet economic development and played a leading role in the formation of foreign and domestic policy. Kosygin became for many a respected symbol of the conservative and workmanlike attitudes characterizing the "Brezhnevera."

Kosygin learned by experience. He was born into a working-class family in St. Petersburg on February 21, 1904. His father was a lathe operator, and he grew up in the cultured and cosmopolitan capital of tsarist Russia surrounded by increasingly militant and radical workers, absorbing much from both social cultures. (Throughout his life, he dressed impeccably, with shoes always brightly polished; but he could always communicate with ordinary factory hands and knew his way around the shop floor.) At the age of 15 he volunteered for the Red Army, distinguishing himself in several Civil War campaigns. As with others of his generation, the Communist Party rewarded his loyalty and commitment by supporting his education after he was demobilized. In 1924 he graduated from the Leningrad Cooperative Technical Institute and began a career in Soviet industry.

Kosygin first worked in Irkutsk as an administrator in the important Siberian regional consumers' cooperative. He also became active politically, joining the Communist Party in 1927. In 1930 he returned to Leningrad for further training at the Textile Institute and, after graduating in 1935, took a series of important positions in Leningrad textile plants. In 1937, at the young age of 33, he became director of the important October Spinning Mill, a position which put him in close daily contact with city economic officials.

Kosygin's talents were soon in demand. Stalin's massive purges opened up unusual opportunities for many of Kosygin's generation, because of their youth "untainted" by association with those then being arrested and killed. In 1938 Kosygin took the vacated chair of the Leningrad City Soviet Executive Committee, becoming, in effect, mayor of Soviet Russia's second most important city. His career advanced rapidly. In 1939 he became minister of the textile industry and in 1940 vice chairman of the all-important U.S.S.R. Supreme Economic Council (Sovnarkom). From 1948 until 1953 he also served as Stalin's minister of finance and, simultaneously, as minister of light industry. He also served as vice chairman of the Council of Ministers.

Kosygin was no mere apparatchik. From January to July 1942 he directed economic activities in blockaded Leningrad, earning widespread appreciation for his efforts. His role in managing Soviet Russia's post-war economy was also an extremely difficult one, beset by Stalin's irrational policies and often whimsical directives. Like Khrushchev, Malenkov, and others, he was consequently determined after Stalin's death to help lead the U.S.S.R. in a different direction, ending Stalinist abuses and infusing as much rationality as possible into the Soviet planned economy within the limits of that country's particular communist system. As Khrushchev consolidated his power, Kosygin took an increasingly important role in support of rapid industrial growth, the satisfaction of consumer demands, and greater East-West trade. He served in the late 1950s as chairman of Gosplan, the state planning commission, and as vice-chairman, again, of the Council of Ministers.

In this capacity, however, Kosygin also became disen-chanted with many of Khrushchev's economic directives, particularly those which promised the Soviet people more than the party could deliver. He thus became a willing participant in Khrushchev's ouster, and in late October 1964 moved into the office of his former boss as chairman of the Council of Ministers. In this new capacity Kosygin was soon identified with new economic ideas, particularly the possibility of using some measure of economic profit to gauge the efficiency of capital investments. These innovations soon fell by the wayside, however, as Brezhnev and Kosygin both opted for more conservative policies, preferring predictability to risk.

Kosygin travelled widely as Soviet premier, visiting the United States on a trip which included the celebrated meeting with President Lyndon Johnson at Glassboro State College in New Jersey at the height of the Vietnam War and a visit to the hydro-electric complex at Niagara Falls. He also visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, France, England, Turkey, Iraq, China, Yugoslavia, and other countries in the 1970s, becoming highly visible as a world leader and comfortable in his role despite Brezhnev's preeminence. Knowledgable, tough-minded, and a skillful if conservative administrator, Aleksei Nikolaevich Kosygin reflected in his career and personality the qualities, values, and limitations of Brezhnev's Russia. His death from a heart ailment in December 1980 was met by many in the Soviet Union with regret. Although regarded as a dour pragmatist, devoid of a sense of humor, he was moved to both anger and compassion on occasion.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Aleksei Nikolaevich Kosygin in English, but students might consult a number of general texts, including Leonard Schapiro, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1960); Carl A. Linden, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964 (1966); and Wolfgang Leonard, The Kremlin Since Stalin (1962). Two excellent studies have also appeared recently on politics under Brezhnev which reward reading: Valerie Bunce, Do New Leaders Make a Difference (1981), and George W. Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (London, 1982). See also the collection of essays edited by Stephen Cohen, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet, The Soviet Union Since Stalin (1980). As with other Soviet leaders, the best source for Kosygin's public speeches and other writings during his years as premier is the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, issued weekly since 1949 with quarterly and cumulative indexes.

For more information on Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin, visit Britannica.com.

(1904 - 1980), Soviet prime minister.

Alexei Kosygin was born into a worker's family in St. Petersburg. After finishing schooling at the Leningrad Cooperative Technical School in 1924, he moved to Siberia and worked in a series of positions in the cooperative movement. It was while in Siberia, in 1927, that he joined the Communist Party. After returning to Leningrad he completed further studies at the Leningrad Textile Institute in 1935. Reflecting the opportunities opened up by the Stalinist terror and the patronage of Leningrad party boss Andrei Zhdanov, Kosygin moved rapidly from being a foreman and shop superintendent in the Zhelyabov factory through a series of industrial, city, and party posts, until in 1939 he became people's commissar for the textile industry. From April 1940 until March 1953 he was deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (from 1946 Council of Ministers), or deputy prime minister; from June 1943 until March 1946 he was also prime minister of Russia. During this period, he likewise held a series of ministerial appointments, principally in the light industry and consumer goods industry areas. Kosygin had become a full member of the Party's Central Committee in 1939, a candidate member of the Politburo in March 1946, and a full member in February 1948.

Kosygin's upward trajectory was halted in connection with the fall of Zhdanov and the Leningrad Affair. Although one of the intended victims of this affair, Kosygin survived, but at the Nineteenth Party Congress in 1952 he was dropped to candidate status in the Presidium (as the Politburo was then called). Following Stalin's death and the consolidation of the position of one of Kosygin's enemies, Georgy Malenkov, Kosygin was dropped altogether from the enlarged Presidium in March 1953. At the same time, he was removed as deputy prime minister. He retained a ministerial position in the consumer goods/light industry sector and was restored as deputy prime minister in December 1953. He held this post until December 1956 when he became deputy chair (and from 1959 chair) of the state planning body. With Malenkov's fall as part of the Antiparty Group, in June 1957 Kosygin was restored to candidate membership of the Presidium and in the following month to the deputy prime ministership. He retained this post, from May 1960 as first deputy chairman, until October 1964, when he became chairman of the Council of Ministers, or prime minister. In May 1960 he also became a full member of the Central Committee Presidium.

The fluctuations in Kosygin's official positions in the early to mid-1950s reflect the vicissitudes of factional politics in the late-Stalin and early post-Stalin periods. In particular, Kosygin's fortunes seem to have been related inversely to those of Malenkov. Khrushchev's triumph over the Anti-party Group consolidated Kosygin's position near the apex of Soviet politics, but it was Kosygin's turning against Khrushchev that later allowed Kosygin to attain prime ministership. When the Soviet leadership tired of Khrushchev, they turned to Kosygin and Brezhnev. In the initial post-Khrushchev period, there seemed to be a general balance both between these two leaders and within the broader party leadership. Initially Kosygin was actively involved in foreign policy, including overseeing the Tashkent Agreement between India and Pakistan in 1965, negotiating with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson at Glassboro in 1967, and conducting key talks with the Chinese in 1965 and 1969. He was the sponsor of the so-called Liberman economic reforms (also known as the Kosygin reforms) in September 1965, which sought to generate greater autonomy from party control for the economic managers, although he also tightened central direction of the economy by eliminating the regional economic councils. Kosygin basically sought the more efficient management of the economy, but with the hostile Soviet reaction to the Prague Spring, the likelihood of liberalizing moves in the economy was eliminated. The suppression of the Prague Spring marked the ascendancy of Brezhnev and the clear subordination of Kosygn, who remained prime minister until his retirement in October 1980, and therefore through most of the period that Gorbachev would later call the "era of stagnation". He was more a technocrat than a politician, but bears some of the responsibility for the Soviet Union's perilous economic situation during the 1980s.

Bibliography

Breslauer, George W. (1982). Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics. London: Allen & Unwin.

Gelman, Harry. (1984). The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Tatu, Michel. (1968). Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin. New York: Viking.

—GRAEME GILL

(əlyĭksyā' nyĭkə lī'əvĭch kəsē'gĭn) , 1904–80, Soviet political leader. A member of the Communist party from 1927, he joined its central committee in 1939. In the 1940s, as an aide to Joseph Stalin, he became recognized as an expert in economics and industry. He held various other government and party posts before becoming (1960) first deputy chairman of the USSR council of ministers. In 1964 he succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as premier, sharing overall power with Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist party. By the late 1960s, however, his importance in the party and government hierarchy had diminished in relation to that of Brezhnev, although Kosygin continued as premier. In this post he introduced various economic measures designed to reform and modernize Soviet agriculture, industry, and trade. Most of his efforts, however, were frustrated by Brezhnev's hardline intransigence. Kosygin resigned due to ill health in 1980 and died shortly thereafter.

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