Frol Kozlov

(1908 - 1965), top Communist party leader during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Frol Kozlov's path to power was typical for party leaders of his generation of Soviet. Born in a village in Ryazan Province, Kozlov became a worker and assistant foreman at a textile plant where he also served as Communist Youth League secretary. After studying at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and working as an engineer, he rose through the ranks: secretary of the Izhevsk city party committee (1940 - 1941), second secretary of Kuibyshev Province (1947 - 1949), a party leader of Leningrad (1949 - 1957), candidate member of the Central Committee's Presidium (1957), and a Central Committee secretary in 1960.

Presidium colleague Alexander Shelepin later described Kozlov as a "very limited man." Anastas Mikoyan labeled him an "unintelligent, pro-Stalinist reactionary and careerist." Yet Kozlov backed Khrushchev in his battle with the Antiparty Group in 1957, and according to Khrushchev, he seemed knowledgeable about economic matters, and "firm, not someone who can be easily swayed."

By 1963, when Kozlov was de facto second secretary of the Soviet Communist party, he seemed to Western Kremlinologists to be leading conservative resistance to Khrushchev's reforms. In all probability, however, there was no organized opposition, and in fact, Kozlov soon began to irritate Khrushchev, for example, when he allowed the Soviet Communist Party's ritual May Day 1963 greetings to other Communist parties to imply an unauthorized change of line on Yugoslavia. Shortly after Khrushchev berated Kozlov for this mistake (but not necessarily because of Khrushchev's tirade), Kozlov suffered a stroke, which removed him from participation in the Presidium, although he formally remained a member until Khrushchev's ouster in October 1964.

Bibliography

Khrushchev, Sergei. (1990). Khrushchev on Khrushchev, tr. and ed. William Taubman. Boston: Little, Brown.

Tatu, Michel. (1969). Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin, tr. Helen Katel. New York: Viking Press.

—WILLIAM TAUBMAN

Frol Romanovich Kozlov (Russian: Фрол Рома́нович Козло́в; 18 August [O.S. 5 August] 1908 - January 30, 1965) was a Soviet statesman, Hero of Socialist Labor (1961).

He was elected a candidate member of the Presidium (as the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was then called) on 14 February 1957 and served as a full member from 29 June 1957 until he was relieved of his duties on 16 November 1964, following the ousting of his mentor, Nikita Khrushchev a month earlier.

In July 1959, he visited the secretive Bohemian Grove encampment in northern California. [1]

As the Time cover illustrated shows, he was for many years thought to be Khrushchev's likely successor as the dominant figure in the Soviet hierarchy of power. This was clearly what Khrushchev had intended^{[citation needed]}, but even before his mentor's removal from office in October 1964 Kozlov's position in the Soviet hierarchy had been undermined by the effects of his alcoholism; in 1963 he had ceased to be Secretary of the Party. At the time of his resignation in November 1964, Kozlov was already seriously ill after a stroke and died two months later. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, which indicates that he was not in deep disgrace under Brezhnev (later, neither Khrushchev nor Mikoyan were allowed to be buried there).

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