Mikhail Suslov
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Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (Russian: Михаил Андреевич Суслов; November 21, 1902 - January 25, 1982) was a Soviet politician and ideologist, and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - having joined the party in 1921.
He studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute and the Economics Institute of the Red Professors, and taught at Moscow State University and at the Industrial Academy. In 1931, he became a member of control commissions that supervised Stalinist purges in the Urals and the Ukraine. He joined the CPSU Central Committee in 1939.
During World War II, he supervised the deportations of Chechens and other Muslim minorities from the Caucasus.
Sent to reimpose Soviet rule on Lithuania after the war, he sent whole villages to prison camps in Siberia. Promoted to the Politburo (at that time called Presidium) in 1952, he was later a prime mover behind the coup that removed Nikita Khrushchev and installed Leonid Brezhnev in 1964. He was in charge of party ideology for much of his time in the Secretariat. His death is viewed by some as starting the battle to succeed Brezhnev, in which Yuri Andropov, who secured Suslov's ideology brief, sidelined Andrei Kirilenko and Konstantin Chernenko.
A curious rumor circulated about Suslov: presumably, when Stalin was nervous, he would call Suslov in his office so he could relax by kicking Suslov's buttocks.
Suslov was the political patron of both Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev.
He is buried next to Stalin at the Kremlin Wall.
Template:Russia-politician-stub Template:Soviet-stubde:Michael Suslow fr:Mikhaïl Souslov ja:ミハイル・スースロフ pl:Michaił Susłow ru:Суслов, Михаил Андреевич zh:苏斯洛夫