Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (1911-1985)

General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Union (1984-1985). Born on September 24, 1911, to a peasant family in Krasnoyarsk, he was of Russian nationality. He joined the Communist Party in 1931.

From 1929 to 1941, he carried out duties Minister of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Youth League in Novoselovo, Party Secretary of Uyarsky Frontier Army Department and Minister of the Party District Committee. From 1941 to 1943, he successively served as Deputy Minister and Secretary of the Krasnoyarsk Border District Committee of the C.P.S.U.. In 1945, he was graduated from the Higher School for Party Organizers. From 1945 to 1948, he assumed the office of Party Secretary for Ideology of the Penza Provincial Committee of C.P.S.U..

Between 1948 and 1956 he carried out duties as the Minister of Propaganda and Agitation Department of Moldavian Central Committee of C.P.S.U.. He graduated from Kishinev Teachers College (correspondence course at that time) in 1953. From 1955 to 1959, he was elected the Supreme Soviet representative of the Republic of Moldavia. In 1956, he was elected as a member of the Communist Party of Moldavia. From 1956 to 1960, he was appointed as the director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee. From 1960 to 1965, he served as Director of the Secretariat of the Presidium of the Soviet Union. From July 1965 to March 1976, he served as Minister of the General Department of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U..

Since August 1966, he was consecutively elected as the Supreme Representative to the seventh to tenth Soviet Supreme Soviets. He was a member of the qualification examination committee of the Supreme Soviet Union Chamber of the Soviet Union. From April 1966 to April 1971, he was elected as an alternate member of the CPC Central Committee. In April 1971, during the 24th Congress of the C.P.S.U., he was elected as a full member of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.. In March 1976, he assumed duties as the Secretariat of the Correspondence Oversight (Letter Bureau) of the Central Committee C.P.S.U.. He was elected as an alternate member to the Political Bureau of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee in October 1977. In November, he was elected as a full member of the Political Bureau in November 1978. At the plenary session of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee, which was held on February 13, 1984, he was elected as the General Secretary of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee. On April 11 of the same year, he was elected chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

During his tenure as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Chernenko continued to experiment with expanding corporate autonomy, but no other reforms took place in other areas. In theory, he inherited Andropov’s “beginning theory” regarding the long historical phase of mature socialism, argued that “the Soviet Union is now in a new stage of socialist construction—the beginning of the perfecting a developed socialist society”. This stage of developed socialism has a long-term establishment phase and can only be completed with the efforts of several generations. He regarded perfecting socialism into developed socialism as the party’s fundamental principle, specifically, to make the productive forces undergo profound qualitative changes and correspondingly improve the relations of production, greatly increase labor productivity, strengthen labor discipline and social discipline, and further give play to the masses’ enthusiasm and initiative of labor.

Chernenko had long been engaged in party affairs and ideological work, and has repeatedly emphasized the need to consistently follow the Leninist principles in ideological work, organizational work and economic work; ideological work is the cause of the Party and ideological work improves ideology. Political education efforts should lead to the level of “adapting to the major and complex tasks that the party would be achieving in the process of perfecting developed socialism”—“we must always be vigilant against the attack of hostile ideology”.

Chernenko was awarded with the Red Banner of Labor in 1976 and 1981, the award of Socialist Labor Hero in 1984, the Order of Georgi Dimitrov of Bulgaria in 1981, and awarded with the Lenin prize for his contribution to Human Rights in the Soviet Society in 1982.

He died of illness on March 10, 1985.