Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (Russian: Михаи́л Андре́евич Су́слов; 21 November [O.S. 8 November] 1902 – 25 January 1982) was a Soviet politician. In addition to serving as the Central Committee's longtime Secretary of Ideology, he held office as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965 until his death in 1982.
Born in rural Russia in 1902, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921 and studied economics for much of the 1920s. He left his job as a teacher in 1931 to pursue politics full-time, becoming one of the many Soviet politicians who took part in the mass repression begun by Joseph Stalin's regime. He was made First Secretary of Stavropol Krai administrative area in 1939. During World War II, Suslov headed the local Stavropol guerrilla movement.
After the war, Suslov became a member of the Organisational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Central Committee in 1946. In June 1950, he was elected to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. From 16 October 1952 onwards, he was a full member of the 19th Presidium of the CPSU. In the ensuing shuffle of the Soviet leadership following Stalin's death, Suslov lost much of the recognition and influence he had previously earned. However, by the late 1950s, he had risen to become the leader of the party opposition to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev.
When Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Suslov supported the establishment of a collective leadership. He also supported inner-party democracy and opposed the reestablishment of the one-man rule as seen during the Stalin and Khrushchev eras. Under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, Suslov was considered to be the party's chief ideologue and second-in-command. He ultimately died in office on 25 January 1982.
Suslov was born in Shakhovskoye, Khvalynsky Uyezd, Saratov Governorate (today, a rural locality in Pavlovsky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast), Russian Empire on 21 November 1902. Suslov began work in the local Komsomol organisation in Saratov in 1918, eventually becoming a member of the Poverty Relief Committee. After working in the Komsomol for nearly three years, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (the Bolsheviks) in 1921. After graduating from the rabfak, he studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy between 1924 and 1928. In the summer of 1928, after graduating from the Plekhanov institute, he became a graduate student (research fellow) in economics at the Institute of Red Professors, teaching at Moscow State University and at the Industrial Academy.
In 1931, he abandoned teaching in favour of the party apparatus. He became an inspector on the Communist Party's Party Control Commission and on the People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. His main task there was to adjudicate large numbers of "personal cases", breaches of discipline, and appeals against expulsion from the party.
In 1933 and 1934, Suslov directed a commission charged with purging the party in the Ural and Chernigov provinces. The purge was organised by Lazar Kaganovich, then Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission. Author Yuri Druzhnikov contends that Suslov was involved with setting up several show trials, and contributed to the Party by expelling all members deviating from the Party line, meaning Trotskyists, Zinovievists, and other left-wing deviationists.
From 1936 to 1937, Suslov studied at the Postgraduate Course of the Economic Institute of Red Professors. He gained a reputation as an unsociable, modest, and serious student who carefully studied and memorized the works and speeches of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin and became known for keeping a complete record of their statements on economic and political issues in boxes of cards and file cabinets in his tiny room in a communal apartment. Somehow, Stalin urgently needed Lenin's opinion on one narrow economic issue and dispatched his secretary Lev Mekhlis to locate the answer. Mekhlis, Suslov's classmate at the institute, approached him and instantly found the necessary quote. An amazed Stalin asked how he managed to find the quote so quickly, upon which Mekhlis introduced Stalin to Suslov. Stalin immediately had Suslov promoted to a secretary of the Rostov Regional Committee in 1937. Suslov has been linked to political repression in Rostov as part of the Great Purge in 1938, however writer Roy Medvedev has questioned this, stating that "we have no evidence of his personal involvement in the repressive campaigns of 1937–1938, though they certainly paved the way for his rapid rise." Suslov was made First Secretary of the Stavropol Krai Committee in 1939.
Wartime activities (1941–1945)
On the Eastern Front in World War II, Suslov was a member of Military Council of the North Caucasian Front and led the Stavropol Krai Headquarters of the Partisan Divisions (the local guerrilla movement) after the Germans occupied the area. Suslov spent much of his time mobilising workers to fight against the German invaders. The guerrilla movement he led was operated by the regional party cells; Suslov for his part maintained close contact with the Red Army.
According to Soviet historiography, Suslov's years as a guerrilla fighter were highly successful; however, testimonies from participants differ from the official account. These participants claim that there were a number of organizational problems which reduced their effectiveness on the battlefield. Suslov also suffered badly from tuberculosis, which he had contracted in his youth, that was further exacerbated in the dense partisan forests and hampered his ability as an effective combatant. Fearing further relapses, for the rest of his life, he continued to wear galoshes on his shoes as well as a hat and raincoat at all times, even in the hot summer weather, which made him the subject of jokes among his colleagues in Brezhnev's Politburo.
Suslov later purged the Baltic region in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War. From 1944 to 1946, he chaired the Central Committee Bureau for Lithuanian Affairs. Anti-Soviet samizdat literature from the height of his power in the 1970s would accuse him of being personally responsible for the deportation and killings of nationalist Lithuanians who became political opponents of the Soviets during the course of Soviet re-entry into the Baltic states on their drive to Berlin in 1944.
In 1946, Suslov was made a member of the Orgburo and immediately became the Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Central Committee. Within a year, Suslov was appointed Head of the Central Committee Department for Agitation and Propaganda. He also became a harsh critic of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the post-war years. On 26 November 1946, Suslov sent a letter to Andrei Zhdanov, accusing the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of spying. Suslov's letter, which was well-received among Soviet leadership, would serve as the basis for prosecution of the committee during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. After becoming head of the Agitprop, at the height of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, Suslov also purged Jews from media and public institutions.
In 1947, Suslov was transferred to Moscow and elected to the Central Committee Secretariat. In January 1948, Stalin entrusted him with the task of speaking on behalf of the Central Committee before a solemn meeting on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's death. Upon Zhdanov's death in August 1948, Suslov succeeded him as CC Secretary of Ideology. From September 1949 to 1950, he was editor-in-chief of the central Party daily Pravda.
In 1949, Suslov became a member of a commission created to investigate charges levied against Moscow's local Communist Party First Secretary, Georgy Popov. Russian historian Roy Medvedev speculates in his book, Neizvestnyi Stalin, that Stalin had made Suslov his "secret heir". Based on documents discovered within his safe, Stalin's feared secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, ranked Suslov first among those he wanted to "eliminate" before his political downfall.