Kosygin, Aleksei Nikolayevich 1904-80
Soviet politician

He was born and educated in St Petersburg. A textile-worker by training, he owed his advancement in the 1930s to the vacancies resulting from Stalin's purges. Elected to the Supreme Soviet (1938), he held a variety of political industrial posts, and became a member of the Central Committee in 1939 and of the politburo in 1948. He had a chequered career in the post-World War II period, falling in and out with both Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. It was only really when, in 1964, he succeeded the latter as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (or Prime Minister) that he could attempt serious, if decentralizing, reforms. However, he was blocked in the late 1960s by the party machine and the caution of Leonid Brezhnev. He soldiered on until 1980, when he resigned because of ill health, and he died soon after, having failed to rescue the economy from over-centralization and over-planning.