Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov ( 1902-1982)
Born in Shakhovskoye, Russia, Suslov worked for the Poor Peasants Committee in Khvalinsk district and joined the communist part in 1921. He completed his studies at the Plekhanov College of Economics in 1928. In 1931, he started working for the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Worker-Peasant Inspectorate. In 1937, he became district party secretary in Rostov, and in 1939- 44, first secretary of the party committee in Ordzhonikidze (Stavropol). He was active in implementing the Stalin purges of the 1930s. In 1944-6, he chaired the bureau of the party Central Committee in Lithuania. In 1947- 9, he successively headed the agitation and propaganda department and the foreign relations department at the CPSU Central Committee. He supervised propaganda, ideology and cultural activity from 1947 until his death. From 1949 to 1951, he was editor-in-chief of the central party daily Pravda. Having become a CPSU Central Committee member in 1941, Suslov was on the Presidium in 1952-3 and again from July 1955 until his death. In this capacity, he had talks in July 1956 in Budapest with the Hungarian leaders and with János Kádár and Imre Nagy, and returned on October 24, 1956 with Mikoyan, as a special envoy. Opposed to Khrushchev's de-Stalinization moves, Suslov played a part in ousting him in 1964.
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