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Mikhail Georgiyevich Pervukhin (; 14 October
O.S. 1 October">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>
O.S. 1 October1904 – 22 July 1978) was a Soviet people">Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
politician and an engineer who served as
people's commissar
Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English language, English transliteration of the Russian language, Russian (''komissar''), which means 'commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the pol ...
for various commissions under
Stalin and
Khrushchev presidiums.
He served as a
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union">Council of Ministers
Council of Ministers is a traditional name given to the supreme Executive (government), executive organ in some governments. It is usually equivalent to the term Cabinet (government), cabinet. The term Council of State is a similar name that also m ...
from 1955 to 1957.
Early life and career
He was born on 14 October 1904 in the village of
Yuryuzansky Zavod,
Yuryuzan, Chelyabinsk Oblast">Yuryuzansky Zavod, Ufa Governorate, Russian Empire">Ufa_Governorate.html" ;"title="Yuryuzan, Chelyabinsk Oblast">Yuryuzansky Zavod,
Yuryuzan, Chelyabinsk Oblast">Yuryuzansky Zavod, Ufa Governorate, Russian Empire to a Russian working class">working-class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
family. Pervukhin was a political activist for the communist cause and became a party member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union">Russian Communist Party in 1919. In August to September 1919, Pervukhin was a member of the
Zlatoust
Zlatoust (; ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Ay River (in the Kama River, Kama drainage basin, basin), west of Chelyabinsk. Population: 181,000 (1971); 161,000 (1959); 99,000 ...
city commission on the nationalisation of property belonging to the Russian
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...
. He began working for the Zlatoust newspaper ''
Borba'' in October 1919, and worked there until February 1920 when he started to attend after-school lessons. He fought alongside the
Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...
in the
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
in the
South Urals. From October to November 1920, Pervukhin was a member of the Bolshevik squad quelling the anti-Bolshevik uprising in Chrysostom.
From January 1921 to mid-autumn Pervukhin worked as the Executive Secretary of the ''
Proletarian Thought''. He was a member of the Bureau of the Zlatoust
Komsomol District Committee, and later became the head of its Department for Political Education in April 1922. Later that year he became the Zlatoust Komsomol District Committee's Deputy Secretary, and was its Technical Secretary from April to August 1922.
The Metal Workers' Union of the Zlatoust District Committee ordered Pervukhin to
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
in the late summer of 1922 to study where he went to attend the
Plekhanov Moscow Institute of the National Economy; he studied electrical engineering and found employment with the Moscow Electric Power Company in 1932. In May 1936, he became the Director of the Kashirskaya Power Plant. From June to September 1937, Pervukhin worked as Mosenergo's Chief Engineer, and later that year became its acting head. Pervukhin started to work for the
People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry in late 1937, and was later appointed to the post of Deputy People's Commissar for Heavy Industry in 1938, and First Deputy People's Commissars for Heavy Industry in June 1937 when
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (; – 25 July 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates.
Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ...
was People's Commissar for
Heavy Industry
Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities (such as heavy equipment, large machine tools, huge buildings and large-scale infrastructure); o ...
.
During the
Great Purge
The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...
Pervukhin was promoted to Deputy Head of the Moscow Electrical Power Administration Bureau, and then its commissioner.
On 24 January 1939 Pervukin was promoted to the newly established post of
People's Commissar for Electric Power Stations and was given a seat in the Communist Party's
Central Committee at the
18th Party Congress.
World War II and the Stalin Era
From 1940 to 1942, during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Pervukhin served as a
Deputy Chairman of the
Council of People's Commissars
The Council of People's Commissars (CPC) (), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (), were the highest executive (government), executive authorities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the Soviet Union (USSR), and the Sovi ...
(literally, Soviet Deputy Premier), and from 1943 until 1950 he served as the
Minister of the Chemical Industry.
Pervukhin, alongside
Boris Vannikov, was
Vyacheslav Molotov's deputy on the
State Defense Committee's commission responsible for the development of the
Soviet program of nuclear weapons since 1943. Along with Molotov, Pervukhin was a program manager of the commission's
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...
project. When
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
signed the
State Defense Committee Resolution No. 9887, he established a Special Committee with
emergency powers.
The Committee's main duty was to oversee the work of those who contributed to the development of the Soviet nuclear weapons. Stalin personally picked the members of the committee; Pervukhin was one of nine members. Pervukhin was the Deputy Chairman under Vannikov's Chairmanship of the First Main Directorate of the Council of People's Commissars, the
executive branch of the special committee. He also served as Chairman of the State Commission on the
RDS-1 testing at the Semipalatinsk Test Site.
In 1950 Pervuhkin was once again appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and in 1952, at the
19th Party Congress, he was elected a member of the
Presidium, the renamed Politburo.
At the 35th anniversary of the
October Revolution
The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
in 1952, Pervukhin delivered the main speech at the
Moscow Kremlin commemoration. If Stalin was absent or could not carry out his duty as
Chairman
The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...
of the Council of Ministers, government meetings would be chaired, in turn by Pervukhin,
Lavrentiy Beria, or
Maksim Saburov.
Post-Stalin era
As part of the changes in the post-Stalin era, a
collective leadership
In communist and socialist theory, collective leadership is a shared distribution of power within an organizational structure, sometimes publicly described or designed as Primus inter pares, ''primus inter pares'' (''first among equals'').
Commun ...
was established with both
Georgy Malenkov and
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
vying for control. At the very beginning, Pervukhin, along with
Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov ( 189618 June 1974) was a Soviet military leader who served as a top commander during World War II and achieved the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Zhukov served as deputy commander-in-ch ...
and Saburov, actively participated in foreign policy decision-making. Malenkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, appointed Pervukhin the post of
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 28 February 1955.
From 5 March 1953 to 17 April 1954, Pervukhin was the
Minister of Power and Electrical Industry, and from December 1953 to February 1955, he was Chairman of the
Bureau for Energy, Chemical and Forest Industries of the Council of Ministers.
On 25 December 1956
Nikolai Bulganin, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, removed Saburov from his post as Chairman of the
State Economic Commission on Current Planning and replaced him with Pervukhin. who held the post until 10 May 1957.
Pervukhin opposed Khrushchev's
Regional Economic Soviet reform, whose main aim was to reduce the powers and functions of the
central ministries. He told Khrushchev and other Presidium members that this reform would weaken branch administration, and that the centralisation and specialisation which had been the system's cornerstone would be lost. Instead, Pervukhin proposed to reduce the numbers of central ministries and establish territorial commissions to provide "horizontal cooperation". Later, in 1957, Pervukhin joined the
Anti-Party Group
The Anti-Party Group, fully referenced in the Soviet political parlance as "the anti-Party group of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov and Shepilov, who joined them" () was a Stalinist group within the leadership of the Communist Party of the Sovie ...
in a bid to remove Khrushchev as
First Secretary.
Ambassadorship to East Germany
Following the failed bid to remove Khrushchev, Pervukhin was demoted to a non-voting member of the Presidium, and became the Soviet Union's ambassador to
East Germany
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
in 1958.
As ambassador, Pervukhin observed that "the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately, does not always turn out in favor of the Democratic
astBerlin". Pervukin remained wary, until its very creation, of establishing a sectorial barrier between
East
East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...
and
West Berlin
West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
; he believed that creating a barrier would increase anti-Soviet sympathies not only in Berlin but in Germany as well. Instead, he proposed three options: 1) "introducing restrictive measures" for East Germans to enter both East Berlin and West Berlin; 2) strengthening the border security; 3) stopping the free movement between the two cities. However, he did admit that closing the borders was a possibility, claiming that if the political situation worsened, the East German regime and the Soviets would not have another option.
Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (; ; 30 June 18931 August 1973) was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar republic, Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later in the early development ...
, the
East German leader, invited Pervukhin to his summer house to discuss the East German immigration flow to
West Germany
West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
. There Ulbricht told Pervukhin that if the Soviets did not react soon, East Germany would "collapse". Pervukhin discussed other problems as well, claiming that Ulbricht but also the East German leadership in general, were opposed to the Soviet Union's plan to improve relations with West Germany. When Khrushchev gave his approval to construct what would become the
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...
, Pervukhin was the first to know. Ulbricht told Pervukhin of the need to create the East–West barrier at night, and he and Khrushchev would later agree to this.
At the
22nd Party Congress in 1961, Pevurkhin lost his seat in the
Central Committee.
He was succeeded in his post as Soviet ambassador to East Germany by
Pyotr Abrasimov at the end of 1962.
Decorations and awards
*
Hero of Socialist Labour
The Hero of Socialist Labour () was an Title of honor, honorific title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries from 1938 to 1991. It represented the highest degree of distinction in the USSR and was awarded for exceptional achievem ...
(1949)
* Five
Orders of Lenin
*
Order of the October Revolution
The Order of the October Revolution (, ''Orden Oktyabr'skoy Revolyutsii'') was instituted on 31 October 1967, in time for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. It was conferred upon individuals or groups for services furthering communis ...
*
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pervukhin, Mikhail
1904 births
1978 deaths
People from Chelyabinsk Oblast
People from Ufa Governorate
Deputy heads of government of the Soviet Union
Plekhanov Russian University of Economics alumni
Ambassadors of the Soviet Union to East Germany
Candidates of the Presidium of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Presidium of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Presidium of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 1938–1947
Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 1955–1959
People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union
Second convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Third convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Fourth convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the October Revolution
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Anti-Party Group
Anti-revisionists
Russian communists
Soviet lieutenant generals
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
Chairman of Gosplan