The second secretary whose stroke opened the Brezhnev era
On 13 July 1959, Time magazine put Kozlov on its cover with the caption "Khrushchev's Heir?" Four years later, a stroke changed everything.
A metallurgical engineer from a Ryazan peasant family, Kozlov rose through the Izhevsk defense industry to take control of the Leningrad party after the war. He backed Khrushchev decisively against the Anti-Party Group in 1957, becoming a CC secretary and Presidium member, and from 1960 was Khrushchev's acknowledged successor, running the Secretariat and Presidium. His grip on party, military and security appointments concentrated enormous power in his hands, but a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1963 shattered Khrushchev's succession plan, and Brezhnev stepped into the void.
Career Timeline
- 1936–39Shift chief → party committee secretary, Izhevsk steel plant
- 1940–442nd secretary, Izhevsk city party: defense production
- 1947–492nd secretary, Kuibyshev obkom: heavy industry and aviation
- 1949–531st secretary Leningrad city → 2nd sec. obkom: post-purge reconstruction
- 1953–571st secretary Leningrad obkom: metro and urban modernization
- 1957–58Chairman, RSFSR Council of Ministers
- 1958–60First Deputy Premier USSR: day-to-day government management
- 1960–64CC secretary, de facto Second Secretary: chairs Secretariat and Presidium
Related historical events
Khrushchev's Successor: The Rise and Power of the 'Second Secretary'
In June 1957, when the so-called 'Anti-Party Group' (Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and others) tried to oust Khrushchev by majority vote in the CC Presidium, Kozlov sided decisively with Khrushchev at the critical moment. As Leningrad first secretary, he mobilized air force transports to rush Central Committee members to Moscow, and most of them swung behind Khrushchev. For this he was elevated the same day to full Presidium membership, becoming First Deputy Premier of the USSR in 1958 and a CC secretary in 1960: de facto 'Second Secretary', chairing both the Secretariat and, in Khrushchev's absence, the Presidium. At the CC plenum on 31 October 1961, closing the 22nd Party Congress, Khrushchev declared openly: 'We have no such statute, we never agreed on one, but in fact our second secretary before this was Comrade Kozlov.' Kozlov consolidated control over party appointments, the defense industry, and oversight of the military and KGB, ruling as the regime's effective number-two figure: a concentration of power abruptly ended by his stroke in April 1963.