First Secretary who ran the largest republican party in the USSR at the close of the Stalin era
Stalin ordered him to double Karaganda coal. 'I don't speak the language,' Melnikov said. 'Find an old akyn at the bazaar,' Stalin replied. 'He will help.' The akyn sang, miners dug, and Melnikov got him the Order of Lenin.
A mining engineer from the Donbas, he served at Stalingrad and then doubled Karaganda coking-coal output on Stalin's orders, earning the leader's trust. In 1949 he became First Secretary of the Ukrainian party, directing postwar reconstruction, the Sovietisation of Western Ukraine, and the drive against 'Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism'; his hard line in the anti-Semitic campaign broke his relationship with Khrushchev. Elected to the expanded CPSU Presidium in October 1952, he was dismissed in June 1953, weeks after Stalin's death, for 'distorting Leninist-Stalinist national policy' and demoted to ambassador in Romania. He rebuilt his career in industrial management, ending as chairman of the USSR State Committee for Industrial Safety (1966–1981).
Career Timeline
- 1937–39Stalino (Donetsk) city and oblast party cadres
- 1939–41Second Secretary, Stalino Oblast Committee
- 1941–42Military Council, 66th Army; Battle of Stalingrad
- 1942–44First Secretary, Karaganda Oblast — coking-coal surge
- 1944–47First Secretary, Stalino Oblast Committee
- 1947–49Secretary, then Second Secretary, CP(b)U Central Committee
- 1949–53First Secretary of Ukraine; full member, CPSU Presidium (1952–53)
- 1953–55Soviet Ambassador to Romania
- 1955–57Minister of Coal Industry Enterprise Construction, USSR
- 1957–61First Deputy Chair, then Deputy Chair of Kazakh Council of Ministers and Gosplan chair
- 1961–66Chairman, Kazakh then RSFSR Gosgortekhnadzor
- 1966–81Chairman, USSR Gosgortekhnadzor