The man who saved Khrushchev and then helped destroy him
In autumn 1964, as Ignatov chatted on the HF phone at his dacha about the plot to remove Khrushchev, his bodyguard stood by the window and listened to everything. The guard warned Khrushchev's son Sergei, but Khrushchev laughed it off: 'Those kids — against me? Nonsense!'
A carpenter's son who served 11 years in the Cheka-OGPU, Ignatov rose rapidly during the Great Purge by orchestrating the downfall of Pavel Postyshev and seizing the Kuybyshev party leadership. In June 1957 he mobilized CC members to defeat the Anti-Party Group's attempt to oust Nikita Khrushchev, a decisive intervention that earned him a CC Secretary post and full Presidium membership. When Khrushchev later sidelined him, Ignatov became one of the chief organizers of the 1964 conspiracy that finally removed Khrushchev. As Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Presidium, he was the paradoxical insider who shaped both the survival and the fall of the thaw-era leadership.
Career Timeline
- 1917–1921Served in the Red Guards and Red Army
- 1921–1932Cheka-OGPU service in the Don region and Central Asia; involved in Basmachi suppression
- 1937–1940First Secretary, Kuybyshev Oblast Committee; rose by attacking Postyshev
- 1943–1948First Secretary, Oryol Oblast Committee; directed wartime partisan movement
- 1949–1952First Secretary, Krasnodar Krai Committee
- 1952–1953CC Secretary, candidate Presidium member, USSR Minister of Procurements
- 1955–1957First Secretary, Voronezh then Gorky Oblast; initiated 'Gorky method' of housing
- 1957–1960CC Secretary and full member of the Presidium (Politburo)
- 1959, 1962–1966Chairman, Presidium of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
- 1960–1962Deputy Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers; Chairman, State Procurement Committee
- 1964Key organizer of the conspiracy to remove Khrushchev
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army service
- 1957The Anti-Party GroupThe CC organizer who saved KhrushchevAs Gorky Oblast First Secretary, he played a leading role in mobilizing CC members to defeat the Anti-Party Group's attempt to oust Khrushchev. He was rewarded immediately after with a CC Secretary post and full Presidium membership.
Chief Organizer of the 1964 Anti-Khrushchev Conspiracy
Ignatov was the most energetic organizer of the 1964 conspiracy to remove Khrushchev. The same man who had saved Khrushchev by mobilizing the Central Committee against the Anti-Party Group in June 1957 developed a deep grudge after being dropped from the Presidium in 1960 and demoted to Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Restored as Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Presidium in December 1962, Ignatov used this position to travel extensively across the Soviet Union, making personal contact with regional party secretaries. His task was to recruit provincial officials disaffected with Khrushchev's reforms, particularly the bifurcation of party organizations into industrial and agricultural branches under the sovnarkhoz reorganization.
The conspiracy's inner circle included Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgorny, Alexander Shelepin, and KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny, but in terms of on-the-ground organizing, Ignatov stood apart. Through the summer and autumn of 1964, using his official RSFSR status, he toured the regions and laid the practical groundwork for summoning Central Committee members to Moscow while Khrushchev was away. Semichastny later recalled in his memoirs that "no one ran around as zealously as Ignatov."
In October 1964, while Khrushchev vacationed at Pitsunda, Ignatov remained in Moscow orchestrating the behind-the-scenes coordination that ensured a majority of CC members would attend. At the Presidium session convened on October 13, Khrushchev was forced to resign all his posts; the next day the Central Committee plenum ratified the decision unanimously. Yet Ignatov gained almost nothing from the conspiracy. Brezhnev did not trust him, and Ignatov remained in the RSFSR chairmanship. When he died in 1966 from an unidentified viral infection contracted during a visit to Chile, he had never been readmitted to the innermost circle of power.