Heavy-industry secretary in Khrushchev's bifurcated industrial Secretariat
On the night of 23 November 1962, the CPSU Central Committee plenum adopted Khrushchev's plan to split the party into industrial and agricultural lines, and Rudakov was elected the secretary responsible for every factory, mine, and construction site across the Soviet Union.
A Donbas miner who rose through the Ukrainian party apparatus to become Khrushchev's top official for heavy-industry policy. After nearly twenty years directing coal and heavy-industry sectors in Ukraine, he was elevated to the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat for industry at the November 1962 plenum that split the party into industrial and agricultural wings, and retained the post under Brezhnev until his death.
Career Timeline
- 1927–1936Miner in Donbas coalfields
- 1936–1938Komsomol work in Ukrainian SSR
- 1938–1942CC CP(b)U apparatus: instructor, deputy head, head of Coal Industry Department
- 1942–1944CC VKP(b) apparatus
- 1944–1954CC CP(b)U: deputy secretary, head of Coal Industry, Heavy Industry, and Party/Union/Komsomol Organs departments
- 1954–1962Head of Heavy Industry Department, CPSU Central Committee
- 1962–1966Secretary of CPSU Central Committee (responsible for industry)
Related historical events
Heavy Industry and the Party Bifurcation Reform
Rudakov was appointed head of the Heavy Industry Department of the CPSU Central Committee in 1954, serving for eight years as the key executor of Khrushchev-era industrial policy. His tenure coincided with the Soviet Union's shift from a Stalin-era coal-and-steel model toward oil, gas, and pipeline transport. The department under his leadership drove the expansion of pipe production and import programs for large-diameter steel pipes in the late 1950s. Archival records show Rudakov directly coordinating production-plan adjustments and negotiations for foreign pipe purchases amid the disruption caused by the 1957 sovnarkhoz reform, which dismantled the Union-level industrial ministries.
At the November 1962 CC plenum (19–23 November), Khrushchev pushed through a radical reorganization splitting the entire party apparatus into industrial and agricultural wings. Rudakov was elevated from candidate to full CC member, elected CC Secretary for Industry, and simultaneously named chairman of the newly created CC CPSU Bureau for Industry and Construction. This bureau oversaw party supervision of every factory, mine, and construction site in the USSR, functioning as the apex policy-coordinating body for the industrial wing under the bifurcated system. Rudakov directed the industrial party committees across republics and oblasts until Khrushchev's ouster in November 1964 and the abolition of the bifurcation.
Even after the reform was reversed, Rudakov retained his CC secretary post and his role as head of the Heavy Industry Department under the Brezhnev leadership, a rare case of a Khrushchev-era industrial reformer surviving into the successor regime on the strength of his expertise. In the Secretariat portfolio distribution of May 1966, Rudakov was formally assigned 'heavy industry questions' and directly ran the Heavy Industry Department, but by then he was seriously ill and attended almost no Secretariat meetings after April 1966. He died on 10 July 1966 at age 55 and was succeeded by Mikhail Solomentsev.