The weaver who became wartime premier of the Russian republic
On 10 October 1941 Stalin named Khokhlov to the Western Front Military Council alongside Zhukov and Bulganin: 'Block the road to Tula and Moscow as long as possible.' The three names appear together on every order of the Battle of Moscow.
Born to a peasant family in Gubino near Moscow, he started work as a weaver at ten, then in 1918 raised a detachment of 125 fellow villagers and joined the Red Army, fighting in the Civil War on the Eastern Front before being badly wounded. After the Leningrad Financial Academy he rose through the Moscow Oblast soviet and the Central Union of Consumer Societies (Tsentrosouz), becoming Chairman of the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars in 1940. When the Great Patriotic War broke out he served on the Western Front Military Council, directing troop and supply transportation during the Battle of Moscow and earning a lieutenant-general's rank: the only RSFSR premier to hold a front-line generalship. After the war he returned to Tsentrosouz to rebuild the rural cooperative network shattered by war, then headed the State Trade Inspectorate from 1955 until retirement in 1965.
Career Timeline
- 1937–1938Chairman, Moscow Oblast Executive Committee
- 1938–1940Chairman of the Presidium, Tsentrosouz USSR & RSFSR
- 1940–1943Chairman, RSFSR Council of People's Commissars
- 1941–1944Member, Western Front Military Council (Battle of Moscow, liberation of Smolensk)
- 1944–1945Member, 3rd Belorussian Front Military Council (East Prussian offensive)
- 1945–1954Chairman of the Board, Tsentrosouz USSR
- 1955–1965Head, State Trade Inspectorate (USSR & RSFSR Ministries of Trade)