The RSFSR premier who turned wartime Gorky into an arsenal
On 13 August 1949, Rodionov was arrested as he left Georgy Malenkov's office. He never saw freedom again.
A hands-on party official who rose from teaching and Komsomol work in the Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) region. As First Secretary of the Gorky Oblast Party Committee from 1940, he oversaw the region's war production throughout the Great Patriotic War. Serving simultaneously as chairman of the Gorky City Defense Committee and State Defense Committee (GKO) commissioner for munitions and combat vehicles, he helped turn Gorky into one of the USSR's principal arsenals. Appointed Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers in 1946, he led the Russian republic's postwar reconstruction until he was caught in the Leningrad Affair: arrested in Georgy Malenkov's office in August 1949 and executed the following year on fabricated charges of a 'Russian separatist conspiracy.' He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1954.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1946–1949Chairman, RSFSR Council of Ministers
- 1946–1949Member, Orgburo of the CC VKP(b)
- 1941–1949Candidate member, CC VKP(b)
- 1941–1943Chairman, Gorky City Defense Committee; GKO commissioner for war production
- 1940–19461st Secretary, Gorky Obkom & Gorkom VKP(b)
- 1939–1940Chairman, Gorky Oblast Executive Committee
- 1938–19393rd Secretary, Gorky Obkom VKP(b)
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarGorky war-production chiefDuring the Great Patriotic War, he oversaw Gorky's war production.
- 1949–1950The Leningrad AffairTargetAs Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers, he was arrested in August 1949 and shot on 1 October 1950 alongside Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, and others. Rehabilitated in 1954.
First Secretary in Gorky and Wartime Arms Production, 1940-1946
From District Official to Regional First Secretary
Born in the village of Ratunino in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Rodionov finished the Lyskovo polytechnic in 1927 and worked in Komsomol and education posts: director of the Borsky pedagogical college in 1930-1931, head of the propaganda department and deputy secretary of the Borsky district party committee, then, from 1935, first secretary of the Ivanovo district committee. After heading the Gorky regional education department and serving as third secretary of the regional committee in 1938, he chaired the regional executive committee in 1939 and became first secretary of the Gorky regional and city party committees in January 1940.
Chairman of the City Defense Committee
When the war began, Gorky became the largest rear center of arms production for the Red Army. As the front approached Moscow in the autumn of 1941, some 350,000 residents of the city and region were mobilized from 20 October to dig defense lines, and from 31 October a 1,134-kilometer defensive belt along the Oka was built by fourteen field construction units. Under the defense-committee system this construction proceeded alongside war production.
Organizer of an Arsenal
During his tenure Gorky supplied the front with 38,318 tanks, self-propelled guns and armored vehicles (37 percent of the total), 101,700 artillery pieces, 16,324 aircraft (26 percent), 43,688 mortars (35.4 percent), 85,722 radios (60 percent) and 27 submarines (43.1 percent). Those figures rested on what the plants and their workers paid. From the autumn of 1941 to the summer of 1943 German aircraft bombed Gorky forty-three times, twenty-six of them at night, dropping 1,631 high-explosive and 33,934 incendiary bombs, the heaviest air assault on Soviet rear areas during the war. In June 1943 the automobile plant lost fifty buildings, more than nine thousand conveyors and transporters and 5,900 pieces of equipment, and 35,000 repair workers and builders restored it in 100 days, working eighteen to nineteen hours a day. He left for the RSFSR Council of Ministers in 1946, but the city's war record remained.