The Moscow party boss who challenged Brezhnev and was exiled to diplomacy
The moment he told the June 1967 CC Plenum, with Brezhnev seated before him, that 'Moscow's air defence is insufficiently reliable,' his career as Moscow party boss was over.
Nikolai Yegorychev was the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU from 1962 to 1967, a position of national significance in the party hierarchy. Under his leadership, Moscow saw a housing boom that rehoused over three million residents, and he personally initiated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial at the Kremlin wall and the restoration of the Triumphal Arch. At the June 1967 CC Plenum, he publicly challenged Brezhnev by warning that Moscow's air defence was dangerously obsolete: a speech made as a member of the 'Komsomol group' aligned with Alexander Shelepin that led to his swift removal. He later served as Soviet ambassador to Denmark (1970–1984) and briefly to Afghanistan (1988) during the Soviet withdrawal.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1954–1956Secretary, Bauman District Committee, Moscow
- 1956–1960First Secretary, Bauman District Committee, Moscow
- 1960–1961Inspector, CC CPSU
- 1961–1962Second Secretary, Moscow City Committee
- 1962–1967First Secretary, Moscow City Committee
- 1970–1984USSR Ambassador to Denmark
- 1988USSR Ambassador to Afghanistan
Related historical events
War service and return to study, 1941-1950
Yegorychev entered the armoured faculty of the Bauman Higher Technical School in 1938, one of its newly opened defence departments, but the war interrupted his studies. On 30 June 1941 he was sent with other students to build defensive works in Kaluga Oblast; they were returned to Moscow on 9 September, and when the school was ordered to evacuate to Izhevsk he chose not to leave the city where he had grown up. In October 1941 he volunteered with the 3rd Moscow Communist Division, formed from workers' battalions, served as deputy political instructor of a separate tank-destroyer platoon in the defence of Moscow, and his platoon guarded the bridge over the Moscow-Volga canal on the edge of Khimki.
The division moved to the North-Western Front in early 1942, where he saw his first combat and was seriously wounded in the leg on 8 March. In June 1942 he joined the 241st Rifle Division as deputy political instructor of a company and platoon commander; wounded a second time on 10 August, he returned to the front line within a week. He went on to serve with the Steppe Front and then the 1st Ukrainian Front, taking part in the battle of Kursk, the crossing of the Dnieper and the fighting to liberate Kiev.
In November 1943 he was sent to officers' cipher courses in Kiev and later taught on them, and surviving records note his participation in operations against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in western Ukraine; assessments of that fighting differ by source, so it is recorded here as the Soviet-side account. He met the victory in Germany near Dresden, and in June 1945, as a platoon commander in the special communications unit of the 8th Department of the 1st Ukrainian Front staff, received the Order of the Red Star. He returned to the Bauman school in 1946, served as Komsomol secretary of his faculty and then Komsomol organiser of the school, graduated with distinction in 1950, and that year became secretary of its party committee.