Planner of the late Stalin and Malenkov years
During preparations for the 20th Party Congress in 1956, when Kaganovich, Molotov, and Voroshilov insisted Stalin's "greatness" must be stressed despite the purges, Saburov — with Mikoyan — dissented: "If all this is true, it cannot be pardoned."
A central Soviet economic planner who chaired Gosplan three times, directing postwar industrial reconstruction and the fifth five-year plan. From the late Stalin years through early Khrushchev rule he stood at the heart of state planning, managing the tension between heavy-industry priorities and consumer-goods balance. In 1957 he joined the Anti-Party Group's attempt to remove Khrushchev. He was expelled from the Presidium and relegated to managing local factories for the rest of his career.
Career Timeline
- 1930s–1940sStalin-era economic official rising through industry and planning organs
- 1941–1942, 1949–1953Works in wartime and postwar Gosplan/state planning leadership
- 1953–1955Planning leader under Malenkov amid debates over consumer goods and heavy industry
- 1957Joins the Anti-Party Group and is expelled from central power
- 1960s–1970sMoved to lower economic posts and then retirement
Related historical events
The Anti-Party Group Affair, 1957
In June 1957, Saburov joined the "Anti-Party Group" that opposed Khrushchev's consolidation of power and de-Stalinization course. The group was led by Malenkov, Kaganovich, and Molotov, with Shepilov joining them; Saburov, along with Voroshilov, Bulganin, and Pervukhin, sided with this faction. They formed a majority of 7 out of 11 Presidium members and moved to remove Khrushchev as First Secretary. Khrushchev, however, with the help of Marshal Zhukov, convened a Central Committee plenum where he secured majority support and reversed the decision. The June 1957 Central Committee resolution expelled Saburov from the Presidium and stripped him of his First Deputy Premier post. He was then shunted to Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Foreign Economic Relations (1957–1958), director of the Syzran heavy machinery plant (1958–1962), and director of a plastics plant under construction in the same city (1962–1966), retiring in 1966. He died in Moscow in 1977 and was buried at Kuntsevo Cemetery. Among the Anti-Party Group participants, Saburov received a relatively moderate punishment, a figure who had stood at the pinnacle of Soviet planned-economy bureaucracy from the late Stalin years through the Malenkov era into early Khrushchev rule, only to be swept aside in the political struggle.