Nikolai Bulganin

Nikolai Bulganin Николай Булганин
Chairman of the Council of Ministers
In office 8 February 1955 – 27 March 1958
First Deputies	Anastas Mikoyan Mikhail Pervukhin Maksim Saburov Joseph Kuzmin Lazar Kaganovich Anastas Mikoyan
Preceded by	Georgy Malenkov
Succeeded by	Nikita Khrushchev
Minister of Defence
In office 15 March 1953 – 9 February 1955
Premier	Georgy Malenkov
Preceded by	Joseph Stalin
Succeeded by	Georgy Zhukov
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers
In office 7 April 1950 – 8 February 1955
Premier	Joseph Stalin Georgy Malenkov
Preceded by	Vyacheslav Molotov
Succeeded by	Lavrentiy Beria
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR
In office 22 July 1937 – 17 September 1938
Premier	Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded by	Daniil Sulimov
Succeeded by	Vasiliy Vakhrushev
Personal details
Born	30 March 1895(1895-03-30) Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire
Died	24 February 1975(1975-02-24) (aged 79) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Soviet
Nationality	Russian
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Булга́нин, Nikolaj Aleksandrovič Bulganin; 30 March [O.S. 18 March] 1895 – 24 February 1975) was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense (1953–55) and Premier of the Soviet Union (1955–58). The Bulganin beard is named after him.

Early career

Bulganin was born in Nizhny Novgorod, the son of an office worker. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917, and in 1918 he was recruited into the Cheka, the Bolshevik regime's political police, where he served until 1922. After the Russian Civil War he became an industrial manager, working in the electricity administration until 1927, and as director of the Moscow electricity supply in 1927–31. From 1931 to 1937 he was chairman of the executive committee of the Moscow City Soviet.

In 1934 the Communist Party's XVII Party Congress elected Bulganin a candidate member of the Central Committee. A loyal Stalinist, he was promoted rapidly as other leaders fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937–38. In July 1937 he was appointed Prime Minister of the Russian Republic (RSFSR). He became a full member of the Central Committee later that year, and in September 1938 he became Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, and also head of the State Bank of the USSR.

Great Patriotic War

During World War II Bulganin played a leading role in the government, and also in the Red Army, although he was never a front-line commander. He was given the rank of Colonel-General and was a member of the State Committee of Defense. In 1944 he was appointed Deputy Commissar for Defence, under Stalin, and served as Stalin's principal agent in the High Command of the Red Army. In 1946 he became Minister for the Armed Forces and was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He also became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Communist Party. He was again Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, under Stalin, from 1947 to 1950. In 1948 he became a full member of the Politburo.

Premiership

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Bulganin moved into the first rank of the Soviet leadership, being appointed to the key post of Defense Minister. He was an ally of Nikita Khrushchev during his power struggle with Georgy Malenkov, and in February 1955 he succeeded Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. He was generally seen as a supporter of Khrushchev's programme of reform and destalinization. He and Khrushchev travelled together to India, Yugoslavia and Britain, where they were known in the press as "the B and K show."^[1] During the Suez Crisis he sent letters to the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Israel threatening rocket attacks on London, Paris and Tel Aviv if they did not withdraw their forces from Egypt. However, many historians believe this was simply a bluff.

By 1957, however, Bulganin had come to share the doubts held about Khrushchev's reformist policies by the conservative group (the so-called "Anti-Party Group") led by Vyacheslav Molotov. In June, when the conservatives tried to remove Khrushchev from power at a meeting of the Politburo, Bulganin vacillated between the two camps. When the conservatives were defeated and removed from power, Bulganin survived for a while, but in March 1958, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev forced his resignation. He was appointed chairman of the Soviet State Bank, a job he had held two decades before, but in September Bulganin was removed from the Central Committee and deprived of the title of Marshal. He was dispatched to Stavropol as chairman of Regional Economic Council, a token position, and in February 1960 he was retired on a pension.

References

1. ^ Julius William Pratt A History of United States Foreign Policy, p. 470, Prentice Hall, 1965 University of California original digitized February 8, 2007; 1979 4th ed. ISBN 978-0133922820

External Links

Nikolai Bulganin at Find a Grave

Political offices
Preceded by Joseph Stalin	People's Commissar of Armed Forces 1947–1949	Succeeded by Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Preceded by Nikolai Kuznetsov	Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union 1953–1955	Succeeded by Georgy Zhukov
Preceded by Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Preceded by Georgy Malenkov	Premier of the Soviet Union 1955–1958	Succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev

Persondata
Name	Bulganin, Nikolai
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	30 March 1895
Place of birth	Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire
Date of death	24 February 1975
Place of death	Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union