Yu. S. Nikiforov. “Now We’ll Live! Brezhnev and Kosygin are not Khrushchev”: The Dynamics
of Regional Power in the Upper Volga Regions on the Eve of and in the First Years after the
Resignation of Khrushchev // Petersburg Historical Journal, no. 4, 2025, pp. 202–211.

DOI: 10.51255/2311–603X_2025_4_202

Abstract:

The article employs an analytical approach to examine the personnel changes that occurred in the corps of first secretaries of the regional committees of the Upper Volga regions on the eve of and in the initial years following Khrushchev’s resignation. It is important to note that the division of the regional apparatus of power in 1962 according to the production principle and the appearance of two first secretaries of the regional committee (industrial and rural) significantly affected the dynamics of regional power. It is noteworthy that the primary responsibility for communication with the center was assigned to the “senior secretary”. The material pertaining to the party power of the Upper Volga region discloses the practices of replacing key nomenclature
posts in the regional government during the 1950s and 1960s. These include the transfer of experienced management personnel from region to region, the appointment of an ethnic Russian as a second secretary in the national (union) republics, and the consideration of the region’s production specialisation when appointing a regional leader. The publication presents a study of the personal characteristics of individual party leaders in the Upper Volga regions during the 1950s and 1960s. This study draws conclusions about two possible scenarios that may have occurred in the careers of the first secretaries of the Upper Volga regional committees in the period following Khrushchev’s resignation. The first scenario is the stabilisation of the power status in the region, and the second is the transfer of the first secretaries to Moscow to a higher post in the nomenclature hierarchy. The first option pertained to the case of Ponomarev and Loshchenkov, the respective party leaders of the Vladimir and Yaroslavl regions. The second variant was realised in the careers of the first secretaries of the Ivanovo and Kostroma regional committees — Kapitonov and Florentyev, respectively — who went to the capital for promotion. As was subsequently demonstrated, by the close of the 1960s, an emergent pattern of “regional political longevity” among the first secretaries of the regional committee had come to the fore,
a phenomenon that can be attributed to the policy of “trust in personnel” espoused by Brezhnev. Following Khrushchev’s resignation, the center permitted the replacement of the post of first secretary of the regional committee with a representative of the local party organisation. This trend was manifestly evident in the Ivanovo region.

Key words: USSR, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, first secretary of the regional committee, CPSU, Upper
Volga regions, party nomenclature, regional policy, leading personnel, regional political long-livers, Balandin, Kapitonov, Klyuyev, Loshchenkov, Ponomarev, Florentyev.

Author:

Nikiforov, Yury Sergeevich — PhD in History, associate professor, Department of Russian History, Ushinsky Yaroslavl State Pedagogic University (Yaroslavl, Russia).
E-mail: Nikifor2108@yandex.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-4253-4532

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