He was born on August 6, 1907, in the village of Gribanovskaya of the Onega Uyezd, Arkhangelsk Governorate (now the Onega District of Arkhangelsk Oblast), into a peasant family. From childhood he was engaged in agricultural labor. He graduated from a rural school. In 1925–1929 he held leadership positions in the Onega District Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (VLKSM). After serving in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, he worked in party positions. In 1938 he graduated from the historical-party department of the Leningrad Institute of Red Professors, after which he was assigned to Yaroslavl Oblast. Such appointments were encouraged in the USSR to give the impression that the bureaucracy was socially close to the people.
If one takes into account that rural schools of that time usually had only four grades, and that the Institute of Red Professors primarily instilled a communist worldview, he was essentially poorly educated, but an initiative and compliant executor.
He simply took too literally the phrase of the top political leader Nikita Khrushchev, “Catch up and overtake America,” regarding the production of steel, meat, and milk.
Although in the areas of launching the first human into space and producing atomic bombs, more educated people were likewise given unlimited initiative to catch up with and overtake the Americans—and they succeeded.
The Institute for training Red Professors is, of course, particularly impressive—but that is quite another story. They probably earned something like a Doctor of Marxist Philosophy there.
He was born on August 6, 1907, in the village of Gribanovskaya of the Onega Uyezd, Arkhangelsk Governorate (now the Onega District of Arkhangelsk Oblast), into a peasant family. From childhood he was engaged in agricultural labor. He graduated from a rural school. In 1925–1929 he held leadership positions in the Onega District Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (VLKSM). After serving in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, he worked in party positions. In 1938 he graduated from the historical-party department of the Leningrad Institute of Red Professors, after which he was assigned to Yaroslavl Oblast. Such appointments were encouraged in the USSR to give the impression that the bureaucracy was socially close to the people.
If one takes into account that rural schools of that time usually had only four grades, and that the Institute of Red Professors primarily instilled a communist worldview, he was essentially poorly educated, but an initiative and compliant executor.
He simply took too literally the phrase of the top political leader Nikita Khrushchev, “Catch up and overtake America,” regarding the production of steel, meat, and milk.
Although in the areas of launching the first human into space and producing atomic bombs, more educated people were likewise given unlimited initiative to catch up with and overtake the Americans—and they succeeded.
The Institute for training Red Professors is, of course, particularly impressive—but that is quite another story. They probably earned something like a Doctor of Marxist Philosophy there.