"Without glasnost the development
socialist democracy is inconceivable"
K. Chernenko
"I was born in a large and poor peasant family, in Krasnoyarsk territory, in 1911, and I lost my mother when I was a little child. At 12 years old I was sent to work at a rich master's farm, to earn a living. Yet, the new Soviet style was gaining more and more strength and I felt its freshness, when I enrolled the Youth Communist League. It was 1926. We worked and studied intensely at the same time. We were malnourished and poorly dressed, but the dream of a bright future charmed us, making us happy" (1).
This is what Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko wrote about himself in his autobiography. Chernenko's path to power was a breathtaking career made of success after success, that lead him from an obscure Siberian village to the very peak of power of the greatest Superpower ever existed on the earth.
Konstantin Chernenko was born in the village of Bolshaya Tes, (a Cossack settlement situated in Krasnoyarsk (2) kraj) on September the 24th (September the 11th according to the old Orthodox calendar) 1911. His father (of Ukraine origins) worked in copper and gold mines whilst his mother took care of the farm work.
At a very young age, Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Young Communist League) and he enrolled as a soldier in the army corps of prodotryady, where he distinguished in fighting against the kulaks and in spreading the Communist ideology: at 18 years old he was already the head of the Komsomol AgitProp Department in the city of Novoselovo. Exemplar was his behaviour: "He volunteered for tasks without waiting to be ordered, [...] he demonstrated zeal to...indoctrinate, organise, do whatever he was called for" (3).
In the 30's we see the young Konstantin Ustinovich serving in the prestigious border guard on the Kazach frontier of: Chernenko himself writes about his military service in his autobiography:
"You know that for the Soviet country the early 1930's was not an easy time, but there was pathos in making socialist construction advance in all directions: in the administration, economy, culture. The whole country was seized by enthusiasm for labour...Serving on the border was the most cherished dream of Komsomol members that time." (4)
An article dated April the 10th 1984, published on the Soviet Armed Forces magazine "Red Star" praised the courage of the young leader: "The young warrior possessed excellent abilities in shooting both with gun and rifle: he never missed the target. He was an fearless horseman".
Even while serving in the border guard, Chernenko never stopped the propaganda and party activity: yet, he showed such an enthusiastic attitude towards indoctrination of Communist ideals that he was chosen as the delegate of the Border Guards at a party conference. This was his further step in his following, rapid career within the Party Nomenclature: in 1933 he worked in the Propaganda Department of the Novoselovo regional Party Committee; few years after he was promoted head of the same department in the Uyarsk raykom; in 1938 Chernenko is the Director of the Krasnoyarsk House of Party Enlightenment, in 1939, he is the head deputy of AgitProp Department of Krasnoyarsk krajkom and finally, in 1941, he was appointed Secretary of Party Regional Committee for Propaganda. Needless to say, the young leader showed an uncommon capability in diffusing Marxist ideology among farmers and workers, in creating and organising activities of the Party, in improving the living conditions and the education of all the towns of the Krasnoyarsk kraikom. During the Great Patriotic War, the city of Krasnoyarsk, led by Konstantin Chernenko, supplied with any sort of goods the Western front that was fighting against the Nazi.
Strongly believing in the value of the education, in 1943 Chernenko attended the Moscow High School of Party Organisers, and after having finished the courses, he was appointed with a series of more and more important assignments: in 1945 he served as the Party Secretary for Ideology at Penza (5) Provincial Committee and in 1948 he was nominated Head of the AgitProp Department of Moldavian Central Committee.
There, he successfully combined the ideological work with the journalistic activity (writing for the newspaper Sovietskaya Moldavya) and the party activity, always paying much attention in improving the educational and theoretical level of the leading cadres. By that purpose, he himself enrolled in a teacher's college and, followed by other party functionaries, he started an upgrading program for top Party officials. Thanks to Chernenko's activity, new propaganda oriented party circles were created and millions of people of any age participated to the meetings organised by the AgitProp department. Chernenko also promoted the translation of Lenin's works into Moldavian language.
In 1950 Leonid Brezhnev became First Secretary of the Moldavian Republic: he was exceptionally impressed by Chernenko's skill in propaganda activities and by his capabilities in organisation; thus, he decided to recall him in Moscow from Moldavia in 1956, when Khrushev became General Secretary and Brezhnev turned to be one of the top authorities of USSR.
In Moscow, Chernenko became immediately the head of the propaganda section of the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee and he was in charge of the organisation of the propaganda work throughout the Country. As he was in Moldavia, in Moscow too he was fully engaged in both the political and the journalistic activity, being he the supervisor of the newspaper Agitator. After one year Chernenko took control over his department: the number of people engaged in Communist educational undertakings and enrolled in the agitatory raised of the 50% (6).
In 1960 Chernenko was appointed head of Secretariat of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet: under his initiative, new departments were created (i.e. the Department for International Affairs), and the bureaucracy was efficiently reorganised. Chernenko's department was among the very first to be equipped with computers, already in the 60's.
In 1965, after Brezhnev succeeded to Khrushev, Chernenko was nominated head of the General Department of the CC and he had the task to set the Politburo agenda and prepare the draft of CC decrees and resolutions; in 1971, at the end of the 24th Party Congress, he was promoted full member of the CC: he had control over the Party work organisation and over the Letter Department.
In 1976 Chernenko was appointed CC Secretary; two years later, he was promoted full member of the Politburo and, de facto, number two in the Party cadres after the General Secretary.
In the years preceding his being elected General Secretary, Konstantin Chernenko fully devoted himself to the ideological and party work; he headed the Soviet delegations abroad, accompanied Brezhnev to important conferences (included the one that took place in Helsinki, in 1976), and he was in the commission that set up the new Constitution passed in 1977; he also participated to many Communist Party congresses in several Countries: Austria, France, Denmark, Greece.
His long and fruitful career in the Party and his strong contribution to the development and to the diffusion of the Marxist-Leninist theories among the masses, were, at least, fully recognised when, on the 12th of February 1984 he became General Secretary of CPSU.
It is a mere prejudice that Konstantin Chernenko's year as leader of the Soviet Union was a dry repetition of Brezhnev's era: during Chernenko's year in power, we can ascribe to his personal initiative the renewal of the dialogue with Usa, an important school reform that was approved in April 1994, the fight against the, absenteeism and alcoholism proceeded, and industrial production even raised corruption; by the way, we like to point out that Chernenko was one of the very few members of the Soviet elite never involved in crimes related to bribing, embezzling or illegal currency traffics. After some initial perplexities, the foreign leaders who met the new General Secretary after his election, reported a good impression of him, as a strong leader although not rigid on his positions. Several times, in his speeches or interviews, Chernenko remarked his desire to meet President Reagan to promote the international détente and the peace in the world. On April the 10th 1984, Chernenko was appointed Chief of the Supreme Soviet (Head of the State) and Chief of the Supreme Defence Council.
It was the health to be Chernenko's very enemy: when he was elected General Secretary he was affected by a serious lung disease which hindered him from fully devote himself to the intense political activity; we don't have any doubt, instead we have sufficient reasons to believe that, if he had lived more and had attained earlier the Soviet leadership, many important and successful reforms in many fields of Soviet political, economical and cultural life, would have been carried out. Konstantin Chernenko died on March the 10th 1985 and was succeeded by Gorbachev.
Chernenko was awarded of many, illustrious decorations in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern Europe Countries: in 1949, he was prized with the Labour Order of Red Banner; 1976, in 1981 and in 1984 he was awarded Hero of the Socialist Labour: on the latter occasion, the Minister of Defence Ustinov underlined his rule as an "outstanding political figure, a loyal and unwavering continuer of the cause of the great Lenin"; in 1981 he was awarded with the highest Bulgarian honour and in 1982 he deserved the Lenin Prize for his "Human Rights in Soviet Society".
With his writings and his theoretical work, no less than with his political and ideological activity, Chernenko devoted himself to diffusing the Marxist ideology and principles: he signed numberless articles on the pages of the most prestigious Soviet newspapers and, "by the 80's, he had written more books than the other Politburo members taken together". Chernenko's books contain an extremely wide range of topics and ideas: from the orthodox principles of Marxist and Leninist thinking to women's right, from school reforms to economy, from human rights to the way to improve the efficiency of Soviet bureaucracy.
Among Chernenko's writings we can mention: Soviet Democracy: Principles and Practice; Human Rights in Soviet Society; Avant garde Role of CPSU; To Reaffirm the Leninist Stile in Party Work ; The Work of the Party and the State Apparatus, and so on.
Chernenko's books are collected in 5 volumes from which have been extracted selections translated in many languages (Italian, Spanish, French, Ethiopian...).
It's remarkable (and surely unknown) that Chernenko's ideas and theories, as they were elaborated in his books and expressed by him in his speeches, possessed a surprising and uncommon modernity, boldness and frankness; they even anticipated both purposes and slogans that would have been Gorbachev's war-horses, i.e. the criticism against the inefficiency of the bureaucracy, the necessity that economy decision makers, enterprises' administrators and anyone else in charge of important responsibilities rely more on their own initiative and less on passive waiting of Party directives; or, the frequent appeals and efforts "to strengthen the Party's responsibility and discipline" and to resolve the gap among theory and practice. The very words glasnost and perestrojka for the very first time appeared in Chernenko's speeches and writings.
Such ideas were still premature for the times when they were exposed (even 15 years before Gorbachev took them up again!) and thus remained ineffectual. This is why we believe that if history had been more benevolent towards him, Konstantin Chernenko would have been an innovative an pragmatic leader, and, around him, wouldn't have been built the negative and absolutely undeserved prejudice of him as an inept apparacik whose year in power was only a grey revival of Brezhnev's stagnation: such a statement is obviously unjust as well as wrong and biased. Besides, we must remember that Chernenko was conditioned by a collegial direction with a part of members of Politburo whose aims were only those of discrediting their General Secretary and oppose whatever attempt he made to put into practice his theories, and consequently, bound his hands.
Very remarkable and illuminating to understand Chernenko's policy under a perspective not polluted by the western (often) simplistic or superficial point of view, is his excellent biography written by the Italian journalist Italo Avellino "Cernenko, il Guardiano del Partito" (= Chernenko, the Guardian of the Party) to which we should direct our strongest thanks and congratulations. In Avellino's analysis, Chernenko, the pedagogue, the teacher, the preacher, was not the brezhnevian firstly defeated candidate, but the Guarantor of the Agreement, inside the "collective leading group" (Chernenko's definition of the Politburo), between the "Old Guard" and the "Rising Guard" and Andropov's natural successor in the crucial transition from the "unripe" Communism to the mature Communism, because he is the eldest among the Politburo members and thus the most reliable Guardian of the Communist Party orthodoxy. Whose aim was to guarantee the sacred collegial leadership in which the First Secretary can be considered primus inter pares.
"Agitate concretely, with your goal in mind!"
"Every Communist Party member a propagandist".
"As the ocean reflects itself in each single drop, so the qualities of all the Party do reflect themselves in each of its members".
About the perfect model of leader: "Wide are the power and the rights of our leaders, and wide are their responsibilities too. For a leader, there's nothing worse than to be presumptuous and arrogant. The true leader can blend together the authority of his office with his personal authority, the latter coming from his personal behaviour. The leader can be exigent towards the other because he is first of all exigent with himself. Then he has the moral and political right to act firmly when there's no need of words but of power".
A sight on his private life
Konstantin Chernenko got married two times: from his first wife (he got divorced from), he had a son, who followed the same career of his father and worked as a propagandist in Tomsk, Siberia.
His second wife, Anna Dmitrevna Lyubimova, gave him two daughters, Yelena, who has an advanced graduate degree by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and worked at the Institute of Party History and Vera, who worked in Washington by the Soviet Embassy, and a son, Vladimir who graduated at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and worked as editorialist at the Goskino.
Chernenko's favourite hobbies were: hunting (oftentimes in Brezhnev's company), fishing, riding, swimming and...cooking!