Mikhail Suslov

Born Nov. 8 (21), 1902, in the village of Shakhovskoe, in what is now Pavlovka Raion, Ul’-ianovsk Oblast. Leading figure in the Communist Party and Soviet state. Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1962, 1972). Member of the CPSU since 1921.

The son of a peasant, Suslov worked on a poverty relief committee and participated in the Komsomol organization of Khvalynsk District (now Pavlovka Raion, Ul’ianovsk Oblast) from 1918 to 1920. He graduated from the Prechistenskaia Workers’ Courses in Moscow in 1924 and the G. V. Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy in 1928; he later studied at the Economics Institute of the Red Professors. He taught at Moscow State University and at the Industrial Academy. Suslov participated in the struggle against the Trotskyist-Zinovievist antiparty bloc and against the right-wing deviation in the ACP(B).

From 1931 to 1934, Suslov worked in the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B) and in the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. Later, until 1936, he worked for the Commission of Soviet Control of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. From 1937 to 1939, Suslov was a section manager and secretary of the Rostov oblast committee of the ACP(B). From 1939 to 1944 he was first secretary of the Stavropol’ Krai Committee of the ACP(B).

During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Suslov was a member of the Military Council of the Northern Group of Military Forces of the Transcaucasian Front and chief of staff of Stavropol’ Krai partisan forces. He did much to mobilize workers of the krai against the fascist German invaders and later helped restore the economy of the region, which was devastated by the aggressors. Beginning in late 1944, Suslov was chairman of the bureau of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian SSR, which under his direction was a great help to the party organization of the republic in overcoming the consequences of the war and consolidating the Soviet system of government in Lithuania. Beginning in March 1946, Suslov worked in various bodies of the party’s Central Committee, and in 1947 he became secretary of the Central Committee. In 1949 and 1950 he also served as editor in chief of the newspaper Pravda.

At the Eighteenth Congress of ACP(B) of 1939, Suslov was elected to the Central Auditing Commission. He was elected to the Central Committee at the Eighteenth All-Union Conference of the ACP(B) of 1941 and at the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-second through Twenty-fifth Congresses of the CPSU. In July 1955, Suslov became a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, and in April 1966 he became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Suslov was a delegate to the first through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1950 he became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He became chairman of the Commission of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet of the Union in 1954.

Suslov has done considerable work in implementing the foreign and domestic policies of the CPSU and the Soviet state and in furthering the development of socialist economy and culture.

Suslov’s party and scholarly activities deal with the major sociopolitical and ideological issues in the growth of Soviet society. Suslov also works on current problems of Marxist-Leninist theory, world social development, and the communist, workers’, and national-liberation movements. He supports the struggle against reactionary ideology and right- and left-wing revisionism.

Suslov, as a delegate of the CPSU in international conferences and bilateral meetings of Communist parties, has played a leading role at many congresses of Communist and workers’ parties. He has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, and various medals. In 1975 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR awarded Suslov the K. Marx Gold Medal.