Kirill Mazurov

Kirill Trofimovich Mazurov (Belarusian: Кіры́ла Трафі́мавіч Ма́зураў, Russian: Кири́лл Трофи́мович Ма́зуров; 25 March 1914, in Rudnia-Pribytkovskaya, Mogilev Governorate – 19 December 1989) was a Soviet partisan, politician, and one of the leaders of the Belarusian resistance during World War II who governed the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia from 1956 until 1965, when he became a member of the Politburo of the CPSU.

Kirill Mazurov
Кіры́ла Ма́зураў
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union
In office
26 March 1965 – 28 November 1978
PremierAlexei Kosygin
Preceded byDmitriy Ustinov
Succeeded byDmitry Polyansky
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia
In office
28 July 1956 – 30 March 1965
Preceded byNikolai Patolichev
Succeeded byPyotr Masherov
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR
In office
24 July 1953 – 28 July 1958
Preceded byAleksey Kleshchev
Succeeded byNikolay Avkhimovich
Full member of the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th Politburo
In office
26 March 1965 – 28 November 1978
Candidate member of the 20th, 22nd Presidium
In office
29 June 1957 – 26 March 1965
Personal details
Born
Kirill Trofimovich Mazurov

(1914-03-25)25 March 1914
Rudnia-Pribytkovskaya, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died19 December 1989(1989-12-19) (aged 75)
Moscow, Soviet Union
NationalitySoviet
Political partyCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (1940–1989)

Political career

Kirill Mazurov was born in 1914 in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire in a peasant family of Belarusian ethnicity.[1] He was originally a construction technician, and graduated from the Gomel highway technical school in 1933. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1940 and the Red Army in 1941. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in military actions as a political instructor, a battalion commander and an instructor of the army's political department.

Mazurov left the army in 1942 to become secretary of the central committee of the Belarusian Komsomol. Mazurov then moved to a Soviet partisan unit where he became president of the central staff.

After the war, Mazurov returned to his position as secretary of the Belarusian Komsomol. In 1947 he joined the apparatus of the Communist Party of Byelorussia. From 1949 to 1950 he was the First Secretary of the Minsk city committee and from 1950 to 1953 first secretary of the Minsk regional committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia. From 1950 to 1979, he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. After Joseph Stalin's death, he actively supported Nikita Khrushchev. He was chairman of the council of ministers of BSSR (1953–1965), then First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia (1956–1965). In 1964 he was appointed candidate member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and was then a full member from 26 March 1965 to 27 November 1978. He was also the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1965–1976).

Mazurov retired in 1978.

In the 1980s, he gave an interview to Izvestia in which he said he was the envoy of Brezhnev who commanded the Warsaw Pact invasion force in Czechoslovakia in 1968 under the code name "General Trofymov". He said he regretted his action, added "today I would not accept to guide one similar operation" and asked the Czechs to forgive the Soviets.

Decorations

He was awarded the Order of Lenin five times, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class and was a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1971. He received other military medals as well.

Further reading
  • Залесский К.А. Империя Сталина. Биографический энциклопедический словарь. Москва, Вече, 2000 (Zalesskiy K.A. Stalin's Empire. Biographical encyclopaedic dictionary. Moscow, Meeting, 2000)
  • Soviet military encyclopedia in 8 volumes, Vol. 5

References
  1. Герои Страны
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