Nikolai Bulganin

Biography

Nikolai Bulganin was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1895, the son of an office worker. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and served in the Cheka political police from 1918 to 1922, working with Lazar Kaganovich during the Red Terror in Nizhny Novgorod. He then managed electricity supply, heading the Moscow power system from 1927, and from 1931 to 1937 chaired the executive committee of the Moscow City Soviet.

Bulganin rose quickly during the Great Purge: in 1937 he became chairman of the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars and a full member of the Central Committee, and in 1938 a deputy premier of the Soviet Union and head of the State Bank. In the Second World War he was a senior political commissar rather than a field commander, joined the State Defence Committee in 1944, and in 1947 succeeded Stalin as minister of the armed forces and became a Marshal of the Soviet Union and, in 1948, a full Politburo member.

After Stalin's death he became defence minister and sided with Nikita Khrushchev against Georgy Malenkov, whom he replaced as premier in February 1955. He attended the 1955 Geneva summit, travelled abroad with Khrushchev, and during the Suez crisis threatened Britain, France and Israel with rocket attacks. His wavering during the 1957 'Anti-Party Group' attempt to remove Khrushchev led to his removal as premier in March 1958, expulsion from the leadership and retirement in 1960. He died in 1975.