Chernenko, << chehr NYEHN koh >>, Konstantin Ustinovich (1911-1985), served as general secretary, or head, of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from February 1984 until his death in March 1985. He succeeded Yuri V. Andropov following Andropov’s death. At that time, the post of general secretary was the most powerful office in the Soviet Union. In April 1984, Chernenko was also named chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which was then the office of the country’s head of state.
In 1978, Chernenko was elected a full member of the Politburo, which was the Communist Party’s main policymaking body. Leonid I. Brezhnev, the top government and party leader, strongly supported his nomination. In 1976, Chernenko had become a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. The Secretariat directed the everyday work of the Communist Party.
Chernenko was born on Sept. 11, 1911, in Bolshaya Tes, near Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia. He joined the Communist Party at the age of 20. In 1948, he became head of the propaganda department of the Communist Party of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Moldova). There, he began a close association with Brezhnev, then the republic’s top party official. Brezhnev became head of the Soviet Communist Party in 1964. Chernenko gained increasingly higher positions in the party. Brezhnev died in 1982. Many people believed Chernenko would succeed Brezhnev as party head. But Andropov was selected before him. Chernenko died on March 10, 1985.
