Nikolai Bulganin

Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin (; – 24 February 1975) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1958. He also served as Minister of Defense, following service in the Red Army during World War II. Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Bulganin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and became a member of the Soviet political police Cheka a year later. After the Russian Civil War, he held a number of administrative positions until 1931, when he became chairman of the Moscow City Soviet with the support of Lazar Kaganovich. A loyal Stalinist, Bulganin rose through the Soviet hierarchy in the middle of Stalin's purges, and in 1937 he was named premier of the Russian SFSR and a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. A year later he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union and head of the Soviet State Bank. Although he was never a front-line commander, Bulganin held a number of important political posts in the Red Army during World War II, and served in Stalin's State Defense Committee. In 1947, he succeeded Stalin as Minister for the Armed Forces and was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In early 1948, he became a full member of the Politburo. After Stalin's death in 1953, Bulganin supported Nikita Khrushchev during his power struggle with Georgy Malenkov. In 1955, he replaced Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. Initially a close ally of Khrushchev, Bulganin came to doubt his policies and became associated with an opposition group led by Vyacheslav Molotov. The group's defeat led to the fall of Bulganin, and in 1958 he was dismissed as premier and expelled from the Politburo. Forced into retirement, Bulganin died in 1975 at the age of 79. Early life and career Bulganin was born in 1895 in Nizhny Novgorod. The son of an office worker, he was of Russian ethnicity. He joined the Bolshevik Party in March 1917 and was recruited in 1918 into the Cheka, the Bolshevik regime's political police, where he served until 1922. During the summer of 1918, he worked with Lazar Kaganovich, the local communist leader, in imposing the Red Terror in Nizhny Novgorod. He worked with Kaganovich again in Turkestan in 1920. After the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), Bulganin became an industrial manager and worked in the electricity administration until 1927. He was the director of the Moscow electricity supply from 1927 to 1931. From 1931 to 1937, he served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Soviet (the equivalent of mayor).