Mikhail Rodionov was born in a peasant family with medium income. When he was 10, Rodionov started working in his native village. In 1927 he graduated from the Lyskov pedagogical college and for two years worked as a secretary of local committees of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) in the Nizhegorod province. In 1928 Rodionov became a senior instructor of the people's education department in the Lyskov region and later headed a pedagogical college in Bor, Nizhegorod province. After Rodionov joined the Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1929), he received a full-time party job (1931) as a department head and later as a deputy secretary of the Bor Regional Party Committee, and a secretary of the Ivanovo Regional Party Committee. In 1937-1938 he supervised the people's education department of the Gorky province and was promoted to a secretary of the Gorky Provincial Party Committee (1938-1939). In 1939-1940 Rodionov chaired the Gorky Provincial Executive Committee. In 1940-1946 he was a major party boss in the Gorky province in capacity of first secretary of the Provincial and Municipal party committees. The 18th party conference (February 1941) elected Rodionov a candidate member of the Communist Party Central Committee. The first post-war election to the USSR Supreme Soviet (1946) brought Rodionov a status of deputy of the federal parliament. He was approved as a full member of the Orgburo (18 Mar 1946 - 7 Mar 1949) by the Central Committee plenum and later appointed Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers (23 Mar 1946). As a result of internal faction struggle of Georgy Malenkov against the Leningraders, Nikolay Voznesensky and Aleksey Kuznetsov, a number of politicians including Rodionov was accused of an anti-state activities and attempt to achieve an autonomy for the Russian SFSR. The Politburo sessions on 15 Feb 1949 and 6 Mar 1949 severely criticized Kuznetsov and Rodionov. After a questionnaire voting, Rodionov was expelled (7 Mar 1949) from the Orgburo and two days later he was discharged as Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers (9 Mar 1949). Left unemployed, Rodionov remained a post graduate student of the Academy of Social Studies (Mar 1949 - Jul 1949). On 13 Aug 1949, while leaving the room of Malenkov Rodionov was arrested and incarcerated. He was one of main defendants in the Leningrad Affair. The military board of the USSR Supreme Court sentenced Rodionov to a capital punishment on 1 Oct 1950. Biography source: [3] |
