Patoličev, Nikolaj Semjonovič

He was born on 23 September 1908 (according to the Gregorian calendar) in the village of Zolino in the Nizhny Novgorod region. He was the son of the Civil War hero, Brigadier-General Semyon Mikhailovich Patolichev, who received all the degrees of the St. George's Cross during World War I. During the Civil War, he received the Order of the Red Banner from Mikhail Kalinin at the suggestion of Budyonny and Voroshilov. Orphaned at the age of 12 when his father was killed in the fighting at Dubno and subsequently lived with his uncle's family.


From the age of 13 he worked for 4 years as a casual labourer before joining the factory of Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov in the town of Rastjapino in 1925. A year later he entered the factory school, from which he graduated after two years of study. Between 1928 and 1932 he worked in the Komsomol, was secretary of the factory committee and then secretary of the Dzherzhivsky district committee of the Komsomol of the Gorskiy region. In 1937 he graduated from the Military Academy of Chemical Defense in Moscow, then became assistant director of the Chemical Service 1. Moscow Proletarian Rifle Division.


From 1938 he devoted himself to party activity, and was responsible for organizing a department of the Central Committee. In August 1938, he was appointed party organizer of the Central Committee at Yaroslavl Rubber Plant, at the same time chairing its party committee. While carrying out an assignment to significantly increase labor productivity at the combine, which had not met its plan for seven years, he approached the factory workers through the factory newspaper, urging them to report any facts that threatened production. The move was met with a massive response, and the number of reports skyrocketed, a significant number of which were motivated and led to organizational conclusions. This introduced suspicion and fear in the teams, but also created an atmosphere of intolerance towards fraudsters. Within a few months, Patolichev managed to increase productivity 2.2-fold and the factory reached its prescribed capacity.


In 1940, after a speech at an extraordinary plenum of the Central Committee convened in conjunction with the USSR's failed military operations in the Finnish War, Lieutenant General Andrei Vasilyevich Chrulev introduced Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev to Stalin, who was well acquainted with his father. This meeting played a significant role in his career, and Patolichev entered Stalin's inner circle. Although Patolichev shunned Stalin's suggestion that he lead the Komsomol at this meeting, his acquaintance with Stalin protected him during his clashes with Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov in the following years. The same meeting also marked a rapid rise in career for the young Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, who, on Patolichev's recommendation, became the first secretary of the Komsomol in the Karelian-Finnish SSR.


From January 1939 to December 1941 he was the first secretary of the Yaroslavl Regional Committee and the city party committee. Under his leadership, from the beginning of World War II, mass production of the important M-105 aircraft engines for the military aviation was started at the Rybinsk factory. With the beginning of the war, under the leadership of Patolichev, the economy of the region was redirected for the war industry, the construction of defensive structures was introduced, the evacuation of the most important companies, the preparation of the population for air and chemical defense, etc.


From January 1941 to March 1946 he was the first secretary of the Chelyabinsk Regional Committee and the city party committee. He was one of the organizers and immediate leaders in the formation of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps (1943).


From March to May 1946 he was director of the department of the CPSU Central Committee, and from 1946 to 1947 he was secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (appointed on 4 May 1946 in place of Georgy Malenkov), a member of the organizational bureau of the CPSU Central Committee, director of the department for the inspection of party organs of the CPSU Central Committee, and also vice-chairman of the council for collective farming issues, falling under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.


At this time, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yakovlev and Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev rescued Brezhnev:
Even during Stalin's reign, Pravda published a sharply critical article about Brezhnev, who at the time served as secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Party Committee. And Patolichev, who at that time was serving as secretary of the Central Committee for Personnel. It is questionable whether Brezhnev was behind the decline of labor in the region, but Patolichev was able to save it. They have been friends ever since.


From May to December 1947 he was secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. From August 16, 1947 to July 1950 he was first secretary of the Rostov Regional Committee and the city party committee. After that he was the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for Belarus until 28 July 1956.


From 1956 to 1958 he was First Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR and from 26 August 1958 to 18 October 1985, when he retired, he was Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR.


He died on 1 December 1989 in Moscow at the age of 81 and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery.

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