Andrei Kirilenko (politician)

Andrei P. Kirilenko (1906-19??) was a leading official of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,in the 1970s and early 1980s among the few serving on both the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

He was for a while positioned as a potential successor to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev,though he was months older than Brezhnev.However,by Brezhnev's death his longer-term protege Konstantin Chernenko had reached sufficient prominence,and the defection to Great Britain of a relative of Kirilenko's contributed to Kirilenko's forced retirement (decided before but announced after Brezhnev's death in November 1982).

Prior to joining the national leadership he had been Communist Party secretary for the Dnepropetrovsk and then the Sverdlovsk region.In the Secretariat he shared responsibility for ideology with Mikhail Suslov(1905-82).

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Another Andrei Kirilenko is a contemporary National Basketball Association player.