Alexei Kosygin

Born in 1904 to a working-class family in Saint Petersburg, Kosygin was conscripted into the labour army during the Civil War, then spent the 1920s managing industry in Siberia. He climbed the Soviet hierarchy through the 1930s and during World War II orchestrated the mass evacuation of factories ahead of the German advance. Stalin elevated him to minister, then abruptly ejected him from the Politburo in 1952. After Stalin's death he returned, chairing Gosplan in 1959 and becoming First Deputy Chairman a year later. When Khrushchev was ousted in October 1964, Kosygin took the premiership and initially led both the economy and foreign policy as the dominant figure in a triumvirate with Brezhnev and Podgorny. The Prague Spring in 1968 killed his reform agenda and let Brezhnev eclipse him; Kosygin stayed on, diminished, until ill health forced him out in October 1980. He died two months later.