Georgy Aleksandrov

Georgy Aleksandrov
Georgy Aleksandrov
Гео́ргий Алекса́ндров
Minister of Culture of the Soviet Union
	In office; 9 March 1954 – 10 March 1955
Premier	Georgy Malenkov; Nikolai Bulganin
Preceded by	Panteleimon Ponomarenko
Succeeded by	Nikolai Mikhailov
Head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee
	In office; 6 September 1940 – 1947
Preceded by	Andrei Zhdanov
Succeeded by	Mikhail Suslov
Head of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences
	In office; 1947–1954
Preceded by	Grigory Vasetskii
Succeeded by	Pyotr Fedoseev
Member of the 18th Orgburo
	In office; 18 March 1946 – 16 October 1952
Personal details
Born	Georgy Fyodorovich Aleksandrov; 4 April 1908; St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	21 July 1961 (aged 53); Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1928–1961)
Alma mater	Moscow State University (1932)

Georgy Aleksandrov (Russian: Гео́ргий Фёдорович Алекса́ндров; 22 March 1908 (Old Style) – 7 July 1961) was a Marxist philosopher and a Soviet politician and statesman.

Biography

Childhood and education

Aleksandrov was born in 1908^[1] in Saint Petersburg in a worker's family of Russian ethnicity,^[2] but became homeless during the Russian Civil War. In 1924-1930, he studied Communist philosophy in Borisoglebsk and Tambov and then transferred to the Moscow Institute of History and Philosophy. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1928. After graduating in 1932, Aleksandrov remained with the Institute for graduate studies, eventually becoming a professor, a deputy director and the Institute's Scientific Secretary.

Communist official

In 1938, at the height of the Great Purge, Aleksandrov was made deputy head of the Publishing Department of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In 1939 he was appointed deputy head of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee's Propaganda and Agitation Department and at the same time put in charge of the Central Committee's Moscow-based Higher Party School, which he headed until 1946.

In September 1940 Aleksandrov was made head of the Central Committee's Propaganda and Agitation Department, replacing Andrei Zhdanov^[3] who, as a Secretary of the Central Committee, retained overall supervision over Communist propaganda in the USSR. In 1941 Aleksandrov was also made a candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee and, on 19 March 1946, a member of its Orgburo. In 1946 he was also elected a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.^[4]

1947 demotion

Throughout his career, Aleksandrov was closely associated with Georgy Malenkov, who was one of Joseph Stalin's closest advisors. Once Malenkov began to lose influence to Zhdanov in 1946, Aleksandrov's position became shaky as well. In June 1947, Aleksandrov's textbook History of Western European Philosophy (1945) was denounced on Stalin's orders for overvaluing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's contributions and underestimating the contributions made by Russian philosophers. Aleksandrov lost his Propaganda and Agitation Department position to Mikhail Suslov and his supporters were purged. Nonetheless, Aleksandrov retained his Orgburo post and was made Director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute of Philosophy. He remained there even after Zhdanov's demotion and subsequent death in 1948 and Malenkov's return to power.

After Stalin

When Georgy Malenkov became the next Soviet Premier after Joseph Stalin's death in March 1953, he made Aleksandrov his minister of culture on 9 March 1954.^[1] After Malenkov lost his position in a power struggle with the Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev in February 1955, Aleksandrov was fired on 10 March 1955.^[1] Nikolai Mikhailov succeeded him as minister of culture.^[5]

Aleksandrov was sent to Minsk where he was put in charge of the section of dialectical and historical materialism of the Institute of Philosophy and Law at Belarus Academy of Sciences. He spent the rest of his life working on sociology and its history. He died in Moscow in 1961^[1] at age 53.

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Nikolai Krementsov (1996). Stalinist Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 300. doi:10.1515/9781400822140. ISBN 978-0691028774.
^ "Александров Георгий Фёдорович [04.04.1908-21.07.1961]".
^ See Pravda, September 7, 1940, quoted in Sanford R. Lieberman. "The Party under Stress: The Experience of World War II" in Soviet Society and the Communist Party, ed. Karl W. Ryavec, University of Massachusetts Press, 1978, ISBN 0-87023-258-4, p. 196
^ Corbett, Percy E. (1949). "The Aleksandrov Story". World Politics. 1 (2): 161–174. doi:10.2307/2008841. ISSN 1086-3338. JSTOR 2008841.
^ "Soviet Ousts Minister of Culture In New Bulganin Cabinet Shift". The New York Times. Moscow. 22 March 1955. ProQuest 196403. Retrieved 17 March 2022.

References

K.A. Zalessky. Imperiya Stalina: Biograficheskij entsiklopedicheskij slovar, Moscow, Veche, 2000.

[nik-1] Nikolai Krementsov (1996). Stalinist Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 300. doi:10.1515/9781400822140. ISBN 978-0691028774.

[2] "Александров Георгий Фёдорович [04.04.1908-21.07.1961]".

[3] See Pravda, September 7, 1940, quoted in Sanford R. Lieberman. "The Party under Stress: The Experience of World War II" in Soviet Society and the Communist Party, ed. Karl W. Ryavec, University of Massachusetts Press, 1978, ISBN 0-87023-258-4, p. 196

[4] Corbett, Percy E. (1949). "The Aleksandrov Story". World Politics. 1 (2): 161–174. doi:10.2307/2008841. ISSN 1086-3338. JSTOR 2008841.

[5] "Soviet Ousts Minister of Culture In New Bulganin Cabinet Shift". The New York Times. Moscow. 22 March 1955. ProQuest 196403. Retrieved 17 March 2022.

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