Bulganin dead

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33778, 26 February 1975, Page 17

Bulganin dead

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, February 25. A former Soviet leader, Marshal Nikolai Bulganin, died yesterday after a long and serious illness, Tass reported today. He was 79. Marshal Bulganin became a familiar world figure as the Soviet Prime Minister and travelling companion of Mr Nikita Khrushchev on international visits in the mid-19505. The silver-haired marshal with his trim goatee beard and semi-aristocratic manner was a smooth contrast to the blunt Mr Khrushchev. The era of “B. and K.” — as Western newspapers dubbed them — lasted from February, 1955, until March, 1958, when Mr Khrushchev took over the Prime Ministership from the marshal. The “B. and K." period included the first East-West summit meeting since the Potsdam conference at the end of World War 11. The summit meeting was held in Geneva in July, 1955. Marshal Bulganin, a former Soviet defence minister, was the second Soviet Prime Minister after Stalin’s death in 1953. He succeeded Mr Georgi Malenkov. After resigning as Prime Minister in 1958, Marshal Bulganin was appointed chairman of the State Bank. According to some reports, he never took up the post and a few months later was named head of the Economic Council of the Stavropol Region, some 80 miles south of Moscow. Marshal Bulganin was forced to resign as Prime Minister in favour of Mr Khrushchev. He had defeated three veteran Soviet leaders — Molotov, Malenkov and Lazar Kaganovich — who had tried to oust him. Mr Khrushchev had his opponents labelled as an “anti-party group” and stripped of effective power. Visiting Norway in 1964 — only four months before he

too was forced out of office — Mr Khrushchev said of the marshal: “He was a bookkeeper, has always been a bookkeeper, and was never a politician.” During their co-travelling period between 1955 and 1957 “B. and K.” had seemed inseperable. Together they visited Belgrade, Geneva, India, Burma, Afghanistan, Britain, Finland and Czechoslovakia. Never before had two top Soviet leaders travelled so much in such a short time. Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was bom on June 11, 1895, in Nizhni-Novgorod (now Gorky), an industrial city on the Volga, east of Moscow. He was the son of a factory clerk and joined the Bolshevik party shortly before the 1917 revolution — thus qualifying as an “old guard” leader. He fought with the Red Army during the civil war and for a time was attached to the Cheka, "Russia’s internal security organisation. Stalin valued his services highly. At different times he held responsible posts in industry, finance and Government. He was major of Moscow from 1931 to 1937 when he became Premier of the Russian federation — the biggest constituent republic of the Soviet Union. He emerged unscathed from Stalin’s political purges of the 19305. Marshal Bulganin played an important role in World War II as a political commissar and member of the War Council for the Western front. He took charge of the civilian and political side of the defence of Moscow. He became Minister of the Armed Forces in 1947 when Stalin relinquished the post and was given the rank of marshal and appointed a deputy chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers (vice premier). He was made a full member of the Politboro, the Kremlin’s top leadership, in 1948.