Andrei Kirilenko; Ex-Politburo Member, Brezhnev Protege

Andrei Kirilenko, 83, a former Soviet Politburo member who was a protege of the discredited Leonid I. Brezhnev. The Soviet news agency Tass said Kirilenko rose through the party ranks with Brezhnev, who like him was from the Ukraine. When Brezhnev succeeded Nikita S. Khrushchev, Kirilenko’s stature also rose, and in 1966 he was named Central Committee secretary for internal political questions and party work, taking charge of day-to-day party activities. He spent 16 years in the Politburo before being pensioned off in 1982, the year of Brezhnev’s death, to live in relative obscurity. Brezhnev is now routinely criticized as having presided over a “period of stagnation.” In Moscow on May 12.