Alexander Shelepin
1918–1994 (age 76)
Biography
Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Шеле́пин; 18 August 1918 – 24 October 1994) was a Soviet politician and intelligence officer. A long-time member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Shelepin served as a First Deputy Premier, a full member of the Politburo and as the chairman of the KGB from December 1958 to November 1961. Even after ostensibly leaving the KGB, he continued to hold considerable influence over the agency well until 1967 through his protégé, Vladimir Semichastny, who succeeded him as KGB Chairman.
Ambitious and well-educated, Alexander Shelepin was the leader of a hard-line faction within the Communist Party that played a decisive role in ousting Soviet premier and First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1964. Opposed to the policy of détente, he was eventually outmaneuvered by Leonid Brezhnev and gradually stripped of his power, thus failing in his ambition to lead the Soviet Union.