Nikolay Kruchina

Nikolay Yefimovich Kruchina (Russian: Николай Ефимович Кручина; 14 May 1928 – 26 August 1991), was a top Soviet communist official, the administrator of affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) since 1983 and until his death, effectively the party's chief treasurer, responsible for its enormous assets (popularly dubbed as the party's gold, Russian: золото Партии) estimated to be worth nearly $9 billion, which have never been located since.[1]

Nikolay Kruchina
Николай Кручина
Administrator of Affairs of the Central Committee
In office
September 1982 – 26 August 1991
Preceded byGeorgy Pavlov
Succeeded byPost abolished
First Secretary of the Tselinograd Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan
In office
November 1965 – 4 April 1978
Preceded byVasily Demidenko
Succeeded byNikolay Morozov
Full member of the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th Central Committee
In office
5 March 1976 – 26 August 1991
Candidate member of the 24th Central Committee
In office
9 April 1971 – 5 March 1976
Personal details
Born(1928-05-14)14 May 1928
Altai Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Died26 August 1991 (aged 63)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Political partyCommunist Party of the Soviet Union

Career

Born in Siberian Krai (now Altai Krai), Kruchina joined the party in 1949. In 1962 he became an instructor for the Agricultural Department of the CPSU. In 1963-1965 he was a secretary of the Tselinny Krai Committee of the Communist Party in the Kazakh SSR, in 1965-1978—the First Secretary of the Tselinograd Oblast Committee of the Communist Party in the Kazakh SSR. In 1973 he was awarded Hero of Socialist Labor. In 1971 Kruchina entered the Central Auditing Committee of the CPSU. In 1971 he became a candidate member and in 1976 a full member of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1978-1983 served as a first deputy chairman of the Agricultural Department of the CPSU then headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, became its Chairman after Gorbachev in 1983 and in the same year, after Yury Andropov's assumption of power, finally replaced Georgy Pavlov as the party's administrator of affairs (upravlyayushchiy delami). It is known that Kruchina's office transferred millions of dollars as a Soviet help to foreign Communist Parties. For the last time Kruchina visited his office on August 19, the day the abortive Soviet coup attempt of 1991 started. In 1966-1989 he was also a Deputy in the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union and in 1989-1991 People's Deputy of the Soviet Union.

Death

Kruchina died as a result of falling out of the window of his apartment in Moscow in the early morning of August 26, five days after the coup attempt. Still, he allegedly left two suicide notes, where it was claimed that he was not a plotter, despite having never been publicly linked to the attempted coup.[2] He apparently left near his desk on the armchair a thick file of recent Communist Party's illegal commercial operations.[3] This wasn't the only alleged suicide among the Soviet leadership those days; Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo, one of the plotters, allegedly shot his wife and himself in their apartment on August 22, while Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Adviser to the President of the USSR on military affairs, allegedly hanged himself in his office on August 24. Kruchina's predecessor, Georgy Pavlov, died the same way as Kruchina did, on October 6. On October 17 Dmitry Lisovolik, former deputy chief of the party's international department, followed his way several weeks after investigators found $600,000 in the office of his boss, Valentin Falin.[4] Kruchina was laid to rest at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.

References
  1. Soviet Turmoil. New Suicide: Budget Director. The New York Times, August 27, 1991.
  2. Jackson, James O. The Party Is Over. Time, September 9, 1991.; Klebnikov, Paul. Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. New York, 2000. p. 76.
  3. "Золото КПСС - десять лет спустя: Почему "новые русские" капиталисты финансируют коммунистов" [Gold of the CPSU - ten years later: Why the "new Russian" capitalists finance the communists]. Free Lance Bureau (FLB) (in Russian). 7 May 2001. Archived from the original on 20 February 2005. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  4. Tifft, Susan. Desperately Seeking Rubles. Time, November 4, 1991.

Further reading
  • Бунич, Игорь Львович. Золото Партии: Историческая хроника. – Санкт-Петербург: Шанс, 1992. P. 245–314. ISBN 978590074003-4
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