After many years as a loyal and effective member of the Communist Party, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (1911-1985) ruled the Soviet Union as general secretary for 13 months between February 1984 and March 1985.

Born September 24, 1911, into a large and impoverished Siberian peasant family in the village of Bolshaya Tes, Novoselovo District, Krasnoiarsk Territory, Chernenko left home by his own account at age 12 to work as a farm hand. His formal grade and secondary school education may have ended at this time. Although his name is Ukrainian, his official biographers describe him as an ethnic Russian, and it has been suggested that his family at one point migrated from the Ukraine to South Siberia, where they came to consider themselves Russian.

As a teenager Chernenko became associated with the Communist Youth League (Komsomol), often an apprenticeship for future party officials. In 1929-1930, he was named to head the propaganda and agitation department...