Nikolai Tikhonov

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tikhonov (Russian: Николай Александрович Тихонов; Kharkiv, 14 May [O.S. 1 May] 1905 – Moscow, 1 June 1997) was a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985, and as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice Premier, from 1976 to 1980. Tikhonov was responsible for the cultural and economic administration of the Soviet Union during the late era of stagnation. He was replaced as Chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1985 by Nikolai Ryzhkov. In the same year, he lost his seat in the Politburo; however, he retained his seat in the Central Committee until 1989.

He was born in the city of Kharkiv in 1905 to a Russian-Ukrainian working-class family; he graduated in the 1920s and started working in the 1930s. Tikhonov began his political career in local industry, and worked his way up the hierarchy of Soviet industrial ministries. He was appointed deputy chairman of the Gosplan in 1963. After Alexei Kosygin's resignation Tikhonov was voted into office as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In this position, he refrained from taking effective measures to reform the Soviet economy, a need which was strongly evidenced during the early–mid-1980s. He retired from active politics in 1989 as a pensioner. Tikhonov died on 1 June 1997.

Nikolai Tikhonov (cosmonaut)

Nikolay Vladimirovich Tikhonov (Russian: Николай В. Тихонов) was born May 23, 1982. He is a Russian cosmonaut, selected in 2006.

References

Nikolai Tikhonov (writer)

Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov (Russian: Никола́й Семёнович Ти́хонов; 4 December [O.S. 22 November] 1896 – 8 February 1979) was a Soviet writer and member of the Serapion Brothers literary group.

Biography

Born of parents who were petty tradesmen of serf descent, Tikhonov trained as a clerk, graduating from the Petersburg School of Commerce in 1911. He volunteered for the army at the outbreak of World War I and served in a hussar regiment; he entered the Red Army in 1918 and was demobilized in 1922. He began writing poetry early; his first collection, Orda (The Horde, 1922), "shows startling maturity" and "contains most of the few short poems which have made him famous." After 1922 he devoted himself to traveling and writing, and his later work, both verse (the collection Ten' druga, or The Shadow of a Friend, 1936) and prose (many adventure stories and the novel Voina, or War, 1931) reflects his delight in what he found in his travels, particularly in Georgia. His cycle of war stories Voennye koni (Military Horses, 1927) is "perceptive and well constructed."