Gorkin, Aleksandr

Born Aug. 24 (Sept. 5), 1897, in the village of Rameshki, present-day Kalinin Oblast. Soviet state and party figure; Hero of Socialist Labor (1967). Member of the CPSU since 1916.

Gorkin was born into a peasant’s family. He graduated from the Gymnasium in Tver’ in 1917. From August 1917 to June 1919 he was secretary of the city soviet and chairman of the Tver’ provincial executive committee. He served in the Red Army in 1919–20. From 1921 he held high party posts in the Tver’ provincial committee, the Kirghiz oblast committee, and Central Volga Krai Committee and in the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik). In 1931 he studied at the Agrarian Institute of the Red Professoriat. From 1934 to 1937, Gorkin was first secretary of the Orenburg oblast committee of the ACP (Bolshevik). In 1937 he was elected a member of the Presidium and secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. From 1938 to 1957 he was secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. From 1957 to 1972 he was chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Gorkin was a delegate to the Eighth through Tenth, Fifteenth, and Seventeenth through Twenty-fourth Party Congresses. At the Eighteenth Congress (1939) he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik), and at the Nineteenth through Twenty-fourth Congresses of the CPSU he was elected a member of the Central Auditing Commission. He was chairman of the Central Auditing Commission from 1959 to 1961. Gorkin was elected deputy to the First through Eighth Supreme Soviets of the USSR. Since 1972 he has been receiving a special pension. Gorkin has been awarded three Orders of Lenin as well as medals.

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