VIOLATION OF SUBORDINATION: THE RESIGNATION OF THE FIRST SECRETARY OF THE MOLOTOV REGION PARTY COMMITTEE K.M. KHMELEVSKY IN 1949

The article examines the reasons for the resignation of the first secretary of the Molotov regional party committee K.M. Khmelevsky in 1949, initiated large-scale cadre purges in the region. In historiography this event was studied fragmentarily, and the assumptions that it was connected with the Leningrad Affair or was a Malenkov revenge for violation of subordination bases on ego-sources only. The circumstances and process of the resignation have been studied through the Federal Archives documents. It turned out that the Molotov region after the Great Patriotic war coped with economic tasks, including thanks to the lobbying activity of K.M. Khmelevsky, who in 1948 was accepted by J.V. Stalin. However, in the summer-autumn of 1949 the Central Committee checked the work of the Molotov regional committee and, citing shortcomings in cadre work and clamping of criticism, replaced its first secretary. Violation of procedures, biased selection of materials, assessment of standard shortcomings as political mistakes point to non-publicized circumstances. K. M. Khmelevsky voiced these in numerous statements addressed to senior party leaders between 1952 and 1959. The former secretary wrote about the unreasonableness of his resignation and linked it to the personal hostility of the Central Committee leaders, who were dissatisfied with the fact that he acted over their heads. At first he called the initiator of his resignation the head of Central Committee department A.L. Dedov and only in 1958 G.M. Malenkov, who had lost his high positions by that time. An analysis of these documents suggests that Khmelevsky's version is reliable.