Fyodor Kulakov

Who was Fyodor Kulakov?

Fyodor Davydovich Kulakov was a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War.

Kulakov served as Stavropol First Secretary from 1960 until 1964, immediately following Nikita Khrushchev's ouster. During his First Secretaryship in Stavropol, Kulakov met Mikhail Gorbachev; Kulakov would go on to become Gorbachev's mentor, and when he left his Stavropol First Secretaryship to enter national politics, Gorbachev took over his former office. Kulakov was elected to several important seats in the 1960s. In 1971 he was elected to the Political Bureau. He would go on to become a leading figure of Soviet leadership, and impressed Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to such an extent that commentators believed that Kulakov would become Brezhnev's successor. Such an event never materialised, however, as Kulakov died in 1978, four years before Brezhnev.