16 Facts About Nikolai Shchelokov

Nikolai Shchelokov was fired from all posts on corruption charges and committed suicide on 13 December 1984.

Nikolai Shchelokov's father was a mine worker, and Shchelokov himself began working in the mines when he was sixteen years old.

Nikolai Shchelokov attended Dzerzhinsky Metallurgical Institute and received a bachelor's degree in metallurgical engineering in 1933.

Nikolai Shchelokov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1931.

Since then, Brezhnev and Nikolai Shchelokov forged very strong ties and continued supporting each other in their political careers until Brezhnev's death.

At the start of World War II, Nikolai Shchelokov was promoted to the rank of commissar in the Red Army while remaining the chairman of the City Soviet of Dnipropetrovsk.

Nikolai Shchelokov served as a political commissar in the army from 1941 to 1946.

Nikolai Shchelokov was part of the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia, consisting of several allies to Brezhnev, including Andrei Kirilenko and Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, when Brezhnev was head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast party committee, or obkom.

Nikolai Shchelokov was appointed by Brezhnev as minister of public order on 17 September 1966.

On 25 November 1968, the Ministry of Public Order was renamed as Ministry of Internal Affairs with the title of Nikolai Shchelokov's office renamed accordingly.

Nikolai Shchelokov was promoted to the rank of general on 12 September 1976, while serving as interior minister.

Five weeks after the death of Brezhnev, on 17 December 1982, Nikolai Shchelokov was replaced as interior minister by KGB chairman Vitaly Fedorchuk, a measure seen as influenced by Yuri Andropov, Fedorchuk's predecessor as head of the KGB and newly elected general secretary of the Communist Party as well as an opponent of the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia.

In 1988, author Raul M Mir-Haidarov argued that Shchelokov had been the godfather of the Uzbek mob.

Nikolai Shchelokov committed suicide by gunshot to his head using his own hunting rifle from his collection of rarities at his suburban mansion in Serebryany Bor on 13 December 1984.

Nikolai Shchelokov was awarded the followings: the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the Order of the Patriotic War, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the Order of the Red Star, Hero of Socialist Labour and various medals.

Nikolai Shchelokov was stripped of all civilian awards and honors on 12 December 1984.