A.V. Vlasov: a political portrait in a historical context

The article is devoted to the biography of the famous Soviet party and economic figure A.V. Vlasov (1932-2002). During his career path from the secretary of the primary Komsomol organization of a mine to the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR he passed in a number of regions of the country. Vlasov worked in senior positions in party, Komsomol, economic structures of the Irkutsk region, Yakut and Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in the capital’s authorities (Central Committee of the CPSU, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Government of the RSFSR). The author pays particular attention to the Don period of A.V. Vlasov’s career (1984-1986), where the hero of the publication as First Secretary of the Rostov Regional Committee of the CPSU became a key regional actor of Gorbachev’s changes. However, he launched the processes of personnel renewal of the regional (local) elite and critical rethinking of the previous experience of socio-economic and political development in the Don region earlier than in the country as a whole. Vlasov’s work in Rostov-on-Don lasted 18 months, and he found himself in demand at the metropolitan stature, but he did not cut ties with the region until the end of perestroika.