V.T. Suslin: the last first secretary of the Rostov regional committee of the CPSU

The article presents the first scientific biographical essay about the last first secretary of the Rostov regional Committee of the CPSU Vitaly Timofeyevich Suslin (1937). His work history began at a metallurgical plant in Taganrog, and the heyday of his party career fell on the late Brezhnev period and the Perestroika period of the Soviet era. For ten years (late 1970s - late 1980s) V.T. Suslin was one of the leaders of the Rostov regional Committee of the CPSU. And after working in the Central Committee of the CPSU (1988-1990) on an alternative basis, he was elected first secretary of the Rostov regional party committee during the rapid collapse of its authority (1990-1991) and the reduction of power resources. The “tug-of-war” with the new regional Council of People’s Deputies headed by L.A. Ivanchenko, a fellow party member and recent competitor of the hero of the article for the position of the regional party leader, became a characteristic of the time. After the ban of the CPSU and the collapse of the USSR, V.T. Suslin took an active part in the restoration of the party structures of the Communist Party, but did not aspire to become a public political figure. V.T. Suslin died in Taganrog at the age of 60 (1997).