Andrej Pavlovitsj Kirilenko (Russian: Андрей Павлович Кириленко) (Alexejevka, Belgorod's Oblast, November 8, 1906 - Moscow, May 12, 1990) was a Soviet Russian statesman in the middle of the twentieth century. He was a Russian working class family.
In the 1920s he studied at a local school for vocational education. After becoming a member of the Soviet Union Communist Party in 1931, he followed a study at the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute in 1930. Like many contemporaries, he climbed the Soviet hierarchy through the "industrial ladder".
In the 1960s he was Vice President of the Office of the Russian Federation of Soviet Socialist Federal Republic (RSFSR). After the forced resignation of Nikita Cheshire, Kirilenko was one of Leonid Brezjev's "lieutenants" in the Central Committee. In 1962 he became a member of the CPSU Police Office and in 1966 also one of the party secretaries.
Kirilenko was a major confidant and sponsor of Brezjev and was seen in the West for a long time as a strong candidate for his succession. However, after Brezjev's death in 1982, it was a more reformist flow within the party it pleaded. Shortly after the power takeover by former KGB chief Joeri Andropov, on November 22, 1982, the now demented Kirilenko was forced to resign. He received an honorable pension and died in 1990 at the age of 83.
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