Born on October 26, 1945 in Moscow to a family of a front-line officer and
Victory Parade participant. He began his career as a turner in the Experimental Design Bureau of A. S. Yakovlev of the
Ministry of Aviation Industry of the Soviet Union. In 1963, he graduated from the Secondary School for Working Youth with a gold medal. He is twice silver and once bronze medalist of the USSR youth championships in academic rowing and was a member of the USSR Olympic reserve team in academic rowing in 1965–1966. In the 1970s and 1980s, he played rugby for Moscow Lokomotiv. Winner of the Moscow Cup in rugby. In 1969, he graduated from the instrument-making faculty of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, specializing in "radio-electronic devices". In the 1980s, he was one of the experts involved in preparing
disarmament treaties between the
USA and the USSR. In the 1980s, he conducted a series of interdisciplinary studies on the problems of ensuring reliable nuclear deterrence by the Soviet Armed Forces, taking into account the entire range of damaging factors of nuclear explosions, technical characteristics of offensive and defensive weapons, decision-making mechanisms on political-military and operational-strategic issues, etc. Together with General , he developed models for ensuring strategic stability at the level of general-purpose forces and conventional weapons, which became widely known in our country and abroad. In the 1980s, under the leadership of Vice President of the
USSR Academy of Sciences,
Evgeny Velikhov, who was in charge of defense issues at the Academy of Sciences, he was actively involved in developing problems of ensuring strategic stability, the concept and programs of an "asymmetric response" to the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of
U.S President Ronald Reagan. As deputy director of the
Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the
USSR Academy of Sciences, Kokoshin supervised, among other things, the laboratory of artificial intelligence and mathematical modelling, created by the decision of Velikhov. In this laboratory, under the leadership of Kokoshin, computer models of strategic stability were developed, which were soon transferred for further use to the General Staff of the
Soviet Armed Forces. In 1992-1996 he served as First Deputy
Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, in 1996-1997 he served as State Secretary and First Deputy
Minister of Defense of Russia. One of the developers of the federal laws "On Defense", "On the State Defense Order" and "On Mobilization Preparation and Mobilization of the Russian Federation". Under Kokoshin's leadership, the first State Armaments Program of Russia was developed (approved by the Government of Russia in 1996).) As Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, he developed and approved by Russian president
Boris Yeltsin in the summer of 1998 the document "Concept of state policy on military construction until 2005", which concerned not only the
Russian Ministry of Defense, but also other Russian security agencies. He supervised the preparation of decisions of the Security Council of Russia on issues of
Russia's nuclear policy, which provided for the development of a three-component structure of Russia's
strategic nuclear forces, tactical and operational-tactical nuclear weapons, and a nuclear weapons complex. Following the
December 1999 parliamentary election he served as deputy of the
State Duma of the
3rd convocation from
Fatherland – All Russia electoral bloc. Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Industry, Construction and Science-Intensive Technologies. Head of the Department of International Security, Faculty of World Politics, Lomonosov Moscow State University. On October 26, 2020, on the occasion of Kokoshin's 75th birthday, Russia’s Channel One referred to him as an outstanding statesman. ==Awards==