Demyan Korotchenko was born in to a peasant family in a small village that today is in
Sumy Oblast,
eastern Ukraine. He joined the
Russian Communist Party (b) in 1918 and became active in organising
Red Army detachments. He was a minor party official in Ukraine during the 1920s, until 1928, when the boss of the Ukrainian communist party,
Lazar Kaganovich, was recalled and put in charge of the Moscow party regional communist party, Korotchenko was also transferred to take a two course, before being made chairman of the local soviet in the Bauman district of Moscow, where
Nikita Khrushchev was the district party secretary. In 1935, he succeeded Khrushchev as the district party secretary. He achieved rapid promotion during the
Great Purge, becoming First Secretary of the communist party in the
Western Oblast, based in
Smolensk, after the previous first secretary had been arrested. In 1938, when Khrushchev took over as party boss in Ukraine, Korotchenko was appointed First Secretary of the
Dnipropetrovsk regional party committee, and then Chairman of the Ukrainian Council of Ministers. He helped organise partisan resistance when Ukraine was under German occupation in 1941-44. In July 1946, he was appointed a secretary of the party, but reverted to his former post as head of the Ukrainian government in December 1947. From January 1954, he held the largely ceremonial post Chairman of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, ie 'President' of Ukraine until his death. == Personality ==