| Demyan Korotchenko | |
| Native Name Lang: | uk |
| Office: | 6th Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic |
| Term Start: | 4 March 1947 |
| Term End: | 15 January 1954 |
| Predecessor: | Nikita Khrushchev |
| Successor: | Nikifor Kalchenko |
| Term Start1: | 21 February 1938 |
| Term End1: | 6 August 1939 |
| Predecessor1: | Mykola Marchak |
| Successor1: | Leonid Korniyets |
| Office2: | Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic |
| Term Start2: | 15 January 1954 |
| Term End2: | 7 April 1969 |
| Predecessor2: | Mykhailo Hrechukha |
| Successor2: | Oleksandr Lyashko |
| Office3: | Full member of the 19th Presidium |
| Term Start3: | 16 October 1952 |
| Term End3: | 6 March 1953 |
| Office4: | Candidate member of the 20th Presidium |
| Term Start4: | 29 June 1957 |
| Term End4: | 17 October 1961 |
| Birth Date: | 29 November 1894 |
| Birth Place: | Pohribky, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Death Place: | Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Party: | Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1918–1969) |
| Signature: | Demyan Korotchenko Signature 1954.png |
Demyan (Demian)[1] Serhiyovych Korotchenko (29 November 1894 - 7 April 1969) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician who twice served as the head of government of the Ukrainian SSR (the equivalent of today's Prime Minister).[2]
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.
Khrushchev's biographer, William Taubman, described Korotchenko as a "classic yes-man". Reportedly, "Silence was his trump card. He would wait until (Khrushchev) made some sort of proposal, and then say: "Yes, yes, of course, that's exactly right."[3]