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An early supporter of Khrushchev's, Kosygin continued his rise in the Soviet hierarchy as a Deputy Premier after Khrushchev was made party chief in 1953. Following the Kremlin conspiracy to oust Khrushchev in 1964, Kosygin and Brezhnev divided up the two posts that their predecessor had held simultaneously. Brezhnev took over the much more powerful job of Party Secretary, while Kosygin became Premier, which put him in control of the day-to-day management of the Soviet government. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger viewed Kosygin as a pragmatist, with "a glacial exterior" who was "orthodox if not rigid."
Kissinger and other statesmen who have dealt with Kosygin have remarked on the former Premier's fanatic, indeed almost inhuman, devotion to duty. In 1967, when Kosygin learned that his wife Klavdiya was dying, for example, he did not interrupt his working day. When word of her death reached him, he remained atop the Lenin mausoleum on Red Square until he had finished reviewing a parade. Last week the great survivor's own passing was duly noted by his colleagues in the Kremlin, but was not conspicuously mourned.