[2] Kirichenko was born in the village of Chornobaivka in the Kherson region of south-eastern Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire, into a family of Ukrainian factory workers.

During this period, Kirichenko told Khrushchev that, while visiting the home of kolkhoz (collective farm) workers: I found a scene of horror.

According to Khrushchev, Kirichenko's promotion to First Secretary the CPU in June 1953 was originally proposed by chief of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria shortly before his downfall.

In June 1957, he rushed to Moscow at short notice to take part in a Politburo meeting at which Khrushchev's rivals, led by Georgy Malenkov were seeking to remove him from office.

This meant that he was officially ranked as one of the five most senior figures in the party, but because of his office and relative youth, he was the person most obviously placed to succeed Khrushchev.

He flew into a rage, banged the desk with his fist and shouted down the phone when Kirichenko tried to transfer a senior official from Moscow to Leningrad without consulting him.

[2] According to Enver Hoxha, in the midst of the Soviet-Albanian split an Albanian military student studying in the Soviet Union had met Kirichenko during a train ride.