Editing Dnipro (section)

==== The "Dnipropetrovsk Mafia" ====
Reflecting Dnipropetrovsk's special strategic importance for the entire Soviet Union, party [[Cadre (politics)|cadres]] from the "rocket city" played an outsized role not only in republican leadership in Kyiv, but also in the Union leadership in Moscow.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Klumbytė |first1=Neringa |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HxZyQlANcDEC&pg=PA68 |title=Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–1985 |last2=Sharafutdinova |first2=Gulnaz |date=2013 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-7391-7583-5 |pages=68 |language=en}}</ref> During Stalin's [[Great Purge]], [[Leonid Brezhnev]] rose rapidly within the ranks of the local ''[[nomenklatura]],''<ref name=":2">{{cite book | last1=Bacon | first1=Edwin | last2=Sandle | first2=Mark | title=Brezhnev reconsidered | publication-place=Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire | date=2002 | isbn=0-333-79463-X | oclc=49894618 | language=br}}</ref> from director of the [[Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute]] in 1936 to regional (Obkom) Party Secretary in charge of the city's defence industries in 1939.<ref>{{cite book | last=McCauley | first=Martin | title=Who's who in Russia since 1900 | publisher=Routledge | publication-place=London | date=1997 | isbn=0-203-13782-5 | oclc=51666665}}</ref>

Here, he took the first steps toward building a network of supporters which came to be known as the "[[Dnipropetrovsk Mafia]]". They spearheaded the internal party coup that in 1964 saw Brezhnev replace [[Nikita Khrushchev]] as [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] and call a halt to further reform.<ref name=":2" />