 Complete the following phrase:  Kupriyanov was elected as the First Secretary of the Karelian Regional Committee of the Communist Party in June 1938 on the recommendation of Andrei Zhdanov to Stalin. As a regional committees First Secretary, Kupriyanov became part of the NKVD troika in September 1938. During the Winter War, he ordered the construction of the 132 kilometer-long Petrozavodsk-Shuezersk railway; the railway was built in 46 days. With the formation of the Karelo-Finnish SSR in 1940, he became the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic on April 2, 1940. He was elected as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks during the 