The son of a poor building worker, he had a meteoric rise through communist ranks to become party boss in the industrial city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Urals. Unlike most other party leaders, he was good at talking to ordinary people, a skill that helped him win support and then power later, but he also showed no sign of questioning the Marxist-Leninist gobbledygook that he was required to recite at public events.