The name of M.A. Suslov - this creator of the authoritarian ideological system for many years was "heard," but there are very few documents about him (not counting the official ones). Using Soviet and foreign publications, memoirs, testimonies of contemporaries, the authors recreate the biography and draw a portrait of Suslov, who began his political career in 1920 and ended his almost 80-year life as a man endowed with enormous power and occupying second place in the party hierarchy.