Kirill Osopek (Napoleon's World)

Kirill Stanislavevitch Osopek (8 November 1900 - 19 August 1981) was an Alaskan politician who served as Premier of Alaska on two nonconsecutive occasions - from 1960 until 1965, and from 1966 to 1968, with an interruption in the middle due to the control of the Duma by the liberal coaltion.

Referred to as "the Arch-Conservative," Osopek was a political ally and protege of Yakov Sighovaryin and was groomed to be the quasi-dictator's successor since the mid-1950's. However, once in power, Osopek struggled for almost a decade with a volatile political atmosphere typified by stubborn refusals by the liberal coalition to go along with policies, infighting amongst his own conservative coalition, the turmoil in 1964 caused by the Great Alaskan Earthquake and the succeeding assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the growing tension with France during the Cold War, and the rise of the Moderate Party in the late 1960's.

Retirement and Death
After retiring in favor of Stanislav Mergeyev in September of 1968, Osopek resided at a home he had built for himself in suburban Kialgory, where he was an informal advisor to city planners and businessmen during the Kialgory Boom. Osopek was the honorary chairman of the 1976 World Cup, a move protested by the Liberal Coalition that came to power in 1973, although he was maintained in that role by Alexander III. Osopek wrote three memoirs of his life in politics - one about his early career, one about his domestic policy as Premier and one about his foreign policy in the same office. He was an avid writer in the late 1970's, and was in the process of editing two more memoirs, one an embellished, semi-ficitional account about his experience as a soldier and the other on his personal friendships with other politicians beyond the realm of day-to-day politics when he died in 1981 at the age of 80 of a severe stroke while walking his dog near the Bow River.

Osopek was granted a state funeral in Aleksandrgrad, the city he had committed so much energy to rebuilding, and was laid to rest alongside his parents in Rozangrad. When his widow, Nini, died in 1984, she was buried on the same plot.