Khrunichev, Mikhail

Born Mar. 22 (Apr. 4), 1901, at Shubinskii Rudnik, in what is now Kadievka Raion, Voroshilovgrad Oblast; died June 2, 1961, in Moscow. Soviet state and party figure. Lieutenant general of the engineering and technical service (1944); Hero of Socialist Labor (1945). Member of the CPSU from 1921.

The son of a miner, Khrunichev became a worker in 1914. He joined the Red Army in 1920; over a period beginning in 1924 he was associated with various militia agencies. In 1930 he assumed a managerial position, while holding which he studied at the Ukrainian Industrial Academy and the All-Union Institute of Economic Managers. Between 1932 and 1937, Khrunichev was initially deputy director and then director of a military plant. He became deputy people’s commissar of the defense industry in 1938 and deputy people’s commissar of the aircraft industry in 1939. He was first deputy people’s commissar of ammunition of the USSR from 1942 to 1946, minister of the aircraft industry of the USSR from 1946 to 1953, and first deputy minister of medium machine building from 1953 to 1955.

From 1955 to 1957, Khrunichev was first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and deputy chairman of the State Economic Commission of the USSR. From 1957 to 1961 he was first deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) of the USSR and held the rank of minister of the USSR. In 1961 he became deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and chairman of the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the Coordination of Scientific Research.

Khrunichev was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1952 and was a deputy to the second and fifth con-vocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He received two State Prizes of the USSR and was awarded seven Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals. Khrunichev is buried at the wall of the Kremlin on Red Square.