Kirill Iliashenko

Born May 14 (27), 1915, in the village of Lipetskoe, in present-day Kotovsk Raion, Odessa Oblast. Soviet state and party figure. Became a member of the CPSU in 1945. The son of a peasant. Graduated from the department of physics and mathematics of the Tiraspol’ Pedagogical Institute in 1939. Served in the Soviet Army from February 1940.

Il’iashenko participated in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) on the Western, Southwestern, Third Ukrainian, and Northern Caucasus fronts. In 1945 and 1946 he was chief of a department of the editorial office of the newspaper Moldova sochialiste. Between 1946 and 1948, he was instructor and sector chief of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia. From 1948 to 1951 he was deputy chief of the department of propaganda and agitation, from 1951 to 1953 chief of the department of literature and art, and from 1953 to 1966 chief of the department of science, schools, and culture of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia. In 1962–63 he was chairman of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research Work of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR and vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR. From March 1963 he was chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Moldavia and after August 1966 simultaneously vice-chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was elected a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU at the Twenty-third Congress of the party and a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Twenty-fourth Congress. He was a deputy to the seventh through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He has been awarded three orders and also medals.