Mikhail Vasilevich Zimianin

Born Nov. 8 (21), 1914, in Vitebsk. Soviet statesman and party figure. Member of the CPSU since 1939.

The son of a railroad worker, Zimianin graduated from the Mogilev Pedagogical Institute in 1939. Engaged in Komsomol (Young Communist League) work since 1939, Zimianin was first secretary of the Central Committee of the Lenin Communist Youth League of Byelorussia from 1940 to 1946. In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) he fought in the partisan movement in Byelorussia. In 1946 he was elected second secretary of the Gomel’ Oblast party committee, and in 1946–47 he was minister of education of Byelorussia. From 1947 to 1953 he was secretary and second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia.

After working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR from 1953 to 1956, Zimianin was appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the USSR to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1956–57. He was a member of the collegium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR from 1958 to 1960 and ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1960 to 1965. In 1965 he was appointed deputy minister of foreign affairs of the USSR.

Zimianin has been editor in chief of Pravda since September 1965 and chairman of the board of the Union of Journalists of the USSR since 1966. A delegate to the Nineteenth through Twenty-fourth Party Congresses, he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Nineteenth, Twenty-third, and Twenty-fourth Congresses and a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU at the Twentieth and Twenty-second Congresses. He was also a deputy to the Second, Third, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Supreme Soviets of the USSR. Zimianin was awarded two Orders of Lenin, three other orders, and medals.