Nikolai Pegov

Born Apr. 3 (16), 1905, in Moscow. Soviet state and party official and diplomat. Member of the CPSU since 1930.

The son of an office employee, Pegov began working in 1919. He worked at the Red Rose Factory and was deputy director of the M. Gorky Factory in Moscow and director of the V. V. Kuibyshev Factory in the city of Margelan (Uzbek SSR). After attending the Industrial Academy (1935–38), Pegov served between 1938 and 1947 as secretary of the Far East krai committee, first secretary of the Primor’e krai committee, and, concurrently from 1940, first secretary of the Vladivostok city committee of the ACP(B). He was also a member of the military councils of the Far Eastern Front and of the Pacific Naval Fleet. An official in the apparatus of the party’s Central Committee (CC) from 1947 to 1952, he was a secretary of the CC in 1952–53 and a secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 1953 to 1956.

After shifting to the diplomatic service, Pegov served as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the USSR to Iran from 1956 to 1963, Algeria from 1964 to 1967, and India from 1967 to 1973. He has been deputy minister of foreign affairs of the USSR since April 1973, and a department head of the CPSU Central Committee since 1975. Elected a member of the CC at the Eighteenth through Twenty-fifth Party Congresses, he was also a candidate member of the CC Presidium in 1952–53 and a deputy to the first through fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Pegov has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three other orders, and various medals.