Petr Mironovich Masherov

Born Feb. 26, 1918, in the village of Shirki, now in Senno Raion, Vitebsk Oblast. Soviet state and party figure; Hero of the Soviet Union (Aug. 15, 1944). Member of the CPSU since 1943. Son of a peasant.

Masherov graduated from the S. M. Kirov Vitebsk Pedagogical Institute in 1939. He was a physics and mathematics teacher at the Rossony Secondary School from 1939 to 1941. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) he assumed leadership of the underground Komsomol organization and was a leader of the partisan movement in Rossony Raion, Byelorussian SSR. He became commander of the Shchors Partisan Detachment in April 1942, commissar of the Rokossovskii Partisan Brigade in March 1943, and first secretary of the underground Vileika Oblast Committee of the Byelorussian Komsomol in November 1943. Masherov further served as first secretary of the Molodechno Oblast Komsomol Committee (1944-46), secretary and then first secretary of the Central Committee of the Byelorussian Komsomol (1946-54), second secretary of the Minsk Oblast Committee of the Byelorussian CP (1954-55), first secretary of the Brest Oblast Party Committee (1955-59), and secretary (1959-62), second secretary (1962-65), and first secretary (from March 1965) of the Central Committee of the Byelorussian CP.

Masherov was a delegate to the Nineteenth through Twenty-fourth Congresses of the CPSU. He was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee at the Twenty-second Congress of the CPSU (1961) and a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the October Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1964) and at the Twenty-third (1966), Twenty-fourth (1971), and Twenty-fifth Party Congresses. In April 1966 he became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He was a deputy to the third through fifth and seventh through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and has been a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR since 1966. He has been awarded five Orders of Lenin and various medals. [15-1579-3; updated]