Petr Strautmanis

(Pēteris Strautmanis). Born Apr. 24, 1919, in what is now the Basi village soviet, Kuldiga Raion, Latvian SSR. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the CPSU since 1944.

The son of peasants, Strautmanis graduated from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1954. In 1937 he began working for kulaks as a wage laborer. In 1940 he joined the Komsomol of Latvia. After the restoration of Soviet power in Latvia in July 1940, he became a department head of the Komsomol’s Talsi District Committee. Strautmanis served in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). From 1941 to 1943 he was in the Soviet Army, and in 1943 and 1944 he was commander of a partisan detachment in the occupied territory of the Latvian SSR.

In 1944, Strautmanis became an instructor for the party’s Valka District Committee and editor of the district newspaper. From 1950 to 1960 he was first secretary of the Ape Raion Committee, department head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, and minister of sovkhozes of the Latvian SSR. From 1960 to 1965 he was secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, and from 1965 to 1974 he was first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR.

Since 1974, Strautmanis has been chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR and deputy chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He has been a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU since 1976. A member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, he was a deputy to the seventh to ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Strautmanis has been awarded the Order of the October Revolution, five other orders, and various medals.