Vatchenko, Aleksei

Born Feb. 12 (25), 1914, in the village of Elizaveto-Kamenets (now part of the city of Dnepropetrovsk). Soviet party and state figure. Hero of Socialist Labor (1973). Member of the CPSU since 1940.

The son of a peasant, Vatchenko graduated from the physics and mathematics department of the University of Dnepropetrovsk in 1938. He taught from 1938 to 1941. From 1941 to 1944 he served in the Soviet Army and took part in the Great Patriotic War. Vatchenko turned to soviet and party work in 1945. From 1954 to 1976 he held a series of important positions in the Communist Party of the Ukraine. Between 1954 and 1959 he served first as secretary and then as second secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk oblast committee; he was first secretary of the Khmelnitskii oblast committee from 1959 to 1963, of the Dnepropetrovsk rural oblast committee in 1963 and 1964, of the Cherkassy oblast committee in 1964 and 1965, and of the Dnepropetrovsk oblast committee from 1965 to 1976.

In 1976, Vatchenko became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and deputy chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1961 to 1966, when he was named a member of the Central Committee.

A deputy to the sixth through tenth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Vatchenko has been awarded five orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three other orders, and various medals.