Vakhrushev, Vasilii Vasilevich

Born Feb. 15 (28), 1902, in Tula; died Jan. 13, 1947, in Moscow. Soviet Party and state figure. Hero of Socialist Labor (1943). Joined the CPSU in 1919.

Vakhrushev was born into the family of a worker. In 1917 he was one of the organizers of a young workers’ union in Tula. In 1918 he volunteered for the front, where he did political work. After the Civil War Vakhrushev held high Party and economic positions. He was director of several plants and manager of the Moscow Regional Administration of Power. In 1937 he became people’s commissar of local industry of the RSFSR and in 1938, vice-chairman and then chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR. In 1939 he became people’s commissar of the coal industry of the USSR and in 1946, minister of the coal industry of the eastern region of the country. At the Eighteenth Congress of the ACP (Bolshevik) he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Party. Vakhrushev was a deputy to the first and second convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Vakhrushev is buried on Red Square in Moscow.