Zhavoronkov, Vasilii Gavrilovich

Born Jan. 28 (Feb. 10), 1906, in the village of Kust, in what is now Ust’ia Raion, Arkhangel’sk Oblast. Soviet party and state figure. One of the organizers of the defense of Tula during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Hero of the Soviet Union (1977). Member of the CPSU since 1929.

The son of a peasant, Zhavoronkov graduated from the Moscow Mining Institute in 1936. He began party work in Moscow in 1937. Zhavoronkov was first secretary of the Tula oblast and city committees of the party from 1938 to 1943; from 1941 to 1943 he was also chairman of the city defense committee and a member of the Military Council of the Fiftieth Army. He held the position of first secretary of the Kuibyshev oblast and city committees from 1943 to 1946.

Between 1946 and 1953, Zhavoronkov served first as deputy minister of trade of the USSR and then as minister. He held the posts of minister and deputy minister of state control of the USSR and deputy chairman of the Commission of Soviet Control of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the period 1953 to 1962. Between 1962 and 1973 Zhavoronkov held staff positions with the Committee of Party and State Control of the Central Committee of the CPSU and Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Committee of the People’s Control of the USSR. A candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1939 to 1961, Zhavoronkov was a deputy to the first, second, and fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He retired on a pension in 1973.

Zhavoronkov has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, four other orders, and various medals.