Mikhail Vasilyevich Zimyanin (21 November 1914 – 1 May 1995) was a Belarusian Soviet partisan, politician, and diplomat who served as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'', the official publication of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

, from 1965 to 1976. Afterwards, he was appointed to the party's secretariat. He retired on 28 January 1987 for "health reasons".

Early life and career

Mikhail Vasilyevich Zimyanin was born into a Belarusian working-class family in the city of

Vitebsk Vitebsk or Vitsyebsk (, ; , ; ) is a city in northern Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Vitebsk Region and Vitebsk District, though it is administratively separated from the district. As of 2025, it has 358,927 inhabitants, m ...

on 21 November 1914. His first job was in a locomotive repair deport, in 1929. He served in the Red Army from 1936 to 1938, and graduated from a teaching college in 1939. In 1940, he was appointed First Secretary of the Byelorussian

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it w ...

. Following the German occupation of Byelorussia, he stayed behind enemy lines as a member of the partisan movement.

Post-World War II career

Following the end of World War II, Zimyanin quickly climbed the ranks of the

Communist Party of Byelorussia Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, ...

, becoming Second Secretary of the BCP in February 1949. The First Secretary, Nikolai Patolichev, was a Russian, leaving Zimyanin, then aged 35, as the highest-ranking native official in Belarus. In 1952, he became a full member of the

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the Central committee, highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) between Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Congresses. Elected by the ...

Khrushchev period

In 1953, soon after the death of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

, Zimyanin was suddenly removed from his position and transferred to the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was a fall in status, and resulted in his being dropped from the Central Committee after the 20th Party Congress in 1956. It was all the more abrupt for the fact - not publicized at the time - that in June 1953 he was briefly elevated to the post of First Secretary of the BCP. This was part of a drive initiated in Moscow by the chief of police,

Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...

, to promote native cadres in the non-Russian SSRs. According to one account, Zimyanin traveled to Minsk, and delivered a devastating report on Patolichev's record while he sat in silence, having already prepared to leave Belarus, when a message came through from Moscow to say that Beria had been arrested, and Patolichev reinstated. For the next 11 years, while

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

controlled the communist party of the Soviet Union, Zimyanin's career suffered from the suspicion that he had been too close to Beria. In September 1953, he was appointed head of the department of the Foreign Ministry that handled relations with Poland and Czechoslovakia. He was Ambassador in North Vietnam, January 1956-February 1958, head of the Far Eastern Department of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1958–1960, and Soviet Ambassador in Czechoslovakia from February 1960 to April 1965.

Brezhnev period

On the day Khrushchev was ousted, and replaced by

Leonid Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (19 December 190610 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until Death and state funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, his death in 1982 as w ...

, their wives were on holiday together in Czechoslovakia. Meaning to speak to Viktoria Brezhneva, Zimyanin inadvertently rang Nina Khrushcheva and gloated about how he had attacked Khrushchev at the plenum of the Central Committee from which he had just returned, and how wonderful it was to have "dear Leonid Ilyich" as the new leader. He realized his mistake when there was no reply from Khrushcheva. That was how she learnt that her husband had been removed from office, because he had not been able to get through to her. Zimyanin made a comeback in April 1965, as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, and then in September 1976 as Editor of ''

'' soon after BCP leader

Kirill Mazurov Kirill Trofimovich Mazurov (, ; 25 March 1914 – 19 December 1989) was a Soviet people, Soviet partisan, politician, and one of the leaders of the Belarusian resistance during World War II who governed the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic a ...

, who had been Zimyanin's deputy and successor in the Buelorussian Komsomol in the 1940s, was transferred to Moscow and raised to full membership of the Politburo. He took a harder line than his predecessor, who had warned against 'anti-intellectualism'. His full membership of the Central Committee was restored in April 1966. Speaking at a private meeting of Soviet journalists in September 1967, Zimyanin described the exiled Ukrainian writer Valery Tarsis as a madman, and

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...

as "abnormal, a schizophrenic" with "a grudge against the regime", and attacked the poets

Yevgeny Yevtushenko Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (; 18 July 1933 – 1 April 2017) was a Soviet and Russian poet, novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, publisher, actor, editor, university professor, and director of several films. Biography Early lif ...

and Andrei Voznesensky. In March 1976, he was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee, with responsibility for culture, science, and the mass media. He retired in March 1987.

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