Peter or Pyotr Parfenovich Vlasov, better known under his

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

Vladimirov, (; 1905 – 10 September 1953) was a Soviet diplomat and journalist. He is best known for '' The Vladimirov Diaries'', in which he recounted the events in

Yan'an Yan'an; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi Province of China, province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several c ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, particularly information on

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

.Петр Парфенович Владимиров
hrono.ru The diary criticized Mao's government, and was heavily edited for Soviet propaganda purposes. From May 1938 through to November 1945, he served as a correspondent for the

Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union The Russian News Agency TASS, or simply TASS, is a Russian state-owned news agency founded in 1904. It is the largest Russian news agency and one of the largest news agencies worldwide. TASS is registered as a Federal State Unitary Enterpri ...

(TASS). At the same time, from May 1942 to 1945, Vladimirov also acted as a liaison officer for

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

to the headquarters of the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

, the capital of the

Yan'an Soviet The Yan'an Soviet was a soviet governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the 1930s and 1940s. In October 1936 it became the final destination of the Long March, and served as the CCP's main base until after the Second Sino-Japanese War ...

. Vladimirov's last appointment was as a Soviet ambassador to Burma in 1952, but due to an illness which eventually led to his death, he never took up the position. Vlasov was married to Maria Danilovna Vlasova; they had two sons, Boris and Yury. Yury became an Olympic weightlifting champion and a prominent writer; he published his father's diaries in 1973, twenty years after his death. According to

Philip Short Philip Short (born 17 April 1945) is a British journalist and author. He was born in Bristol. He studied at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduation, he spent from 1967 to 1973 as a freelance journalist, first in Malawi, then in Uganda. He ...

, this was done "on instructions from the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat, 'in the context of worsening relations with China', and underwent high-level editing and censorship. Its purpose was propagandistic. No contemporary diary ever existed, but it was based, at least in part, on Vlasov's radio messages to Moscow, conserved in the Soviet archives." Yury would also go on to claim that his father was poisoned "on the orders of" Soviet secret police chief

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 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vladimirov, Peter 1905 births 1953 deaths People from Voronezh Governorate Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Ambassadors of the Soviet Union to Myanmar Soviet journalists Russian male journalists Recipients of the Order of Lenin 20th-century Russian journalists Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Consuls for the Soviet Union in China Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies alumni