Malyshev, Viacheslav

Born Dec. 3(16), 1902, in Ust’-Sysol’sk, now Syktyvkar; died Feb. 20, 1957, in Moscow. Soviet state figure; one of the organizers of socialist industry; colonel general of the engineer corps; Hero of Socialist Labor (1944). Member of the CPSU from 1926. Son of a teacher.

Malyshev graduated from the Velikie Luki Railroad Technicum in 1924. He worked as a mechanic and locomotive engineer from 1924 to 1930. Upon graduating from the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School in 1934, he served from 1934 to 1939 as designer, chief engineer, and director of the V. V. Kuibyshev Plant in Kolomna. He became people’s commissar of heavy machine building in 1939. Malyshev was vice-chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR from 1940 to 1944. Between 1941 and 1956, Malyshev served as people’s commissar of the tank industry, minister of transport machine building, chairman of the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on Introducing Advanced Technology in the National Economy, minister of the shipbuilding industry, minister of transport and heavy machine building, and minister of medium machine building. He served simultaneously as vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR from 1947 to 1953 and from 1954 to 1956. In December 1956, Malyshev became first vice-chairman of the State Economic Commission of the USSR and a minister of the USSR. He was elected to the Central Committee at the Eighteenth through Twentieth Party Congresses. He was a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1952-53. He was a deputy to the first through fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Malyshev was twice the recipient of the State Prize of the USSR and was awarded four Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals. He is buried in Red Square at the Kremlin Wall.