Mikhailov, Nikolai

Born Sept 27 (Oct. 10), 1906, in Moscow. Soviet statesman and party figure. Member of the CPSU from 1930. Son of a handicraftsman.

Mikhailov was a worker at the Serp i Molot Plant in Moscow from 1924. From 1931 he worked as a journalist on the editorial boards of plant newspapers, on the Proletarskii raion committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) of Moscow, and on the newspaper Pravda. He served as managing editor of the newspaper Komsomal’skaia Pravda in 1937–38. From 1938 to 1952, Mikhailov was first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol and from 1952 to 1954, secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and then first secretary of the Moscow Committee of the CPSU. He was ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the USSR to the Polish People’s Republic in 1954–55 and to the Republic of Indonesia from 1960 to 1965. Mikhailov served as minister of culture of the USSR from 1955 to 1960 and as chairman of the Press Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR from 1965 to 1970. He received a special pension from 1970.

Mikhailov is the author of works on the communist upbringing of youth and on socialist culture. He was a delegate to the Eighteenth through Twenty-first and Twenty-third Party Congresses. He was a member of the Central Committee from 1939 to 1966, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1952–53, and a deputy to the second through fifth and seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, and various medals.