Mikhail Trifonovich Iovchuk

Born Nov. 6 (19), 1908, in the village of Zauzhov’e in what is now Kobrin Raion, Brest Oblast. Soviet philosopher and party leader. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946). Member of the CPSU from 1926.

Iovchuk graduated from the philosophy subdepartment of the Academy of Communist Education in 1931. From 1933 to 1936 he was in charge of the political department of a sovkhoz in the Byelorussian SSR. From 1936 to 1939 he chaired the subdepart-ments of dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism at the Moscow Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology and the Moscow Timiriazev Academy of Agriculture. From 1939 to 1941 he was engaged in party work on the Executive Committee of the Comintern, and from 1941 to 1947 on the Administration for Propaganda and Agitation of the Central Committee of the ACP (B), becoming deputy chief of the administration in 1944. From 1947 to 1949 he was secretary in charge of propaganda and agitation on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia. From 1949 to 1970 he was engaged in research and teaching at Moscow State University, the University of the Urals, and the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Social Sciences of the USSR. In 1970 he became rector of the Academy of Social Sciences attached to the CPSU Central Committee.

Iovchuk’s main scholarly works deal with the history of Russian philosophy, methodological problems in the history of world philosophy, the history of Marxism -Leninism, historical materialism, the theory of culture, and the contemporary ideological struggle. He was a deputy to the second convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. At the Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU he was elected a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. His awards include the Order of Lenin, four other orders, and a number of medals.