Puzanov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich

Born Oct. 12 (25), 1906, in the village of Lezhkovka, now in Puchezh Raion, Ivanovo Oblast. Soviet state and party official; diplomat. Member of the CPSU since 1925.

The son of a peasant, Puzanov graduated from the Ples Agricultural Technicum in 1930 and worked as an agronomist. He was a member of the Commission of Soviet Control of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR from 1934 to 1940. From 1940 to 1943 he was chief controller, and in 1943 and 1944 deputy people’s commissar of the Commission of State Control of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He was chairman of the Kuibyshev Oblast Executive Committee from 1944 to 1946, first secretary of the Kuibyshev City Committee from 1946 to 1950, and first secretary of the party’s oblast committee from 1946 to 1952.

Puzanov was chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR from 1952 to 1956 and first vice-chairman of the council in 1956 and 1957. From 1957 to 1962 he was ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the USSR to the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, occupying the same post to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1962 to 1967, to the People’s Republic of Bulgaria from 1967 to 1972, and to Afghanistan beginning in 1972.

Puzanov was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Nineteenth through Twenty-fourth Congresses, a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1952 and 1953, and a member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU for the RSFSR in 1956 and 1957. He was a deputy to the second through fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Puzanov has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and several medals.