Tolkunov, Lev

Tolkunov, Lev Nikolaevich

 

Born Jan. 22, 1919, at Bukreevka Station, Kursk Oblast. Soviet journalist; state and party figure. Member of the CPSU since 1943.

Tolkunov graduated from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1946. He received the degree of candidate of historical sciences in 1968.

From 1938 to 1944, in 1946 and 1947, and from 1951 to 1957, Tolkunov was associated with Pravda in various capacities: as a writer, a military correspondent, a special correspondent, an assistant editor, and a department editor. From 1947 to 1951 he was deputy executive secretary and a department head on the editorial staff of the newspaper Za prochnyi mir, za narodnuiu demokratiiu! After working from 1957 to 1965 in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he served as editor in chief of Izvestiia from 1965 to 1975. He was made chairman of the administrative board of the Novosti Press Agency in 1976.

Tolkunov became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1966 and a member in 1976. He was a deputy to the seventh through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and became a deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Group of the USSR in 1970.

Tolkunov has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, four other orders, and various medals.